by Cat Rambo
Since her participation in Clarion West in 2005, Cat Rambo’s publications include stories in Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, and Subterranean. Her collaboration with Jeff VanderMeer, The Surgeon’s Tale and Other Stories, appeared in December 2007. She is the co-editor of Fantasy Magazine and readers can learn more about her at www.kittywumpus.net. In “Kallakak’s Cousins,” her first story for Asimov’s, Cat choreographs the complex interactions of aliens with aliens as they try to get along (to one degree or another) on a human space station.
* * * *
The more annoyed Kallakak got, the sleepier he became. By the time he found himself in the small trapezoidal office that served the Undersecretary of Spaces as a waiting room, weariness washed over him in waves threatening to carry him away into sleep. His mid-hands, which he usually employed for fine work, were shaking with fatigue. He slapped open a pouch and took out a syringe with an upper hand to jab into the opposite arm’s pit, preferring that to the soft underside of his stumpy tail’s base. He grunted once as the needle pierced the thick skin, and felt the chrome-edged wake-up shock through his nervous system.
The rustle of the space station’s ventilating fans sharpened to a whine as the wake-up’s second component jolted his metabolism. The only bad side-effect was his bladder’s tightening, a yank on his nerves that made him wonder how far away the nearest eliminatory was. He allowed himself to feel gratitude for the lack of caff as his breathing and heartbeat slowed from the initial jolt.
The light was set to an annoying wavelength that scraped angrily at his eyes. Somewhere down the corridor someone kept walking back and forth, a metallic echo of footsteps. Three or four rooms away, he thought, and wondered whose waiting area they had been put in.
“Mr. Kallakak?” a woman said from the doorway, her voice officious and too loud to his tender ears. He flattened the frills atop his head, a rude gesture, but it dampened the noise’s edge. She probably didn’t know Ballabel etiquette anyway.
Unfortunately, her expression said she did. She said nothing, just turned and gestured him to follow. They traversed a winding corridor up several floors and into the Undersecretary of Spaces’ office, where the Undersecretary and two other humanoids awaited him.
“Mr. Kallakak, is it?” the Undersecretary asked, glancing at the pad on his desk for confirmation before Kallakak could reply.
“It’s a great pleasure,” Kallakak said, preparing to launch into the speech he’d prepared, but the man simply pointed him to a stool.
The Undersecretary wore no uniform, which made Kallakak hope for a moment that he was a long-timer, someone whose position in things as far as the government was concerned remained the same, and didn’t shift with every change of the government. But the official’s hair was growing out of a military crew-cut, about two weeks’ worth. Kallakak resigned himself to another iteration of the negotiation for his shop’s location that he had undergone, by his count, thirteen times so far.
The room’s two other occupants sat quietly. Both were burly and broad-shouldered, with the look of people who had grown up in substantial gravity. Their augmentations were utilitarian, with no pretense towards naturalness: thick metal ridges protected their eyes and laser lenses set over the eyes shifted with the light as they moved. Dark blue plating layered over their arms. Kallakak did not doubt that there were other, more dangerous additions on their forms.
“The Jellidoos here say that they have a prior claim to the space where your shop is located,” the Undersecretary said.
Startled by the bluntness, Kallakak looked to the pair. They stared back, expressionless. He had prided himself on his ability to understand shifts in human expression—it was of great value to him in negotiations with customers—but these two were unreadable to him. A wave of torpor washed over him, but he would not inject himself here and show them information about the angry terror their assertion had inspired.
“I have been there three standard years,” he said. “What is the prior claim?”
“They have been offstation and thought that their representative was occupying the space,” the Undersecretary said. “Their claim dates back four standard years.”
“They had no way of checking on their claim?” he said politely.
“Our representative deceived us,” the woman said. “Now we have returned in person to take up our merchandising effort again.”
“It is a very small and oddly shaped space,” Kallakak said. “Surely fine beings like yourselves have access to significantly grander locations?” He looked to the Undersecretary. “Or perhaps such might be found?” He wished the Undersecretary had met him alone; it would be easier to find out how much of a bribe was needed.
“Despite spatial difficulties, it is a premium location,” the woman said. “Just above the Midnight Stair and across from the Convention Hall.”
Kallakak nodded to assert his command of human gestures. “May I ask what type of merchandise you intend to sell?”
“Much the same merchandise that you currently sell,” she said. She permitted a smile to cross her lips. “We would be glad to give you a good price on your current stock.”
