Dave kept visiting Seo. Sometimes in his lizard disguise. Sometimes, at night, when they could actually talk.
And he could hold her.
She gave this beautiful, contented sigh when he held her. As if she could finally take a burden off her shoulders, and spend some time at peace.
She let slip things, from time to time. Like the fact that Seo's aunt, apparently, blamed Seo for what happened —
"Of course she blames me," Seo tried to justify. "It's my fault."
—and no longer wanted anything to do with her. And then Seo had gone off to find her father, tell him what had happened and find some family who still wanted to have something to do with her—
"It didn't work out," Seo said.
"He blamed you, too?" Dave couldn't quite believe it. He wondered if she had a bit of a martyr-complex, or if her whole family really was full of idiots.
Imagine!
Blaming someone as wonderful as… Seo. For anything!
Seo wrinkled her nose. "No," she said. "He's just decided to live as a hermit in Victorian England for a while. No guests allowed."
"Not even you?"
"Especially not me."
She snuggled into him, closer. Close enough that he could feel her hearts pounding away inside her chest. Her skin was soft and smooth beneath his touch.
She didn't take things further than cuddling, at that point.
That took a lot of self-restraint from Dave.
He wouldn't — couldn't — push her. Not when she was still in mourning. Not until she decided she was ready.
(It was a lot easier to say it than it was to put it in action.)
During the day, Dave generally went out and gathered information. Generally… it was the kind of information he'd rather Seo didn't know he was gathering.
"Gun technology is pretty primitive," Dave reported into his thumb-corder. "Projectiles, mostly. A few neural stunners, but get a good tech guy in, and I bet they'll be a cinch to counter." He grinned. "Trust me, anyone with advanced technology could blow this planet out of space. Easily."
His best success so far was when he found and broke into one of their military bases.
"They do have some missiles that might cause some dents in space ships, so probably best to cloak during descent — or break into the military bases and disable the systems," Dave reported to his thumb-corder, wordlessly, as he snuck around the base he'd just evacuated with a false alarm. "Hardest problem you'll have is finding the bases in the first place. Obviously a society that gives the impression it doesn't need military might, but keeps them hidden in the basement just in case." He grinned. "Then again, if you're interested, you can give the signal to me. And I'll do it for you."
He snuck around, easily disabling the cameras and unlocking doors. Carefully keeping to the shadows, to avoid detection by the few military personnel still floating around.
"Five dollar wire-jammer, available to anyone with a 3D printer," Dave reported into his thumb-corder. "Disables every security system they have. Amazing."
Better still were the top secret documents he found just lying around in the base commander's private safe.
Which he'd opened in about sixty seconds using his superior human technology.
"And we have a winner," Dave told the thumb-corder. "Military base locations, deactivation sequences, top secret weapon locations, atomic codes, and…"
He paused.
"…the location of Vedhor," Dave muttered. Switched off the thumb-corder. "Better keep that."
Snapped holo-images of each document, for his personal records, then sealed the whole thing up and got the hell out of there.
Back to his ship.
To report.
When Dave was done with the work he couldn't tell Seo he was doing, he always tried to drop by to check on her. In disguise, usually. Unless it was night, and everyone else was asleep.
Not because he was worried about Madgella.
He was starting to figure out, by now, that Madgella wouldn't harm Seo — not intentionally. In fact, far as Dave could tell, Madgella basically let Seo decide where they were going and what they were doing, any given day.
Madgella wasn't the problem.
It was Madgella's friends.
Madgella had thrown a party, once, for friends and vague acquaintances, hosted at her house —
"Oh, I can't stand this moping around all day — drives me crazy!" Seo had explained to him, one night, in regards to the party. "But I think I've finally worked out enough of the social etiquette to pigeonhole her into a situation where she has to hold a party. It'll be good for her."
—and Dave, despite not having an invitation, had managed to get in due to his increasing familiarity with Madgella—
"And I could use someone there standing up for my pet," Madgella admitted.
—which led to Dave's getting a very frank account, from everyone Madgella knew, about just how useless and stupid Seo was.
"She makes Madgella sunny," Jimennila said. "We're all pleased about that."
"But…?" Dave offered.
Jimennila emitted annoyance and irritation. "I just wish she had a more… normal pet!" She swished her tail. "I mean, this one actually refuses to do certain activities! Can you believe it? Madgella thinks Sunshine finds them… 'degrading'… and lets her get away with it."
