“As was I,” Rafe growled. “Well, I suppose we have a second reason to stay away from it now.”
“Just as long as you pretend to play with the ball when Mama is around sometimes,” Yancy cautioned them. “That way she thinks you’re getting the full effects of it.”
“Hello—are these our new neighbors? Are they Thinking Ones, then?” The black-haired male came to join the girl on the other side of the bars. Looking at their identical raven-black hair and startling green eyes, Whitney couldn’t help thinking they were awfully similar. Maybe Mama Tusker had put them together to breed for a certain look or trait.
“Yes, they are. This is Whitney and this is Rafe,” Yancy said, pointing them out. “And this is my brother, Yarrow,” she said, nodding at the black-haired man beside her.
“Your brother?” Whitney said blankly. “But I thought…”
“That we were mates? Yes, so does Mama Tusker. She’s thought that for the past three cycles.” Yarrow laughed as though it was a fine joke.
“But we were told by Dood that tweedles who don’t, er, breed, are not kept here for long,” Rafe objected, frowning. “How do you get around that? Surely you do not…”
“Oh, certainly not!” Yancy said, perhaps a bit too quickly.
“You mean Mama Tusker doesn’t keep tweedles who don’t look like they’re breeding,” Yarrow corrected Rafe. “It’s easy enough to fake it, you know. The Tuskers are so huge they really can’t see exactly what’s going on with the naked eye. So we just…pretend every now and again and that seems to make her happy.”
“I see,” Whitney said a bit blankly. She couldn’t imagine “pretending” to breed with your own brother but apparently Yancy and Yarrow were used to it.
“Why do you not try to escape?” Rafe asked. “Surely this cannot be an easy life for you, pretending to be mates when you are actually siblings.”
“And you think living out in the open is easier?” Yarrow demanded. “With all the predators out there? We tweedles are at the very bottom of the food chain—don’t you know that?”
“Actually, we’re not from here,” Whitney said and explained as they had to Dood, that they were from another galaxy.
Yarrow listened skeptically and she got the distinct impression that he didn’t believe her at all. But he only shrugged politely when she was finished.
“Well, your galaxy sounds like a fine place. But for my money, there’s no place safer than in a cage, living as a treasured pet. Why, we have all the food we can ever want, a soft place to sleep, fresh water, plenty of tweedle weed to while away the hours…”
“But I thought you told us to avoid the tweedle weed,” Whitney protested. “Yancy said it has side effects. That it leads to, uh, breeding.”
“Only if you’re not careful,” Yarrow said dismissively. “You can have a sniff or two of it as long as you don’t get carried away.”
Whitney wanted to ask if he and Yancy had ever gotten “carried away” but then she decided she didn’t want to know.
“So the two of you are happy and contented here and never want to leave?” Rafe asked, sounding skeptical.
“Oh yes—Mama is very kind to us and little Zhu-zhu is also very sweet, although she’s not actually supposed to play with us,” Yancy put in. “But she loves to come and watch us and sometimes she gives us things.”
“Like food?” Whitney asked, thinking of the giant celery plank and blue-rimmed radish which had been dinner and was probably going to be breakfast too.
“And other things. Like that.” Yarrow pointed deeper into his and Yancy’s cage. Looking around the bars, Whitney saw what appeared to be a large round bed covered in a bright flower-print pattern. After a moment, she worked out what it was—a replica of the giant couch-like sitting platform the Tusker family had in their own living area.
“Oh—she gives you furniture!” she exclaimed.
“Exactly. She takes it out again sometimes and gives us other pieces.” Yancy shrugged. “It helps to pass the time.”
Whitney imagined that it did—almost anything would be better than sitting around the cage bored all day.
But Rafe had another question.
“When she does this—when she gives you new furniture—do you ever have a chance to escape?” he asked, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully.
But Yarrow was shaking his head.
“Oh, no—she’s very careful, is Zhu-zhu.”
