by Lula Monk
As they passed aliens in all shapes and forms, she looked them each in the eye, wondering if they took their leave in the Entertainment Sectors, when they weren’t in the breeding rooms trying to pump their vile alien offspring into some human woman’s womb. Icy fingers ran up her spine, shooting into her chest to squeeze her heart.
“Dredge . . .,” she said slowly, almost afraid to ask the question. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer. “The past few days, when you’ve been gone from the room . . . have you been going there, to the Entertainment Sector?”
Dredge glared down at her, his offense plastered all over his face. “Of course not. I would never go to such a place. I have told you Samantha: all sentient creatures deserve freedom and respect.”
“And yet you patroned Galactic Continuity when you bought me?”
“That is different. You know this.”
The Glim was breathing hard now, his chest rising and falling in rapid motions. He looked angry. Furious even. Samantha shied away from him. Dredge was a tall creature, and his human body was corded with bulging muscles. He was strong. She didn’t want to push him too far.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Dredge asked, glowering down at her. “Specifics are the key to any apology, Samantha.”
“I’m sorry for assuming you would be like them.”
Dredge stopped walking. His eyes bore into hers as though he were searching for something. After a moment, he looked away, resigned. “I accept your apology.”
They continued to walk down the corridor, and Samantha was pleased to see that the crowd was thinning the farther they traveled.
“So, where have you been sneaking off to then?” she asked with a laugh, trying to lighten the mood.
“Medical bay,” said Dredge.
She thought about the crack at the base of the Glim’s skull and gasped. “Are you okay?”
He looked down at her, brows furrowed in confusion. He lifted his hand and pointed to a large entryway. “Medical bay.”
Bright red letters above the entry way read Medical Bay, Sector 1.
“Ah,” said Samantha. “Gotcha.”
“Come,” said Dredge, putting his arm around her shoulders protectively. He smiled down at the shining light glowing through her sun dress. “Let us receive confirmation for what our eyes tell us already.”
“It’s way too soon to tell, Dredge,” Samantha warned him again. “Besides, maybe this is just some weird space STD. Are you clean?” she asked jokingly.
“Clean?”
“Diseased. Do you have any sexual diseases?” Samantha asked. Her laughter was now gone . . . what if he did? She hadn’t considered the possibility before.
“I have no diseases of the sexual variety,” the Glim said softly, guiding her through the entryway.
She stared down and placed a hand over her abdomen, hiding the glow with her palm. She honestly didn’t know which she would prefer – being pregnant with an alien baby or having a galactic STD.
That was a lie, and she knew it. She needed to be pregnant.
Pregnancy was her one-way ticket off the Hub and out of Dredge’s life forever.
The Glim swiped his palms over a steel wall on their right. A portal opened. Inside, Samantha could see a sterile looking room and a short alien with four arms, each appendage holding sinister looking medical equipment. Her stomach churned again.
She hoped she would be strong enough to cash in on her ticket and save them all.
Chapter 18
Dredge
The Earth woman was staring at the Quadra before her, her mouth hanging open in a perfect ‘O.’
“I’m actually pregnant?” Samantha shook her head in disbelief. “There’s no way you could possibly know that. You’ve not tested my blood or urine or . . . anything.”
“I have scanned you,” said the Quadra, its eight eyes blinking in unison. “My results are accurate.”
“I call bullshit.”
“Language, Samantha,” warned Dredge, though his tone was not as commanding as it probably should have been. His heart was full of joy. He had done it. He had taken the first step to fulfilling his duty to his species. He’d gotten the Earth woman pregnant.
“What is the sex?” he asked the Quadra.
“Not even my technology is that advanced.” The Quadra scribbled notes into a digipad. “The fetus must develop its sex organs before you will know such a thing.”
Dredge frowned. “You can’t access its genetic code and assess its chromosomic make-up?”
The alien healer made a gurgling sound in its many throats. “Such a thing is possible. For a fee.”
“I will pay whatever is required.”
“No!” shouted Samantha, her arms resting protectively over her abdomen. “You’re not accessing anything.”
“It should be a simple procedure, Samantha. Nothing to worry about. Just a quick prick with a needle, and all is done.”
“How big is the needle?”
Dredge studied his hand and then made a long ‘L’ with his thumb and pointer finger. “A little longer than this.”
As if on cue, the Quadra turned around, brandishing the aforementioned needle. With deft fingers, it twisted the needle into an amnioscopic gun. In a thick voice, the Quadra commanded, “Lay down.”
Samantha gripped the edge of the examination platform. “No.”
She turned her large liquid eyes to Dredge. “Please don’t make me do this… let’s just wait, okay? Let it be kind of like a surprise?”
“If you are carrying a male Glimling, we must terminate.”
The disgusted look on Samantha’s face made him look away.
“You would force me to terminate if the baby were a boy?”
“If the Glimling was a male, yes. Termination would be the only option. Of the approximately one hundred and twenty-five Glim remaining on Brillar, 83% are male. We do not need more male Glims. We need healthy, female Glims to carry back to Brillar for breeding.”