He let his eyes slit to demonstrate annoyance while he thought frantically. Would it be best—or even possible—to take his loss and see about finding another location, build up merchandise stocks again?
It would be laborious to clear his things out and re-establish a new shop: across from the Convention Hall was, as he and the other merchants knew full well, a location rivaled only by the entrance to the university or the booths immediately by the port, where every sailor and traveler had to pass. He did not think any other location he could afford would let him stay afloat. Sooner or later, his capital would dwindle bit by bit and destitution would come knocking at his door.
“Will the matter be examined before a court?” he asked, and caught the twitch that might signify the Undersecretary’s hope to have avoided the formalities. But the official only said “Yes, of course.” Pulling open a window on his desk, he studied it. “The next opening is...”
“We would prefer to have it done quickly,” the female Jellidoo said, and the official continued on as though he had not heard her, “five days from now.”
That was astonishingly quick, and Kallakak wondered if the two realized it. They stood, and Kallakak remained in his chair, hoping to speak to the Undersecretary alone. But they continued standing, looking at him until at last he resigned himself to exiting with them and rose to his feet in turn. All three bowed to the Undersecretary before leaving.
Outside, the Jellidoos fell in step with him, one on either side, as he walked towards the lift.
“We realize this is an inconvenience for you,” the woman said. “We are prepared to offer you compensation for the trouble it causes.”
“How much?” he said, tapping the lift call.
“Five thousand standard credits,” she said.
While substantial, it was not enough to make up for the space’s loss, which netted him that much again every few months. He grunted noncommittally.
“Sometimes we don’t realize that what we want isn’t good for us,” the man said, speaking for the first time. He stared intently at Kallakak.
“Dominance rituals do not work well on me,” Kallakak said, roughening his voice to rudeness. “I will see you in five days in the court.” He decided not to burn his bridges too far. “I will tally up the cost of my goods by then and will have a definite figure.” Let them think him acquiescent while he tried to find another way to save his shop. He stepped into the lift, but they did not follow him, simply watched as the doors slid closed and he was carried away.
Making his way back to his quarters, he saw three figures standing before it. He paused, wondering if the Jellidoos had decided to lean on him further. The trio turned in unison to face him, and he recognized them with a sinking heart. The cousins.
* * * *
Kallakak had come to TwiceFar space station ten standards earlier with his wife, Akla. Both were Balabels of good family; their births had been normal and each’s twin had gone on to a respectable mate and business of their own.
But Akla had a set of cousins who had been born not in a pair but a disreputable and unlucky triad. Moreover, they had continued to stay together long past their adolescence and therefore never matured into sexuality. Not unheard of, certainly, but unusual.
They had not been successful in business, and Kallakak had grown used to hearing Akla’s stories about their efforts. At times she had been quite witty about it but without her presence to remind him of their existence, he realized he had lost track of them. He had not seen them since he and Akla had joined together, back on Balabel, but he recognized them: they were oddly graduated in size, not the same height, and had a peculiar slump-shouldered appearance.
The tallest—what was its name?—approached Kallakak.
“You may not remember me, sir,” it fluted at him, its voice uncertain. “I am Tedesla, and these are my siblings, Desla and Sla. We are related to your wife, Akla.”
“She’s gone,” he said roughly. The corridor lights buzzed brittlely behind his head. He could feel a continuing push at his bladder, despite the several eliminatories he’d visited on the way home.
The cousins exchanged glances and conferred in whispers as he waited. He heard the smallest, Sla, say, “But we have nowhere else to go!” and reluctantly took pity on them.
“Come inside,” he said.
They followed after him, crowding the narrow room that served him as eating and sleeping quarters as well as a warehouse of sorts. Double layers of mesh crates were stacked up against one wall, and others had been assembled to create the furniture.
A bed made from a pallet of rugs covered with film plastic sat near two metal boxes pushed together to make a table. He pulled a tab on a caff box, setting it to Heat and putting it on the table before rummaging for cups in a box of chipped mugs showing the station’s logo. Glancing at the cousins, he grabbed for dried meat as well and opened it.
Two cousins sat on the floor, interspersing rapid bites of meat with gulps of caff, while Sla did the same, cross-legged on the bed, its bones still adolescent soft and flexible. Kallakak averted his eyes and focused on Tedesla.
“We won a prize,” Tedesla said. “A ticket for all three of us to the station.”
