The Ninth Orb (7 page)

The size wasn’t deceptive. Behind the female, Eden saw workers much like those she had already seen, moving back and forth industriously. Beyond the workers, three soldiers stood near the wall, stiffly erect, staring straight ahead.

The female looked to be at least a foot taller than any male in the room and probably twice as heavy.

Eden was revolted. She did her best not be, not to make a judgment on the creature when she knew nothing about her, or at least to keep from showing it, but it seemed fairly obvious that she did little beyond lay upon the lounge while the males scurried around her attending her needs and wants.

She discovered Baen had turned to her. He was holding out the rounded object he’d spoken in to. Blinking as if coming out of a trance, Eden took it.

The creature smiled at her thinly. “I am Sademeen. Most humble apologies tendered for encroaching upon your territory. We wish no conflict also.”

For several moments Eden wondered if the translator had completely malfunctioned. She smiled a little mechanically, searching her mind frantically for a response. It appeared, though, that Sademeen--indeed the aliens as a whole, were laboring under the impression that this world belonged to them, the interlopers from Earth. Her next words seemed to confirm it.

“We did not know the world below us was claimed.”

Eden reddened in spite of all she could do, uncomfortable about claiming the territory under the circumstances. She wasn’t about to admit that the world didn’t belong to them either, or that they were late comers when it came to staking a claim to it. “The facility here is merely a misunderstanding, then?” she managed to say finally.

Sademeen bowed her head slightly. “The young males discharged there are kzatha--creating problems with the mature males. We none wished to destroy our kzatha off spring, however, and sought to make peace among our males by separating two.”

Eden sent Baen a horrified glance before she could prevent it. Frowning faintly, she returned her attention to the female. “My device has not fully assimilated your tongue and fails to translate all of your words for my understanding. Baen is your off-spring?”

“One. I, myself, kzatha a small number there.”

“Discarded or possibly banished.”

A jolt went through her when the translator abruptly produced the meaning for the word, kzatha.

“You must send them away if they are a nuisance. We have not the capability to retrieve them. Or, if you must, we will understand if you destroy.”

Eden sent another horrified glance in Baen’s direction, feeling a shiver travel down her spine. Baen’s expression was very carefully neutral, but she could well imagine what thoughts must be going through his mind when his mother had just suggested he be destroyed if he was a nuisance. “We would not be comfortable with such a solution,” she said firmly. “It is not our custom to destroy to make peace.”

That wasn’t strictly true, of course. The bloody history of humanity was a testament to that particular solution for problems, but the aliens couldn’t know that and she hoped they wouldn’t learn, or have to be taught, the worst about humans.

Sademeen looked both relieved and pleased. “Baen has said that you have no males?”

Eden felt her color fluctuate again. “Not here,” she responded a little stiffly.

She sensed rather than saw the surprised jolt that went through Baen at her response. Sademeen’s smile broadened. “I knew it could not be as Baen had reported. The kzatha are strong and without defect. It was with regret that we sent them there, and only to make peace among our pazaan, for the older males disliked the young cubs. You may claim them if you have need. As kzatha they have no queens. It distresses me to see them without a future or hope of offspring.”

It was almost one shock too many. “I--uh--I would have to discuss this with the –uh--the other queens,” she stammered, sparing for wind and trying a little frantically to assimilate the fact that she--they--had just been offered their choice of males.

Did the males have no choice in the matter?

So much for her certainty that this was a male dominated society!

“In any case, we have the seed of our males. We have no need for--uh--mates,” she added after a moment.

Sademeen looked saddened but not surprised. “I thought as much. They would still be useful to you. There are enough to form new pazaans for yourselves.”

“Harems/family structure.”

Eden blinked several times and finally tapped the translator. “Excuse me,” she said apologetically, removing the headset and checking it for malfunction. She could see no sign that it was broken and finally returned it to her head. “I thank you for meeting with me, but my device is malfunctioning. In any case, I must return now and consider what you have said and discuss it with the others. We are all pleased, though, that we have established peaceful relations between our two peoples.”