Samantha’s entire body began to shake. Her face mottled into a mask of pure rage. “You are not taking my daughter back to your home planet to pimp her out so your stupid species can survive.”
The Quadra clucked its many tongues and gave Dredge a disapproving look. “You should control your breeder, Glim. Such strong-willed humans as she often prove to be troublesome. Problematic. Liabilities.”
“Thanks for the word spew, you freaky little thesaurus.” Samantha glared at the Quadra, her hands now clenched into fists at her side. She looked ready to pounce from the table onto the healer. The needle-loaded amnioscopic gun glittered in the Quadra’s hand like a true weapon.
Dredge placed a hand on Samantha’s shoulder and squeezed lightly. He meant for the gesture to be comforting, but Samantha shrugged him away, her eyes burning him with their hatred.
“Besides, there won’t even be an amniotic sac,” she said looking at the needle in the amniogun. “You can’t use that thing right now, anyway.”
The Quadra clicked its tongues again. “This is inaccurate information. The amniotic sac is fully developed and growing.”
Dredge watched as Samantha took in this information, her teeth chewing at her lip in that adorable way Dredge had begun to like. He did not like it now, though, for now she was doing it to the degree that blood painted her bottom lip crimson.
“How?” she asked. “It’s only been three days.”
The Quadra grabbed his digipad.
“Lie down,” he instructed.
“Put the needle thing down first.”
More clicking of its tongues and then the Quadra pulled open a drawer and securely stored the loaded amniogun inside. It turned back to Samantha. “Lie down.”
To Dredge’s surprise, the Earth woman did as she was told.
The Quadra lay the digipad flat on Samantha’s lower abdomen, obscuring the soft glow that radiated from her. It pressed a button on a corner of the screen and a three-dimensional rendering of Samanth
a’s womb hovered above the device.
Samantha sucked in a sharp breath. “Is that it? It looks like a blob.”
The Quadra made a sound that Dredge identified as a sigh. The healer pressed another button and the rendering altered into a transverse slice of the human woman’s womb.
“There,” said the Quadra, pointing at a small bright spot with all four of his index fingers. “This cluster of cells is your Glimling. Observe,” said the Quadra, enlarging and enhancing the imaging. “This dark line is your Glimling’s primitive streak, what will become its spinal cord and brain.”
Dredge’s heart swelled with pride. The thing was no bigger than his smallest fingernail – not even a tenth as large – but already he loved it. He blinked, his brain struggling to process this realization. Love? He had never experienced such a sensation before.
He looked at the wide-eyed Earth woman lying on the table, the illumination from the rendering of their Glimling shining across her face. His heart clinched, and he placed his hand on his chest.
Maybe he had already experienced the sensation.
“I don’t understand," said Samantha, squinting at the rendering. “How is it already so big?”
The Quadra pressed another button on the screen. The rendering disappeared, and in its place scrolled words and numbers. “The fetus is already 4.51% developed. Your expected date of delivery is 11.2 universal units from this moment. I will put you on the schedule for that time.”
Seeing the confused look on her face, Dredge leaned down and whispered, “Approximately 66 Earth days.”
“Two months!” Samantha screamed. “I’m going to be having this baby in two months?”
“Glimling, yes,” said Dredge. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
The Earth woman stared at him with frightened eyes. “That is too soon. I won’t be ready in two months.”
Dredge smiled at her. “You will be a wonderful life-giver, Samantha. I am confident. Do not worry.”
The Quadra reached back into the drawer and extracted the amniogun.
“Remain lying flat,” he instructed.
Samantha bolted upright. “Uh-uh. I don’t think so, buddy.”
The Quadra clicked its tongue, now an angry sound. “I am not your companion. Please lie back down.”
The Earth woman stared up at Dredge, her eyes pleading. “Can’t we just wait to find out if it is a boy or a girl? Please?”
Dredge frowned at her. “To do so would be to waste precious time. We must perform the examination today.”
Samantha’s eyes darted around the room, as if she were struggling to think of some other argument. Her face lit up. She turned to the Quadra. “Is this procedure dangerous to the baby?”
“There is a 33.87% chance of rupturing the amniotic sac at this stage,” answered the four-armed healer. “In the event of such an occurrence, fetal death is guaranteed.”
Samantha turned back to Dredge. “Are you willing to risk that? What if it is a female Glimling, huh? You could be voluntarily murdering it because you couldn’t just be patient and wait.”
Dredge had not considered this outcome. “33.87% is rather large.”
“Plus, you would have to wait an entire month before I’m ovulating again. Would seem like a waste to put you a month behind for nothing.”
The Quadra clicked its tongues. “I have other patients to attend. Choose.”
“We will not be having the procedure,” said Dredge firmly.
Samantha threw her arms around him in a tight embrace.
“Thank you,” she said breathily into his ear.
He shivered, leaning into her embrace.
Yes. Perhaps he had indeed experienced the emotion of love before.
Chapter 19
Samantha
She breathed in and out, forcing her body to take on a meaningful rhythm with the motions. She squeezed the sides of her head with her knees. Breath in. Breathe out. This was as close to a panic attack as she’d come to since she was a child. She didn’t miss the sensation.
