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Chapter 5

"Here's your certification," the Master said, sitting across from her at the table. They sat together in the busy lounge of the Callahan Spaceport, the thing that connected the Master's world to all the others that the humans had found and colonized. The master's library had many books that told of the different planets. Some had maps, some had pictures, but Meriah had never been out from beneath the dome, at least not in her conscious memory.

She still looked around in awe at the different humans that wandered the halls of the spaceport. They were dressed in all manner of clothing, much of it very different from the plain garb of the Master's estate. Even the humans that visited on occasion never wore anything as gaudy as she was seeing now, and she started to feel self-conscious about the plain brown vest and pants that she was wearing. The bandage that still covered her bent ear made her feel even more out of place.

"Meriah," the Master said, a little more urgently.

Meriah snapped her attention back to him and smiled bashfully. "Yes, Master?"

"I'm no longer your master, Meriah. You are a free Mrr'tani, and this is your certification. It holds the signature of the ruling humans of the planet. From now on, I'm just Marcus."

"Marcus." Meriah smiled, hearing the Master's name for the first time. She rolled it around in her mind, testing it, and then she smiled. "Marcus, then. I understand."

Marcus laid the small folio on the table and then reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small plastic tube. "Give me your hand, Meriah."

She held out her arm without a second thought, still trusting the Master with all her being, a trust that had only grown with the link that they shared. She'd spent a great deal of time in the library over the last week as Marcus made her preparations for her to leave. She didn't find any mention of a Mrr'tani forming a link with a human in all of the history books that he had available. He even let her use the colony net to research. She suspected that he was as curious as she was about the whole thing, but even a search of the Allied Planets database had turned up nothing.

He was still there, though, in the back of her mind. The link was one of the weaker ones and she knew that it would fade away once she left, and the thought made her chest hurt. She had to push the thought to the back of her mind so that he didn't see her tearing up.

Marcus waved the small tube over her hand and pressed a button on the side. Something beneath the skin on her hand glowed purple, then red, and finally faded to a blinking blue before the light winked out again.

"Now, the folio has your official papers, so when you find a place to stay, you keep that safe, but I just reset the code on your transmitter to register you as free. You no longer serve any master, Meriah. You're free to find your own way."

Meriah blinked at Marcus and then looked back down at her hand. "But what do I do now, Mas- Marcus?"

"It's up to you. But for now, I found a pilot to take you outside the Allied Planets. He's going to take you where you can't be found for a while. When things are safer, I'll be sure to send for you again."

"Where will I be going?" Meriah asked, more as a way to keep down the sob that she felt trying to work its way up her throat than as genuine curiosity. She wouldn't know the planet names anyway and they likely wouldn't mean anything even if she did.

"Even I don't know. Only Jason is going to know." Marcus reached over the table and took hold of her chin, raising her head to look him in the eyes, something she wasn't used to doing at all. "Jason lived on the estate, too, Meriah. I trust him with my life. You can trust him, too. He'll keep you safe."

Meriah nodded, unable to take her eyes off Marcus'. They were the plain and simple eyes of any human, brown with a tinge of gold at the very edge, but for some reason they held a fascination for her. She could feel the intensity behind his scrutiny, and she could feel the truth in his words. She didn't know this Jason at all, but the Master had confidence in him, and that was good enough for her.

"You don't have to do what I want you to do, Meriah. You're free to go your own way if you like."

Meriah laughed and finally pulled her eyes away from Marcus. "I don't know anything about other worlds. It would be stupid of me to ignore your advice."

Marcus smiled and then slid the tube back into his pocket and folded his hands on the table in front of him.

"I've given you enough credits that you will be well cared for until you find something else, and I will continue to put credits in the account so you'll have plenty."

Marcus reached his hands out across the table and took both of Meriah's in his. She could feel a subtle change in his feelings when he did and she looked up curiously, meeting his eyes a little easier this time.

"Did you know that Susan can't have children, Meriah?" Marcus asked.

It took her a minute to place that name. Who was Susan? Then she put the name with the face she saw from the link. Susan was the Mistress.

"It was a rumor, but it was never spoken of lightly," she replied.

"It's true. We will never have a family of our own. When old Bright Smile brought you to the estate, just a kit, we had just learned. I've always considered you as at least a little bit my daughter."

Meriah could no longer stop the tears from welling in her eyes. She felt the lump growing in her throat and she knew without a doubt that she would miss her life here, and more than that, she would miss her Master.

"And you have always been a father. If I am not to call you Master any longer, may I call you Father?"

Marcus nodded and then moved around the table to fold her into a hug. She could feel his tears catching in the fur on her cheeks. Or maybe it was her tears, or perhaps both. The dampness was real, as were the feelings, on either side. She threw her arms around his neck and held him tight.

"I'd like that, Meriah," he said as he held her.

"Mrr'tani Pride docking at gate 7," came the announcement over the speakers and Meriah looked up in an instinctual move to locate the source of the sound. She could hear a quiet grumbling around her from some of the assembled humans. Free Mrr'tani were definitely not unheard of in the Allied Planets, and they had to make their living somehow, but many humans believed that the Mrr'tani were suited for nothing more than working on the human estates. To have a ship named Mrr'tani Pride bordered on heresy for some of the more conservative among them.

