OUTCAST

by Cheryl Brooks

  Bonnie looked down at her bloody hand and experimentally moved her fingers. It hurt like hell, but she could move all of them, which was a good sign. “It's not too bad,” she commented.

  This time only one of Lynx's eyebrows went up. He’d seen the deep gash in her arm, and how crushed the surrounding tissue was. She was nothing but a pretty little fool.

  “No, really, I’ve been hurt a lot worse,” she lied, not wanting him to see her as weak and defenseless. “All I need is some of Captain Jack's Derivian ointment, and I’ll be just fine.”

  Lynx eyed her skeptically, thinking that she was either intoxicated or a raving lunatic. “Your arm needs to be stitched,” he said bluntly. “There is nothing that will heal so deep a cut.”

  “Well, you just go right ahead and stitch it then,” Bonnie said roundly, though she considered this form of treatment to be a bit outmoded. “Don’t think I can sew with my left hand.” Another treatment option flitted through her mind, but she couldn’t quite bring it to the forefront of her brain, and, instead, giggled, “Did you drug me with something?”

  “No,” he replied. “The pain has affected your senses.”

  “Is that right?” she muttered. “What pain?” She giggled again, thinking that he had to have poured a half a liter of whiskey down her throat. “God, I feel weird.”

  “It is also from the shock and loss of blood,” Lynx said, applying pressure to the bandage.

  “I’m bleeding to death then?” Bonnie said as her eyes drifted shut. “That's funny; I’d have thought it would hurt more.”

  “You need to lie down.” Lifting her from the chair, Lynx carried her to the bedroom, placing her gently on the bed. His gaze took in her rounded abdomen and his eyes widened. “You are with child?”

  “Give the man a prize,” Bonnie mumbled. “Get another prize for guessing when it's due.”

  “In three months,” Lynx replied. He said it so automatically that Bonnie thought he must have chosen a number at random, but, as it happened, he was correct.

  “Ooo, that's two for two!” she said admiringly. “Care to go double or nothing and tell me whose it is?”

  “I have no way of knowing that,” he said stiffly. The only thing Lynx could be certain of was that it wasn’t his—after all, they never were.

  “Yeah, well, his name is Sylor,” Bonnie said informatively. “Sylor Halen. Long gone Sylor… caught the enocks… but took the money and ran.” She paused for a moment before giggling again. “There's a song in that somewhere, I think.” Her voice trailed off as she nearly slipped into slumber again, but roused up when she remembered that she didn’t even know this man's name. “And what should I call you—besides ‘my hero,’ that is?”

  “My name is Lynxsander Dackelov,” he replied.

  “Lynxsander Dackelov,” she echoed. “Hmm, it’ll sound pretty strange hollering that out when I call you in for dinner. How about just Lynx? You do sort of look like one, you know.”

  Lynx had no idea what a lynx was beyond the fact that it was the first four letters of his own name, but he didn’t bother to comment, focusing, instead, on things that he did understand. “And you are Bonnie Neurath.”

  “Mmmhmm. That's me.” She knew she was mumbling again and tried to remember what else might help someone who’d lost a lot of blood. She had donated blood one time and had felt perfectly awful afterwards, but for the life of her, she couldn’t seem to remember what they’d done for her. “Fluids!” she blurted out. “I need something to drink.” She thought a moment longer and added, “Something salty… or sweet… or something…”

  Taking this as an order, Lynx pulled a sheet up over her and went back out to the kitchen. He felt strange prowling around her house, looking for what she’d requested. Not only did he feel out of place, but her disturbing female scent was everywhere, and the smell of her blood was even more unsettling to him. It brought back too many memories—unpleasant memories—that he never wanted to revisit. His only consolation was that she didn’t wear perfume, the scent of which was guaranteed to make him feel ill.

  Lynx found some sort of liquid in a container and looked for salt and sugar to add to it. He didn’t care how it tasted to her; he was just doing as he was told. It was still so automatic to him that he had to continually remind himself that he did, indeed, have a will of his own.