“A prize?”
“For our shopping, for being the one-millionth customer at the new grocer’s.”
“A prize for shopping?” Kallakak considered the idea. It would be easy enough to do something similar with his shop—if he still had it after five days, he thought sourly. He bit into a meat stick, looking at Tedesla.
“How much money is left?” he said.
Tedesla shrugged. “That’s all it was, a ticket.”
“And one to go back on?”
“No.” Tedesla hesitated. “It was supposed to be round trip for two, but there were three of us. So there is a trip back for one.”
“Which one?”
They shrugged in perfect unison. As though evoked by the gesture, he felt the day come crashing down on him, sleep crawling over his skin like an insect swarm.
“You can stay until we get things settled,” he grunted. Setting his cup down, he moved over to the bed, Sla scrambling out of his way. He laid down with his back to them and fell downwards into sleep.
In the morning, he saw they had tidied away the food from the night before. He thought they might have gone exploring, but when he pushed the corridor door open, he found them sitting outside in the hallway. They rose to their feet.
“I am going to the store,” he said. “Have you seen it already?” They shook their heads and followed him.
“I named it ‘Akla’s Wares,’“ he told them as he walked along. “I stock the things she liked: Corrinti bubbles and other sparkles, things tourists buy.”
“She liked such things?” Sla asked.
“She does,” he said.
They turned the corridor and headed up the Midnight Stair, moving along handholds rather than taking the stairs, the gravity feather-light around them. Kallakak’s muscular arms moved him along more rapidly than the majority of pedestrians along the hundred meter wide tunnel, its sides lined with black stairs that showed no sign of scuff or wear.
“It wasn’t smooth going at first,” Kallakak said. “Twice I got robbed during sleep periods, so I hired a mechanical to run it while I wasn’t there.”
“A mechanical?” Tedesla asked.
“A robot,” Kallakak said. “Most of them are trying to buy themselves or others free, they take on whatever labor they can manage. Alo2 is a good sort. Funny sense of humor, but a good sort.”
“We could watch over the shop,” Sla said. “With us here, you wouldn’t need anyone else.”
He didn’t answer, but paused in the doorway of the pharmacist. “The usual,” he snapped at Ercutio, who replied as he passed over the pack of juice bulbs, “If you wouldn’t retain your fluids in your body so much, they would not cause the infection.”
He ran his card through the reader to pay. “I know, I know,” he said.
“Who are those with you?” Ercutio nodded at the cousins, who stood backing Kallakak in a little ring.
“Cousins,” he said. He toothed through the seal of a juice bulb and sucked down the salty-sweet fluid, mixed with antibiotics.
“I heard there’s some trouble with your space,” Ercutio said and Kallakak paused before hurrying out of the doorway. “Some,” he said. “I’ll know more in a day or so, need to size things up.”
They moved along towards the shop. The name “Akla’s Wares,” written in standard and red Balabel script, rode the wall above the doorway, which Kallakak had widened at his own expense in order to make it easier for customers to enter.
Alo2 looked at them from where he sat beside the counter.
“We are Kallakak’s cousins. You will no longer be needed,” Sla told the mechanical in an officious tone.
Kallakak hastened to say, “Don’t listen to it. Visitors from home. Go look at the merchandise, you three, while I catch up.”
Alo2 registered the knowledge with a flicker of the blue lenses that served it as eyes. Its surface was matte steel, marred in places with dents from years at dock labor. “The shop took in 541 standards,” it said. “A party of six sailors bought twelve souvenir items at 2:11. Two Jellidoos came by but bought nothing.”
“Did they say anything to you?” he asked.
“They wanted to know the sum of my wages,” Alo2 said. “I misrepresented them as considerably more than I make.”
“Good,” Kallakak said enviously. He was incapable of lying; the effort of it caused a purpling of the ear frills that was unmistakable to anyone knowing much of Balabel physiology. While a master of understatement and misdirection, he envied Alo2’s ability to overtly misstate things.
“Jellidoos are tough to deal with,” Alo2 said in a statement of absolute truth and Kallakak nodded in glum agreement.
“They used to use a lot of mechanicals,” Alo2 said.
“Used to?”
“They’re superstitious. We spread a rumor that mechanicals hold souls that have been displaced from bodies—ghosts. Not all of us, mind you, just a few. They’re terrified of ghosts and death.”
