“Are they in residence?” Bach asked, from the passenger side of the transport.
“Yes.”
“Do they know we’re here?”
There was only a slight movement at the drawn hide. While it might have been caused by a faint winter breeze, Tral doubted it. “Probably. By now I’m sure they’ve all learned to dread the sound of transport engines.”
“Are they scrambling for spears?”
“Almost certainly.”
The two men paused, both lost in his own thoughts, each likely questioning the wisdom of what they were about to do. Tral definitely was. But this was important and long overdue, and he didn’t want to put it off any longer. He sighed, steaming the air with his breath. “I’ll get the chairs.”
As he walked around to the rear of the vehicle, the car gently rocked and Bach stepped out into the snow. He too studied the far hillside. His mouth tightened with disapproval before, steaming the air with a heavy sigh, he turned and opened the back door for Pani and Bebe.
“Stay close,” he told them, no doubt regretting not having brought his personal guard. This was to be a private meeting, however. One that could easily end disastrously and with very far-reaching consequences for every human in the empire. The fewer witnesses there were, the easier it would be to cover-up if the worst case scenario occurred.
Unless, of course, they got killed. Tral tried not to think about that.
Lugging three folding chairs in his arms, he walked a good twenty feet from the vehicle toward the summit of the hill they’d parked on. Bebe and Pani followed close at his heels until Bach called out, “That’s plenty far enough.”
Tral didn’t think so, but he stopped and set the chairs up anyway, one facing the car and the other two side by side overlooking the cave.
Don’t go! Bebe signed to him when he started to back away.
“I won’t leave you here,” he promised, then thumbed back over his shoulder at his frowning uncle. “I’ll be right there, watching you the whole time.”
I don’t want to do this.
“I know. But we need to talk to them, and I don’t think they’ll come if they don’t see you out here. Being an ambassador sometimes means doing things you don’t want to, especially if the potential outcome might bring about good things.”
Her beautiful blue eyes were tearing. I don’t want to be an ambassador. Nobody even asked me!
“There’s a lot of that going around. I tell you what though, you get elected magistrate and I promise we’re going to fix the electoral process.”
Bebe glanced sideways at Pani when the older woman spoke encouragement in English, and then focused worried eyes back on the distant cave. Her fingers tapped nervously together, then rubbed at the seams of the cream-colored snowsuit she wore. It had taken all morning just to get her into the thing, and then a lot of hard talking the whole way here to keep her dressed. She didn’t deal with change well under the best of circumstance, and that she fully expected to be dumped on the humans’ doorstep was etched into every worried line on her face. That she was also fighting back tears shone just as brightly in the watery blue depths of her eyes. She was struggling to blink them back and she was struggling to trust him.
Tral dropped to one knee in the snow, cupping her small shoulders in his hands. “You know why we have to do this.”
So the people can come here and not be afraid, she signed quickly back. But not me, right? I stay with you. Right?
“I will not leave you here,” he promised. “Not unless you want to stay.”
I don’t.
“Then let’s tell them what we came to say, and then you and I can go home where it’s warmer.”
And have sex, she signed, some of the worry leaving her features. Lots of sex.
“That should go without saying.” Starting to smile, he turned her towards the chair and gave her a pat on her well-padded butt.
Fingers tapping constantly, she followed Pani’s example, her tiny feet crunching through the snow as she circled around to sit down. But she did it reluctantly, looking back at him over her shoulder all the way.
“What was all that?” Bach asked once Tral returned to the transport.
“Just making sure she won’t be abandoned.” Folding his arms across his chest and trying not to shiver, Tral leaned against one door. “If I ever find her past owners, I’m going to have them arrested. That’s got to be one of the best benefits to becoming the foster guard to an ambassador. I’ve got power now; people are going to fear me.”
“Ah, the joys of suddenly becoming a larger cog.” A corner of Bach’s mouth tugged upwards. “Have you tried the sleeve I brought you yet?”
“Nope.”
“The stretch kit?”
“Nope.”
Bach tsked, shaking his head once. “Boy, at some point you’re going to get tired of fumbling around and simply want to plow her into the bedding.”
“You forget, I’ve got excellent self-control.”
“Or a human-sized cock, in which case, you’re definitely adopted.”
Despite the presence of the sun, the longer they waited, the colder it seemed to get. The breeze wasn’t helping. It had a bite that cut right through Tral’s coat until he had to grit his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. It was a long time further still, with Tral and Bach leaning motionless against the car and Bebe and Pani sitting frozen (hopefully, not literally) to their chairs, before the hide flap finally shoved aside and the human males ventured outside. They all of them brought their spears.
“Oh yes,” Tral said softly. “This was a good idea.”
“Remind me again why I agreed to it,” Bach muttered back. The car rocked as he shifted, the only show of nervousness he betrayed, but then he stilled and he didn’t move again. Neither did the males. On opposite hillsides, the two groups stared at one another for an icy wind-swept age.
Finally, the leader of the wild pack sighed. Handing his spear to the white-haired elder beside him, he reluctantly trudged through the snow toward the empty chair opposite of Bebe and Pani.