“She knows she’d get into terrible trouble if she was caught playing with Mama’s tweedles,” Yancy added.
Whitney sighed. Well, so much for that idea.
“But don’t you think—” Rafe began but just then the ponderous thud-thud-thud of Tusker footsteps could be heard on the ramp leading down into the lower area of the house.
“Quick!” hissed Yarrow. “Pretend to be Mindless Ones. Mama mustn’t suspect you can think or she’ll think you have the ‘Speaking Disease’ and kill us all!”
“Oh my God,” Whitney muttered. As the footsteps got closer, she felt like a kid playing musical chairs when the music is about to stop and the only free chair is far away. “What are we going to do?” she whispered to Rafe.
“This way! I’ll run on the exercise wheel and you climb,” he murmured back. “Let’s go!”
They ran for the back of the cage and while the big Kindred got onto the wheel and started jogging at an even pace, Whitney crawled halfway up the brightly colored jungle gym structure, feeling weird and exposed. Who ever heard of climbing nude? It just felt wrong but she knew she couldn’t try to cover herself or the Tuskers would suspect her of being a thinking being, which they apparently didn’t want in a tweedle.
“That’s not gonna make her happy.” The low voice was coming from Dood’s cage. When Whitney looked over, he was shaking his head.
“What are you talking about?” Rafe growled in a low voice. “We are acting like the animals she thinks we are.”
“She’s gonna want to see you breeding,” Dood advised. “She put you in the cage together for a reason, you know.”
There was no time to answer him because just then, Mama Tusker’s huge moon-sized face with its enormous trunk came into view and this time she wasn’t alone.
Nineteen
Rafe watched as covertly as he could as the second vast face appeared in front of the tweedle cages. It wasn’t Zhu-zhu, as he had thought at first. No, this Tusker was much larger than the child. In fact, now he realized why they were called “Tuskers” by the tweedles. The face hanging outside the cages like a vast blue moon had a long trunk with two short, sharp curving tusks on either side of it.
“You see, my dear! Aren’t the new little tweedles that Zhu-zhu found in the forest adorable?” the alien mother exclaimed.
The other Tusker—who must be male and was quite possibly her mate—answered her, but his voice was so deep Rafe couldn’t understand one word in three. It wasn’t that the translation bacteria wasn’t working—it was just that the male Tusker’s voice was almost below the range of what he was able to hear.
“Yes, I’m certain they’re fine. You know there hasn’t been a case of Speaking Disease anywhere near us so stop being so foolish,” the alien mother said, frowning at the male. “Though they really aren’t acting like I had hoped they would,” she added, moving her face closer to the cage to see him and Whitney.
Rafe saw Whitney freeze on the climbing structure and he had to admit, it took an effort for him to keep running on the exercise wheel. It was very difficult to keep acting like a mindless creature when he knew they were being watched.
His protective and possessive instincts cried out that he needed to get to Whitney and keep her close and safe—that he needed to defend her from the possible threat. But he didn’t dare do it lest the alien mother suspect them of having “the Speaking Disease.”
“Why aren’t the two of you breeding yet?” the mother alien muttered, frowning unhappily. “I must check the tweedle weed in that ball and make certain it’s fres
h.”
The male Tusker rumbled something and pointed to the cage beside theirs.
“Oh yes, bless their hearts—there they go again,” the alien mother exclaimed.
Looking through the bars, Rafe saw that the two black-haired, green-eyed tweedles were breeding vigorously—or at least pretending to. Although it was very hard to tell the difference as far as he was concerned. Yancy was on all fours and Yarrow was behind her, holding on to her hips and thrusting hard while she moaned and cried in a high, needy voice.
“Yes, look at them go—almost every blessed morning,” the alien mother continued. She sighed deeply, her gust of breath like the wind from a hurricane. “I just don’t know why she’s only had the one litter when it seems like they’re always at it. And the babies brought such a good price! Well, maybe you’ll have another litter soon,” she said, speaking more to Yancy and Yarrow than to her mate. “At least you’re trying. For now, it’s breakfast time.”
