Better be careful, Calden, whispered a little voice in his head. You’re getting awfully attached here and you know you can’t afford to—you know that in the eyes of FATHER and the Mentats, Madeline is just a specimen—one with a limited shelf-life. As soon as her time is up, the self-termination unit in the back of her neck will—
No! He tried to push the thought away but it wouldn’t go. He was beginning to think—no, to know—that implanting the unit in Madeline when he was growing her in the nutrient bath tank had been a big mistake. He should have disobeyed FATHER and left it out. After all, the sentient AI wasn’t omniscient—it couldn’t see everything.
But then if he had, the Mentats would have known at some point. No specimen lived forever. And it was a moot point anyway because Madeline did have a self-termination unit implanted and the only one who could turn off the timer which was even now ticking away the seconds and minutes and hours of her life was FATHER. And Calden was very much afraid that the sentient AI would never agree to that.
But what if I presented her as a valuable asset to the station? he asked himself. Another scientist—one who has special knowledge of Earth species. Considering all the specimens we have to study that we collected from her ship, we could be working for years to catalogue and study them all. It would make sense to make her a permanent addition to the station.
Could he really convince FATHER that turning off the unit in the back of Madeline’s neck and letting her live at the station permanently was a viable option?
He would have to, Calden thought grimly. Because already the idea of watching the little Earth female die in his arms was unthinkable.
I can’t lose her, he thought and had to fight the impulse to squeeze her hard against him, to feel her soft, curvy body press against his own. I must protect her! She’s mine—I have to keep her safe!
But in order to do that, he would have to prove her worth to FATHER.
“Calden?” Her soft, melodious voice drew him back from his musings. He looked down at her.
“Hmm?”
“Is everything all right?” Madeline asked, a worried look on her lovely face. “You just have the most intense expression. Like you’re determined to do something really difficult. You’re not going to dive again, are you? Please put me down in the shallow end first if you are.”
“Of course not.” Calden held her even closer. “No, I was just thinking—we’ve been in here for some time. How would you like to come see my specimen lab?”
“I’d love to.” Madeline smiled. “And I know you want to know about animals from Earth but I’d like to know about some from your home world too. Or whatever you have that’s alien and interesting.”
Calden smiled back, loving her curiosity.
“I think we can manage that. In fact, I have a new litter of branthas growing now that you might like to study.”
“Like the one I saw in your lab? With orangish-red fur?” she sounded hopeful.
Calden nodded. “Exactly. I instructed the nutrient bath to grow some on the accelerated setting. They should be opening their eyes any moment.”
Excitement shown in Madeline’s silvery-green eyes.
“What are we waiting for? Let’s go!”
Her enthusiasm was catching. With a smile, Calden carried her out of the fizzing enzyme baths and back through the steam room.
It was almost time for Mid Meal now and several of the Mentats had stopped their work long enough for a quick steam and a bath before gulping down the four liquids which kept them going until Last Meal. Several of them gave Calden disapproving looks as he carried Madeline close to his chest but he ignored them. His little female was too delicate and fragile to trust around the big brutes—the run in with Grack-lor the day before had proved that, he told himself.
So what if they stared at him as he carried Madeline—let them stare. He wasn’t going to put her down and trust them to behave. He had thought that he knew these males that he lived and worked with but the addition of a female to their motley mixture proved it wasn’t so.
He might never have been with a female before, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know how to treat one, Calden told himself. As a Kindred, respect for females was imprinted on his very DNA. He could no more hurt one or allow one to come to harm than he could willfully cut his own hand off. So he watched over Madeline with careful, protective eyes as he moved swiftly through the steam room and back to the changing area.
To his intense displeasure, he saw that Grack-lor was standing in the corner of the room, hanging a stained white lab coat on a hook. But he said nothing, for which Calden was glad—only watched Madeline with a hot, avaricious gaze as Calden held her close to his chest.
But just as he had reached the hooks where their clothing was hanging and was about to put her down, another big Mentat named Jong-tar approached him.
“I see you have your new little female with you, Calden.” His voice was harsh and accusatory. “Grack-lor told us all about her—how FATHER gave you a special dispensation to have her. What gives you the right to a female when the rest of us have none?”
Madeline stiffened against him but Calden gave her a warning look. He put her down and pushed her gently behind him as he confronted the Mentat.
“Madeline is not my female in the sense that she is my mate—I have sworn the oath not to take a mate, as did every male here aboard the station,” he said calmly. “But she is a sentient person and she wanted a bath. Since I have used up most of my allotment of bathing water for the standard week, I brought her here at a time when I thought the baths would be mostly empty and we would bother no one.”
“But it does bother us.” Jong-tar squared his shoulders belligerently, like a male looking for a fight. “It bothers all of us Mentats that FATHER made an exception for you and let you have a female—to bed and breed—when the rest of us have none.”
Calden felt his hands curl into fists at his sides and his vision grew hazy and red.