Considering some of these activities involved pre-chewing food, giving naked massages, and posing at the local carnival so kids could throw fruit at you… Dave could understand Seo's refusal.
One of the pets floating around this party seemed to have no other function than to make sure his owner's shoes didn't get dirty. Always dusting them, polishing them — even lying down so she could step over him, to avoid mud-puddles.
"Maybe some things are degrading," Dave offered.
Jimennila's shock was palpable, like a sudden stream of cool air, puffing out from her. "She's a pet!" she said. "You can't get any lower than that!"
Besides which, it seemed to be the unquestioned privilege of the rich to have as many human slaves as they wanted, for as many petty and stupid tasks as they could think up.
"Sunshine? She's stupid and defective," Callea told Dave, as if this were the absolute fact-of-the-matter. "One of Vedhor's failed experiments. It must be true — Sunshine jumps every time I say it."
"Stupid?" Dave asked.
How anyone could mistake Seo for being stupid was beyond him.
Be in a room for more than two seconds, and it'd be blatantly obvious that she was the smartest person there.
"You didn't see her when Madgella first bought her," said Callea. "Forget emotion-blindness… that whole first week, she couldn't even understand our words! If you didn't shout it at her slowly, she'd never get it."
Dave had an explanation for that one. Seo had mentioned to him that she had a new ship who was "supposed to translate languages — on good days", but "he's very young and sometimes decides to throw a fit to get my attention, and stops working for a little while."
Apparently, this had happened during Seo's first week of working for Madgella. And — while Jack had been fine, with his Vortex Manipulator to translate for him — Seo had had to scramble to learn the language fast as she could.
Dave was impressed that she'd managed to figure it out in just a week.
"And she messes things up for Madgella all the time," Callea added. She used her tail to gesture around herself, at the party. "You know, Madgella was forced to throw this party because of something that pet did. How embarrassing is that?"
And Callea's rant didn't end there.
As she went on about how Sunshine had ideas above her station, how Sunshine clearly had significant brain damage, and how Sunshine was… too attractive.
Okay.
That wasn't exactly how Callea phrased it.
"While you've got the surgeons in there, fixing her brain," Callea said, "I'd tell them to change around her face, too. I'm no judge of mammalian mating rituals, but half the male mammals on this planet are probably lusting after her." To make her point, she snapped her tail around so it struck Grassdew — who'd been staring at Seo and not paying attention to anything else — across the face.
Grassdew snapped back to attention.
And polished Callea's shoes.
"It's driving those of us with male pets crazy," Callea informed him. "Let me tell you."
Dave didn't approve of slavery. Or hitting slaves who weren't completely fixated on polishing shoes.
But even he couldn't help but feel a little smug about the smack on Grassdew's face.
In fact, Dave wanted to get right into Grassdew's empty face and shout, "She doesn't care about you, she's mine!", but figured that would probably blow his cover.
So he stayed quiet.
Despite Jimennila and Callea being complete snobs who didn't give a rat's ass about anything that actually mattered, the most potentially threatening — in Dave's opinion — was Pwouia.
When he asked her about Seo, Pwouia had simply said, "Madgella is fond of her. She'll be fine."
What Dave only found out later was that when Pwouia said, "she'll be fine", she had carefully omitted the phrase, "…after I get through with her."
Pwouia had a habit of disappearing, throughout the party. Dave didn't notice until, when he was looking around, trying to find Seo, he heard Pwouia's shouting voice echoing through from the kitchen.
"No, you stupid freak," Pwouia said. "Does that look clean to you? Do it again!"
There was a loud smack, like Pwouia had just struck something.
But the echo of telepathic pain that crackled through the air like thunder… wasn't from Seo.
As Dave crept closer, he found Madgella hiding, spying on Pwouia and Seo, in the kitchen. Pwouia had clearly tried to strike Seo… and had instead struck the stone counter top, very hard. Judging by the way she was now holding her hand.
The rage was pouring off her in waves, now.
Madgella, on the other hand, seemed highly amused by the situation. If lizards could laugh, Dave imagined Madgella would be chuckling right around now.
She grabbed him by the arm and shoved him into her hiding spot. Which was especially alarming, for Dave — as he realized the lizard people were surprisingly strong.
