Page 271 of Every Almost

"Well?" Tavi said.

"It'll hold."

"Good enough for me."

"You don't want the numbers?"

"Why would I need the numbers?"

"To check my calculations?"

Tavi laughed, loudly. "Have you met yourself, Spark Plug? You're a walking micrometer! I don't need to checkanythingyou tell me." He turned towards her. "I trust you implicitly. So don't fuck it up."

Charlie grinned at him. Three legs of the tripod, holding.

Thirty minutes later, Borran was walking the Palus out of the paddock.

Charlie stood back and watched alongside Tavi and Maren.

Borran had gone into the paddock alone. He didn't hurry, instead slowly approached an armored prehistoric tank, stopping about four feet away. The Palu looked at him while Borran looked back, and neither of them moved at all for a long moment.

Then Borran moved forward and put his hand flat on the male's shoulder plate before saying something to the creature.

Charlie couldn't hear it. Her Voxlink had caught nothing, which meant it wasn't language, and the Palu leaned its enormous head into him.

The ground moved again while Borran was standing there.

Charlie grabbed for the fence while Tavi swore. Somewhere behind them a shutter came loose and banged twice.

Borran didn't move and neither did the Palu.

The Palus had been standing in an open paddock through nine hours of this, with the gate hanging wide open. It had never once occurred to either of them to leave because there was nowhere on this planet that wasn't moving.

Borran decided feeding the Palus would be the whole trick. He'd brought a sack down from his own galley that he didn't even tell anybody was with him. When he brought it out, surprising Charlie and the team, the male Palu ate out of his six-fingered hand almost immediately. Then it proceeded to follow him right out of the paddock.

"Are you seeing this?" Tavi said quietly.

"Yeah," Maren said while Charlie nodded.

"Gentle giant recognizes gentle giant."

"Tavi," Charlie muttered. "I swear to God, if you make me cry in this suit..."

The three of them watched the first Palu walk up the ramp onto the shuttle, and Charlie's hinge assembly held at seventy-one percent of its tolerance.

"See?" Tavi said, bumping his shoulder against Charlie's hip. "Walking micrometer."

The female Palu took a bit longer. Being the female, information stated it would be difficult for her to want to leave.

Borran stood with her in that paddock for eight minutes doing nothing that Charlie could see, but then the female put her head against his chest and let him take her out.

"We can't let this go to his head back on ship," Tavi said.

"Why not?" Maren asked.

"We'd never hear the end of it."

"We'd never hear the end of it from a man born of a species that barely says four words at a time and grunts for most conversations?"