Ninth Orb

by Kaitlyn O'Connor

  Deb hadn’t been surprised, though, and that wasn’t only because she’d thought the symptoms suggested pregnancy.

  Everyone she’d checked was pregnant, and carrying more than one.

  She felt a nearly overwhelming, and hysterical, urge to giggle. They were certainly going to have a bumper crop of new colonists!

  She sobered after a moment, realizing she’d given the go ahead to the other colonists to choose men for themselves. The Xtanian men were more than potent. They had to be secreting something that was forcing the women to produce.

  She still didn’t understand how, even if they’d boosted her reproduction, that four different males had managed to fertilize four different eggs.

  That thought halted her in her rambling contemplation, though.

  Baen had fathered a child on her. Baen who’d been certain he couldn’t, or least told her he couldn’t.

  Who’d fathered the others?

  Deb had said it was Baen’s brood, but that wasn’t good enough. She wanted to know who.

  “Tell your brood that they must come into New Savannah and go to the clinic,” she told Baen without bothering to turn around.

  It occurred to her almost at once that he might or might not understand since she wasn’t wearing her translator. Grabbing it off her desk, she set the device on her head and repeated the command. When Baen still didn’t move, she swiveled around to look at him.

  He didn’t look as pale as he had earlier, but he looked stunned.

  However well he usually pretended not to understand, she knew he had to have understood a good bit of what Deb had been telling her.

  “Now, Baen,” she said in a tone that brooked no argue.

  He swallowed a little sickly, nodded, and then frowned as if trying to recall what she’d said.

  “Go and get them,” she said slowly.

  “They are coming,” he responded.

  Eden stared at him, feeling her jaw slowly go slack. She blinked several times. “I … uh … How do you know they’re coming?”

  He touched his temple, rubbed it with his fingertips as if it hurt. “I summoned them.”

  “How?” Eden demanded, wondering a little wildly if the shock had unhinged her mind.

  He stared at her in confusion. “We are brood. We are as one,” he said slowly. “It is much like the thing on your wrist.”

  “The communicator? You have one in your head? You communicate telepathically,” she guessed abruptly as it hit her suddenly why they worked so well together, why they always seemed to know what needed to be done without having to be told. They did communicate. They just didn’t need to verbalize to do so.

  They hadn’t thought about it because they couldn’t.

  She supposed the Xtanians had not told them because it had not occurred to them that the Earth women couldn’t.

  Maybe.

  Maybe they realized they had an advantage?

  She considered it carefully for some time and finally dismissed it. He’d said brood. He hadn’t said pazaan. He could communicate with his brothers without speech, not the others.

  That was the bond, she realized. They shared thoughts, maybe all thoughts. Maybe they couldn’t block the others from their minds at all? Did that mean they shared feelings, too? Knew about them? Or felt them?

  The nerves might carry sensation, but it was the brain that translated. That was why Baen--all of them--usually said ‘we’.

  She thrust that from her mind after a few moments. She had enough to deal with without trying to understand the confusing relationships of the Xtanains.

  Most important at the moment was how, if at all, the discovery that they were pregnant impacted the colony. The pregnancy changed their situation drastically.

  Moving would mean placing a high risk on the babies. Even if they could feel that they’d taken every possible precaution to protect them, unless they placed all of the developing fetuses in incu-sys, they would be at greater risk themselves, and perhaps not physically able to do the things they would need to do to survive, let alone flourish.

  It occurred to her that they did not have to have the babies at all. There was another alternative, but it made her feel like throwing up.

  She could not make this decision alone, she decided.

  After a moment’s thought, she buzzed Deb. “Contact the other … uh … mothers,” she said, stumbling over the word. “They’re to meet with me in council chambers.”

  Surprise flickered in Deb’s eyes, but after staring at her speculatively for several moments she nodded. “When?”

  “Now.”

  “It’ll take me a few minutes to locate them. Thirty minutes?”

  “Fine.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Baen’s brothers will be coming for testing. Notify the guards at the gate and have them escorted to med lab, and when you’re done, have the ones that test positive wait.”

  Deb’s brows rose at that, but she merely rang off without voicing any of the questions Eden could see buzzing through her mind.

  A couple of the women were already in the council room when Eden arrived. They looked questioningly at her, but Eden ignored it, gesturing for them to be seated and then pacing to the window to stare down at the city while she waited for everyone else to arrive.

  It was late afternoon, and many of the women had already ended their shift and were heading to their homes. A handful were headed toward the security passage and the new city that had sprung up between New Savannah and the Xtanian Citadel.

  Either they hadn’t gotten word before they’d gone off the clock, or they weren’t pregnant--yet.

  Eden hadn’t summoned the council, but Deb buzzed, appearing on her vid screen to inform her that she’d contacted the other nine women in question and to inform her that Baen’s brood brothers had arrived. When Eden rang off, she counted heads and discovered everyone had arrived.

  Eden saw without surprise that they’d been escorted. Ten Xtanian warriors were ranged around the room, including Baen.