And he couldn't escape.
"Don't you care that Pwouia is going to…?!" Dave began.
Madgella shushed him. "She thinks Sunshine's stupid. Maybe now, she'll learn!"
"Clean the floor again!" Pwouia demanded of Seo. She used her tail to grab up the trash can nearby, and dump its contents across the floor. "Properly, this time!"
Seo looked like she was minutes away from decking Pwouia.
But instead of jumping to her feet and attacking — or just shooting her, which was basically what Dave wanted to do — Seo simply grabbed up her cleaning supplies and bucket of soapy water, and began scrubbing.
Well…
Not exactly scrubbing…
As far as Dave could see, she was mostly just pushing things around. Then picking up bucket, moppy-thing that looked like a lillypad, broomish-thing that had a slimy handle, and her rag… and rearranging them. Or whichever ones she bothered to pick up.
Some just remained lying around.
"No, you idiot!" Pwouia snapped. "Pick up the bigger pieces of garbage with your hands, before you clean the rest of the floor." She leaned down, threateningly. Tail swishing in a predatory manner. "And if you don't do it right… I'll make you pick them up with your teeth."
Seo looked up at her, blankly.
Then squatted back down on her hands and knees, and did exactly what she'd been doing before.
Pwouia grabbed up — what looked like — a rolled-up newspaper, and launched herself at Seo, ready to beat some sense into her.
But on her way, she slipped on a discarded fruit peel — carefully placed by Seo, earlier — so she tumbled backwards, grabbing for the moppish thing — also carefully placed by Seo — which gave way and swept across the countertop, knocking over the next few full trash cans, lined up there ready for Pwouia's next lesson.
Thunder actually split through the air outside.
Feeding off Pwouia's disgust, anger, hatred, and rage — so strong, now, it almost hurt Dave's head to feel it.
But the emotion was lessened by Madgella's absolute delight, watching it all happen.
"Smart little Sunshine!" Madgella cheered. "Show her who's boss!"
"You… you…!" Pwouia started, shaking her fist at Seo.
Seo stood up.
Keeping her face still carefully blank.
"You emotion-blind moron!" Pwouia said. She gestured at herself. "I'm smelly and bruised and humiliated! Do something about it!"
Seo raised her eyebrows.
Then, with a shrug, picked up the bucket of soapy water.
Threw it over Pwouia.
Then turned, and walked out of the room.
Her head held high.
Dave raced off to follow her, while Madgella darted into the kitchen to deal with the fallout from her friend. When Dave caught up with Seo, it was clear that the only thing bruised had been her pride.
"I've had it with Madgella's gaggle of rich snobs!" Seo hissed at him. "It's time I got that woman some better friends."
"Or," Dave replied, "you could let her sit around here and mope all day, while you slipped off into the study and worked on freeing human slaves."
Seo stopped walking. "I… I can't…!"
"Look, Madgella was sitting there, that whole time, watching you," Dave insisted. "She held me back so she could sit there and laugh at Pwouia humiliating you!" Pointing at where the altercation had happened. "She's no better than any of the rest of them."
Seo turned her head, to glare at the kitchens.
She clearly hadn't known she'd had an audience.
"You've gotten into her house," said Dave. "Found her contacts. Gotten everything you need out of her. Give it up and spare yourself some suffering!"
"I can't!" Seo bunched her hands into fists. "If I stop, she'll fall back into her depression. It'd be like murder!"
"She'll get over it," Dave said. Took her by the shoulders. "You're more important."
"She won't get over it, she'll be dead!" Seo waved at the transparent ceiling, above them. "They're reptiles whose emotions have an influence on weather patterns, Dave. Madgella went through something so traumatic… just thinking about that event makes the sky cloud up and storms start — all localized on this house."
"A bit of rain never hurt anyone."
"She's cold blooded," Seo said, evenly. "Without sunlight, she dies."
Dave hesitated.
Realizing… what Seo meant.
"I've already led one person to her death," Seo said, turning away from Dave. "I won't lead another!" Her voice was laced with bitter anger. "No matter how many people call me a worthless genetic disaster!"
She was about to run off, but Dave caught her by her arm.
Disabling his lizard disguise, so he could see her properly. And she could see him.
"You're perfect," he said, stepping forwards.
Then he grabbed her up.
And kissed her.