Outside Context Problem: Book 03 - The Slightest Hope of Victory

by Christopher Nuttall

  She looked over at Jane. “Apart from being pregnant,” she asked, “how are the mothers?”

  “They’re in reasonably good health,” Jane said. “The aliens treated them well – we think that some of them actually got proper medical assistance from them. Several of the girls had past injuries that didn't show up when we examined them; one of them, in particular, had a plate in her arm after she broke her wrist. That plate is now gone.”

  Alex leaned forward. “How the hell did they do that?”

  “Good question,” Jane said. “As far as we can tell, the arm is in perfect shape, as good as new. How they did it? Nanites, we assume. I don’t think anything else could have fixed it so perfectly.”

  She stared down at the x-ray for a long moment. “Mentally, however, most of them are in poor shape,” she continued. “They’re all pregnant, which plays marry hell with hormones at the best of times, and they were, as you say, effectively rape victims. Some of them have had to be placed on suicide watch; one of them managed to slit her wrists before she was caught and hastily bandaged up by the guards. Another was about to try to cut her womb open ... overall, if we could, I would recommend abortion. They might well have been better off with human rapists.”

  Juanita lifted her eyebrows. “Oh?”

  “There are two sorts of deliberate rapist,” Jane explained, dryly. “The first one merely wants sex; he would be delighted if the girl enjoyed herself too, but his priority is enjoying himself. At worst, as far as he is concerned, the girl is nothing more than a blow-up doll. But the second type gets off on pain and suffering. He wants the girl to suffer, so he can enjoy himself properly. It wouldn't please him if his victim just submitted at once. He wants to beat the resistance out of her personally.

  “But the aliens treated their captives as ... tools,” she added. “There was no empathy, not even the twisted form indulged by the most warped rapists in existence. The girls were impregnated against the will by monsters, creatures who weren't even human. And they were so drugged that resistance was futile.

  “People respond differently to rape. In this case, the horror of effectively carrying a rapist’s child is blurred with the realisation that they did absolutely nothing to resist and that they were – and still are – effectively helpless. I expect that there will be more disturbances to come; some of them may reject the children completely, while others will try to hurt or kill them ... both behaviours are not uncommon among rape victims.

  “The only odd point here is that none of the girls shy away from men,” she concluded. “It is far from uncommon for a rape victim to unconsciously blame all men for her experience, even though cold logic would suggest otherwise. They flinch away from any expression of masculinity, no matter how harmless. However, these girls show no sign of being more than moderately worried by the presence of the soldiers on the base. There is much interesting research into psychology to be done here.”

  Juanita didn't smile. “You think that happened because it was the aliens who impregnated them?”

  “It isn't impossible,” Jane agreed. “There have been cases where women were raped by other women – those victims don’t flinch away from women so much. It seems to reverse itself, however, where male-on-male rape is concerned. Men seem more inclined to flinch away from their fellows after rape ...”

  “Thank you,” Alex said, quickly. “I didn't want to know that, really.”

  Jane smirked. “You’re welcome.”

  “That leaves us with one question,” Juanita said, smoothly. “Do we risk allowing the babies to be born, or do we simply kill them and take what care we can of the mothers?”

  “I think we need to study them,” Jane said. “And besides, they are innocents. They are not guilty of any of the crimes carried out by the rest of their race. We cannot hold them to account for those crimes.”

  “Very well,” Juanita said. “I will so advise the resistance high command.”

  She swept out of the room, leaving Alex and Jane alone.

  “I’ll run the question of just what they were trying to do past Theta,” Jane said, once the door had clicked shut. “He might have some insights into just what they intend for their new babies.”

  Alex shook his head. “Assuming the Rogue Leaders told him what they had in mind,” he said. “I don’t think they told their doctors everything.”

  Jane nodded. “Do you remember when they offered us cures for diseases and suchlike, back before the war started in earnest? They could have won all kinds of friends if they’d simply taken their time to worm their way into our society, rather than starting a war.”

