“Oh, I can see how that would be true,” Kara said thoughtfully. “But…what do you give them in return for their, er, hair and fingernail clippings?”
He shrugged, his broad shoulders rolling.
“Pretty much anything, actually. They have an insatiable thirst for new things—they’ll sit and contemplate a dish or a boot or whatever you have for hours.” He shrugged again. “It makes them happy and their old leaves are valuable to me so that makes me happy. It’s a win-win situation.”
“I see.” Kara was fascinated that he’d managed to not only make contact with such a disparate species, but also to make a lucrative trade deal with them as well. “How did you make the deal with them in the first place?” she asked, wanting to know more.
“I decided to land here—even though a lot of traders avoid Xephron Five like the plague—and check it out. At first they didn’t know what to make of me—a whole bunch of them surrounded me and started stroking me all over and chanting “New,new,new” like they’re doing now.”
Kara’s eyes widened.
“That must have really freaked you out!”
“A little,” he admitted. “But I realized pretty quickly they weren’t hostile. I asked about making a trade with them and they told me I would have to speak to their Kaji first. Once they took me to him, er, it, and Qi approved me, I was free to trade with them as much as I wanted.” He grinned at her. “And I’ve been coming back ever since. It’s a pretty lucrative deal and the Xephronians are nice people, when you get to know them.”
Once more, Kara was impressed with his nonchalance and open-mindedness. Of course, the Kindred were genetic traders by nature but they mostly made contact with other people they could possibly mate with or found animals with little or no sentience they could modify genetically to suit their purposes. She liked that Raak didn’t rule out an entire species just because they weren’t genetically compatible or biologically useful.
“So this Qi,” she said, keeping her voice low, though they were speaking in the Kindred Standard tongue, so she was pretty sure none of the Xephronians could understand them. “What is he, um, it, like? I mean, what does it look like? Is it the same as the rest of the people here?” She motioned at the sea of reflective plant people they were still wading through.
“Couldn’t tell you what it looks like because I’ve never seen it,” Raak told her.
“What? But then how…I mean, I don’t understand.” Kara shook her head.
“Qi is one of the Unseen,” Raak told her. “He has achieved what all the Xephronians hope for—complete invisibility. And here we are at his domicile now,” he added as they came to a halt.
Kara looked to where he was pointing but saw nothing…literally nothing. There was just a very large square of cleared land, about as big as a football field, with nothing to see but hard-packed dirt. Or was it dirt? She frowned and squinted her eyes at it. It was black, whatever it was, providing a strange contrast to the silvery reflective surfaces of the Xephronians all around it.
She reached down to touch some of the black stuff to see what it actually was…and found that she somehow couldn’t reach it. Though she could see it plain as day, when she reached for it, her seeking fingers encountered something hard and smooth that wouldn’t let her make contact with the black stuff.
“Hey—why can’t I touch it?” She looked up to see that Raak was grinning at her.
“You’re doing the same thing I did on my first visit here,” he remarked. “You can’t touch it, baby girl, because Qi’s palace is in the way. It’s like you’re trying to reach through the brick wall of a domicile to touch the foundations—it can’t be done. Well, not unless you’re able to phase through matter.”
“So this whole thing is a building?” Kara flung out a hand, gesturing to the vast, empty-looking square of black dirt. She winced as the back of her hand banged into something. “Ouch!”
“Uh-huh—the Palace of the Unseen. You okay?” Raak asked, frowning. He took her hand and examined it carefully. “Gotta be more careful, baby girl. Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it can’t hurt you.”
“Okay.” Kara flexed her bruised fingers and frowned. “Um, if we can’t see the entrance, how do we get in?”
“I will open the door for you,” their plant-person guide said in its clear, tinkling voice. “But first you must disrobe and become all-flesh.”
“Uh, what?” Kara asked, frowning at it uncertainly.
“It means you have to strip.” Raak was already tugging his shirt over his head to reveal his muscular chest and unfastening the magno tabs that held his flight leathers closed.
“What?” Kara wrapped her arms around herself protectively. “You didn’t tell me we had to get naked.” She put a hand on her hip. “This is why you said I was dressed perfectly for Xephron Five, isn’t it? Because I only have one thing to take off to be completely nude.” She gestured down at his silver uniform shirt and frowned at him.
He frowned back.
“Didn’t think you’d mind. After all, baby girl, didn’t I just see you naked not that long ago? Or mostly naked, anyway.” His dark, silver-ringed eyes scanned over her body and his voice dropped to a low growl. “Saw you and touched you too, as I recall.”
Kara felt her cheeks grow hot with a blush and her fangs throbbed with the memory of their time together. But she was still hesitant.
“Well…yes, I know that,” she said, frowning. “But just because I let you see me naked doesn’t mean I feel comfortable letting a whole bunch of strangers see me naked too!”
Plus, she’d been out of her mind with