“I am not bedding or breeding Madeline! You have only to look at our size difference to know how impossible that would be! Now stand aside so that the two of us can get dressed. We are going to my lab and Madeline is going to help me classify some of the specimens the droids found in the wreckage of her ship.”
“Yeah, I bet you’re just going to work in the lab,” Jong-tar sneered. “Work on getting your shaft inside her, most likely.”
“You will take those words back or I’ll make you eat them with my fist,” Calden growled, meaning it. He had never been a violent male before but this intimation that he would do improper things with Madeline and the insult to her virtue were too much to bear.
Except you were doing improper things with her earlier, weren’t you? whispered a little voice in his head. Remember how you rubbed her soft little pussy until she got wet enough for you to slip your finger inside her? Remember how she moaned and begged you to do more…to touch her deeper?
Calden pushed the memory away. That had been a…momentary aberration. A kind of experiment, in a way. After all, he had never been with a female before so he was naturally curious about it. No one could fault a scientist for trying to satiate his curiosity—could they?
“You Kindred liar! I won’t take it back—you’re breeding her, I know it!” Jong-tar snarled, breaking his guilty train of thought.
Calden pulled back a fist to punch the bastard right in the jaw when a new voice interrupted.
“Already it begins,” cawed the harsh voice of Kro-thur. “Just like on our home world when there were not enough females to go round. If one male had one, the others all wanted her. Truly it is a shame that FATHER was willing to allow one in our midst again to cause such strife. I predict that this will be a serious problem.”
Calden rounded on him.
“The only problem is that you Mentats seem to think that a female is a ‘thing’ to have and to use only for slaking your lusts. Madeline is a person—a sentient being—who deserves respect.”
He nodded down at her—she was shivering at his back, her eyes wide with fear. Because of course she was afraid—males many times her size were about to come to blows right in front of her! At the sight of her white face and big eyes, Calden knew he had to get her out of here.
“Come, Madeline,” he said. Sweeping their clothing off the hooks, he bundled them under one arm while he lifted her in the other.
But as they left the enzyme baths, still naked, he heard angry voices raised behind him as well as the thick, cawing laughter of Grack-lor echoing against the tiled walls.
Chapter Nine
The fuzzy little brantha kits were absolutely adorable, wobbling around on their short, stubby legs and blinking their large, crystalline eyes. They made hooting sounds, almost like owls through their long trunk-like noses and nudged against Madeline’s legs, begging to be petted.
Maddy was happy to oblige them. Calden had taken off the gloves and cleaned her hands and she was beginning to have some control over them—though still not as much as she would have liked. She had worried about taking them off but Calden had pronounced that a recess from the gloves would give her tissues some time to rest before putting her hands back in the slime again. So for now, at least, she was free of the heavy black things.
She still had no strength in her hands or fingers, so picking up the little branthas was out of the question. But she could at least pet them, so she sat down in the middle of their enclosure and did exactly that.
By taking off the gloves and presenting her with the frisky, cuddly branthas, Maddy thought Calden was probably just trying to take her mind off the incident that had almost taken place at the enzyme baths. There had been a really scary moment when the big Kindred’s eyes had turned red and he had seemed to get even bigger and more menacing as he prepared to fight the big-mouthed Mentat who kept insisting that she and Calden were “mating” with each other.
Maddy was fairly certain Calden could have taken him but there was that awful Grack-lor smirking in the corner and if he had joined in, it might not have been such a sure outcome. She’d been glad and relieved when the big Kindred had simply scooped her up and taken her back to his living quarters instead, so they could both get dressed and go to his lab.
What’s wrong with these jerks anyway? she thought, as she stroked one of the baby branthas gently with her weak right hand. It’s like Calden said—they seem to think women are something to be owned and used and they’re jealous of him—like kids get jealous when one of them has a toy the others want and can’t have.
She wondered at the differences between them. From what Calden had said, his people—the Kindred—had also had a shortage of females on their home world. But instead of squabbling like spoiled children they had gone out in search of new brides. Why didn’t the Mentats try that instead of being nasty with each other and Calden?
Well for one thing, it probably doesn’t help that they’re such ugly, scaly bastards with those awful, cawing voices like crows and parrots on steroids, she thought with a shiver. She couldn’t imagine any human women being willing to mate with the Mentats, even if they were sexually compatible—which they thankfully were not.
Being sexually incompatible didn’t stop you from doing things you probably shouldn’t with Calden, though, whispered the voice of guilt in her head. Maddy felt her cheeks get hot with shame but at the same time, her body burned with the memory of his big hands on her. How was it she could feel so guilty for what she had done and still want to do it again? What was wrong with her?
One of the branthas—the littlest one—nudged her hand and made a demanding burble like someone trying to talk out of a snorkel. Apparently Maddy had been too caught up in her own thoughts to pay attention to what was important—giving the little creature pets and skritches behind his floppy ears.