“Too bad we can’t convince them this place was once a body repository or something,” Kallakak said. He looked around at the walls, which were a dull layer of cloudy plastic over gray metal.
It was unclear what use the station’s creators had meant to put the space to centuries ago. Finding it unused except for storage, Kallakak had submitted petitions to three versions of TwiceFar’s constantly changing government, achieving success on the fourth try. He touched the counter, a silvery glass slab he’d found in a cast-off sale at the university, and swore.
“What?” Alo2 asked.
“I’ve put too much work into this to see it taken away,” he said, feeling tired. “It is the only thing I have to remember Akla by. It is her past—my future.
He turned to the cousins. “All right. Desla, sweep the back aisles, Sla, wash the wall—you’ll want to unpin those scarves first and then put them back up. Tedesla, sort that box of mail cards, and make sure they’re grouped together by language. Alo2, can you stay a few more hours and show Tedesla how to operate the credit reader?”
“Where are you going?” Sla asked.
“To do some research.”
* * * *
“Huh,” Bo said after he’d listened to the whole long saga. “Jellidoos are bad news; they know law inside and out.”
“You’d think that they wouldn’t know TwiceFar law,” Kallakak said bitterly. He took a sip from the fragrant tea Bo had served him, redolent with yellow, straw-like flowers that smelled like honey and apple.
“They’ve probably been waiting for a turn that would allow them to do this,” Bo said. His height had been augmented to over two meters and that, coupled with his ferocious black eyes, helped him keep his own establishment orderly. “A lot of people watch the station to see how things change, watching for opportunities. But how can they claim your space? I thought it was unoccupied until you moved in there.”
“It was,” Kallakak said. “But there was a caff cart stored there for three days at one point, a temporary measure. They are claiming occupation based on having owned most of the cart.”
“Feh,” Bo said. “So you can make it too expensive for them to force you out, I suppose...”
“Hard to do. In that location, they can recoup a very large sum quickly. Larger than I can raise against them.”
“You can wait them out and see what happens next time the government shifts.”
Kallakak shook his head. “Then they’ll have been the most recent occupants—most law will lie in their favor.”
“It’s a shame,” Bo said. “I remember when you arrived—took you a year to save up enough to buy citizenship, let alone start to make claim to that space. When you and your wife first came...” The sentence trailed off in awkward silence.
“All done and gone,” Kallakak said. He drank the last of his tea, now cool.
* * * *
Back at the shop, he swore when he saw the mess Sla had created. The scarves, draped against a wall still damp from washing, had bled mottled dyes onto the wall’s plastic.
“I didn’t mean to,” it said, shrinking unhappily into itself. Tedesla came up behind it and touched its shoulder, giving Kallakak a look that reminded him of Akla. By the end, she had learned to play his guilt-strings like a musical instrument. The emotion glittered in his mind like Sla’s unhappy eyes.
“It doesn’t matter,” he sighed. “Take those down and fold them. We’ll sell them to the Jellidoos for a decent sum, I’m sure.” He frowned at the colored wall; the pink and green dye had left pale, feathery patterns like fern leaves.
Late that night, he heard them whispering together, admonishing Sla. After they finished, he heard the smallest cousin weeping and then the other two comforting it.
“Of course it is strange here,” Desla said. “But tomorrow we will go and get the little cream pastries from the Food Court that the woman was talking about. Sweet and light as air, she said.”
“We’ll bring some back,” Desla murmured. “He deserves to be taken care of, now that he no longer has his wife.”
“He never speaks of her,” observed Tedesla.
“Never,” said Sla. “Do you think she died of something gruesome?” The other two shushed it and lapsed into murmurs that he couldn’t make out.
When the hallway lights brightened to morning shift white, he let the increased angstroms tug his eyelids awake and drank another of the sour bulbs. His bladder felt much the same as it had the day before, irritated and a little sore, but at least it was no worse.
Sla was cheerful. Kallakak gave the three the day free, with a handful of coupons and vouchers he had gathered through exchanges with other merchants.
Alo2 was sweeping out the aisles as he entered.
“Where’s your entourage?” it asked. He shook his head. “Sent the pack of them off to the Food Court.”
“Good. What are you going to do about the Jellidoos?”
“There’s not much I can do,” he said. Moving over to the card-reader, he tapped at it, checking the totals. “I’m going to see the Undersecretary today. Can you watch over the shop again?”
“And the cousins?” the mechanical said.
