The Claiming (23 page)

Alain drew in a ragged breath. “You fainted. Lill screamed like someone had been murdered. When I got upstairs, you were lying on the floor.” He released her, moved away and finally got off of the bed, tossing the damp cloth in the general direction of the wash stand. “I’ve sent for the doctor, though I’m not so sure I’ll feel any better when the old quack has looked at you,” he muttered, pacing the floor.

Jana sat upright. “Don’t! Please! I don’t want him to touch me again, Alain.”

Alain stopped, stared at her a long moment and finally strode toward her, taking her hands in his. “He won’t hurt you, princess. I’ll stay, if you like, but there’s something wrong. He needs to examine you.”

“I’m fine,” Jana lied, feeling her eyes fill immediately with tears of absolute terror. She wasn’t fine. She was pregnant.

Alain gripped her arms. “Jana you nearly scared the life out of me. I have to know what’s wrong. You said you’d never been ill,” he said almost accusingly.

“I’m not ill.”

“You fainted. People don’t just faint. And this isn’t the first time.”

Jana glared at him. “Because I was afraid. And these … things I have to wear around my waist would not allow me to catch my breath.”

“The corset? You’re afraid? Of what? Marty…?”

“No!” Jana covered her face with her hands, trying to fight down the panic that had surged through her before. Her stomach protested again and suddenly she knew that this time she would throw up. She got up abruptly and rushed into the bathing room where the chamber pot was kept. When she’d finished, she was so weak she could hardly stand. She moved back into the bedroom, steadying herself by keeping one hand on the wall as she made her way to the wash stand. Scooping cool water into her hands, she washed her face, then rinsed the foul taste from her mouth.

Alain, she saw when she managed to make it back to the bed, was still standing as he had been when she’d fled the room, looking decidedly gray. He followed her to the bed, standing over her, staring at her in baffled concern. “For God’s sake, Jana, tell me what’s wrong!”

She fell back against the pillows. “I’m pregnant,” she said baldly.

Alain dropped onto the bed beside her, staring blankly at the opposite wall. After several moments passed, a faint smile began to curl his lips. He turned to look at her, placing his hand carefully on top of her abdomen.

The gesture was too horrific a reminder that something was growing there, when she would far rather have been able to push it completely from her mind so that she could think without panic to churn her mind into a chaotic jumble of half thoughts. Jana pushed his hand away, turned on her side away from him.

He studied her for a long moment, saying nothing. “You don’t want to be pregnant?” he asked coolly.

Jana turned to look at him as if he’d lost his mind. “I’ve got some--thing growing inside of me. Would you want something growing inside of you?”

“It’s not a thing,” he said tightly. “It’s my baby—mine.”

Jana turned her back to him, unable to bear the look in his eyes.

After a moment, she heard his tread as he moved swiftly to the door and slammed it behind him.

She tried to dismiss that look from her mind, but it became one more anxiety to deal with when she felt she had more to deal with already than she could manage.

She heard sounds of an arrival some time later. She sat up on the bed, listening, but Alain had said he’d sent for the doctor. She knew it must be him. Leaping from the bed, she raced to the door and bolted it. She relaxed fractionally, until she turned and looked at the other door.

There was no bolt on it.

Moving across the room, she stared at it in consternation for several moments, then looked around. There was a chest at the foot of the bed. She tested it and discovered it was heavy, impossible to lift. She began pushing it, slowly but surely toward the door to the bathing room and finally wedged the weighty trunk against the door.

She’d no sooner done so that she heard a tap on the other door. The trunk had made so much noise as she pushed it across the floor that she hadn’t heard the sound of approaching footsteps, and had no way of knowing whether it was the doctor, or Alain, demanding entrance. She wondered, briefly, if she should answer, or simply tell him to go away, but it seemed likely that most anything she said would only fuel Alain’s anger. Instead, she returned to the bed, climbing into the middle of the mattress where she could watch both doors.

