“What is that?”
“Dried meat. We prepared it at our village. Most of it was eaten on the trip.”
She pulls a face, which wrinkles her nose. “That doesn’t sound very appealing.”
“I have tried your sludge…it is polite for me to offer you a taste of my jerky.”
A laugh bursts out of her mouth, and she covers her heart with her hand. “I’m sorry I shouldn’t laugh. But if a human man offered me a taste of his meat…” She shakes her head, still laughing. “Youactuallymean jerky.”
“I am not sure if the whisperer translated properly, but are you insinuating that a human man would offer you a taste of his meq?”
“Meq?” Realization dawns on her face as her whisperer catches up. “Oh…mating equipment. Yes. That is what I was implying.”
“I can assure you; I am only offering jerky.”
She laughs again. “I’m going to be thinking about jerky in all the wrong ways.” She covers her mouth with her hand.
Her heart rate has increased, and her scent has changed. “You are not thinking about jerky at all.”
While her mouth might be covered, her dark eyes are filled with merriment.
“Sure, I am…So many men have offered me their meat, but you are offering me meat.” Harper sighs. “No one has made me laugh that much since we landed. Thank you. I would like to try your jerky. It can’t be worse than sludge, right?”
I lift my eyebrows. “If it tasted as bad as sludge, I would be too embarrassed to offer it to anyone.”
Once when I was surviving on my own, I found a carcass that was at least a day overripe, but I was hungry, and I didn’t want to waste it. I cooked it well over the fire and smoked severalpieces to last me for a few days. Smoking did not improve the flavor, though it was better than the time I ate the entire animal, including its brains. Sludge has much the same texture though sludge tastes as though it was boiled in a sock that hasn’t been washed in ten days.
“Come on, I’ll show you how to put the laundry on, and then where everything is.” She steps inside a room full of shiny metal boxes. “This is where we wash and dry the clothes.”
“You do not hang them outside to dry?”
“No. The machine does both.” She holds up my bag and opens the door to a machine, tips the clothes inside, then tosses in the bag. “Really simple. If the machine is full, you turn the dial this way. If it’s half-full, you turn it the other.”
“Hrad’s clothes can go in with mine.”
“No. It’s one bag per machine because it makes it easier to keep track of which clothes belong where. You put his in a machine.”
It’s not hard. I tip in the clothing, toss in the bag, shut the door and turn the dial to the not full setting.
She’s watching and assessing me. “You act like you’ve seen washing machines before.”
“No, we wash our own clothes in the river, or sometimes in tubs if it’s in the middle of winter. We always hang our clothes out to air dry. Do you not use soap?”
“We do. It is automatically added.”
“The soap came from Earth?”
“It did. In a powder.” She presses a button and the machine containing my clothes makes a noise.
I press the button on the machine I filled. “What happens when your Earth soap runs out?”
“We hope our scientists can make more…or I guess you show us what you use for soap.”
“What is it doing to the clothes?”
Harper opens the next machine, and puts her hand, spinning the inside. “When it’s full of water and soap and clothes, it’s much the same as you washing your clothes by the river. Then it rinses, it switches to drying them.”
I put my hand on the front of the machine containing my clothes. There is now charge running through the machine. “How do you make…electricity?” I use their word for it. Sabine says that is what our kams make, and how we talk silently and hunt so well. We can sense the charge of our prey.