Chapter Six

Eden didn’t prod Baen to talk as she headed back. In truth, she was so caught up in her tumultuous thoughts that she wasn’t completely certain of whether he’d accompanied her back. She found herself in her quarters--home, she mentally amended--with surprise and no clear memory of getting there.

She thought it was her home. After a brief search that turned up personal items that she recognized, she sagged with relief. No one, including her, had had the time since their arrival to devote to making their personal space comfortable. The focus had been on setting up the factories to begin producing their own goods. On the schedule directly after that was the search for useable raw materials. Naturally, there had been very limited space for bringing such things. They had enough to start and that was all.

Dismissing that for the moment, she looked around for a place to sit. One not-terribly-comfortable chair sat in one corner of her living area. She dropped into it for, despite her nervous energy, she was tired from the trek to and from the alien compound.

From out of no where a sense of pity swamped her.

They had been abandoned on an alien world to get along the best they could and, from the way Sademeen had spoken, they were little more than babies, only just matured to adulthood!

She supposed she and the other colonists were in pretty much the same boat, but they had chosen to come, after all. And everything had been planned out and provided for them to the best of the project’s abilities.

They hadn’t simply been taken off and dumped--like an unwanted pet!

Frowning, she summoned a mental image of Baen’s face. It hadn’t occurred to her that he must be very young. He looked young, of course, but she was so used to the life spans afforded by their anti-aging drugs it hadn’t occurred to her that Baen--all of the aliens really were young!

She dismissed that for the moment. She couldn’t afford to expend a good deal of sympathy on the aliens. She had her own people to consider.

She could not tell them what Sademeen had suggested, not yet, anyway. They were liable to demand to take the mother queen up on her offer without considering the long term possibility for repercussions.

Guilt almost immediately swamped her at that thought. The aliens were probably over there right now wondering what their fate was to be.

The decision wasn’t hers alone. She didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry that that was the case, but she also knew that the others would most likely take their lead from her.

She thought they would, anyway.

She hoped they would. She didn’t know what would become of them if the colonists stampeded the alien colony and began looking the males over to claim. They’d had several physical disagreements over space. They were liable to resort to real violence if they got into a dispute over the males!

Regardless, she needed time to recover from the shock of her discoveries and ….

Her eyes widened abruptly. She’d been in so much turmoil, she had completely forgotten the potential threat. Getting to her feet abruptly, she moved to the communicator near the doorway. “Major Sterling?”

Ivy answered immediately. “What the hell’s going on, Chisholm? You walked right past me like you were in a trance or something!”

“We need to talk.”

Almost on the heels of her comment, the chime rang at the door, alerting Eden to a visitor. Impatiently, she stalked to the door and commanded it to open. A shockwave of surprise washed over her when she saw Ivy was standing on the other side of the panel.

Briefly, amusement glinted in Ivy’s dark eyes. It vanished almost immediately, however. “Something happened,” she said, taking the open door as an invitation to enter.

Eden wrestled with her disordered thoughts, trying to think of some way to relay her news without sounding overly alarming. Nothing came to her. “We were right. The aliens aren’t from here.”

“I didn’t think so. I’ve gone over the computer logs. There was no malfunction. That--whatever they want to call it--wasn’t there when we dropped the bot pod.”

Eden chewed her bottom lip nervously. “They’re from this world’s moon.”

Ivy’s eyes grew so wide Eden could see the white’s all the way around her dark irises. She could also see the dawning horror in them.

“I don’t think they represent a threat to us,” she added hurriedly.

Ivy gave her a look, depressing her wrist communicator. “I’d rather be safe than sorry … Lt. Carter?”

“Affirmative.”

“Be advised, we have learned that the aliens inhabit this planet’s satellite. Copy?”

There was a faint pause. “Affirmative. What do you want me to do, Major?”