She began pushing something through the bars of the cages which appeared to be some kind of flat gray, irregularly-shaped slices about the size of a large pizza. Rafe wondered what they were. Should he and Whitney go over and investigate? But no—it was better not to draw attention to themselves, he decided.
“Now the two of you eat up and get your strength,” the alien mother said, as she pushed two of the slices through the bars of their cage. “And maybe if you’re ready to breed the next time I visit you, you’ll be fit to be seen at the Tweedle Beautiful Show.”
Then she and the male Tusker left, stumping up the ramp which trembled and quivered under their combined weight.
Twenty
As soon as Mama Tusker was gone, Whitney climbed off the jungle gym and went back to the other side of the cage where she had been before the interruption. Yancy and Yarrow stopped their noisy copulation which Whitney wasn’t at all sure had been fake, after Mama Tusker’s comments, and came back to their side of the bars as well.
“That was close,” Yancy exclaimed, breathing a sigh of relief. “She usually comes in later than that. She must have wanted to show you two off to Papa Tusker before he left for work.”
“So the one with the tusks was her mate?” Rafe asked, joining them.
Yarrow nodded. “Yes—that’s Papa. He only comes down here occasionally—he doesn’t really have much interest in Mama’s tweedle breeding hobby.”
“She seems very interested in the breeding though,” Rafe remarked. “What was that she was saying about the two of you having a ‘litter’?”
Yancy’s cheeks went dark red and she looked down at her hands but Yarrow lifted his chin and glared at the big Kindred.
“We had an accident, once,” he emphasized, frowning. “When we were first brought here, we didn’t know the effects of the tweedle weed. It was completely unintentional—we were half out of our minds and didn’t know what we were doing. Much like the two of you, this morning,” he added, giving them both a significant look.
“I had a litter of three,” Yancy admitted, still staring down at the greenish purple grass at her feet. “But Mama Tusker took them all as soon as they had stopped nursing.” She gave a deep, shuddering sigh. “She sold them, I suppose, for a tidy profit. I…I’ll never see them again.” When she looked up, Whitney saw that her big green eyes were brilliant with tears.
Her heart went out to the other girl. What an awful situation to find yourself in! And to have her babies taken away like that and sold…it was horrible! For no matter how she had gotten them, it was clear Yancy had loved them dearly. Losing her children must have been even worse than waking from the fog of the tweedle weed and realizing what she had done with her own brother to get them in the first place.
“I’m so sorry,” she said softly, reaching between the bars to squeeze the other girl’s hand. “That’s terrible.”
Yancy sniffed and gave her a watery smile.
“It’s all right—it was years ago, when we were first captured. Now we’re careful. Mama can’t take any more of my babies away because I won’t have any more.”
“I would hope not,” Rafe growled.
Whitney turned and gave him a quelling look. What Yancy and Yarrow had revealed wasn’t very nice to contemplate but judging them and making them feel bad about it wasn’t going to do anybody any good.
And it might do a lot of harm, she thought, still frowning at Rafe. We need all the friends we can get here!
Rafe took the hint but his next remark wasn’t much better.
“I do not see why the two of you don’t try to make an escape,” he burst out, frowning. “After what you have been forced to do together, how can you endure this captivity?”
Yarrow bristled. “I told you, we’re at the bottom of the food chain out in the forest and we’re much too far from our original home to ever get home! Do you think Yancy could have kept her babies if we lived out there? At least two of them would probably been eaten by a tigree or a boskit if not all three!”
That must be why they have multiples—liters, Whitney thought to herself. If the infant mortality rate is so high, they’d have to in order to survive as a species.
Aloud, she said, “It sounds like a very hard life. But maybe we could all escape together. We could bring the two of you and Dood with us back to the ship and all fly back to our own galaxy.”