“Do not bend over too much, Samantha,” cautioned the Glim sitting on the bed beside her. “You do not want to injure the Glimling.”
Samantha started wheezing and gasping again. Breathe in, breathe out.
She couldn’t believe what she had done in the medical bay. She should have just let the four-armed alien puncture the amniotic sac so she could miscarry the freak growing in her belly.
Breathe in, breathe out.
What was she thinking? She needed the Glimling growing inside of her. Having this thing inside you is the whole point, she reminded herself. You need this thing for the plan to work.
Breathe in, breathe out.
She thought about the tiny glowing dot on the 3-D projection. Her heart fluttered. She felt sick, dirty, wrong.
What she was doing . . . this whole plan. It wasn’t right. First, she would betray Dredge, and then what? She would abandon her own baby?
She hated herself just thinking about it.
But then she thought about all those women Dredge had mentioned earlier, the ones in what he’d called the Entertainment Sectors of the Hub. The ones owned by Galactic Continuity, pimped out with the ultimate ultimatum: fuck or get turned into a pile of ash.
Breathe in, breathe out.
She had to do this. Even if it meant betraying Dredge and her child, she had to save the human women on this space station.
All the things that could go wrong assaulted her mind, pushing into the already crowded space there, competing with all her other worries and fears.
Damn it all. She had to at least try.
“Are you okay, Samantha?” The Glim’s concerned tone coupled with the way he was gingerly stroking her back brought tears to Samantha’s eyes once more.
“Everything is happening so fast,” she whispered. Her head was still between her knees. “I thought I would have nine months to get ready to have a kid. But it’s going to be two months from now; I just don’t know that I’m going to be ready.”
Dredge gave her a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, Samantha. I can tell by the concern you’ve shown for our offspring already that you’re going to be a great life-giver.” Then, more softly, “A good mother.”
Samantha had that sad feeling tugging at the back of her soul. Dredge really was a nice guy. He was trying to be kind to her given her circumstances, even if he was the reason she was in such circumstances to begin with.
Part of her wanted that important fact to be the only part of Dredge that she saw, but it wasn’t.
“I’m sure you’re right,” she said. “I think I just need to come to terms with the fact that everything is happening a lot sooner than I thought it would.”
Dredge tilted his head. “What do you mean ‘everything?’”
Samantha’s heart sped up. She needed to be careful about what she said; Dredge was a very intelligent life form – that was obvious – and she didn’t want to give away too much of her plan too soon.
“Yeah,” she said. “Just, you know, being a mom. Having a Glimling. Having a shiny belly.”
Dredge laughed. “As I said, you’ll acclimate soon enough.”
Samantha gestured toward the copy of the Glimling offspring book. “Can you bring that to me, please? I think if I read up on it some more, maybe I will feel more comfortable.”
Dredge stood to do her bidding, returning with the book in double time. He asked, “Do you need anything else?”
He was suddenly super more accommodating than usual; maybe this could have advantages, and she hoped his willingness to help her persisted. Her plan relied on his actions, after all.
“Yeah,” she said slowly. “Can you go out and get me those little berries that taste like chocolate?”
Dredge furrowed his eyebrows. “I don’t know what chocolate is.”
“The little blue berries,” she said, indicating the size with her fingers. “You bought them for me the first day I was here.”
“Yes,”
said the Glim. He nodded his head eagerly. “I can do that. Will you be needing anything else?”
Samantha tapped her chin as though she were searching her mind, even though she already knew the answer immediately.
“I would like to start exercising every day.”
“Exercise . . . for what purpose?”
Samantha gave him a wide-eyed, innocent look. “Well, on Earth, women exercise throughout the course of the pregnancy. To ensure their bodies are strong and prepared for labor.”
She held her breath, hoping the explanation made sense to Dredge.
“This is an exceptional request! I think equipment can be brought to the room easily enough.”
“No!” shouted Samantha. “Sorry. No. I would really prefer to walk around the Hub with you, if that’s all right. It’s nice to get out of this room. Cabin fever, remember?”
Dredge squinted his eyes at her for a long moment. Finally, he nodded. Hesitantly, he said, “If you think it’s best for your body right now . . .”
“It is!” she said. And then less eagerly, “It is. It’s nice to get out, you know? It’s . . . nice to be with you.”
She put her hand on top of Dredge’s. He shifted his hand, lacing their fingers together.
Samantha felt horrible, rotten. Like the worst person on Earth.
Except she wasn’t on Earth. Maybe somehow that made it better, would somehow help her cope with everything she knew she was going to have to do to Dredge.
Her heart seized. She knew her physical location didn’t matter; what she was planning to do was wicked. She was still piece of shit for even thinking about betraying Dredge, especially considering how nice he’d been. The blackness of her guilt threatened to engulf her, to wrap its pallid fingers around her throat and choke the life out of her.
Samantha felt her heart fluttering, another panic attack waiting to assault her. She struggled to shut those feelings down, to smother them before their sparks had a chance to catch fire.
Breath in. Breath out.
“Thank you,” she said softly. She lifted his hand to her mouth, planting a soft kiss on his fingertips. “You’ve been very kind to me.”