He shook his head. “I told them they were off today and to meet me at evening to eat together.”
“They tried to ask me questions about Akla yesterday.”
“What did you say?”
“That I didn’t know anything. I think they don’t yet understand that non-Ballabel can lie. Not that I’m complaining. I had the middle one fetching and carrying for me yesterday when I described the pain that sudden movements caused to my resistors.”
He laughed. “They’ll learn soon enough, I’m sure.” He drank another juice bulb, feeling his outlook improving. His cheer was confirmed when the Undersecretary saw him with surprising promptness, but the emotion fled when the official bluntly mentioned the sum the Jellidoos had already provided.
“I can’t match that in the short term,” Kallakak ventured. “But perhaps over the course of time...”
The official shook his head. “Things change too quickly around here. There hasn’t been a government that’s lasted more than six months in over a decade,” he said. “Who’s to say what could happen? Better to grab what I can while I can.”
“All right,” Kallakak said.
Bo was similarly discouraging. “Chimp down in the Click Bar said the Undersecretary picks up lonely sailors every once in a while, treats them to a good meal and usually breakfast too, isn’t too picky about looks. I don’t have anyone that could lean on him.”
“And the Jellidoos are better at brute force leaning anyhow,” Kallakak said. He sighed. “Thanks anyway.”
Coming home through the Food Court, he came across a noodle vendor screaming at the cousins, who stood in a line before the livid, red-faced man, their upper and midhands clasped together in embarrassment.
“What’s happened here?” he asked, hurrying up.
“They pick up soup unit, get it all mixed around, bad programming!” the man yelled, his voice grating across Kallakak’s ears. “Expensive machine!”
“We were just looking at it,” Sla said sullenly, its tail lashing.
“We thought that you might get one for the shop,” Desla said.
“How much to fix?” Kallakak said to the merchant. He wished he could lie, wished he could pretend this trio, so clearly linked to him, were of no relation, no consequence to him. But their every moment proclaimed them his.
“Fifty credits.”
“Give you ten here and now or twenty store credit.”
“Fifteen here and now.” The merchant swiped Kallakak’s card through his reader, punching in the numbers as he eyed the cousins. As though his money wasn’t flowing away rapidly enough, Kallakak thought.
“You’re not paying him, are you?” Sla asked. “We were just looking!”
“Apparently you punched a few buttons,” Kallakak said tiredly. They followed him as he circled around the entrance of the Midnight Stair, towards the shop.
“You could sell a lot of food in your shop,” Sla said.
“We aren’t zoned to sell food.”
“But you sell the chocolate and fruit boxes.”
“Those are sealed.”
“Oh,” Sla said.
“Tonight you can watch over the store with Alo2,” he said. “First two of you in a five hour shift, then Desla by itself.”
“All right,” Tedesla said agreeably.
“What will I do by myself?” Desla asked, alarmed.
“You can go sit in the shop with them. You just won’t be working. Although if you get bored, Alo2 can show you how to weave hiber baskets. We sell a lot of those.”
“And what will we do when Desla is working?” Tedesla asked. “Sit and weave baskets as well?”
“You may also wish to go and fetch yourselves some food at that point, and perhaps bring some back for Desla. In such a case, do not look at or touch any machines, but allow the vendor to hand you the food,” he said. “At any rate, I will see you in the morning.”
But in the solitude of the room, things felt empty. Much as they had after Akla’s departure, a store full of strange echoes and spaces that could not be filled with boxes of Corrinti jellies and bioluminescent inks. He drank another bulb of medicinal juice and chewed his way through a pack of dried protein flakes, washing them down with swallows of meaty, buttery tea, while his midhands spread lotion on each other, brushing away bits of accumulated, overgrown skin and picking away the cuticle in order to burnish each sharp, curved claw.
“I do miss you,” he said aloud to the empty air. “I do.”
* * * *
The next day, Desla managed to flood the shop. All three had had digestive problems due to an excess of cream pastries and the eliminatory near the shop had overloaded and backed up. He waded through an expanse of dirty water, opening the shop door to see more water pooling in the aisles, bearing on its surface a film of dust, lint, and scraps of packing material. He turned the water off at its source and sent for a registered plumber before setting the trio to mopping. They carried the water, four dirty buckets at a time, to the recycler so he could reclaim at least some of the fee.
“Look,” he said to Tedesla. “The three of you might look around for another job. I will lose the shop in three days to others with a prior claim, and I will not have anything for you to do.”