“That is if we can find our galaxy,” Rafe growled. “And to do that, we’d need access to star charts and galaxy maps.”
Yarrow shook his head.
“I don’t know where you’d find any of that.”
“Maybe in the information device I saw in the Tuskers’ living area as Whitney and I were being carried down here yesterday,” Rafe suggested. “That was my hope, anyway—if I can learn their written language first.” He looked at Yarrow and Yancy hopefully. “Do either of you know it? I have had an injection of translation bacteria but their symbols seem to defy even their ability to translate.”
Yarrow shook his head but Yancy nodded.
“I know it…a little,” she offered hesitantly. “Our family stayed for a while in the walls of a Tusker school where they taught the young Tuskers. I would hide in the corner and watch when I was bored. It’s complicated but I can at least teach you the alphabet and some of the words.”
“Excellent!” Rafe clapped his hands together. “Let’s get started right away.”
Yarrow frowned sourly. “I don’t see what good it will do even if you learn enough of the damned Tusker tongue to write a book in it! You’re never getting out of this cage to go up and look at the info-server. And even if you did, if Papa Tusker caught you at it he’d smash you into jelly! He doesn’t like tweedles the way Mama does.”
“Leave that to me,” Rafe said, frowning. “Whitney and I are getting out of here. When we go, you can come with us or not—it’s your choice. But we are going.”
“I’ll teach you what little I know,” Yancy said. “And you can use it as you like. Here—the best way to learn is to clear away some of the grass from the floor of your cage. Mama Tusker uses the weeks-end periodical to line our cages and there is often a lot of writing on it. I try to read it sometimes when I get bored.”
Which must be very often, Whitney thought as she and Rafe started clearing the greenish-purple grass blades away. There was only so much tweedle weed Yancy and Yarrow could sniff if they were being “careful” as they claimed.
* * *
They worked most of the morning, trying to master the Tusker alphabet and Whitney found to her delight that she was able to memorize it with ease, though she had never been very good with languages before. The translation bacteria might not be able to translate the written words directly, but it certainly helped her understand and retain them once she started learning.
“Now see,” Yancy pointed through the bars to what appeared to be an advertisement printed on the thick bluish paper that lined the bottom of their cage. “That’s an ad for tweedles. Can you make it out?”
“Young
tweedles…of breeding age,” Rafe read haltingly, his brows furrowed as he made out the words. As fast as Whitney had been learning, he was going ten times faster. It must be his natural Kindred ability combined with the translation bacteria, she thought. Kindred were always a whiz with languages—it was in their DNA along with their instinctive knowledge of machinery and their desire to please and protect women.
“Yes, yes—good!” Yancy said encouragingly. “What else?”
“Exotic colors…gentle…temperament. Guaranteed no…Speaking Disease.” Rafe finished.
Whitney stared at the ad and shook her head, horrified.
“To be bought and sold like that—how awful!”
“Do you not have a tweedle trade where you live then?” Yancy asked curiously.
“No,” Whitney said and added reluctantly, “though we used to have something like it.”
“Do you have Tuskers on your planet too, then?” Yarrow asked, frowning.
Whitney shook her head. “No, but for a long time in our past, people with lighter skin color used to buy and sell people with my skin color. It was horrible.”
“I have heard of that shameful part of Earth’s past,” Rafe said soberly. “I am so sorry, Whitney.”
She shook her head. “It was other humans who did that, not the Kindred.”
“Of course not!” His brows lowered as he scowled like a thunder cloud. “We would never subjugate another people, especially not on the basis of skin color, which is foolish and prejudiced in the extreme. All sentient species should be free to do as they like as long as they don’t harm anyone.”
Whitney sighed. “I wish more humans held that point of view. And more Tuskers, for that matter. The idea of buying and selling another sentient species just because they’re smaller than you is awful!”
“It is reprehensible,” Rafe agreed and pointed at the ad. “Gods—there’s a picture to go with the words, look.”
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