  Returning to the bedroom where she lay, he lifted her up and held the glass to her lips. How many times had he done this for a woman in the past? He couldn’t remember, but he knew it was too many times for one man's life.

  Bonnie took a sip. He’d mixed apple juice with a little salt and extra sugar, which didn’t taste too bad, and she drank every drop.

  Despite the fact that Lynx was doing his best to help her, Bonnie didn’t think he was being very nice about it, and the tone of his next question proved that. “You risked your child for a chicken?” he snapped contemptuously.

  “And an egg,” she reminded him. “Don’t forget the egg—but I guess you did. It's still out by the gate, and, unlike the chicken, it is somewhat valuable. Why don’t you go get it, and we’ll eat it.” That was the other thing they’d done when she’d felt faint; made her drink juice and eat something. “Should be good for me to eat a really big egg, now, don’t you think?”

  Bonnie didn’t understand his reply since it was in another language, but she was fairly certain that it wasn’t very nice—at least it didn’t sound that way to her. She was getting the distinct impression that Lynx didn’t like her—which was fine, because she didn’t want him to like her. All she wanted him to do was to work hard… and feed her.

  “Actually, those eggs are so big, they’re a full meal for a family of six,” she added informatively, “—and they taste really good, too, which is why people are willing to pay so much for them.” She looked up at him curiously. “Are you hungry?”

  Lynx didn’t answer that at all—in any language. Bonnie recalled Drummond saying that he wasn’t very talkative, but it had never occurred to her that he wouldn’t even answer a direct question, which she considered to be very rude.

  “I don’t usually eat them myself,” she went on, trying to fill the gap in the conversation, though her speech was still slurred, “but I think this time I should make an exception. Can you cook, or should I get up and do it myself?” Since this seemed to be the obvious answer to her question, she attempted to sit up, but lay back down as her head began swimming again.

  “Do not get up,” Lynx said curtly. “You need a healer.”

  “Don’t have one—well, not handy, anyway. Vladen's the only one we’ve got, and he's in Wasaba this month— long way from here. He… travels.”

  “Will he be here when your child is born?”

  “Maybe,” Bonnie replied. “I’m not sure. He thought he might be, but you never know.”

  “What will you do if he is not?” Lynx asked, although he was afraid he already knew the answer to that.

  “Don’t know,” she mumbled. “Sylor thought he could help, and he read up on it, but he's gone.” Bonnie gave a fatalistic shrug. “Guess I’ll just do it by myself.”

  Lynx had yet to see a woman—any woman—look after anything for herself. Those he had known had always put the responsibility for just about everything on him, and he was used to being a scapegoat. But he also knew—all too well—that giving birth was often fraught with danger. She could not possibly do it alone. “And if there is trouble?” he prompted.

  “Guess I’ll die, then.” Bonnie had already thought about that, which may have been the reason why she did seemingly stupid things like trying to rescue one of her chickens from the enocks. She wasn’t sure if it stemmed from the desire to preserve other lives or to simply let the enocks kill her before she had the chance to die in childbirth, but it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

  “You should not be living here alone,” Lynx said firmly.

  “Well, you’re here now,” she pointed out, “so I’m not alone anymore, am I?
”

  Lynx didn’t comment, but Bonnie could see the emotions roiling within him. She had already decided he didn’t like her, and just as surely disliked the idea of having to work on her farm. “You don’t want to be here, do you?” she observed.

  “No,” he said shortly.

  “Working on a farm wasn’t what you had in mind?” she suggested, but then the most obvious reason occurred to her. “Oh, I get it! You don’t like the idea of working for a woman, do you?”

  “No,” he replied.

  Bonnie let out a loud crack of mirthless laughter. “Not even gonna bother to soften that up, are you? Just a flat-out no?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you,” she said with a sigh, “but the mines aren’t hiring. Something about quotas or working conditions—I forget which.”

  “That is what I was told.”

