Jacob's Pair of Hearts Read online

  Jacob’s Pair of Hearts

  By

  Alyssa Hope

  Text copyright 2017

  Alyssa Hope

  All Rights Reserved

  Is it necessary to say that any resemblance between aliens (blue or otherwise) and any living people (real or otherwise) is purely coincidental?

  All beings engaged in sexual acts are over the legal age of consent in their own particular universes.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1.

  Chapter 2.

  Chapter 3.

  Chapter 4.

  Chapter 5.

  Chapter 6.

  Chapter 7.

  Chapter 1.

  Jacob hated the one day each week that he had to go to town, almost as much as he hated the thought that this was what his life had come to, being a goat farmer on a backwards planet on the wrong side of nowhere. He wasn’t saying that none of it was his fault, and he knew that he should probably count himself fortunate that he’d won the farm on a long-shot bet a couple of years ago. He’d run out of options and people he hadn’t annoyed on most other populated planets, so at least he’d had this place to come to.

  The weekly runs to town to sell his farm products brought in the money that supported his lifestyle, such as it was. Having to talk to the various humans and non-humans who he ran across in town was a necessary evil. There was a balance in there somewhere, which he had to remind himself of every week. He’d used up the last of his optimism when he’s moved here thinking he’d find a new life, maybe even a lover to share it with, but it turned out to be the same old thing on a different planet.

  This week was no different. He delivered the fresh produce that was in such high demand, along with the eggs, goat milk and goat cheese, and picked up the few essentials that he needed. He had just finished loading up at the feed store and was getting ready to head back home when his attention was captured by a small dark creature chained to a wall in the back of the store.

  It didn’t look dangerous enough to warrant chains, and it didn’t look particularly well fed either, considering that this was a feed store.

  “Dorn, what the heck is that?”

  The store owner rolled his eyes.

  “A bad decision on my part.” Dorn was at least honest, most of the time. “Guy came through here, said he had to get rid of the thing, gave me a good deal on it. But I have no idea what it is or what it’s supposed to do. He said it was some kind of valuable pet, but who would want that?”

  It didn’t look valuable. It mostly looked like it was on the verge of dying.

  “Um, you do know there are laws against keeping aliens as pets?”

  Dorn shrugged. “You want it?”

  Jacob shrugged back. “Not particularly. What good is it?”

  Dorn thought, and then looked hopeful. He wanted to make the sale, and Jacob could see that on his face. “My guard dog likes it. Maybe it would be a buddy for yours.”

  Jacob’s guard dog-thing was indeed moping around without much to do anymore. Dorn had brought in a pair of young males last year, and Jacob had paid far too much for one of them. It had been doing its job, though, and he hadn’t lost any stock to predators since he’d got the animal, so really it had been a good deal, although he wasn’t about to tell Dorn that.

  George had become large and fierce, and seemed to really enjoy protecting the goats, or maybe just killing predators. Now he was bored, though, and a bored guard dog could lead to trouble. Perhaps getting George a pet would cheer him up, if he didn’t eat the scrawny little thing.

  Dorn sensed a weakening. “You can have it for what I paid for it. It’s easy enough to keep, just eats dog food.”

  Money changed hands, and Dorn was smiling broadly now.

  “If you want a pair of them, I think the guy dumped another one on that loser at the used parts store across town.”

  Jacob snorted. “One useless thing on the farm will be enough, thank you.”

  He knew the guy that Dorn was referring to, though, and the thought of any living creature belonging to him made him shudder. He was a farmer, though, and not in the business of saving the world.

  Dorn offered to throw in the collar and chain, but Jacob had no use for such things. He opened the collar to free it, took the little thing’s hand and led it out to his hover-truck. It didn’t even bother looking at him, and just followed numbly along. In the daylight it seemed to be dark purple in color, and featureless except for large sad eyes and a small mouth. It was vaguely humanoid, just past his waist in height and painfully thin, with scars over much of its body. It looked like it had been starved and beaten, and had no expectation of life getting any better.

  “Do you have a name, little one? Do you understand any of what I say?”

  It stared off into the distance. He opened the passenger door of his hover-truck and motioned towards it, and the little thing climbed in. Apparently it had been in vehicles before.

  He drove down the main street, heading home, and then turned off, heading for the rougher part of town. The particular loser he was looking for owned a business stripping down old and wrecked vehicles and then selling the parts. It was a useful and necessary business, but the thing who ran the business made his skin crawl. When he got there, he looked at the little alien beside him and sighed.

  “You stay here, okay? Stay. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  It didn’t move, just sat staring vacantly out the window.

  Once his eyes adjusted to the dark inside the shop, he could see the little alien that was the match to his. It was smaller, dirtier, and similarly chained to a wall. A heavy chain was attached to a thick metal collar around its thin neck, and this little one also had shackles around its ankles. It was slumped on the floor and looked like it was already dead, but then he saw its thin chest rise and fall. Great.

