This didn’t sound like much of a punishment to Bonnie, but then, she’d been getting the cold shoulder from Lynx for so long, perhaps she was becoming immune.
“So?”
“Oh, I was forgetting you didn’t know. When a Norludian female won’t open her mouth to speak, it's a sign that she is refusing sexual relations.”
Bonnie sat for a moment, and Zuannis watched her anxiously, waiting for the implications to sink in. “They don’t… really… do they?”
Zuannis smiled. “I should have told you before—but if you’ll recall, you didn’t want to hear any more.”
“True,” Bonnie admitted. “So, tell me all of it.”
“Ever hear how a Norludian gives birth?”
“No,” Bonnie replied. “But I would assume it's the same as for other species.”
Zuannis shook her large bald head, making her earrings jingle merrily. “It's more like they regurgitate their young.”
It didn’t take long for Bonnie to figure out the rest. “So when they have sex, it's always… oral?”
Zuannis smiled. “That's right.”
“So if the female won’t talk… it's like saying ‘You’re not getting any’?”
“Exactly,” Zuannis replied.
Having heard this, Bonnie thought she should stop talking to Hatul altogether, just so he wouldn’t get the wrong idea—but it was fascinating that conversation of any kind constituted flirtation. She just wished it could have been as easy with Lynx. “So, who did he, um, do it with?”
“Do you mean to say you can’t guess?”
Bonnie's laugh began with a small chuckle and then progressed to a full-blown bout of hysterical laughter. Eyes streaming with tears, she said, “Oh, my God! Not Salan!”
“The very same,” Zuannis assured her. “You must understand; Norludians are not opposed to sex with other partners, provided the other mate approves.”
“But Gerna has never liked Salan, has she?” Bonnie observed.
“Not one bit.”
This made Bonnie laugh even harder. “That poor girl! She must really be getting desperate to say yes to Hatul! She still comes around and flirts with Lynx, even though he was openly insulting the first time they met.”
“Poor girl,” Zuannis echoed. “We should try to find someone for her.”
“Who?” Bonnie said. “Wilisan's always been the best-looking man around here, but he's never seemed interested in her either, otherwise she wouldn’t be so desperate. Know any miners?”
“None that are enough like her to be compatible,” Zuannis said frankly. “You’ve seen them, haven’t you? They’re perfectly hideous!”
Bonnie had seen them, and the fact that most of them were Udeelans was a point she considered mentioning to Lynx, if for no other reason than to let him see what he was missing. Udeelans were slimy, smelly, albino hulks, nearly blind from living in darkness, and had hands the size of platters. Even the Norludians thought they were ugly, and they weren’t terribly friendly, either. Bonnie couldn’t imagine anyone—Salan included—who would want an Udeelan boyfriend, but then, Bonnie would never have encouraged Hatul, either.
“Not much hope, is there? Unless Gerna really does kick Hatul out.”
“I don’t think Salan truly enjoyed the event,” Zuannis said dryly, “and I think that was part of Gerna's problem with the whole thing: she seemed to think that Salan should have appreciated it more and blamed Hatul for not choosing his lovers more wisely.”
This insight had Bonnie laughing merrily once more, which did wonders for her morale. “That sounds so… Norludian, don’t you think?”
Zuannis nodded, wondering just what it was about a particular Zetithian that made him so choosy about his lovers—Bonnie, specifically. Zuannis didn’t think Lynx could have seen anything objectionable in her friend, but since she had an idea it might be a sore spot with Bonnie, she broached the subject very carefully.
“So, what does Lynx think of Shaulla?” Zuannis said casually—knowing that Lynx must have helped deliver the child. “Or does he think of her at all?”
“He likes her,” Bonnie replied woodenly. “Even made her some toys and a crib.”
Zuannis didn’t miss Bonnie's abrupt change of mood. “Cat seems to be a very devoted father,” she remarked, “and so is Leo.”
Shaulla began to get fretful, and Zuannis handed her back to her mother. Kissing her daughter on the top of her head, Bonnie said, “Yes, I’m sure they all are, and Lynx is better at taking care of a baby than most women. Better than me, anyway. You should see him change a diaper.”