Ivy studied Eden a moment. “Do you have a visual?”

“Negative. It’s currently on the dark side.”

“For now I want you to settle into an orbit that keeps you in a position opposite the moon. Copy?”

“Affirmative. Will calculate the speed of its orbit and adjust ours.”

She paced to the window of the living area and stared into the distance when she had broken off communications. “Why didn’t you tell me at once?”

Eden was embarrassed. “The meeting was--uh--nothing like I’d expected. To be honest I was just plain thrown for a loop.”

Ivy was frowning when she turned to look at Eden questioningly. “You said you didn’t feel like they posed a threat.”

Eden rubbed her head. “The mother queen was very apologetic. They seem to think that this is our world.”

“It is.”

“I mean, they obviously haven’t been here before and thought it was unoccupied when they sent the others down, the kzatha, they call them.”

A thoughtful expression crossed Ivy’s features. “So they’re just beginning space exploration, you think?”

“It seems that way.”

Ivy was silent for some time. “What did she have to say that threw you into such a state of disorder then?”

Eden shrugged. “She said we could have them.”

Ivy commenced to blinking. “Excuse me?”

“That’s what I thought. I checked the translator, though, and it seemed to be functioning properly. Besides, she didn’t leave me in any doubt. She made it clear we could have them if we wanted them--or we could send them away if we didn’t, or wipe them out if we felt it was necessary.”

Ivy laughed, but it was a sound of disbelief. “That isn’t funny, Eden.”

“I’m not joking. The females have harems. The one I spoke with, Sademeen, seemed to think we were the same as they are, and that we’d … misplaced our men, or something. I told her we didn’t need them for … uh … breeding, but she said they would be useful anyway. I’m telling you, she was trying to give them to me--us.”

Ivy commenced to pacing. Abruptly, she stopped and turned to stare at Eden again. “The Trojan horse!”

“What?” Eden asked blankly.

Ivy shook her head. “This is ancient military lore. An army came up against a city they couldn’t breach. So they built a great wooden horse and left it as a ‘gift’. When the people of the city dragged the ‘gift’ inside, the soldiers came out and destroyed the city from the inside.”

“You’re saying you think that’s what this gift is? An attempt to get inside to attack us?”

“It seems just as obvious that they are aware of our force fields as it is that they don’t have the technology to breach them, so, yes, that’s what I’m suggesting.”

Eden realized that, deep down, she’d harbored the same fear in spite of her sympathy for the aliens who’d apparently been discarded for no other reason than because the older males felt threatened by them. “There is absolutely nothing to support a suggestion that they mean us any harm, however--except the human capacity for deception and treachery and we don’t know that they’re as bad as we are.”

“From a military standpoint, from a security standpoint--it would still be better to destroy them,” Ivy said forcefully.

Eden merely gaped at her while that slowly sank in. As it settled in her mind and then the pit of her stomach like something completely loathsome and indigestible, Baen’s image rose before her mind’s eye, and then the faces of the others she’d passed when she’d visited their city. “You can not be serious,” Eden managed faintly.

Ivy’s expression was impatient. “You can’t allow emotion to color your judgment, Eden! Our future--the future of everyone here--is at stake. From a purely logical standpoint, you know as well as I do that there will be trouble down the line even if we could get relations off to an agreeable start now. We are seriously, scarily, out numbered here, even if our technology does give us an advantage at this point. We could and should destroy them now, while we can, to preserve our future.”

A wave of nausea washed over Eden. Anger was the backwash. “You’re not just suggesting we annihilate the colony that’s here. You’re talking about attacking their home world, aren’t you? I will not sanction such a thing! I won’t even consider it! They haven’t threatened us in any way. If they had, I might agree with you. If I’d seen anything to suggest they were being less than honest, I might consider it. From everything I’ve seen and heard, they are completely focused on their own concerns and have no real interest in us at all, however. Moreover, we’re not talking about a damned rodent infestation. We’re talking about intelligent beings!”