“We can do that.” Tedesla said. It patted his arm kindly. “Do not worry, Akla’s husband. We will help provide for the household, and keep you in the style which she would have wished.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “I mean, I will have an excess of goods and no place to put them while I look for more shop space. The room will be quite full.”
Tedesla’s ear frills quivered eloquently with disappointment, but all he said was “I see” before he went back to helping mop the water from the floor.
* * * *
In between researching ways to save the shop, he tried to find them living space, but there was an influx of visitors—a trade market was being held within the next three days—and so he resigned himself to another week of their presence. He kept them on a schedule opposite his own, pointing out its efficiency in keeping the store constantly open, and paid Alo2 double the usual wages to keep an eye on them.
Meanwhile he found a private access unit and searched through endless datanets, trying to find a legal loophole in between constant trips to the eliminatory to soothe the burning in his groin. He stopped on the way home for more bulbs and ignored Ercutio’s questions. Every search had closed another door. When he got to the store, he found Bo waiting with advice.
“One of the new employees came from a Jellidoo background, so I asked them about the culture,” he said to Kallakak. “You need to be careful of what you say to them. Their specialty is libel and slander, and they’ll provoke you into saying anything that you can possibly be sued for.”
“As though taking the store were not bad enough?” Kallakak grumbled.
“Rumor says we might be in for a governmental tumble,” Bo said.
“So soon?”
“This has been a pretty apathetic government; a lot of old-timers aren’t too happy with it.”
“But still, if it were to change within two days, that would be a quicker change than any I’ve seen here,” Kallakak said.
“True,” Bo said, “But I thought the mention of it might cheer you up. How are your new additions doing?”
“They haven’t done much so far today,” Kallakak said. “Sla tried to eat a tourist’s pet last night, apparently, but Alo2 stopped it in time.”
Bo snorted.
“They’re coming for dinner anytime now,” Kallakak said, glancing at the light level in the corridor.
But the next people to come in the door were not the cousins, but rather the pair of Jellidoos. Kallakak smiled politely at them and signaled unobtrusively with a midhand to Bo, who drifted nearer, staring at them.
“We have heard that there have been acts of sabotage in the shop,” the man said. The woman pointed at the colors on the back wall. “And water,” the man added. “There has been a broken pipe?”
“A small problem, quickly solved,” Kallakak said. Sla and the others came through the door just in time to catch the last.
“Is there a problem?” Sla asked. The three came to look at the Jellidoos as well.
“We do not want any more damage to our property,” the man said. “We are prepared to offer a sum for immediate vacancy. Or else we will begin charging for damages to what will be our property.”
“Never!” Sla said indignantly and behind him, Bo rolled his eyes at Kallakak, mouthing the words “libel and slander.”
“You have no right to oust Kallakak! You are very bad people to do so!” Desla added.
“Tell me more,” the woman said, listening avidly. “Why should we not oust him?”
“He named this shop after his wife and she remains to watch over it, with love and affection!” Tedesla said, despite Kallakak’s frantic signal.
Kallakak opened his mouth to correct it, but then shrugged and remained silent.
“How so?” the man demanded. “Do you mean she still lives here?”
“In her death, as in her life, she remains by his side!” Sla declaimed. “Looking after him with eternal devotion.”
“A ghost!” the woman exclaimed, paling. She and her compatriot exchanged glances.
“It is a trick,” he said, but she shook her head. “Ballabels cannot lie,” she said. “See his ear frills?”
Although they could, Kallakak thought, neglect to correct mistaken impressions. Akla had left aboard a freighter, saying that she wanted to “find herself,” and had never come back. No sane Ballabel chose a life of solitude, and he had not wanted to correct the cousins in thinking her dead. She would have, he thought, preferred that.
“Will you be withdrawing the claim?” he said to the man as the Jellidoos pushed their way through the cousins towards the door. The woman spat and made a gesture he did not recognize as his only reply.
“Nicely done,” Bo said as she exited.
Kallakak beamed at the cousins with effulgent satisfaction. Fumbling behind the counter, he took out an unopened decanter of spirits and fumbled at the stopper.
“So the shop is safe?” Tedesla asked.
“Yes,” Kallakak said, pouring drams into mugs patterned with glittering stars.
“We don’t need to get jobs after all! We can keep working in the shop!” Sla said.
“Well,” said Kallakak. “I don’t know if I’d go that far.”