Bonnie sighed—and the regret it contained wasn’t lost on Zuannis. Apparently, it was a sore spot, and Salan wasn’t the only one taken with Lynx.
Zuannis gazed at her friend, realizing that nothing had changed between Bonnie and Lynx—which was most unfortunate. With Cat and Leo as examples, Zuannis knew that Lynx could make Bonnie one of the happiest of women—unfortunately, it wasn’t in her power to encourage that.
At this point, Bonnie wasn’t looking for Lynx to be her lover; she’d have settled for a whole lot less than that. She was sitting in the shade of the peach tree one afternoon while Lynx held Ulla, clearly smitten with her, ignoring Bonnie completely. “Tell me something, Lynx. Is there a reason why we can’t be friends?” she asked thoughtfully. “I know you work for me, but—”
“Women do not want men as friends,” he said, not even bothering to look up from Ulla's face. “They want only lovers.”
“That's not true!” Bonnie exclaimed. “I’m friends with lots of guys! Drummond, Mobray, Cat, Leo—I even like Hatul up to a point, and Wilisan is, well, gorgeous, even if he is a little too macho for my taste— what makes you so different?”
“I have no mate,” he replied.
“Well, neither does Vladen,” Bonnie said reasonably, “and I like him just fine—when he's not telling me things like forehead ridges might have caused trouble with Ulla's birth, that is—but I don’t want him for my lover!”
Lynx turned his yellow eyes on Bonnie at last and inhaled deeply; the scent was still there. “But you want me,” he said. “You say you want only a friend, but you lie. Your body tells the truth.”
Bonnie knew he was right; she might not have been asking for it with words, but he knew differently. Pausing for a moment in an effort to regroup, Bonnie decided that if he knew the truth, there was no point in denying it. “Well, then, what's so wrong with wanting a man as a lover? Most guys like the idea.”
“I do not,” he said firmly. For a moment, she thought that might be all he had to say, but, surprisingly, he went on to add: “Women have only used me. I cannot love them.”
Bonnie had been used plenty of times herself, but she could still feel something for Lynx, which led her to believe that he must have come through much worse times than she ever had. Still, his choice of words had her puzzled. “Can’t or won’t?”
The look he shot her almost drew blood, but he did answer her question. “Both.”
With two couples as her example—as well as their respective children to show as proof—Bonnie knew there was no reason that your typical Zetithian couldn’t mate with a Terran, therefore, there had to be some other sort of… problem. “I’ve got a pretty good idea as to why you won’t, but is the reason you can’t physical or mental?”
“Both,” he said again.
His tone of voice was sharp enough to make Bonnie wish she hadn’t asked, but it explained quite a bit. It was her rotten luck with men coming back to haunt her. She’d found a Zetithian dud, all right; one who not only didn’t like women but was impotent to boot! Then she remembered that he’d been the slave of other slaves— many of them female—and Bonnie had an idea that if a man were to own a bunch of slave women, he would prefer that they have his own offspring rather than that of another slave. There were plenty of old tales about eunuchs who guarded the harems of sultans. Bonnie had only seen Lynx naked from the rear—was it possible that he’d been castr
ated? Worse things had been done to slaves throughout Earth's history alone. Who knew what might happen on other alien worlds? It made her blood run cold to think of it, but the possibility was there.
Bonnie tried to put it as delicately as possible. “They didn’t… do anything to you to make you that way, did they?”
“They used me,” he repeated.
“Used you?” she echoed. “How?”
“As a slave is used,” he replied, biting off his words.
Bonnie knew she’d gotten him pretty well riled, and was surprised he was still talking to her. Then she realized that the fact that he was sitting on the ground holding Ulla would have made stalking away rather difficult, so she decided to press her advantage. “For sex?” she asked, probing further. “How could they do that if you weren’t capable?”
“I was at one time!” he spat at her. “As capable as any man, but they would not leave me alone—ever!”