  “I remember,” Alex said. “That sort of information was way too revealing.”

  And it had also been a quiet threat, he’d realised at the time. Anyone who could produce a workable cure for AIDS, or Cancer, or Bird Flu could also produce a virulent disease that could wipe out the human race. And it had also suggested that many of the stories about alien abduction might have had some basis in fact. The existence of the alien base in Antarctica had more than proven that when the war began openly. They’d discovered hundreds of abducted and imprisoned humans there.

  “I keep thinking about the promise of their technology,” Jane said. “I don’t think they know the half of it, not from what Theta says. Can you imagine what it would be like to have a cure for Down’s Syndrome? Or all those other problems that come from living in the wrong place, breathing in the wrong air? Or what if we were to ensure that everyone had the same skin colour, all the time? Or stronger, more resistant to disease? We could reshape the world!”

  “Or destroy it,” Alex said. Science-fiction had showcased both the promise and terror of genetic engineering. He’d devoured those books avidly when he had been a child. Now, he spent his days combing through alien invasion novels and films, looking for insights. “And God alone knows what the children will really be like.”

  “We’ll find out soon, I think,” Jane said. “According to the midwives, at least three of the girls will be giving birth within the week. They don't know for sure when, because of the child’s odd growth rate, but it will happen. Doctors are standing by ...”

  She looked over at Alex. “I should go there,” she said. “They’re going to need me.”

  Alex understood the impulse, but shook his head. “Jane ...”

  “This is a unique event,” Jane insisted. “I should go.”

  “You know too much to risk being captured,” Alex pointed out. “Right now, the bastards know that we used the truckers to move people from state to state and they’re raiding them, looking for evidence of resistance connections. We cannot risk slipping you into a truck and then having them pick you up.”

  “I could pose as a driver,” Jane said. “Or as a passenger ...”

  “You’d need permission to leave your state to be a passenger,” Alex reminded her, “and you wouldn't have the papers to show them. And you couldn't pretend to be a driver, I think. Or a driver’s escort. They’d know you were trying to fool them and then the shit would hit the fan. Besides, even if the aliens didn't see you, the bandits might.”

  He scowled. Texas – all of the southern states – was a battleground these days, a problem not made any easier by the panic the nuke had caused. Thousands upon thousands of people had tried to flee, breaking through the Order Police lines and heading in all directions. Most of them, Alex knew, would die in the desert. A lucky handful might be rounded up and placed in the alien camps.

  You know the world has gone to shit when the best thing people can hope for is a concentration camp, he thought, sourly. What’s going to happen when the next hurricane hits Florida? Or New Orleans?

  “No,” he said, flatly. “And I’m sure that the Colonel would say the same thing. It’s far too dangerous to try to get you up north in time for the babies to be born. There are plenty of midwives and doctors there already. You’ll have full access to the live feed and everything ...”

  “But it won’t be the
same,” Jane snapped. She glared at him, then stamped towards the door. “I’ll propose a list of procedures for them. You can make sure they’re followed.”

  Alex watched her go, feeling a twinge of sympathy. He would have hated to be excluded from something he found interesting too, even if his presence wasn't strictly necessary. But there was no choice. Jane simply knew too much to risk allowing her to fall into alien hands.

  And if they turned her into an unwitting spy, he thought, glumly, she could show them everything.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  South Wyoming, USA

  Day 241

  “Well,” a southern voice asked. “You’re going to have a baby, my dear. How does that make you feel?”

  Dolly opened her eyes to see an incredibly fat woman with dark skin and a big smile leaning over her bed, one hand holding a medical device Dolly didn't recognise.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I just don’t know.”

