by Marie Dry
She moved a little, restless. His wonderfully warm hands reminded her of times when she had still hoped he loved her.
"I did not feel the need for a mother's love." He stopped rubbing for a moment then continued, dangerously close to the swell of her buttocks. She couldn't stop a small squirm. He pressed down with his palms on her buttocks, rubbing in the salve more firmly. "When you talk about your mother, your childhood, I almost understand what she grieved for. I would have given my life to protect her."
There was a strange longing in his voice. She didn't think it was longing for his mother, but more a need to understand her emotions. "That's normal for any son. I don't understand why you feel so guilty."
"I had no need to see her every day and before my first change, I might have been small but I was mean."
Natalie couldn't help but smile at the thought of a tiny Zacar with his mean face on. "You, mean? I never would have thought you had it in you."
He stared at her. "Teasing?"
"Yes, Zacar. Teasing." And she shouldn't. This was still the man who told her he'd breed her like an animal. "So what happened when you were little and mean?"
This glimpse of life on his planet fascinated her. It also frightened her. She had no doubt if they really wanted to, they could return to their planet.
"My mother wanted me to stay with her. Play with toys." Disgust rang clear in his voice.
Natalie turned her face a bit to hide her smile. "Uh, okay, I get it. No toys. Still, that doesn't seem so bad. Children differ. Some play while others are more serious. I'm sure you practiced with your sword even then."
"I was never a child. Remember? I told you we are born fully aware. I had not a child's need to be cuddled. My mind was that of a warrior."
"And she wanted a little baby who needed her, to cuddle," Natalie said softly. She knew exactly how the poor woman felt. A little part of her mind kept hoping she would have a human baby and not a fierce little warrior like he kept telling her about.
"Yes."
Quiet for a long time, he rubbed salve over every inch of her back and buttocks with gentle, caressing movements. In spite of the foul smell of the salve, his touch was affecting her.
"So what happened to drive her to suicide, Zacar?" Natalie didn't move a muscle, afraid that he'd stop talking.
"You remember when I bit you?" He stopped rubbing and she could feel his gaze on her neck.
How could she ever forget something that horrible? "Yes."
"We do that to make our women strong. If I bite you every twenty years, you can live for centuries."
Natalie was stunned. She'd thought it was some terrible ritual or that he'd gotten so carried away he couldn't help himself.
"Why keep it a secret?" She was tempted to bare her neck and ask him to bite her some more. Think how many trees she could reintroduce if she had a few centuries to do it. She could study and accomplish so much.
"It is one of our closest guarded secrets."
"Did your mother know why your father bit her?" she asked.
"No."
"Why wouldn't he tell her that? I would've felt differently about it if I knew you were doing it to make me stronger." She might have even forced him to bite her. There might be a downside to living forever, but she couldn't think of one.
"Think what would happen if other races knew that we have such an ability."
"Oh." They'd be hunted to extinction like the rhinos were centuries ago.
"Exactly. My mother hated my father. He couldn't trust her with this knowledge, not even when I was born. That was why my mother had to starve herself. She had to weaken her body in order for the poison to kill her."
His claws appeared and she looked on in horror as they penetrated the skin of his thighs. She wisely pretended not to see that brief moment when his claws came out. "Didn't your father notice her getting thin or something?" She was so used to Zacar, who would never miss something like that, and she'd assumed all Zyrgin men were the same.
"No."
"Oh, how terrible. I know that's why you feed me. You're afraid I'll starve myself like your mother." She'd get him to lose that habit somehow.
"I am not afraid of anything. I will care for you properly. Since my father failed to care properly for his breeder, most warriors have started to do it."
She could imagine these fierce warriors, unable to verbalise their concern, forcing their women to eat enough.
"I know your father might've had a hand in her unhappiness, but based on the way you treat me, I find it hard to believe he mistreated her. How can your whole family be shamed because of what she did?" Clutching the sheet to her, she turned around.
He looked down at her and absently closed the tube with the foul-smelling salve. He lifted his head then opened and closed his mouth a few times though no words came out. She'd never thought he'd be so diffident. If she hadn't known better, she'd have thought he was afraid to tell her something. Dread shivered down her spine. What else could there be?
"My father is the leader."
"Leader of what?" Was that what he'd started to say earlier, changing it to father? She'd assumed he was going to use a Zyrgin term.
"The United Zyrgin Territories."
"Territories? Is that like colonies or provinces?" It sounded important. Was he trying to warn her he would have to go back and take his father's place some day? Would she have the courage to go with him? Would he even want to take her with him?
"No, it is our home planet and those we have conquered."
For a long time, she didn't understand. Her mind just couldn't wrap around it. "You mean your father rules several planets? Like a king or president."
"No, your word would be emperor," he said and she could hear his reluctance to speak of it.
"You're a prince?" A prince, in line to become emperor. What did that make her? A concubine? Princess? No, they weren't married. She drew back from him and a queasy feeling settled in her stomach, like she'd swallowed a ball of snow.