“They?” she echoed. “You mean there was more than one?”
At his nod, Bonnie exclaimed, “Good God, Lynx! Most guys would kill to have a problem like that!” However, having said that, it occurred to her that every man has his limits. “Just how many were there?”
“I do not know,” he said. “Perhaps fifty or more at any given time. They came and went. I stayed.”
Bonnie stared at him, scarcely believing her ears. “Fifty women? For how long?”
“I am not certain,” he replied, “but I believe I was with them for ten years—as the years were reckoned on that planet,” he added.
“Let me get this straight, Lynx,” Bonnie said. “You were a love slave to fifty women? For ten years?” She tried to comprehend what it would have been like to have been stuck servicing fifty men for that long, and while she knew it wouldn’t have taken quite as much out of her as it would have for the reverse to be expected of a man, she could understand him a little better now. “Why the devil didn’t you say so before?”
As soon as Bonnie said it, she knew it was a stupid question. He didn’t want to talk to her at all, let alone tell her his life story.
Then she remembered what Jack had said about Cat's sexual abilities. One Zetithian man in a harem? It was no wonder they hadn’t left him alone! They must have been after him night and day! No, he hadn’t been castrated. They’d simply worn him out.
“How long ago was that, Lynx?”
“Another ten years have passed since I was sold to someone else,” he replied, seemingly grateful to have moved on to a less sensitive topic.
“And why were you sold?”
He looked at Bonnie as though she’d lost her mind. “The women I served must have… complained,” he replied, “for I was taken away and sold to a man who freed me after five years of service.”
“And you still can’t… do it,” Bonnie said hesitantly. “Even after all this time?”
“No.”
Bonnie's body might have been screaming at her, but her heart was even louder in its protests. She loved him anyway. This wasn’t terribly surprising considering that, as things stood, she couldn’t have him at all and still loved him. Sighing deeply, her voice wistful, she said, “Would it make any difference to you if I said it didn’t matter?”
If he’d been holding anything other than Ulla, Bonnie believed he would have slammed it into the ground in frustration. “What do you want from me?” he demanded angrily. “I have done the work. I have helped with Shaulla's birth and her care—I have even helped you to name her. I can do no more than that.”
“Probably not,” Bonnie agreed sadly. “But the thing is… I love you, Lynx. God knows you’ve given me no encouragement, but there it is, whether we like it or not. You can’t help who you fall in love with—no one can—and, believe me, I’ve fallen for the wrong men my whole life! It's something no one can predict, and quite honestly, I wish I didn’t love you. It would make things so much easier.”
His silence stretched out longer than it should have, and Ulla began to fret even more than she had when Lynx was so angry. Reaching out, Bonnie took Ulla from him.
“She's probably hungry,” Bonnie said as she began to pull up her shirt, preparing to feed her.
Lynx didn’t move.
Bonnie looked into his fiery feline eyes and saw no warmth there, no love returned, and no hope that there ever would be. “Go away,” she whispered. “Leave me alone, now, please… That's something you can understand, isn’t it? The wanting to be alone?”
And it was true: Bonnie did want to be alone—alone to hide her shame. She’d never told anyone she’d loved them before and then been so completely rejected and ignored. Not like that. Not without some sort of response.
Then Bonnie realized that she had never actually spoken those words before—at least, not to a man. Perhaps that was why she was so alone. She thought she might have said, “I love you, too” at one time or another, but had never been the one to say it first. She had always waited to hear the man say it before she risked saying it herself—and sometimes, those words were never uttered. This time was different, though, because she had volunteered the information, and it had gotten her nothing—nothing but a blank look from the man she claimed to love. She was mortified and desolate, knowing that Lynx would never even say, “I love you, too.” In fact, he didn’t say anything at all, but left her there in the shade while she nursed her daughter.
All Lynx could think as he walked away was that it served him right for being such a fool. He hadn’t intended to tell Bonnie that he was incapable of being a lover to her, it had just popped out. How could he have let himself be goaded into revealing such a secret? She didn’t need to know, and he didn’t want her to know. It was better to let her think he didn’t like her, not that he was only half a man.