  The first day had been almost tranquil as the drugs worked their way out of her body, allowing her to sleep and rest normally. On the second day ... she’d realised, truly realised, what they’d done to her and she’d screamed and cursed, demanding help, demanding that they tear the baby out of her womb and destroy it, before slumping back onto the bed in a dead faint. She’d woken up on the third day to discover that she’d been strapped to the bed, with a nurse waiting to explain that it was far too late to abort the child. Reluctantly, Dolly had agreed to give birth ... and then let them take the child away from her.

  But she felt odd. Part of her wanted to keep the child, even though it was quite possible that she was nothing more than a host mother for an alien children. It was unlikely, the doctors said, that there was anything of her in the baby. And yet she felt a certain love for the child in her womb. Perhaps she would have felt the same way if she’d given birth under alien supervision or perhaps they would just have kept drugging her until she forgot the first child and thought herself perpetually pregnant. From what the doctors had said, some of the drugs the aliens had fed their captives were nasty.

  “That’s normal, my dear,” the woman assured her. “I remember being all worried about my Aggie. Would having her ruin my life as it had already ruined my figure? Would that worthless deadbeat who had knocked me up ever shape into a good and decent father for my child? But when she was born, I held her in my arms and knew that she was mine.”

  She winked, mischievously. “That’s our little advantage over the men,” she added. “They can never know that the child is really theirs, but we know ... because we carried the child in our womb for nine months ...”

  “Thank you,” Dolly said, tartly. Anger and shame fought for dominance in her mind. Anger won. “You have the bedside manner of a ...”

  She stopped, unable to think of something awful enough.

  “Clap-ridden whore?” The woman asked. “Politician bent on grabbing a few more votes?”

  She laughed, not unkindly. “At least you’re fighting back, child,” she added. “Some of the others have just been ... broken by the experience.”

  Dolly sagged, feeling grief threatening to overcome her. She hadn't put anything into the child. There was no assurance that she had actually carried her husband or boyfriend’s child, no secret amusement at fostering a child from a brief affair outside the family ... just the awareness that she had been turned into a host mother for an alien child. But it was almost over and then ....

  She looked down at the bulge in her stomach and, beyond it, the cuts and scars on her feet. The doctors had told her that she’d lost a great deal of weight and muscle tone while she’d been an alien prisoner, the effect of some of their drugs. But she could get it all back, she told herself, and then go hunting the aliens again. The resistance already knew her to be a capable sniper and even if her hands didn't stop shaking, they could surely find something else for her to do. Even if it was just hewing wood and drawing water to free someone else up to fight.

  Her entire body jerked as the baby kicked. “I think you don’t have much longer to wait,” the woman said. She smiled, suddenly. “I wish your family could come here, but we couldn't get in touch with them. Sergeant Tanaka did offer to come sit with you, if you would like ...”

  Dolly flushed, remembering the short sparkplug who’d commended her for shooting an alien leader, and then commended her again on escaping the alien base. She barely knew him, yet he was the closest thing to a friend she had in the hidden clinic. And it was nice of him to stick around to take care of the girls.

  “Yes, please,” she whispered, suddenly feeling very tired. The baby kicked again, harder this time. “I think he wants out.”

  “Definitely a boy, then,” the woman said. She grinned and extended a hand. “My name is Shanna, a midwife of fifteen years experience. I’ll take care of you.”

  Dolly must have drifted off, for the next thing she knew was that she was in an operating room. A handful of lights glared down at her naked body from high overhead, while a handful of shadowy figures stood around her bed. She shuddered, feeling panic bubbling up inside her; their presence was far too like the aliens as they’d poked and prodded at her body, impregnating her with their spawn. Had she really escaped or had she imagined it? Maybe one of the drugs had made her delusional ...

  A hand took her hand and squeezed, gently. “Bring up the lights,” a gruff voice ordered. “You’re scaring her.”

  The room brightened, revealing that the shadowy figures were human doctors wearing masks that covered their entire faces. Dolly opened her mouth to ask if they were worried about disease, but a stab of pain from her womb distracted her. She clung on to the hand she was offered for dear life as a second stab followed ...

