There was nothing soothing about the brief, cold shower I ended up having. The water was barely room temperature, and it stopped running before I even managed to properly rinse all the soap out of my long hair. I ended up using the sink for that. Even as there wasn’t a shortage of drinking water in this place, the water consumption must still be regulated.
The cold shower, however, felt invigorating. It woke me up and brought me into action. Since I had no plan beyond surviving tonight, I put all my energy into that.
Selecting a few dresses off the rack, I lay them out on the floor. I wished I had a pair of scissors or at least my utility knife. Since I had neither, I used my teeth and hands to rip sleeves off some of them, separate bodices from the skirts and shorten their length the best I could.
It wasn’t easy. My fingers hurt after a while.
“I could use your teeth here,” I said to Lesh, who had finished the food, licked the plate clean, and now was resting in his usual place by the door. His two heads were taking a nap while the middle one continued to watch my every move suspiciously.
I wasn’t quite finished with my work when Wyck returned with an armload of flat, opaque tiles that glowed in different colors.
Lesh greeted him as enthusiastically as ever.
“Here, here.” Wyck patted his pet.
Taking a cookie from his pocket, he tossed it to Lesh. The animal paid little attention to it. His left head licked the cookie once or twice before Lesh settled down on the glass floor by the wall. All three heads sleepily dropped to the floor, one by one.
Wyck’s gaze landed on the empty plate on the floor.
“We shared,” I explained before he had a chance to ask. “He seemed hungry.”
“You’re not to feed my beast.” He glowered at me.
“Well, you’ve never told me that before. And it’s too late, now.”
At the sound of Wyck’s grumpy voice, “the beast” gave us a sleepy glance with only half of his eyes open. He then went back to his nap, the long, scaly tail forming a circle around his body.
“What are those?” I pointed at the stack of tiles under Wyck’s arm, diverting his attention.
His brow still furrowed in displeasure, his lips pressed tight, Wyck followed my gesture with his gaze.
“Data slates,” he bit out curtly. “You’ve asked for some music.”
“Oh, yes!” I jumped to my feet. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
He shuffled back a little as I approached, then tentatively drew in some air through his nose, his chest rising.
“What?” I winced. “Do I still stink?”
From the impression I got of this place, the air around here wasn’t pristine or completely odorless. His excellent sense of smell aside, I couldn’t possibly smell worse than anyone else in here.
“Stink?” He frowned. “Who said you do?”
“You keep making faces whenever I’m near, as if my smell offends you.” I snatched a few slates from him. “How do these work?”
He shuffled through the remaining stack of slates, producing a black frame.
“Slide a slate in here, it’ll light up for you to use.” He handed the frame to me, then added in a softer voice, “And you don’t stink, never did, even before you took the shower.”
Something in his tone made me look up at him. His eyes on me, he appeared absolutely serious, genuine.
“How do you know I took a shower?” I brought a hand up to my slightly damp hair. “Can you smell it?”
“Yes. And it’s...nice, either way.” He shifted foot to foot, tipping his chin at the slates in my hand. “Tell me which color has what you need, I can bring more.”
Color?
I turned the slates. Two of their spines glowed yellow. Two were gray. The remaining few that Wyck was still holding were green.
“What do the colors mean?”
“The data slates are organized by color in the library.”
“You have a library here?”
He nodded.
“The captain put it together.”
I quickly ran my gaze over the words etched into the glowing spines. These were in Universal, with a line of text under it in a language I didn’t recognize—themul most likely, since that was the species of the captain.
According to the titles, the yellow slates contained documentaries on the lives of indigenous tribes of some distant planet. These wouldn’t be the obvious choice in search of some fast, catchy music to strip to, but I’d have to see the