  Bonnie studied him for a moment. A worker who disliked you spelled trouble, and trouble was something she could very well do without. “Listen, if it makes you feel so much better to work for a man, you can go apply for a job at the mines—or somewhere else, if you like. I don’t know how much good it’ll do you, but you can try.”

  “I have done that already,” he said bluntly. “They said it might be several years before I could work in the mines, so I had no choice. It was either work for you or be deported.”

  Bonnie knew this couldn’t be true—there had to be another job somewhere on Terra Minor—but decided that Drummond must have been concerned enough to ensure that Lynx would take the job she was offering and no other. “Well, I think I’d rather work just about anywhere but a mine myself,” she said candidly. “But if you prefer it, I guess that's the place to go.” She was doing her best to be nice to him, but it was becoming more difficult with each passing moment. After all, she was the one with her arm half bitten off, and here she was having to make him feel better about working for her instead of slaving away in the mines! She was beginning to wish that Drummond had sent her a woman, instead—especially since a woman would at least have known how to fry an egg; she wasn’t so sure about Lynx, who was still glaring at her as though he didn’t know whether to slap her or feed her.

  “Well,” she said at length, “if you aren’t going to fix any eggs for me, would you at least give me some cookies?’

  This was something else Lynx didn’t understand. His working knowledge of Stantongue didn’t seem to be helping him very much in this instance, because he had no idea what cookies were, let alone where to find them. Trying not to appear too bewildered, he asked, “Where are the… cookies?”

  “In the kitchen, on the table in a green tin marked ‘Cookies,’” she said patiently. “You can read, can’t you?”

  “Yes,” he replied defensively. “But not in your language.”

  “My language?” she repeated. “You mean Stantongue? What language can you read?”

  “Zetithian.”

  “Ah, so you are from Zetith then,” she said. “I thought so.”

  “You know of Zetith?” he asked in surprise. In all the years of his enslavement, he had yet to meet anyone who had ever heard of his homeworld. Sometimes Lynx wondered if he’d imagined that early part of his life, since there was nothing left to remind him of it. Even his memories had begun to fade.

  “Yeah, I know of it,” Bonnie said grimly. “Did you know it was destroyed?”

  Lynx nodded. Yes, he knew—all too well. The sense of loss he felt whenever he thought of it assailed him once again. So many lives, so much waste. His planet had been beautiful once; now it was only space dust. “How do you know of my world?”

  “Captain Jack told me about it—her husband is a Zetithian, by the way. I don’t know what his real name is, but she calls him Cat.”

  Lynx felt his eyes widen in disbelief. “There is another of us still living?” he gasped.

  Bonnie gave him a nod and continued. “Yep, and he's not the only one. There's another one called Leo who travels with them, along with his wife, Tisana. Jack says there are two brothers around somewhere too. One of them's a rock singer and the other one's a pilot.” And any one of them has to be nicer than you are, Bonnie thought. She had never met the two brothers, but was certain that Cat or Leo would have already gotten that egg and had it cooked.

  Ignoring that, he asked, “They are still slaves?”

  “I just told you that Cat is Captain Jack's husband,” Bonnie said patiently. “Weren’t you listening? They have three kids, too.”

  Lynx felt the floor waver slightly beneath him and his eyes widened even further. “She gave birth to his children?”

  “Well, yeah!” Bonnie said, slightly mystified by his question. “They’re married.” Eyeing him curiously, she added, “Why wouldn’t she have his children?”

  Lynx was still too stunned to reply, and when he didn’t answer, Bonnie decided that this business of not answering direct questions could get old in a hurry. Then she realized that she must have misunderstood his last question; perhaps it wasn’t a matter of whether or not Jack had been willing to have Cat's children, but whether or not it was possible.

  “Oh, I see what you mean,” she said. “They’re different species, of course, but the cross between a Terran and a Zetithian obviously works.” As another example, she added, “Leo and Tisana have two boys and a girl.”