“Oh, sorry,” Maddy told him, smiling. “You know what you look like?” she asked, stroking around the bases of his ears and the back of his neck. “You look like a baby Snuffleupagus. And you’re ridiculously cute—but I guess you know that, don’t you? Hmm, don’t you?”
She used the soft, soothing voice she naturally fell into when working with animals and the little brantha and his litter mates responded to it just as Earth animals did. Maddy smiled as he made another burbling sound and nudged her hand for more attention. The others crowded around her as well—she was sitting in the middle of their pen, which was enclosed by a fence made of stiff white stuff which looked like cardboard but probably wasn’t. At Maddy’s suggestion, Calden had simulated some balls for the branthas to play with and now she picked one up awkwardly, because her fingers were still so weak, and tossed it to the far side of the enclosure.
Most of the branthas ran eagerly, chasing the brightly colored object with excited hoots and burbles. But the littlest one stayed, still nudging her hand. In fact, he seemed to sense an opportunity. Now that his litter-mates were preoccupied, he busied himself with climbing into Maddy’s lap and making himself comfortable.
“Well, just make yourself at home, why don’t you little buddy?” Maddy laughed and stroked the soft little head and neck again.
The brantha rested his head on her knee and gave a sigh of deep and total contentment that she envied. But then, she often envied animals their uncomplicated lives. She wished she could have the little brantha’s life at the moment—no guilt, no complications, no worries about the future—which she was definitely beginning to have herself. After all, how long could she go on living in a place where most of the residents were hostile towards her? The Mentats all seemed to resent her and only Calden seemed to care for her at all so…
Her thoughts broke off when her weak but sensitive fingertip found a tiny bump under the brantha’s fur, right at the base of its skull.
“What’s this, little guy? Some kind of a parasite?”
She frowned and bent forward, parting the fur with a fingertip to see. Of course there shouldn’t be any parasites. Calden had just grown these little creatures—she assumed from frozen embryos—and the lab was a mostly sterile environment. There couldn’t be any pests or parasites here.
Sure enough, the lump on the back of the little brantha’s neck wasn’t a parasite—not a tick or a flea burrowing into the skin. But Maddy couldn’t tell what it was. It didn’t seem to be part of the animal’s anatomy. Maybe it was a chip of some kind to monitor the brantha’s vitals or keep track of its location?
“Here—come here, you guys,” she called to the others in the pack—about five in all—and they all scampered over to her and started begging for attention again, much to the smallest one’s irritation. As Maddy checked the backs of their necks and noted that they did, indeed, all have similar bumps at the base of their skulls, he sat up on Maddy’s knee and bugled his dissatisfaction with the situation angrily. It was almost as though he was trying to claim Maddy as his own, which made her laugh.
“Take it easy, little guy,” she told him. “Don’t worry—you’re definitely my favorite, little Snuffy.” Which seemed like a good name, considering that he really did look like a miniature version of the giant, hairy Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street.
“He was always my favorite as well.”
Calden’s deep voice made her look up and Maddy saw that he was crouching beside the brantha enclosure and looking at the little creatures fondly, though he made no move to try and pet any of them himself.
“What do you mean ‘was’?” she asked. “I thought you just gestated these embryos earlier this morning? It really is wonderful how you’re able to accelerate their growth by the way,” she added. “We had some artificial gestation tubes aboard the Kennedy that we were going to use with our embryos but they weren’t nearly as fast as yours are.”
For some reason, Calden was looking uncomfortable.
“These branthas weren’t grown from embryos that I had in storage,” he said, haltingly. “They were… made from the DNA of the last litter I had been studying.”
Maddy looked up at him, her
eyes wide as this information sank in.
“You mean they’re clones? You can do that? You can clone things? I mean, we could back on Earth in a very limited capacity but it was usually an expensive and lengthy process and the clones didn’t always survive for very long.”
“They don’t…” Calden cleared his throat. “They don’t always survive here, either.” He hesitated again. “I would…advise you not to get too attached to them.”
“Oh no! Are you afraid they’re going to die right away?” Maddy put an arm around Snuffy protectively. “Please say they won’t! Oh Calden, there must be something we can do!”
“I’m afraid not.” He looked regretful. “You should have several days with them—maybe a standard week at most. But these will almost certainly not live out their natural life span.”
Maddy felt heartbroken. “Only a week? What is the natural life span of a brantha anyway?”she asked, stroking Snuffy’s fur gently.
“As far as I can figure, they ought to live at least twenty standard solar years,” he said thoughtfully.
“About the same as a dog or a cat—maybe little longer,” Maddy murmured to herself. She looked up at him again. “And there’s nothing we can do to help them live longer?”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid not. From the time I take them out of the nutrient bath to the time of their death, I have only about a standard week to study them. Sometimes a little more or less.”
Awakened by the Giant: Brides of the Kindred Page 11