* * * * *
Bebe fidgeted, growing more and more nervous the closer Ben came. Eventually, Pani reached over and lay a calming hand upon her knee. “Relax. Everything will be fine.”
Except that it wasn’t. Pani didn’t know the men like Bebe did. Pani didn’t know how they’d stolen her away in the dead of night with the intent of keeping her, sharing her. She had only the haziest memories of the two days she’d spent in their care. She remembered the heat and the pain. She remembered running, and she remembered Ben, the touch of his hot and gentle hands roving her in the night, pulling her back into the cradle of his fiery embrace, that prominent bulge pressing between her buttocks as he caressed her from behind.
As she watched Ben come up the hill, she had the most absurd urge to run back to Tral, to reassure herself that he really wasn’t tired of her, that he really wasn’t going to leave her here, that her life wasn’t about to change any worse than it already had. Somehow she managed not to move. Somehow she held herself stiffly on her chair, her knuckles whitening as she gripped the edge of her seat.
A curious ribbon of tugging heat unfurled down in the depths of her bell the closer Ben came. Her face flushed as the phantom rasp of calloused fingers scraped the tips of her nipples into tightened peaks and smoothed that slow, shivering path down her stomach, between her legs, cupping her, finding that secret place that had made her cry out—what had that been, one week ago? Two? Perversely a very small part of her wondered, if she hadn’t made a sound that night, would Ben have stopped? Or would it have felt the way it did when Tral held her, pressing her down in the sheets of his bed, his mouth exploring every part of her, mapping her body down to the smallest sensual detail before rising up to slide himself deep inside of her. Awkward, talkative Tral, who wasn’t always gentle the way Ben had been, but who also didn’t leave her feeling...afraid.
“Hello,” Pani called out when Ben drew close eno
ugh.
He glanced at her, but didn’t reply right away. Instead, he stared beyond them, studying Tral and Bach and then the empty chair. Finally, his eyes shifted to Bebe. With a good six feet still separating them, he stopped. Nothing about him actually seemed to soften, and yet when he spoke, his tone was as tender and soothing as she remembered it being. “You okay?”
That tingling ache between her legs blossomed, became a pang of real regret.
“I like Tral,” she said, just so Ben wouldn’t get his hopes up, if indeed he bore any hopes for her at all.
Glancing back at Bach and Tral, Ben breathed the cold winter air, looked cautiously back over his shoulder at his men—still huddled and watching them closely—and then grudgingly he sat down. “You look better. Not quite so feverish...and crazy.” He folded his arms across his chest, one leg jiggling rapidly up and down. “What do you want?”
“Your help,” Pani said.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Ben said curtly.
“You’re going to have to talk to me. I speak English better than she does.”
“Fine.” He turned his rapidly evaporating civility and attention and fixed them hard on her. “What do you want, then?”
“In about three hours, six very large transports are going to descend into your backyard with the intent of building you someplace to live. Barracks, I imagine, are more likely at first. Real houses are supposed to follow just as soon as the spring thaw softens the ground.”
Ben stared at her, no expression on his face. “Bullshit.”
“If you have a preference as to where they should begin,” Pani continued, “now’s the time to say so.”
“Bullshit,” he said again. “Why would they do that?”
“Because just as soon as that first barrack becomes livable, every human being within this empire is going to become liberated. They will need someplace to go and someone to help them adjust to all the new changes rapidly being put into effect. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that someplace will be here and Tral thinks that someone should probably be you.”
“Tral? Empire?” Other than to glance at Bebe, Ben didn’t move. He barely seemed even to breathe. “What empire? Are there a lot of us?”
“More than you or I can imagine,” Pani held up a restraining hand. “Before you erupt out of your chair in that fine show of outrage I can already see bubbling up inside of you, I would strongly caution you against unnecessarily freaking out the two men standing behind us. Having us this close to you makes them nervous enough as it is. Besides, it’s them we have to thank for all the good about to happen to us.”
“Thank them?” Ben echoed. His face rapidly darkened. A pulsing vein stood out against the side of his forehead. “You want me to thank them? I’d sooner cut th—”
“Don’t,” Pani said sharply when Ben started to rise. “Don’t get out of that chair. My man is very protective. He is already this close to letting you spend the next several months drugged and drooling on yourself in one of the fancy new rehabilitation centers they’re going to build. We’ve all gone to a lot of trouble to prove that humans aren’t mindless animals. We can’t afford to let your lack of self control now ruin it.”
“Sit, Ben,” Bebe added, patting the air as if she could soothe him back into his seat. “Sit down.”
Ben ground himself into his seat, furious and breathing hard. “Cock suckers,” he snarled, but he didn’t erupt, and judging by the look of him, he very much wanted to.
“There’s good and bad in every group of people, including ours,” Pani said, not unsympathetically. “Bach and Tral are two of the good guys.”
“Bull-fucking-shit!” Ben spat, still breathing hard. “We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for them! If they’re so fucking good, then tell them to fucking send us home!”
