She turned and hurried off, with Dot-R hurrying behind her. The thought of being with any man besides Kodran made her physically ill.
“Dot-R, I have been a fool,” she told her robot companion.
Dot-R shrugged. “Well, you are human, so that seems like a foregone conclusion.”
“Kodran and I are meant to be together, right?”
Dot-R looked at her askance. “Well, I—”
“So,” Rosamund continued, “I can’t just give up. When you choose to be with someone, it’s for better or for worse. If we have problems, I shouldn’t just run off and abandon him, right? I need to figure this out on my own.”
“Actually, I—”
“Thanks, Dot-R, you’ve been incredibly helpful!” she said cheerfully.
“I have?” Dot-R stared at her. “I mean, of course I have. You would be lost without me. Remember to tell my parental units that.”
“Actually, speaking of being lost without you, do you have a local map function? Because I need you to guide me somewhere. And we can’t tell anyone.”
“Are we going to do something forbidden?” Dot-R asked hopefully. “I have not misbehaved in days, ever since you forced that awful chaperone on me.”
“Whatever. We can take her with us. We just can’t tell Kodran.” Rosamund was cheering up enormously now. She had a plan. What could possibly go wrong?
* * * * *
“I’ve never hijacked a ship before,” Dot-R said excitedly as they landed.
She was maybe enjoying this a little too much.
Rosamund, on the other hand, was wondering if she’d made a mistake.
It was only a little ship, one of the skimmers, and really they had only borrowed it. And nobody had said they couldn’t, Rosamund reminded herself as they climbed out of the ship. Of course, they hadn’t asked if it was okay to take it, and that was because Kodran would of course have said no, but she was going to take it right back.
She’d asked Dot-R to access her memory banks and take them back to the place where Kodran’s star cruiser had first landed.
Now they were standing in a thickly forested valley, and she wasn’t sure what they were looking for.
There was a massive area of vegetation that had been flattened and scorched when the ship had landed, so she knew Dot-R had brought them to the right place.
She had assumed that she would have seen some buildings. A medical center or hospital, some houses, warehouses,something…but there was no sign of life here. There were tall trees in strange shapes and colors, draped in vines or giant snakes or possibly both. She listened carefully. All she heard was the screech and caw of alien beasts.
“I’m sure he dropped the medical equipment off here,” she said. “He must have. He bought medical equipment, he made the first landing, wouldn’t let me out of the room so I wouldn’t see what he was doing, and the second time he landed, he let me out right away. I would have seen if he’d unloaded the equipment near the Draell colony.”
“That makes sense,” Dot-R said.
“But then where is it?” She shaded her eyes with her hand. She saw purple monkey-looking creatures swinging from tree to tree, and enormous butterflies flapping through the sky. She even saw a few Feerbas hanging from tree branches, and she waved at them. They waved back.
“They have braids in their hair,” she said in surprise. “We’re nowhere near the group of Feerbas I taught how to braid hair. They even braided in flowers like I showed those other Feerbas.”
“Yes, they have kind of a hive mind,” Dot-R said. “They’re small and weak and they can’t fight back against big predators, so they developed these psychic abilities, like communicating with other Feerbas all across the planet. Once a Feerba learns a new skill, they broadcast it to all the other Feerbas. I learned about it from the Draell’s computer. I’ve been studying every day.”
“On purpose?” Rosamund said in surprise.
Dot-R scowled. “I got bored. Since I’m not allowed to get into any trouble or hang out with boys.” Then she stamped her foot. “This doesn’t mean my parental units were right. I don’t miss them at all.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“And I’m not going back home. Ever.”