  The proprietor’s face lit up. He had been buying and selling things for a long time, and Jacob hadn’t looked at anything but the half-dead little creature since he walked in. He knew he had a sale.

  “That’s a very special pet, that is, very valuable ...”

  Jacob pulled out his communicator and started taking pictures of it, which seemed to alarm the dealer. Jacob suppressed a smile. He might be just a simple farmer, but he was not without a few bargaining skills.

  “Heh, whatcha doing?”

  “Bylaw 47, Section 12, Paragraph 4, regarding the conditions necessary for the keeping of alien species. I’m sending these to my buddy at Control. This is not up to standard.” It was, in fact, enough to turn his stomach, and if there wasn’t any such bylaw there ought to be.

  “Hey, I don’t want any trouble, some guy just left it here.” His face lit up. “I’ll sell it to you, cheap, just enough to cover my costs, you know? You can take care of it properly since you know this stuff. Supposed to be a great little pet, talented in ways that a man living alone could appreciate, you know?” The leer was apparently supposed to suggest a selling feature.

  In case Jacob was too stupid to catch his meaning, he hauled the little thing to its feet and started to unbutton his dirty trousers. “Here, I’ll show you ...”

  Jacob felt like throwing up. “No, that’s okay, you’ll probably kill it if you stick anything down its throat. It looks like its dying anyway.”

  The dealer shrugged, but let the little thing drop to the floor again.

  “Well, no returns, no warranty, but I’ll give you a good price.”

  They finally shook hands on a deal, Jacob having paid far too much for the small creature. He unlocked the shackles, stroking the little creature’s ankles where they had been rubbed raw. He had some herbal cream at home that should help those heal, if it lived th
at long. At least it wouldn’t die in chains. The proprietor unlocked the chain from the wall, and handed it to Jacob, who looked at him in disbelief. The little thing didn’t even look like it could walk, let alone run away.

  Jacob unfastened the collar and threw the heavy metal towards the dealer, almost hitting him in the face with it.

  “Oops, sorry.”

  The collar and chain probably weighed more than the little creature did. His mother’s voice echoed in his head. ‘Violence does not educate.’ Well, maybe a good smack alongside this guy’s head would open his mind up a little bit.

  He picked the small being up carefully, trying not to hurt it, and carried it out to his truck, wondering what the hell he was going to do with the pair of them now. If they even lived long enough for him to do anything. He could just turn them loose, but he had a feeling that freeing them on this planet wouldn’t result in a good end for them. He didn’t want to have to buy them again. Or bury them. Maybe he could send them to his parents. He was pretty sure he’d missed their anniversary again.

  He had the little one cradled in one arm while he opened the truck door, and lost his hold on it when it wiggled out of his grip and threw itself at the one already in the cab. Obviously it could move when it wanted to. They held onto each other with something akin to desperation, and the smaller one began to sob, very quietly. The small hopeless noise would have broken his heart, if he’d had one.

  They buried their faces in each other and curled up into a little ball, rocking back and forth. There were a lot of boney ribs and elbows and legs sticking out from that ball, and he wondered what they ate, supposing they were ever given the opportunity. He didn’t think dog food was the answer.

  He was surprised to suddenly have a mental image of milk and cheese. That figured. He drove back to the grocery store and bought back some of his own products, much to that owner’s gap-toothed amusement. She didn’t give him a discount.

  He didn’t want the little guys dying on him during the two hour trip home, though, not after what he’d paid for them, and he figured he needed to get some nourishment into them sooner rather than later. They’d lived this long, but he wasn’t sure how they’d managed that.

  He bought two travel mugs as well, with nipples on them, thinking that those might be easier than cartons for the little things to drink out of while they were on the road. He didn’t want milk spilled all over his truck, not that it was new or especially clean or anything. Still, a man had to have standards.

  He filled up the drinking cups with the goat milk from his farm, and watched as they emptied the cups in seconds. For the first time, the littlest one had something that might have been the beginnings of hope on its face. How could something that had been so neglected and abused still have hope?

  The bigger one purred very softly, just a little bit, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that purring was a happy noise. He refilled the cups, and unwrapped the cheese for them.

  The little guys devoted themselves to drinking and eating, still without letting go of each other, and he headed home, swearing quietly to himself because he was now a couple of hours later than he usually was. He wasn’t far out of town before one small hand reached out and latched on to the bottom of his shirt. Neither one them looked at him.

  Guys or girls, or neither? They seemed to be androgynous, but it was hard to tell with aliens. These could be very young, or maybe being starved and abused had caused them to retract whatever genitals they’d had, if they’d ever had any. They both had scars all over them, which seemed to contradict the stories of them being valuable pets. Who beat their pets?

  Well, okay, some scuzbags did, but these two little ones were safe now, and he was going to make sure they stayed that way. Maybe if he sent their pictures to his mother she would at least know what they were, and what he should do with them.

  ‘Love us?’