  Bonnie waited a moment or two, wondering if he’d ever snap out of it and get her something to eat. He’d been pretty good about doing whatever she’d asked him to do up until now, but this balking at getting cookies seemed a bit odd. Perhaps she hadn’t asked him correctly.

  Taking a deep breath, she tried to phrase it as politely as possible. “May I please have some more juice with my cookies?” She started to add, “before I pass out again,” but decided that wouldn’t be quite as polite.

  Lynx jumped as though she’d startled him out of some really deep thoughts, but all he did was nod before going back out to the kitchen.

  What a strange bird he is, Bonnie thought. Cat had been a slave—up until fairly recently, too—but he didn’t act anything like this one did, and neither did Leo. She wondered what had happened to Lynx to make him this way, but figured that unless he were to suddenly become a whole lot more talkative, she would probably never know.

  However reticent he might be, he was very much like the other men in one respect: Bonnie couldn’t help but notice that he was every bit as physically attractive as the other Zetithians, and if it hadn’t been for his surly attitude—and her own distrust of men in general—she probably would have fallen for him at the outset. Unfortunately, given Bonnie's current attitude toward attractive men, this didn’t do very much to endear him to her. She’d have been happier if he’d been not only grouchy, but ugly, because then she wouldn’t have to worry about being taken in by his charm.

  But charm was something Lynx was sadly lacking, though Bonnie realized that his attitude might have been partly her fault. If she’d thought about it at all, she would have planned things better. She would simply have let that chicken get eaten alive by enocks and then used it as an example to demonstrate just how dangerous they could be. Then she would have shown Lynx around the farm, asked him what he liked to eat, fed him, given him a place to sleep, and they would have gotten along just fine. But she’d blown it by getting hurt and demonstrating that she was nothing more than a helpless female—which, ordinarily, she wasn’t, and never had been—and, first impressions being what they are, she would now have to spend God only knew how long trying to prove it to him. Not that his opinion mattered, as long as he was willing to work. Besides, she shouldn’t have to prove anything to him; if anything, he should be the one proving things to her.

  If Bonnie was wishing he’d be more friendly, Lynx went back to the kitchen wishing he didn’t feel quite so dense. The men he’d worked alongside hadn’t made him feel that way—at least, not after he’d learned all they had to teach him—but women? They usually made him feel stupid and the
n laughed at him.

  Casting about for a likely object, Lynx picked up a green container from the table, noting that something rattled inside it. There was a word inscribed on the side, but he didn’t recognize the style of writing. For all he knew, it might have said cookies, but even looking inside the tin wouldn’t have helped him, because he had no idea what she’d been talking about. What were cookies?

  Hoping he wasn’t making a mistake, Lynx poured another glass of juice and took it back to the bedroom along with the tin and handed them to Bonnie.

  “Would you like some?” she asked as she pulled the lid off the tin. To Bonnie's eyes, he appeared to be much too thin—not precisely sickly, but definitely undernourished—and she knew just how far he’d walked to get to her house, because she’d made that walk a few times herself.

  It took him a long time to reply, and for a while Bonnie thought he wasn’t going to answer her at all. “I do not know what a cookie is.”

  “Never been to Earth, have you?” she chided him.

  “No.” His voice was wooden and his eyes wary. She was making him feel stupid again. Just as women have always done.

  “I didn’t think so,” she said pleasantly, “otherwise you’d know all about cookies! Here, try one; they’re really good, and I know you’ve got to be hungry.” When he still seemed hesitant, she waved it in front of him tantalizingly. “Chocolate chip,” she said in a lilting tone. “One thousand-year-old original Toll House recipe…”

  Lynx took the one she offered but pulled his hand away quickly, as though she might have been using the cookie to trap him. Then he did something else she thought was strange; he moved away from her and turned around so she couldn’t watch him eat it. This was disappointing to her, because when someone eats a chocolate chip cookie for the first time, their expression is worth noting. When he turned toward her again, she couldn’t tell if he’d liked it or not.