“Problem?”

That was definitely Alain’s voice.

“She did not answer.”

She recognized the second voice, as well—Doctor Jenk.

Someone tried the door knob, and Jana started nervously.

The next moment, the door burst open with a splintering of wood. Wide-eyed, Jana met Alain’s gaze across the room for several, long, uncomfortable moments. He turned away. “It seems to have been stuck.”

That single look from Alain was enough. Jana said nothing as he and the doctor moved into the room, pushing the broken door to behind them.

If possible, the examination was even worse than the first time, primarily because Alain stood beside the bed.

Doctor Jenk chuckled when he’d finished, moving to the wash stand. “There is nothing wrong with your wife, sir, aside from the happy circumstance that she is with child.”

Jana stared at the man’s back, refusing to look at Alain. “Could it be undone?”

Doctor Jenk threw her a startled look.

“Removed?”

He laughed. “Give it time. It’ll ‘remove’ itself. In … about seven months, I’d say, give or take a few weeks.”

Jana did not clarify her question. She would have been willing to chance angering Alain further—as if he could be more angry—except that it was obvious that Doctor Jenk did not have the knowledge of such things. She had not really expected that he would, but she had been desperate enough to ask anyway.

The two men left together, Doctor Jenk instructing Alain on a list of things that Jana could, and could not, do, things she should eat, and should not eat.

Alain said nothing at all, and Jana made no effort to listen. Alain was back shortly, carrying some sort of tool. Without a word, he removed the bolt from her door and the splintered wood from the door frame. He set the tool and the debris aside, strode across the room and lifted the chest. Carrying it back to the foot of the bed, he set it down, then collected the broken wood, the bolt and his tool and left.

Jana spent the rest of the day in her room, thinking, trying not to think, pacing the floor part of the time. She heard Alain come up stairs in the evening, knew he must be dressing for dinner. She was not hungry and was tempted to just stay in her room, but finally decided to go downstairs.

She found it impossible to swallow more than a few bites of food. Alain sat at the head of the table in stony silence, a bottle of Brie at his elbow. Blane, although present, said nothing either, glancing occasionally from Jana to Alain. Jana refused to allow him to catch her eye, although she was aware of several attempts on his part.

At long last, the interminable meal ended. Jana had been waiting for the servants to leave the room. She knew that, any moment, Alain would rise and leave.

“I would like to return to Earth,” she blurted finally.

For the first time since she’d entered the room, Alain looked directly at her.

Blane knocked his glass over, spilling a crimson trail of wine across the white table cloth.

“No.”

“I think it would be best for … everyone.”

A dark brow lifted and Jana felt a blush climbing her cheeks, aware of what he had implied, even if he had not said it. He was right. Mostly, she was thinking it would be best for her, but that was not entirely the case. It had occurred to her as she paced her room that Alain had expected that the woman he chose would incubate his children. It was the way on Orleans. Undoubtedly, the woman he’d meant to contract with had understood that part of the arrangement even though she had not. If the contract between her and Alain were to be broken, then he could contract with the woman he’d chosen to begin with. “If you send me back, then you will be able to contract with the woman you chose.”

“No.” He got up abruptly and left the room.

Blane, she discovered, would not look at her now, but he had been kind to her since she had come. Surely he would understand and help her? She rose from her chair and met him at the door when he would have left, grasping his wrist and giving it a jerk until he looked at her. “Please make him understand, Blane!”

Blane looked at her angrily. “How can I make him understand when I don’t?”

“This thing,” she said, hysteria edging her voice. “It’s growing. I have to go back, so it can be removed.”

Blane paled, shook her hand free. “You’d kill it? Alain’s baby? What kind of woman are you?”

Jana stared at him blankly. “Kill?”

“You think it could survive outside your body?”

“But they do! They put them in a tube. I was grown that way! Everyone is—on Earth! It’s much better. Everything is regulated, defective genes or undesirable ones are replaced with better ones. They are given the perfect blend of nutrients to make them grow healthy and strong, free of genetic diseases.”