  If the truck hadn’t been on auto-pilot he would have driven off the road. Crap, was he hallucinating now? Maybe he had lived alone too long. Or were his little friends telepathic? Then he thought that maybe he was already beginning to love them, just a little bit, if wanting to take care of them and keep them safe was part of loving. The same way he kind of liked taking care of George and the goats, although he wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone. That said, these two were going to have to make themselves useful around the farm, even if that was just keeping George company, because he had no time for useless little pets.

  Whatever they were, they were his now, and his responsibility to take care of. He’d seen too much of the galaxy and too much brutality, which was part of the reason he was just a simple farmer now, and the proud owner of the barely profitable Long Shot Farm.

  He decided that if they were going to stay with him, even for a little while, they would need names. He wasn’t being sentimental, but if these small things were going to be useless pets or friends for George or whatever, he had to call them something.

  ‘Kira. Hana.’

  Okay, they already had names, apparently. Neither of them looked at him.

  “Jacob. I’m Jacob.” He didn’t expect or get a response.

  Chapter 2.

  Already running late and behind in his chores when he got home, he hurried through milking the goats and getting all the animals fed and watered. His new little friends greeted the goats with almost as much enthusiasm as they had each other, and rubbed the animals’ head and necks, stroking the long silky ears, both of them making little purring noises now.

  He left them with the goats while he finished the rest of his chores, and then went back to retrieve them. They were curled up together in a corner of a stall, and he debated leaving them there for the night, but Kira’s eyes opened, then it poked Hana and both of them made their way over to his feet and sat there, staring up at him.

  Right. He held out his arms, and they climbed up and then wrapped their arms around his neck. They nuzzled into his throat and purred happily, and he got the impression that he was pretty clever, for a large clumsy alien.

  He was too tired to debate with them about who was the alien, even more tired by the time everything was locked down for the night and he carried them back up to the house. All he wanted to do was climb into bed. He was actually beginning to like the simple life of raising goats and growing fruits and vegetables, and it brought him a decent enough income on this desolate planet where any fresh food was a luxury, but it was still a lot of work for just one man. There were too many early mornings and long days, and introducing the two to George and putting together some kind of bed for them out in the barn just wasn’t going to happen tonight.

  They were filthy, though, so he filled the tub with warm water and sat them both down in it. The water was almost black by the time he had them clean to his satisfaction, and they were a rather attractive dark purple with shades of blue. Not that he cared what color they were.

  He gave each of them another bottle, and they were asleep again before they finished them. They didn’t wake up when he moved them, so he just tucked them into one side of his bed and crawled into the other. He hoped they were house-broken.

  He woke up once with both of them wrapped around his neck, but their closeness felt good so he just went back to sleep. It had been a long day, longer even than usual, and he was tired. He had strange dreams of being stroked by agile little fingers and rough little cat-tongues licking him all over, and he woke up feeling better than he had in a long time. It felt, he thought, like the warm happy satisfaction of waking up in the arms of a lover, but what he had to settle for were memories of pleasant dreams and two small warm creatures wrapped around his neck. That was okay too.

  He rolled them out of bed and after a quick breakfast they tagged along behind him when he went down to the goat shed. He began milking, and Kira watched him for a while then pushed him out of the way. It took his place against the goat’s flank and started milking the animal as though it knew what it was doing. He was even more surprised when t
he goat didn’t object. They could be temperamental creatures, and had kicked the milk buckets over more than once until he had come to an agreement, of sorts, with them.

  He watched, waiting for something to go wrong, and then started replacing each filled bucket with a sterilized clean one, and filling the cooler in the dairy with the full buckets, placing some aside for the cheese. Hana followed closely behind and watched. It couldn’t carry full buckets, but it started taking the clean ones out to Kira, and the three of them worked together as a team, getting the milking finished in record time. It looked like the morning’s yield was about half again as much as he usually got. The goats must prefer those agile little fingers to his big hands, but he wasn’t going to be jealous.

  Kira smiled up at him, and he got the distinct impression that the little thing didn’t understand how he had survived this long without them. Goat milking apparently wasn’t for large things with big clumsy hands. Maybe not. He couldn’t purr but he hummed down at it, and got back an impression of happiness and satisfaction, and that was fine with him.

  He showed Kira and Hana how to let the goats out into the pasture, and then watched with amusement as the two little aliens ran around the field, rolling in the grass and playing tag games with the younger animals. He would have left them there to play, but they weren’t about to let him out of their sight again.

  They were unsure about the greenhouses, and the fans and moving benches alarmed them. He seemed to spend most of his time in there with two small creatures wrapped around his neck staring around in awe, but that was okay too, even if it slowed him down a bit. They’d get used to it.

  They went into the house for lunch, and there was a great deal of excitement, which was, as far as he could figure, all about having another meal again so soon. He was beginning to feel a little bit guilty about his simple life-style, which was obviously extravagant to these two. They ate until their little bellies were round and they were falling asleep at the table, and then he carried them into his bedroom and tucked them back into his bed. Whatever kind of little beings they were, it seemed right that they should have naps, at least until they were healthier.