"That's Jason's ship, Meriah. Time to go."

Meriah nodded and then tucked her face in against Marcus' neck, taking another last minute to enjoy the contact between the two of them. Finally, though, she had to let go. She had to leave, she knew that. Jacques' employers would come looking for him, and for her, and she needed to be away before news of his death reached them. She needed to be out of their grasp.

She didn't carry much luggage, just her clothing, her bow and her collection of knives. She couldn't bear to part with any of them. All were made by her hand, and they were as much a part of her as her skin. The one on her hip earned her aggrieved looks from some of the humans in the lounge, but they chose not to say anything, likely owing to the Master's notoriety. She was grateful that he'd chosen to escort her to the terminal.

The gate ended up being a bit more of a walk from the lounge than she anticipated. She didn't mind, though, as it gave her a chance to survey all the different kinds of humans in the spaceport. She already knew that the average human body varied, just as Mrr'tani did, but she saw skin tones and manners of dress that she'd never seen before. She would have been able to tell a Mrr'tani clan by the markings in the fur, and she supposed that the different skin tones served the same purpose. Some were as her Master, with tan skin, while others had wildly different hair color and ranged from very pale to almost as dark as the night sky.

She marveled at the vast array of clothing and decorations as well, from piercings to tattoos. One female human, who Meriah had to admit she found halfway attractive, was wearing a garment so thin that Meriah could almost see every curve of her body. As she passed, the dress became more and more translucent, to the point that Meriah could see a small blemish on the woman's back when she walked past. Then as the angle changed, it became more opaque.

"That'll cost most of your savings, Meriah," Marcus said with a laugh. "At least you've got good taste."

Meriah flushed and kept walking, still admiring, but she was also reaching out with new senses. She found she could feel some of the humans around the spaceport. Not many, she noticed, but there were some that seemed more inclined than others. She could feel every Mrr'tani that they passed, though, and all around her she felt the press of more minds, more strongly than she'd ever felt before. She was learning to control how much of her mind they occupied, though. What was almost paralyzingly overwhelming when they entered the city was down to a dull roar and a pressure at the back of her mind. When she focused, she could start to isolate individual minds.

Some were aware of her doing it, like the waiter that regarded her with wide, shocked eyes when she'd done it shortly after ordering herself something the humans called soda. She'd felt his surprise and his shock and she'd immediately withdrawn. But the surprise was still there on the link all the way through the short lunch and even Marcus noticed the difference in their treatment. Their needs were seen to before they could voice them and they found that their drinks were always full.

Now, though, she was too preoccupied to focus on any one sense. There was too much around her, and she was too focused on getting her feet to move down the concourse that she didn't have any attention to spare for those around her. Much more rarely, though, she had a link flare of its own accord. Some of the Mrr'tani that they passed created a much stronger link that laid in the background of her thoughts no matter how far away she went. She noticed that some of them shared similar fur patterns to hers when she made the effort to look. Not all of them, but many.

Meriah never realized how large everything was outside the dome. Marcus kept his estate in a state of calm tranquility. There was only one vehicle in the entire estate, the car that belonged to Marcus and Susan, and it was rarely seen. They only used it when the left the estate. All of the travel in the estate was done on foot or sometimes by bicycle for the ones who knew how to ride. But even here in the spaceport, inside the building itself, there were electric carts and other vehicles that made their way through the crowds and down the corridors, some carrying cargo, some people and still others seemed to have an official purpose, fitted out with flashing lights, and on one Meriah recognized the symbol of the infirmary on the side.

Everything moved so fast here, and she felt as if she was caught in a river of beings, carried down the corridors by the sheer force of movement around her. She wished everyone would slow down, even long enough that she could get her bearings, but from the pace Marcus kept, she knew that he was in a hurry, and she tried to push the distractions and the consternation to the back of her mind along with the links.

She soon found herself standing beside him at a large door, above it was the number 7.

"This is it, Meriah," Marcus said, pushing her forward. "Jason will take care of you, and he'll let me know when he's got you somewhere safe, alright?"

Meriah could only nod, not able to take her eyes from the door. Somewhere behind that door, her life was going to change. Everything that she knew up until this point wouldn't be her life any longer. She finally tore her eyes away and looked up at Marcus, tears welling in her eyes and finally streaming down her cheeks. She took a deep breath and slowly wrapped her arms around Marcus.

"I'll miss you, father," she said quietly, laying her head against his chest.

She felt his strong arms around her and then she felt a gentle kiss to the middle of her head, right between her ears.

"As much as I'll miss you, Meriah," he said.

She held onto him a little longer and then finally let go and turned towards the door. Two steps brought her to the small plastic panel in the wall beside it. She knew the palm scanner when she saw it, as some of the doors around the estate had them. She lifted her hand and pressed it to the panel, feeling it grow warm beneath her fingers. There was a momentary pause and the door slid open. Meriah watched it open, thinking that it should be making a much more ominous, or at least a much more real sound than the simple whisper that it made. She would have been more satisfied if it had opened with the satisfying thud of the large oaken doors of the main house.

Chiding herself for letting her mind wander, she looked back over her shoulder and gave a small wave to Marcus and then stepped across the threshold and walked down the tunnel ahead of her, wondering where her steps would finally take her, and if she'd ever see the estate beneath the dome again.