He looked almost as repelled by that as he had when he’d accused her of wanting to kill the infant—which had never once entered her mind! She was appalled that he, and apparently Alain, as well, believed that of her. She had never caused injury to a single living organism. “It’s unnatural,” he said tightly. “Human beings are meant to be carried, and born, by their mothers. Without that, they lose their humanity. They’re … less than human.”

Jana blinked at him, stepped away, feeling as if he’d slapped her. “Men grow these humans inside them?”

He looked taken aback. “NO!”

“Then you can not know what it’s like. You will never have to experience it. It’s easy to despise someone for not doing something you will never have to do.”

“You don’t know what it’s like either! Your body was designed for it. It’s the most natural thing in the world!”

“How do you know that?”

“What?”

“That my body was designed for it? I was not supposed to be a companion! I was designed to be a courtesan.”

He stared at her for several moments. “If you had not been designed for it, you could not be carrying a child now,” he said, but doubt threaded his words.

“I’m afraid.”

He grasped both of her shoulders. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

She looked away, wondering, now, why she’d thought he would be able to understand. How could he when it was something he would never have to face? In any case, he saw her as Marty did—less than human. Most people rarely if ever concerned themselves about the way their cultural or economic inferiors felt. They felt less than nothing about the possible feelings of any creature they did not even consider human. Perhaps they thought they had no feelings?

Alain did not come to share his body with her in her bed that night, or the night afterward, or the night after that. Jana was relieved because she felt closed inside herself and she did not feel like she could bear to open herself to share, knew instinctively that she had some protection by distancing herself from emotions she couldn’t seem to deal with. For days she wandered around the house in a state of disbelief, hardly eating or sleeping. All she could think about was that Marty had warned her this would happen to her and she hadn’t believed him.

It wasn’t that she had not been able to believe what everyone had told her about the process of producing infants on this world. She knew everyone was not lying to her, though, if she’d heard it only from Marty she would probably not have believed it at all.

But she had not believed it could possibly happen to her, whatever Marty, or Val-risa had said. She had not believed that she would have to pay such a horrendous price for enjoying sharing herself with Alain.

She imagined she could see her belly beginning to bulge already.

Before long, she began to think she should have stayed with Marty. She had thought she hated the life she had. In retrospect, it didn’t seem quite as bad when the alternative was watching her body slowly growing larger and larger while some alien thing grew inside her until it reached a time when it was ready to tear itself from her body.

The more she thought about Marty, the stronger her conviction became that he had not given up and returned to Earth. He was probably still waiting, watching, to see if he could catch her alone. She probably wouldn’t even have to find him. She probably wouldn’t have to do anything at all except slip far enough away from the house that he wouldn’t be afraid of Alain catching him.

He would not allow her to become swollen and horribly distorted. He would arrange to remove the growing thing from her body. He could probably even arrange to have it properly grown in a tube once she’d gotten back to Earth. Then Alain could have the infant once it was de-canted.

She could not forget the look on his face. He had wanted it. She could tell that he did.

She decided she would make that part of the agreement, make Marty swear he would protect it for Alain. She could not allow any harm to come to it, for it was important to Alain.

But she had to leave Orleans.

Val-risa had managed to arrange passage for her on a ship that was scheduled to arrive in Orleans within the next few months, but Jana didn’t feel she could wait for it. She would not be able to pay her passage in any case, unless she managed to think of a way to steal the credits, or to steal something to barter in place of credits. Although Alain had said that he had arranged for her to have money he had never explained to her how she was to get it and she did not think it would be safe, now, to ask him.

Beyond those considerations, she’d specifically requested passage to another world, not Earth. She had no way of knowing whether the ship would take her to a world that was technologically Earth’s equal, or one like Orleans, and if she ended on a world like Orleans, she would be no better off.

All in all, it seemed safest to simply return to Marty.