Sarsuk 14 (Patreon)

Quick one today. Will Sarsuk spill his secret?

Ky and I wish you the very happiest of holidays. She adds, "I hope everyone gets to eat their favorite thing."

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Sarsuk scowled hard, his forehead folding into a series of wrinkles. With some hesitation, he asked, “So, you really want all the ship coordinates and flight plans? The company will have changed the plans by now.”

Siki’s ears were a mask. “Then, giving it to me shouldn’t be that big a deal, right?”

He lowered his eyes, spoke quietly as if worried someone might overhear, “Unclassified or not, it’s still treason.”

“Which they’ve already punished you for,” said the geroo. She waited until he looked back up. “Still feel loyal to them?”

He wasn’t sure about that. He’d had a lifetime—thousands of years—of living in that society, and whether he liked it or not, it was his world. He couldn’t just betray everything he knew because they’d disappointed him, could he?

“Siki, earlier, you mentioned that the lio have cloning technology.”

She looked up. “I did?”

“Well, you said they were keeping my head alive like a cloned liver,” explained Sarsuk. “I take that to mean they can clone someone a new liver.”

Her ears pulled back in a smile, and she nodded. “Yeah, the lio can clone stuff.”

He bit his lower lip, asked, “Can they clone krakun organs?”

The dark brown geroo nodded. “Yup.”

Sarsuk blinked. “You just knew that?” he asked with surprise. “You didn’t need to ask Doctor Palani?”

Siki leaned back slightly, explaining, “Palani told me that your voice box had been severed when you were…” Her ears fell.

“Beheaded?” he offered.

“Yeah.” She couldn’t meet his eyes. “Anyhow, he had to clone the rest of it, or you wouldn’t be able to speak.”

“Oh, I see,” said the former commissioner. He leaned in a little closer, whispering, “Do you think he could clone me a new body?”

“I don’t know.”

The krakun head drew a deep breath and let it back out. “Well, I want a new body, and you want the plans. I think we should trade.”

With only a moment’s hesitation, the geroo shook her head. “Nah.”

“No?”

“I don’t think Palani will ever go for that,” she said. She pointed at his snout. “I mean, you could try, but you already said you weren’t much of a negotiator.”

Sarsuk frowned, then brightened. “I suppose not, but you are. You could talk him into it!”

She lowered her ears all the way and sat in silence a long while. She said, “I doubt it, but if you wanted me to try, I could. Tell me the plans, and I’ll ask him if he’ll clone you a new body.”

Sarsuk grinned, showing off a fence of meter-long teeth. “Nice try, Siki,” he said, confident that he had the upper hand for once. “Get him to agree, and then I’ll tell you.”

“Nah.”

His smile faded. “No?”

Despite her tiny size, she bulldozed right over him. “Palani is paying me to get information from you, not to negotiate. Give me the plans, and I’ll offer him a deal,” she said, crossing her arms. “I’m not gonna bring it up with him unless I’ve got the information already.”

He wanted to push back. He wanted to grab her and squeeze, to make her do as he commanded, but he felt so helpless. His stare softened and fell. “Oh, okay.”

She smiled. “So, the plans?”

The krakun pointed his snout at her tablet, laying on the bench nearby. “Do you have a recording app on that tablet?”

“Yeah, I think so,” she said.

“Well, turn it on.” He explained, “It’s the flight plans on over twelve hundred ships. You won’t remember it all if I just tell you.”

# # #

Siki bounded excitedly into Doctor Palani’s office with tablet held high. She announced, “I got it!”

The tawny lio looked up from behind his desk. “Got what, Siki?”

“Sarsuk’s secret.” She grinned wide and set the tablet down before him with a flourish. “He told me the flight plans for the entire fleet.”

When the lio didn’t react, she added, “That’s the information they accused him of leaking. That’s why they executed him. I recorded all the details, and I can start translating—”

But he was already shaking his head. “That’s not his secret.”

“What?” she gasped. “Of course, it is!”

“No, it’s not.”

Siki took the tablet back and cradled it against her chest. She fell back into one of the two chairs opposite him. She squinted at him. “How can you be so certain?”

Palani leaned a little closer, confiding, “He gave it up too easily. That wasn’t information that he truly cared about keeping secret.”

“Aw.” She fell back in her seat, her eyes studying the ceiling overhead.

“Don’t feel bad, Siki. I think you’re doing a wonderful job,” he said, reassuringly. “You’ve got him talking, and he’s confiding in you. He’ll give it up in time, but there was no way he was going to share it after just a couple days.”

With the tablet gripped in both paws, she gestured frantically with the computer. “But if it was a ticking bomb, it would have already gone—”

“It’s not a ticking bomb,” the lio reminded her. “There is no bomb.”

“But you said you wanted to use this technology—”

Palani stood and walked around his desk. He knelt beside her and covered her little paw with his own. “That was just an example I made up,” he explained. “We’re doing this research, and there’s no predicting what all applications it might eventually have. I didn’t mean to imply that you needed to extract his secret against some sort of action-movie-deadline.” His ears stood out in a smile.

Siki pouted hard. “I get that, but I was just hoping I’d succeeded.”

“You are succeeding!” He squeezed her paw, then waited for her to look in his eyes. “Besides, if that was all you needed to do, then you’d be done. You don’t want to go back to preparing agar plates for three sovereigns an hour, do you?”

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VaY2npimFMdDDwv9IAnoeWNR-Tv5ujh0OfZkiKzFO-k/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?