He remained silent for another long moment, then abruptly said, “Keep it.” Once again, his words were accompanied by the unshakeable snap of authority. A command.
“Keep it?” I looked down at the shirt, feeling my brows pucker a little. I mean, I certainly liked it well enough. It had short sleeves, and was made of some kind of grey material that felt natural – something akin to Old-Earth cotton or wool.
Oh dear. Was this some kind of Zabrian custom I hadn’t heard of? During our chats before my arrival here, Tasha had told me all sorts of things about the world I was stepping into. She’d told me about the good natures of the cowboy convicts I’d be meeting. She’d told me about the wardens.
She didn’t say anything about trading clothes.
“Am I supposed to take my shirt off and give that to you, too?”
Warden Hallum had been in the process of standing up. He halted halfway, legs bent. Then, he swivelled to face the back ofthe wagon – and me – placing his big hands on the bench he’d been sitting on. Bending almost menacingly over the bench, he leaned into the area of the wagon I occupied.
“Pardon,” he said slowly, “me?”
“My shirt.” My right hand flew to the coat buttons at my chest. If his gaze followed them there, I couldn’t see it. “Am I supposed to take mine off, too? To give to you?”
He said nothing. Which wasn’t particularly helpful.
“I don’t mind,” I said hurriedly. “If it’s some kind of custom. We can trade shirts if you like. But I probably won’t take mine off out here.”
“You are asking me,” he said, enunciating every word with a cutting precision so that there was no way for my translator to miss his meaning, “if I would like you to undress here, and then to present some of your clothing to me? As a gift?”
“Er, yes?” I shrugged. “You gave me yours. I’m just trying to understand the expectations here. It only seems fair.”
I’d given up on trying to look into the blank, black hole of his face beneath his hat. So I wasn’t actually sure if I saw it or not. But for the briefest of moments, I thought there was a flicker of brightness there. As if he’d tilted his head, and the bright moon- and starlight had suddenly caught on the reflective surface of his eyes.
But he hadn’t tilted his head at all.
“Have I offended you?” I asked. Tasha had said something about Zabrian eyes flashing white with strong emotion.
“You have not,” he said, words clipped as he turned and basically launched himself out of the wagon.
“Well, you sound offended,” I muttered, more to myself than to him. But somehow, he heard me anyway. I yelped, nearly chucking his shirt with surprise when he replied from the ground directly beside the wagon now, his big head about level with mine.
“I am not,” he said. “No matter how I may sound to your human ears.”
“Hmm.” I observed him – or tried to, anyway. “Would you take your hat off?”
I watched the subtle, rhythmic rise and fall of his bare chest. Even his breath seemed supremely controlled.
“Why?” he asked. “I will do it,” he clarified. “But I would like to know the reason.”
“So that I can see your face.”
Maybe my response surprised him. He seemed to hesitate for a second. “You cannot see my face?”
“Not at all,” I admitted with a little laugh. “It’s way too dark! The brim of your hat is blocking the moonlight.”
He paused again, as if filing that little bit of information away.Human doctor is shit at seeing in the dark. Noted.
“It’s not just me,” I added, suddenly feeling a bit awkwardly defensive. “No human would be able to see your face right now. Not unless they’d had some kind of optical upgrade done.”
“This was not in the book.”
“The book?”
“The one that Tasha wrote. The one about human biology and culture.”
“Oh! Yes, I’m familiar with that document,” I said. “I helped her write parts of it.” A smile tugged at my lips. “Sorry, I didn’t think to add, ‘human eyes are absolute garbage in the dark.’”
