“It, um…” The skin of her face began to pinken. “Never mind,” she said, leading him away towards the stairs. “You keep watching cable long enough, you’ll pick it up all on your own.”

Yes, he supposed that was true. The tee-vee was a remarkable font of information and instruction. There was one program in particular, a show that depicted the labors of officers in what passed for the On-World Security Fleet here on Earth. Tagen was astounded by the very concept. Jotan media broadcast many fictional programs for the entertainment of its citizenry, but never one based on law enforcement. Watching Earth’s officers investigate and prison criminals filled Tagen with an embarrassing sense of fascination and pride. He took comfort in the fact that it was also educational.

Daria reached the top of the steps and moved back toward the room of holding, but Tagen paused by the privy door. “Wait.”

She looked back over her shoulder at him, and the sudden tension that had entered her when he spoke evaporated, turning her a shocking shade of red. “Oh,” she said. “Um. Yes, of course. Do you know how to, um, work everything in there?

“Yes,” he said tightly. When she’d been under the effects of vey Venekus’ mild sedative, he’d asked her to show him the operation of the privy. He’d been reduced to an embarrassing mode of pantomime to make the request, but she had eventually explained the workings of the toy-let. Now, he said, “I would like to shower. Show me again, please. Which is the soap for my body and which for my hair?”

“What do you mean, again?” She came towards him with a puzzled look on her face. “Um, okay. Let’s see. Here’s the shower. Here’s how you turn it on. This is the hot water tap, by the way. And here’s the soap for your body and a sponge you can use if you want to. Don’t use the yellow one, it’s mine. In fact…” She removed the puffy yellow object from the shower stall entirely, an insult Tagen withstood in silence. “And here’s the stuff for your hair. It’s called shampoo. Actually, it’s a two-in-one with conditioner, but you don’t need to know that.”

“And that?” Tagen asked, pointing to a canister and accompanying instrument on the far corner of the shower stall.

“Oh. That’s for shaving. You know, if you want to take your beard off. Not my beard. I don’t have a beard, but I use it for…never mind. You can use it if you want.”

Tagen followed little of her disjointed words, but fortunately, she had made a scraping movement across her cheeks as she explained, which made her meaning clear. He touched his own face, feeling the roughness of stubble growing in thick on his jaw. “Thank you,” he said.

“The towels are right there for drying off after. Just don’t drop them on the floor,” she added anxiously.

“Of course not.”

“Okay, then, you…carry on in here and I’ll get your bed ready.” She ducked out of the white-tiled room and half-ran down the hall.

Tagen shut the door behind her just long enough to use the crude and incredibly unhygienic toy-let in privacy. Then he leaned out into the hall again, listening to the human move around in the far room. She was having to shuffle quite a number of crates.

Leaving the door open, Tagen stripped out of his uniform. It was stiff with grime and clammy with sweat, and removing it freed a great cloud of unpleasant odor. There was a mirror over the sink, inescapably positioned to catch occupants. In it, Tagen saw a man he would not trust to repair his waste reclamator, much less invite into his house. His heart thawed a few degrees toward the human.

Just a few.

He stepped into the shower and knelt to work out the controls. Hot water, she had said, but he only wanted enough of that to take the ice out of the spray. Coolness streamed over his body, blessedly welcome. Tagen braced his arms against the wall and bent his head, letting it pour over him.

He could be right back on Jota. Not in the Fleet Barracks, which, like most of the civilized world, used vaporizing disinfectants, but on any of the carrier ships, this shower would be right at home. Or, for that matter, he could be back in the country, in the house where Kolya Pahnee had raised him. That neat, sterile house…much too big for just the two of them. It had only the most minimal furnishings, only the most basic necessities, and if there were any decorations within its walls, Tagen had missed them. But he had bathed beneath aquatic jets there, and he had trained on hard white tiles, and worked his body to exhaustion in the orderly gardens Kolya grew. Nostalgia was all around him here in the human’s house, leading him inexorably back to his first, true home.

Without question, those were the worst years of his life.

Kolya Pahnee had been a Fleet commander, decorated no less, a veteran of the Kevrian conflict. His name was still spoken around high tables. His combat methods were still taught at Fleet Academy. He was a hard man, not given to words or to patience. He had bred many young among some very high-ranking houses, but he had taken only one son, and he had waited until he was retired, his two hundred years of service behind him, so that he would have the time to train up a child.

Tagen supposed he should be grateful. He was ten years old when Kolya Pahnee brought him out of the Child Halls, and at that age, he’d known his time was running out. Graduation, unadopted, won a man a lifetime of menial labor and the inescapable stigma of having Male Live Birth and a number as his primary identifier instead of a name. But Kolya had wanted a ten-years boy. Had demanded one. At ten years, a boy could feed himself and put himself to bed. At ten years, a boy knew enough to keep quiet and not irritate his elders.

And so at ten years, Tagen had been sent out of the city and into the middle of wind-blowing nowhere to live in that horrible, aseptic house. He could still remember having to stand in the receiving room, his few possessions in a box in his arms, surrounded by old men who poked at him and discussed in loud voices how his eyes were too close together and his feet were slightly splayed, wondering which of them he would have to call ‘father’. All of that, just for a half-year trial, not even a true adoption.

But in the end, Kolya had accepted him, named him, and put him on the path that led unswervingly to the Fleet. There was never any discussion on that subject, never any doubt that Tagen would obey Kolya’s wishes. Even after the old man died, there was a certain expectation.

And now look at him. Not the youngest to ever achieve fourth-rank, but still damned young. And sek’ta, assuming he survived it, was a true springboard to greater things. He would see command of his own ship before he hit his century mark, he was sure. There would be crona for the taking. Females would come to mate with him, even to breed with him. And perhaps one day, when he was retired and had the time, he would adopt a half-grown son to mold as his replacement.

Gods, what a depressing thought.

Tagen straightened under the spray of cool water and picked up the human’s soap. He washed thoroughly, scouring life back into his body with the thing she called a ‘sponge’ and replacing the hot stink of his flesh with something flowery and feminine. He cleaned his hair with a viscous green fluid that, despite its unhealthy appearance, stripped the sweat and grime from his hair with admirable speed. Finally, Tagen’s long years aboard-ship began to prickle at him, reminding him unreasonably that there was only so much water and it would all have to be recycled before the crew could bathe again tomorrow, and as illogical as the feeling was, he still had to obey it.

Tagen shut off the flow of water and dried himself briskly with one of the human’s white towels, then tied it around his waist for modesty’s sake as he exited the shower stall. He took the canister and the device the human had indicated to be a shaver with him and stood in front of the mirror.