"Not the way you understand it." His eyes tracked her movements, his body tensing as if to draw her back to him.
"Make me understand it."
He'd never really trusted her. So, why was he telling her all of this now?
"In our culture, cunning and learning matters, but strength matters most. My family come from a very strong, very savage bloodline."
"Oh." She didn't know what else to say.
"If we weren't capable of being vicious, we'd never have ruled this long."
"Will you have to be emperor one day? Please tell me you have older brothers who can take over from your father one day." She really, really didn't want to be an empress. She'd much rather live out the rest of her life in this cave. But what about her sons? Wouldn't it be selfish of her to keep them here?
He leaned over to look at her face. "You do not want to be empress?"
She thought he sounded disappointed but she had to be careful not to assign emotions to him that he didn't feel. Look what happened yesterday. "I'd rather chew worms."
He cocked his head. "Chew worms?"
"Never mind. I meant I never ever want to be an empress." She would chew on the most disgusting worm she could find before she lived in some imperial court. She shuddered at the thought of the intrigues and protocol it probably involved.
His shoulders relaxed and he bared his teeth at her. She froze then realized it was his version of a smile. Like his laugh, it might be a good idea if he only did it when he wanted to intimidate his enemies. "I will never rule," he said. "We live very long and my father is still a young warrior, capable of ruling for many more of your centuries."
"Is that why you were on your way to colonize a planet?"
"Yes."
"Do you have brothers?" Her heart ached for his mother, who probably gave birth to son after son, only to see them become warriors with very little emotional need for her. They probably went off to conquer new worlds after a few hundred years of training.
"Onl
y ten," he said defensively.
"Oh." She couldn't imagine giving birth to ten children. She knew there were women who did but it still boggled her mind. She'd find a form of birth control that worked or embrace celibacy. On second thought, she'd just make a form of birth control that worked.
"My father stopped having little warriors when she asked him to," he said, as if defending his father's actions.
She realized to him it was a shame having only ten brothers. She lifted her free hand and placed it against his cheek. "That was a wonderful thing for him to do."
He must've cared for her very much to make a concession that went against their beliefs. Maybe that was why she'd always sensed a capacity for caring within Zacar. He'd seen his father try to change.
"He wanted her to be happy," Zacar said, still in that defensive voice so alien to him.
"Some people never are, Zacar, no matter what you do. Did she have any family?"
How long has this haunted him? She could see his guilt for not somehow stopping his mother from committing suicide. But that whole situation was made for tragedy.
He tensed again and tightened the lid of the salve until she thought it would shatter. She'd suspected there was more, but knew nothing good was coming. Unless his mother was dangerously unstable, she knew there had to be something else that made the woman so desperately unhappy.
"She was a princess on a small planet and was about to be crowned queen when my father led the invasion."
"How long ago was this?" He talked about it as if it was yesterday.
He thought for a moment. "About two of your centuries ago."
"Oh." The way he talked about centuries as if they were years really disconcerted her. Strange to think if he kept biting her she'd do the same one day. If she ever stopped planting trees, she would write this story down. It had all the elements of an old soap opera or a Russian tragedy. "So what happened?"
"They resisted and my father gave the order for all warriors on that planet to be killed."
"What? How could he do something like that? Did your mother have any brothers? Uncles? A father?"
How terrible. If Zacar had killed her family, she would never have come to love him. No matter what he did afterward. She remembered how he'd killed the raiders that first day, the calm way he admitted to killing the man they'd experimented on. Suddenly, his mother's action made a terrible kind of sense.
"She had many male family members." He stood up and walked over to the small table where she kept her few toiletries. Putting the salve down with a loud crash, he kept his back to her.
"Were any of them warriors?" Even as she asked the question, she knew the answer. This story had no good aspect to it.
"No. They were courtiers who wrote poetry and played music every day," he said, clearly puzzled at men preferring such pastimes.
"And your father killed all of them." It was a guess, but not a wild one. She had no doubt Zacar was capable of killing anyone who stood in his way. She could only imagine his father was ten times worse.
"They resisted," he said simply.
"How horrible," she whispered. She was shrinking back from him instinctively, imagining him killing humans who resisted him.
"They would not swear loyalty to Zyrgin," he said so reasonably he might have been talking about the melting snow.
"So if you conquer a planet and they refuse to swear loyalty to your planet--"
"We kill them."
She thought of Julia. Of the innocent children. Of the little girl she'd once seen in town who walked with crutches. Her lungs seized. "Will you do that on Earth?"
"Yes."
"You'd kill anyone not loyal to you? Even women and children?"
"Ultimately, yes. But our plans have changed."
"What? You're not going to conquer Earth anymore?" Her heart started to beat with loud optimistic drumbeats. Would he be willing to live quietly with her? Raise children and make a happy life for them?
"I will conquer Earth, but it would not be much of a war now."