  “Hold on,” someone said. “Everything seems to be going just fine.”

  Dolly screamed as another burst of pain threatened to force her into the darkness. If this was what giving birth was like, how could she ever face it again? How could any woman have anything more than one child? Or was it the alien child? The doctors hadn't said anything about what it looked like, but she’d seen their faces and clearly there was something wrong with the child. But what? The next burst of pain forced her entire body to convulse ...

  “Get the straps,” someone ordered. “And then inject her ...”

  “No needles,” Dolly managed to say through the pain. “No needles ...”

  “Don’t worry,” a soothing voice said. “They’re taking good care of you.”

  Dolly convulsed, her body twisting so badly that she was half-convinced that she’d snapped her own spine. A moment later, there was a prick in her arm; they’d injected her with something, she realised, just before a faintly inhuman calm settled over her. They strapped her hands to the edge of the table, pinning her in place ... and it didn’t bother her at all.

  “I’m sorry,” the voice said. “It will all be over soon.”

  ***

  Edward shuddered as he watched the doctors working on Dolly’s womb. Seeing the girl like that was bad enough, but he had a nasty feeling that half of the doctors were more interested in what came out of her body rather than protecting the girl herself. Behind them, a pair of armed soldiers carried M16s and flamethrowers, ready to eradicate everything in the room if the shit really did hit the fan. It made him think that someone had been watching Alien too many times.

  He recoiled as the first flow of liquid oozed out of Dolly’s vagina, bringing with it a ghastly abnormal stench that reminded him of fighting in Iraq’s less well-developed cities. Judging by what the doctors were saying, that wasn't even remotely normal; they hastily cleared the liquid away from her, moving it into sample bags for later analysis. Edward looked back at the girl’s face and realised that she had slipped into a dazed state where none of this was actually happening. He just hoped that it lasted long enough to keep her from feeling anything as she gave birth.

  “I see the head,” one of the doctors announced. “It's coming out, right and pr
oper.”

  Edward stood upright and watched, grimly, as the baby’s head started to make its way out of the girl’s womb. There was no trace of hair on its head – he couldn't recall if that was normal for a baby or not – but it stopped, moments after it had started to emerge. Dolly’s body shuddered as she tried to push the baby out, yet nothing happened. Edward realised, to his horror, that the baby’s head was too big to escape the womb. And how long would it be before it suffocated to death?

  One of the doctors leaned forward, holding a knife. Edward looked away, horrified. He’d seen battlefield medicine, but this was something different, something that sickened him right to the core of his being. Dolly’s entire body seemed to jerk, then make one final push. The baby appeared between her legs, followed rapidly by a piece of ugly blue flesh that seemed to be ridden with green specks. He had no idea if that was normal or something that the aliens had included. The doctor bent forward again and cut it away from the child, then picked it up and dropped it in another sample bag.

  The baby started to gasp for breath, then cry. One of the midwives picked up the child, very gently, and patted him on the back. Edward stared, unable to quite believe his eyes; he’d known that the baby’s head was larger than any normal human head, but he hadn't realised just how large it was. It was bigger than the baby’s chest; the nose was tiny, almost like a button, while the eyes were large and dark. Alien eyes, he realised, and shuddered. What had they done to the child?

  Medics surrounded Dolly, one injecting her with a sedative while the others worked frantically on her womb. The blood was still flowing freely, Edward saw; if they didn't manage to sew her up, blood loss would kill her as surely as a shot to the head. Her face was twisted with bitter pain and relief, even though she’d been sedated. He couldn't help wondering if she would ever want to face her own child.

  But he isn't her child, he said, looking back at the baby. The midwife was washing him gently, removing the blood from his pale skin. There was definitely a penis between his legs, Edward noted, but it looked odd. The midwife didn't say anything, so he assumed that was normal for human children too. But she did look rather pale.