  Tension settled as a knot in the pit of her stomach as she considered ordering the guards from the room and the possible consequences of doing so.

  She didn’t feel up to the possibility of a challenge in authority at the moment. Moreover, the Xtanians either already knew everything--or they knew nothing because they couldn’t understand the language.

  It seemed a little like trying to close the barn door after all of the cows had already escaped.

  She decided to simply ignore them, but she removed her translator very deliberately, switched it off and set in on the conference table. Without so much as a blink, the other women removed theirs, as well.

  “I’m sure some of you have guessed by now why I called this meeting. Deb informed me earlier this morning that we have a … situation that will have a tremendous impact on the decision we made months ago to seek an alternate location for the colony.”

  Several of the women exchanged looks, but it was Ivy who spoke. “I was under the impression that that plan was merely a contingency, in case we discovered that it was necessary for the safety of the colonists to remove to a new location.”

  Eden shrugged. “It was. It still is. Moreover, we have not located a site that is even nearly as good as this world. If worse comes to worse, there’s still the option of heading back toward Earth and settling on one of the other worlds.

  “At least, I considered that an option before. I don’t feel particularly comfortable with the thought of trying to transport fetuses. Even with the incu-sys units, they are very, very fragile at this stage of development. I think the risks to them would be high.”

  This time instead of merely exchanging glances, the women began trying to talk all at once. It was hard to catch individual remarks, but the general consensus was that no one wanted to take the risk.

  Eden studied her hands. “That being the case, I’m fairly certain the alternative won’t appeal to any of you, but it is my duty to point out the option nev
ertheless. We came with donors, anticipating a need that hasn’t arisen. We don’t have to consider the fetuses, at all.”

  As understanding dawned, they paled one by one. “Abandon them, you mean?” Liz demanded, aghast at the suggestion.

  “That’s one possibility.”

  “Why would we have to?” one of the women cried out. “I don’t see why we’d have to! And I won’t! I’ll stay. The rest of you can go if you want to!”

  It took Eden several minutes to get everyone relatively quiet again. “I don’t want to. This isn’t personal with me. I’m trying to make a decision that will be in everyone’s best interests. Don’t make me the villain here.

  “Liz, it was you who warned me of the dangerous situation that could arise from flouting their customs, and you, Ivy, who most loudly vetoed the idea of integrating our colony with that of the Xtanians to begin with. As you also pointed out, one on one, we don’t even come close to being capable of defending ourselves if the need arose. Militarily, they out number us three to one.

  “And their social structure is presenting problems for us. None of us are physically or emotionally capable of handling pazaans. I’m not. Considering our history, I don’t think we could go so far as to claim to be truly monogamous, but we are still more accustomed to one on one relationships.

  “The long term has to be considered on this, because the mental and emotional health of our colony is just as important as the physical health and well being.

  “We also have to consider that, even though they outnumber us three to one, their entire culture is based on the broods remaining together. They would suffer from any attempt to split them up because the bond between them is far stronger even than the bonds siblings generally form. They are telepaths, mentally joined even though we see no physical joining between them.”

  She could see from their faces that none of the women had realized that particular fact, but she waved a dismissing hand at those who wanted to question it.

  “The point is, it can’t happen, and that means that we could be looking at conflict within our own colony between the haves and the have nots.”

  “Well, I know three who already have more than their fair share,” Marion Lynden put in testily.

  Eden glared at the woman, but she wasn’t surprised at the accusation. She was more surprised that she hadn’t already heard complaints. “If you’re too stupid to grasp that that is not a circumstance that I, Liz, or Ivy are particular delighted about, then you should certainly be able to grasp ‘screw up’,” Eden snapped before she thought better of it. “One brood is certainly enough--more than enough. But since I have no intention of allowing someone else to suffer for my mistakes, I deal with it. We all deal with it.”

  “You could choose to give the unwanted broods as gift to another.”

  Eden--every woman at the table--swiveled around sharply at the male voice that intruded.

  Baen ignored the stares of the other women, his gaze unwavering as it locked with Eden’s. “They would not be shamed in that way. It is acceptable.”

  Eden merely stared at him blankly, too stunned to discover he could speak and understand their language so fluently to be able to think of anything to say. She’d suspected he had some grasp of it long since, but she had not really believed he’d mastered their tongue. She’d been thinking more in terms of him having picked up a small vocabulary.

  He swallowed uneasily. “We are a peaceful people. We have never offered a threat to you. We would never do so, but if you feel that you must go, that you can not be comfortable living among us, then there is no need to go to another world. This one is large enough. We will go far from this place and you will have no need to go at all.”

  Eden felt tears burn her eyes and nose and clog her throat.

  She fought the urge back with an effort, dragged her gaze from Baen and looked at the other women. They were studying their hands, or the table, uncomfortably. Eden cleared her throat. “This meeting is at an end, ladies,” she murmured huskily.

  Pushing herself up from her chair, Eden moved to stand in front of the window while the women filed out.

