Sweep of the Heart (Innkeeper Chronicles #5)(26)

Gertrude Hunt is the place to be, let’s head inside once more.





The portal’s rim flashed with green lights.

“Here we go,” I murmured.

The four of us waited, positioned around the portal, Sean and I directly in front, Gaston on the left, and Tony on the right. Sean and I wore our robes, Tony opted for a plain brown robe as well, and Gaston decided on black boots, black pants, and a black pirate shirt with a black high-tech ballistic vest over it. The vest, which must’ve been custom made to accommodate his powerful frame, fit him like a glove and did a good job of masquerading as fashionable accessory rather than impact-resistant armor. Tony asked him what his outfit was called, and Gaston told him that if he had to be menacing, there was no reason he couldn’t be dashing as well.

A giant snow globe emerged from the portal. Oomboles, as expected according to Miralitt’s manifest.

The eight-foot-wide bubble slid forward. It sat on a two-foot-tall ornate base fitted with a communication screen. The base concealed the moving mechanism and the filtration system, while the globe was a flexible hyper-durable membrane containing the precisely calibrated water particular to oombole oceans.

More globes followed the first, each holding a motionless four-foot-long fish. The globes were dark and translucent and the beings within were mere outlines.

We waited.

Oomboles didn’t deal well with portals. They always went into short-term sedation during transit, and their globes would attack anyone who approached.

All twenty-one globes completed the transit.

A minute crawled by.

The lights clicked on in all globes simultaneously, turning the membranes transparent and illuminating their passengers. The oomboles came in every color of the rainbow. They were covered with glistening scales, and their round heads with a slight overbite, big eyes and brightly colored snail-like antennae gave them hilariously comical expressions. The fringe of tentacles that sprouted under their chin and enabled them to wield specialized tools had been withdrawn into their bodies. Their incredible dorsal fins, disproportionally large with pronounced spines, lay flat.

The oomboles opened their eyes. Our gazes met.

All 21 dorsal fins snapped open, vivid with a multitude of colors and flashing with bioluminescent sparks that ran down the spines. The fins went flat, snapped open, flat, open, flat, open. Open, flutter, flat, snap flutter, snap…

The more agitated the oomboles were, the faster they talked with their fins, and passing through the portal must have discombobulated the oomboles beyond their capacity. It was like being greeted to a psychedelic display of jazz hands viewed at ten times the speed. The translation units built into the bases struggled to transform the rapid chaos of colors and movement into words, spitting out gibberish onto their screens. The screen belonging to the globe on the far left crackled and went dark. A small puff of smoke slipped from its edge.

I raised my hand. A wide length of carefully dyed fabric segmented by plastic spines snapped open above me, held up by Gertrude Hunt’s tendrils. I went through the folding and snapping sequence, assuring everyone that currents were calm and free of predators. We would have to rely on the communication screens for anything more complicated but greeting species in their own manner tended to calm them. It was a small gesture that went a long way.

The oomboles quivered, slowing to a somewhat calmer frenzy.

I took them to their suite, which consisted of a constellation of tanks connected by narrow channels. The largest tank was the size of an Olympic pool, complete with plants, corals, and custom lighting. The oomboles entered it, immediately formed a school around the spouse candidate, a spectacular orange specimen, and the fins stopped flashing.

The Donkamins were next. I braced myself.

For visually evolved species, sight was crucial. We evaluated everything, from the suitability of a potential mate to our offspring’s health, by eye. We noted the skin tone, the condition of the eyes, the sparsity or fullness of hair just so we wouldn’t miss that someone was deathly ill and would be able to avoid them in time or administer medical treatment. We made millions of assessments unconsciously during our lives, examining each other, our pets, and other animals, because fearing a rabid dog foaming at the mouth saved our lives.

Unfortunately, our perception was flawed. Our eyes had difficulties distinguishing between minor skin ailments, like ringworm, and a plague. Every year hundreds of people thought they saw a monster instead of a mangy coyote. Things that were just different enough often freaked us out, because when our rudimentary biological brain had no frame of reference, it interpreted everything as danger just to be on the safe side.

Donkamins tripped every human visual alarm sensor in existence. A relative newcomer to the interstellar scene, they were aggressively trying to expand and grab their own slice of galactic real estate. The first of their species had visited Earth roughly 200 years ago. An innkeeper urban legend said that the first innkeeper who opened the door to them took one look and blurted out, “Don’t come in!” which was how they got their nickname.

The light within the portal spun. Twenty-one Donkamins entered the arrival chamber in an orderly procession. They were eight feet tall, hairless, covered with pale pearlescent skin, and unmistakably humanoid, although they were not even mammalian. Their tall, thin bodies stood upright on two appendages that resembled legs. Their shoulders sloped very sharply down, as if their clavicles had been broken, and just kind of dangled there. They had two upper limbs, long and reasonably arm-like, and two hands with seven very bony long fingers without fingernails. Their round heads sat on seemingly human necks.