She could easily be wrong about that since she had only seen them from a distance, but they had seemed very large and there must be some reason Zhor was anxious to avoid a confrontation with them.
Of course, that could just be a matter of thezorphhaving the tendency to hunt and attack in packs. One against many was never good in a survival scenario, not even if the many were pint sized.
But she couldn’t rule out the possibility of giant things and that made her uneasy.
If that wasn’t enough to spoil any possibility of actually enjoying her ‘tour’ of the alien world—beyond being strapped to the back of a being to whom flight was his nature and who wasn’t the least bit shy about doing loop-de-loops, nose-diving, or flying almost straight up—the fact that he ‘lit’ every couple of hours certainly didn’t help. The uncomfortable suspicion began to form in Annika that she was wearing Zhor out.
And worse, that he was well aware that it was her additional weight that made it necessary to stop to catch his breath.
Embarrassed but also resentful, she began to anticipate some sort of snide comment about it.
Of course, she didn’t know if she’d be able to understand if hedidinsult her, but she watched him for any sign that he was thinking insulting things.
She was fully prepared to let him know in no uncertain terms that it was his own damned fault! She had done her best to talk him out of it! She had tried to convince him to take her to the buoy where she might have been able to figure out how to communicate with the home office.
She didn’t know that she could’ve, but she didn’t even get the chance to try, damn it!
And she had a bad feeling she was going to lose her job over this incident. Employers could be so damned unreasonable in their expectations of employees!
Especially when it cost them ten credits!
And this was liable to cost way, way more than that!
Maybe it still wasn’t too late, though? Maybe there was a silver lining to the fact that she was such a lard ass Zhor was having trouble going very far?
Deciding to ignore provocation, Annika dismissed her focus on looking for insult and instead fell to pondering what she could make of the trip thus far.
The first part had been truly terrifying, but she knew the cave entrance faced almost due south and they’d certainly taken off in that direction. She couldn’t actually recall anything after that point, though, because she’d been too terrified to make any mental notes. She’d had her eyes squeezed tightly together most of that time. When she looked around, though, she saw after a little bit that they seemed to be traveling somewhat southwest.
Of course, that was based on the assumption that the planet was actually revolving in the same direction that Earth did and the sun ‘rose’ in the east. If the planet rotated in the other direction they were moving east not west.
She struggled to recall that bit of information from her reports and finally gave up. It didn’t matter. She could see the position of the sun. To get back—assuming she could get away from Zhor at some point—she just needed to keep the sun at the opposite shoulder.
She spent hours trying to dream up a workable scenario for escape. This was basically a fruitless pastime—partly because she knew she couldn’t actually figure anything out that would be useable until she was actually presented with an opportunity.
Mostly, though, it was because she realized that she simply couldn’t bring herself to do anything that involved bashing him over the head or feeding him possibly poisonous berries to incapacitate him.
It made her so unhappy, in point of fact, that she realized she was way more fond of Zhor than it would ever have occurred to her was possible.
How could she feel like that about an alien?
How could she form an attachment to anyone that she couldn’t even really communicate with?
It actually didn’t take a lot of soul searching to conclude that her dependence upon him for survival was the primary thread of her attachment. And it was a very strong one formed very quickly because she needed him to survive—and because hewillinglyhelped her to survive.
She thought she probably would have felt a bond even if he’d spent most of the time trying to peel her loose and abandon her.
Unfortunately, she realized that wasn’t the entire reason she’d grown fond even if it was the main one.
She found him physically attractive—chemically, clearly, or she wouldn’t have been so very willing to have sex.
She wouldn’t have enjoyed it so much.
As long as he was the only one that had enjoyed the sex, she could lie to herself and tell herself that she’d only done it to barter for her safety and it was perfectly reasonable for her to do that since it was all she had to pay with.
It wasn’t actually payment, though, if she’d done it because she wanted him every bit as much as he’d wanted her.
She owed him for saving her life, but she didn’t think she was trying to pay with affection and/or sex.