And what had she said? That it didn’t matter? Lynx believed it mattered more than anything. No woman wanted a man who couldn’t function. He’d even been sold because of it.
But at least she hadn’t laughed. He reminded himself that Bonnie had always been kind to him, even when he was being an ass—which made Lynx feel even worse, because telling her hadn’t changed anything. He was still being nasty and rude to the one person who had ever shown him kindness.
And not only that, but she had claimed to love him—not just desire him, but love him! Lynx had no idea what to make of that. No one had ever told him such a thing before, and while he had to admit that he wasn’t entirely opposed to the idea, he wasn’t completely sure he believed her. As to why they couldn’t be friends, the main reason was that most of the contact he’d had with women had been sexual in nature; just being friends with a woman wasn’t something Lynx knew anything about.
Bonnie wondered just how much it had cost Lynx to admit his failings as a man—if you could call it a failing. Bonnie knew that Lynx had never asked to be anyone's love slave—let alone slave to more than fifty women!—and though it might have seemed like fun to a young man at first, he was to be commended, rather than condemned, for having lasted as long as he had. No one could have tolerated that forever; in his case, what was surely every man's dream had become a nightmare when translated into reality. Unfortunately, what Bonnie thought didn’t seem to matter to him; she’d told him she loved him, in spite of everything he’d told her about himself, and he hadn’t said a word.
Bonnie tried to convince herself that she didn’t care, but she knew it was a lie because she did care, though not for the reason that he, or anyone else, might have expected. She cared because she did want something from him—and it wasn’t just his love—she wanted what everyone else seemed to think she should want; she wanted his children.
And not even for herself. She wanted them because deep down, Bonnie believed that Lynx wanted them far more than she did. His love for Ulla was obvious, and she knew he would love his own children even more. Bonnie laughed bitterly, knowing that the one thing Lynx might have wanted from her was the one thing she couldn’t give him. It was so ironic, so sad, and so unfair…
Vladen had said that Lynx was needy, but Bonnie wondered just how much he had actually known. As the regional physician, Vladen was required to do physical examinations on all immigrants to the sector, so if there had been a physical problem, he would have picked it up on the scanner and would, therefore, never have suggested that Lynx might be the one to father Bonnie's next child. If Vladen had known about it at all, he would therefore have had to assume that the cause was psychological, and that, given the right environment, Lynx's problem would correct itself. Unfortunately, Bonnie didn’t think the right environment was to be found anywhere within a thousand kilometers of her house.
It occurred to her to consult Vladen in the matter, but Bonnie knew that as things stood, it was truly none of her business. It wasn’t as though she’d been Lynx's wife or girlfriend who was facing an infertility problem. Bonnie was nothing more than his employer—an employer who ought to have known better than to fall in love with her own employee, much less told him about it. She hadn’t intended to, but like so many things in life, it had simply happened.
The season progressed, and the rains became more infrequent. Bonnie went to the market in Nimbaza every week, taking Kipper and Ulla with her in the speeder and leaving Lynx behind to tend the farm. To Bonnie's surprise, Lynx seemed happier for some reason, and while she suspected it was from having finally told her something about himself, if Lynx had been asked, it was doubtful that he would have said the same thing. It might have helped to unburden himself—or even to know that he was loved—but he was also becoming more used to his life on Bonnie's farm, and, as he had always done, he took pride in his work—however mundane it might have seemed to anyone else.
Lynx loved coming up with new and better ways to do things around the farm. The enock pen was only the beginning, and he was streamlining work in ways Bonnie had never dreamed of, and also began looking ahead to anticipate any problems that might arise.
Bonnie saw Drummond and Zuannis at the market every week, but knew that Jack wouldn’t be back for months. Bonnie and Salan kept right on trading eggs for cheese and butter, and everyone remarked on how beautiful Ulla was and how fast she was growing. That was one nice thing about having a baby along, Bonnie reflected—it gave you something neutral to discuss.
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