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Eden saw Baen’s reflection as he moved to stand behind her moments before she felt the warmth of his nearness. He didn’t touch her, and yet she could feel the insidious invasion of her senses that always threw her into chaos, that made thinking optional and feeling treacherously appealing. She cleared her throat uncomfortably. “When I accepted this position, I don’t think I ever really anticipated a time or a situation where I would feel conflicted between my responsibilities as the president of the colony and my personal feelings.”

  She paused and a wry smile curled her lips. “On a personal level, I don’t think I ever truly distrusted you or felt threatened by you in any way. I was wary, yes, a little uneasy, very confused, but I wanted to trust you because ….” She broke off and dragged in a shuddering breath, clearing her throat uncomfortably again.

  “The first time I saw you, you just … took my breath. I couldn’t think, not rationally, anyway. All I could do was feel, and I knew that wasn’t something I could trust, not as woman, and certainly not as a leader who had the responsibility for the lives of two hundred colonists.”

  “It was much the same for me the day you came,” Baen said huskily. “When you came with the others, I could not tear my eyes from you, or move. I did not think to breathe even until I began to grow dizzy and remembered that I had forgotten to. I am not at all certain, but I think I was terrified. My knees quaked and my heart beat so hard I thought it would burst through my chest.”

  The comment dragged a shaky chuckle from her and she tilted her head to look back at him. The look in his eyes made her heart skitter to a painful halt, however, made her mouth go dry, and thought fled.

  “I was struck deaf, and mute, and stupid, and blind to all else around me but you. To me, you were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and for many, many moments I could not think beyond that. And then I realized that you were also the smallest woman I had ever seen before, and the boldest, and you were not frightened at all to look up at me and command me to do your bidding. That made me nervous, for I thought, if she is so small and feels no fear, then she has reason to feel none.”

  Eden chuckled, realizing that he was teasing her. “Liz is smaller than me,” she said pointedly and then it occurred to her to wonder if he had found what must have seemed very strange to him appealing. Surely, given the fact that Xtanian women were larger than the men, their notion of beauty and desirability was not the same as the men she was familiar with? Had he been drawn to her anyway? Or because of the difference?

  Maybe it had been the latter, she thought, realizing that part of what had drawn her to him was the fact that he was so exotic. She hadn’t found him appealing in spite of the fact that he had wings and horns. She’d been fascinated by the fact that he did. The differences between him and the men she’d known before had added to her excitement and enthrallment with him.

  Obviously, it went beyond that, for there were others of his kind also winged and horned, and he was still infinitely more appealing to her than anyone else.

  He shrugged. “But I did not see Liz. I saw no one but you.”

  She looked away, uncertain of whether or not she believed that.

  He caught her shoulders, turning her to face him and capturing her face between his hands so that she had to look up at him. “You made me think things that I had never thought before. From that moment, I could think of nothing beyond claiming you for my brood and that is not done among us. Never has a male had the choosing. And certainly never a warrior. It was not my place, not my right, and I still could think of nothing else.

  “Stay with us, Edie. We are your devoted slaves. We will care for you as no other would, attend to your comfort, protect you from all threat of harm. Do not allow the others to persuade you to leave us.” He swallowed convulsively. “Do not allow that one to take our young f
rom your belly. I know that we are not … the same, but they will be strong and worthy of life.”

  A sense of deflation hit her at that. It hurt and because it did it produced a spark of anger in response. Catching his wrists, Eden dragged his hands from her cheeks. “You misunderstood,” she said flatly, turning away from him again and moving closer to the window to stare blindly at the cityscape. “As you pointed out yourself, we are smaller than the women of your world, too small to safely carry so many and deliver healthy babies. The discussion was not about disposing of them. It was about protecting them so that they had a better chance of developing into strong, healthy babies. They will be removed to incu-sys, synthetic, biological wombs designed to protect them throughout development.”

  He moved closer, hesitated for several moments and finally dropped his hands to his sides when she stiffened as he reached for her. “She said that one was mine. Is that …. Did I misunderstand that as well?”

  Eden frowned. “No. You didn’t misunderstand. One is yours--the others your brothers.”

  He swallowed audibly. “She could not be wrong?”

  Eden shook her head. “No. She could not.”

  He was silent for many moments. “Mine is female?” he asked finally, cautious excitement threading his voice.

  His obvious pleasure in the knowledge that she was carrying his daughter warmed her and yet Eden couldn’t help but feel cheated and painfully disappointed. Maybe love was overrated, she thought dully. Passion was excitement, fire, a feast of the senses, and Baen gave her that without restraint, made it clear with every touch, every kiss, the look in his eyes that he felt all that she felt, perhaps even more. His brothers gave her that same fiery passion unstintingly. They were willing, more than willing--eager to do whatever it took to please her, sexually, and otherwise.

  It was stupid and greedy to whine for more than she already had.

  But she knew the passion she felt for Baen was just an extension of the love she felt for him. Without the love, she might still have felt desire, and yet she knew it would not have been nearly as powerful, and certainly not as enduring, growing stronger each time they made love instead of mellowing and cooling with familiarity.