"So, what? You're going to wait? I thought you said our civilization was on the verge of collapsing. If so, it wouldn't be much of a fight."
"The leader decided to run an experiment."
She didn't like the sound of that. "What kind of experiment?"
"I am to see if we can settle in without anyone noticing. If we could take our time breeding little warriors and prepare dwellings, the war would be easier on our breeders."
"Women. For heavens' sake, use the term women." Natalie took a deep breath. "So you're still going to conquer Earth, but only in, what? A hundred years?" She still couldn't believe he could conquer a whole planet with one spaceship and a hand full of warriors. Still, she felt overwhelming relief. In a hundred years, she might manage to change his mind.
"I want to re-evaluate the situation in two hundred of your years. What I learn here might be useful to us in the conquest of other planets."
"Oh?"
"In our culture, conquest is everything. Every Zyrgin has two goals in life. Conquer any other civilization we come across and protect our breeders. We always had strict laws for that. Hurting any female who swore loyalty was never socially acceptable in our culture. But we didn't have laws about caring for our women, either."
"But now you do?"
"Yes. Because my father shamed us by not taking proper care of his breeder, we now need laws to ensure it never happens again."
He'd told her a few times that being called breeder was an honor. Now, for the first time, she started to understand what he meant. She'd been so focused on what the word meant in her culture, she never stopped and asked what it meant to him.
"Is your father the warrior you talked to as a hologram that day outside the cave?"
"Yes."
"How many children do you want me to have?" she asked.
She wanted to know what was in store for her but she also wanted to take his mind off his family's past. He had such a sad look in his eyes whenever he mentioned his mother and honor.
"We used to insist on about twenty warriors."
Twenty?
They live for a long time. Over several centuries, it's not that many, she tried to convince herself.
In centuries past, it was normal for women to have up to fifteen children. But she knew her real problem was having children with a man incapable of loving her. Of having children that wouldn't need her.
"When I taunted you about having children until your fertile period ended, I was playing on your fears." He turned and looked at her. "What I did not tell you yesterday is that it was in ancient times that warriors could insist on the amount of children they wanted. Now it is up to the breeders to decide."
"So what is the average number of children a woman gives birth to on Zyrgin?"
He hesitated. "Fifteen little warriors."
"Oh." All that pain for nothing. "But you won't force me to give birth fifteen times?"
"No."
She wanted to kick him. "So that story about the fifty warriors in a spaceship breeding enough warriors to take over a planet was a lie?"
"They could multiply in a short period but that is not our plan anymore."
"That's just semantics, Zacar. You lied to me."
"I will never lie to you again. But, Natlia, you have to understand, there will be times I cannot tell you everything."
Natalie thought about it. When her father was alive, he'd never talked about his time at the pharmaceutical company, and his silence wasn't wholly due to his wanting to forget the bad experiences there. Then something else occurred to her.
"So why did your mother have so many children?" If it was only the old days that women were forced to give birth year after year, why did his mother give birth to ten children with a warrior she despised?
"She thought every time she became pregnant, it would be a child that she could love. She knew it was impossible but she still hoped for a daughter. Instead, they were all born warriors."
/> She opened her mouth to ask if his mother had ever cared for him, but thought better of it.
As if reading it in her eyes, he answered, "No, she never cared for me. I am almost as big as my father. Of all of us, I look the most like him. She wanted children who looked like her."
What a truly sad situation. His poor mother, trapped on a strange planet with a man who had killed her family.
Could a man who was so affected by his mother's suicide blame her for having asthma?
"What about my asthma? I don't know if my babies will be born with it."
Yesterday he'd looked as if he hated her for having a weakness.
"Viglar said they are fine, with no trace of the asthma. He cannot cure you, but he can keep it dormant. It will have to be carefully managed. My bite will not cure it but eventually it will be better."
"You don't mind that I'm weak?"
"No."
After all her agonising over it, could it really be this easy? Did she run around hiding her inhalers for no reason at all?
"How many little warriors do you want, Natalie?" He put stress on the word warriors.
"It's all right. I understand that they will be born little warriors and not babies. And I don't know how many little warriors I would want." She'd have to give birth to these two first.
He walked over and sat down again. Taking her hand in his, he fiddled with her fingers. "Our women have been extinct for a long time now. We do not have marriage customs anymore."
"How did you marry before, when there was still women born on your planet?"
He looked up briefly and then studied her hand again. "It was a ceremony that lasted three days but I think you would prefer Earth custom for marriage. It is best we leave Zyrgin marriage rituals extinct."
"Why? I'm sure most women wouldn't mind observing some of your customs."
"They involved chains and that was some of the kinder rituals."
"Oh." Best not to go there.
She was still wondering what kind of rituals their marriages used to involve when something moved over her finger. She looked down to see him sliding a huge diamond ring onto her finger.
She gaped down at it. "Where did you get this?"
"In town," he said, as if he'd simply gone shopping for a ring. "Do you accept what this means?"