“I went home.” A quiet steeliness filtered through Pani’s cool tone. She raised her graying head. “Trust me when I say home is the last place you want to go. Even if they didn’t lock you in an insane asylum as they did me, after all this time and everything you’ve been through, do you really think you can pick up your life where you left it? As if nothing had happened? Will your parents still be alive? Will your wife or girlfriend have waited for you? Will you still have a place to live? Friends? Money? A job? Anything even approaching marketable work skills?”
“At least I’d have a life,” he growled. “At least I’d be doing something other than marking time until old age or something with big-ass fucking teeth catches up with me! Look at you.” He threw a one-handed wave at her, gesturing at her from head to toe. “You fucking sit there in your little pink parka with ribbons in your fucking hair, judging me. You’ve no idea what I’ve had to do—what we’ve had to do—just to survive!”
“And you have no idea how fortunate you’ve been, in spite of all your hardships,” the older Pani calmly countered. “You got to spend your captive years here in relative freedom, instead of in a breeding facility, as Bebe’s mother did, being passed from one champion stud to the next, squeezing out child after child until her body was exhausted and her mind broken. You weren’t born here, like Bebe was, cared for by those you thought of as family, only to be abandoned by the side of a road when your presence became too inconvenient.”
Shaking his head once, Ben laughed angrily. “If you’re trying to impress me with all of their innate goodness, lady, you’re doing a fuck-ass job.”
“I’m trying to tell you that this preserve is about to become a haven for people who have been things and seen things that you can’t possibly imagine. Some won’t know how to feed themselves. Some will have never worn clothes, and some will be so traumatized that they won’t know how to adjust. They’re going to need help, Ben, and who knows this place better than you do? Who’s better equipped to help the weak and the broken become strong again? Yes, you can choose to fight Tral if you want to, but you’ll lose. You can choose to live in your cave instead of the new barracks, and you can continue to mark your time, future-less, until you die. You can be obstinate and bitter and make things worse for yourself and everyone else. Or you can be the one who turns a few scattered refugee barracks into a human civilization we can be proud of. You can be, like Tral and Bebe, a liaison between our two cultures, until we have all adjusted enough to integrate back into one single, equal society.”
Fists clenched upon his knee, Ben shook his head again. “I fucking hate them.”
“No one expects you to love them,” Pani said gently. “We ask only that you not act on that hatred. Don’t instigate a revolt that we can’t possibly win. Don’t use those who come here as your own personal army of vengeance. We don’t have anyplace else to go, and you’ll kill us all if you try.”
“I’m not stupid,” he told her. But he still shifted restlessly, angrily in his seat. When his gaze again fell to Bebe, gradually his tone and expression gentled. Softly, almost seeming to feel betrayed, he asked, “You like him?”
Bebe barely held his gaze. The way she shifted in her own chair, her fingers nervously gripping and re-gripping the edges of her seat, left her looking almost as if she were...afraid of him. Eventually, she nodded. “Yes.”
He shook his head, obviously struggling to understand. “Why?”
Her hands fluttered through the air, signing at him, he suddenly realized though he hadn’t the foggiest what she was saying. He stared at her until, realizing her mistake, she put her hands down again. She swallowed hard, meeting his steady stare for several long seconds before she finally said, “I go home now.”
Hugging her arms across her chest, she jumped up and walked quickly back to one of the giants waiting by the transport car. There didn’t seem to be much point in watching her go, and yet he couldn’t help himself.
“Stockholm’s,” he said out loud, as much for his own benefit as for the mature woman still sitting in front of him. “It’s got to be. She can’t...” He hesitated, his open hand helpless gesturing after Bebe, the muscles of his jaw clench
ing again and again as he tried to comprehend what he was seeing. “She can’t...want...”
He couldn’t say it, and Bebe never once glanced back at him. Not until she reached her giant’s side and sidled in under the comforting caress of the bigger man’s hand, petting down her head and shoulders to rub at her back. The urge to go after her was intense, but he still knew a worthless cause when he saw it. He’d have to kidnap her if he wanted her to come with him.
Ben clenched his jaw one last time, then blew out steaming sigh and looked away. “Can I get up yet?” he asked dully.
Glancing over her shoulder at Bach, Pani shook her head. “It would be best to wait until I go. But first, answer me this: does knowing she won’t stay with you affect your decision to help us?”
He snorted, casting her vaguely resentful glare. “Can you make her change her mind if it does?”
“No,” Pani said simply.
“Didn’t think so.” Ben clenched his jaw again. “Guess I don’t have much of a choice then, do I?”
Smiling faintly, Pani went to him. When she touched his shoulder, he shifted his grim stare to look up at her. “That’s just it, Ben. Can’t you see? Because of this, now we’ll all have a choice.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Going Home
There was dust on the knees of her coveralls—and probably on her seat as well—as, grinning from one ear to the other, Bebe ran across the human complex towards him. She was signing rapidly, Look, Tral, I have wounds!
With inordinate pride, she bounced to a hoppy stop in front of him and held up both her hands. They were covered in red blotches and broken blisters, some of which were oozing and bloodied.
“Oh!” Tral exclaimed. It took effort, but he even managed to sound halfway cheerful when he added, “Great. Would you look at that.”
I was helping. She smiled at her hands, then bent to pick at the broken edges of skin. Our new hospital will be ready in two days.
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