The Ninth Orb (9 page)
Looking far more relieved than smug that Eden hadn’t contradicted her, Ivy nodded and approached the first row of the formation. She’d made her way all the way down to the opposite end, looking each male over cursorily, before she returned, tapping first one and then another on the shoulder, seemingly at random.
Trying to ignore her discomfort and embarrassment, Eden made her way to the Xtanians lined up in the last row and Liz took the center row.
It was difficult to decide, Eden found. They were all very serious about the business and gave nothing of their thoughts, or personality, away. Uneasily, the thought occurred to her that Ivy might be right about the selection process. They could influence the colonists either way by choosing only those most appealing, or the ones that were least appealing. On the other hand, it occurred to her that what she found appealing might not necessarily appeal to another woman so perhaps she was being unnecessarily sensitive about her own influence? Finally, she simply decided to choose at random as Ivy seemed to have.
It was an unexpected ordeal. She felt more than a little faint herself when she had returned to the shuttle. Liz seemed to have recovered in the interim. She looked as if she was trying very hard not to look too pleased with herself. “They are an exceptionally handsome race, are they not?”
There was a note almost of giddiness in her voice. Ivy sent her a look of displeasure. “Very fine specimens,” she said tartly.
“From that I’d have to guess she didn’t find any runts or ugly brutes to pick,” Liz said testily.
“This entire thing has made me very uncomfortable I don’t mind telling you. I feel very badly that we could not invite them all,” Eden muttered. “I know it isn’t safe, and I’m not arguing that, but I couldn’t help but feel that those not chosen must feel slighted.”
“Which is a good thing,” Ivy retorted. “Now we will see what behavior this provokes and I’ll warrant we will understand them a good deal better.”
Eden’s eyes widened as she stared at Ivy. “You were hoping to provoke some sort of violence by showing favor to some and ignoring others?” she demanded, appalled. “What if you’d succeeded? There were hundreds of them out there. I’d be willing to guess the entire city emptied. I had heart palpitations only thinking, briefly, that it might be an attack. I do not want to be caught up in the midst of giants like that fighting.”
“I had it covered,” Ivy retorted dryly. “The techs recalibrated the transporters and targeted the three of us the moment we stepped out of the shuttle. If there had been a problem, they would have snatched us up instantly.”
“You know this for a fact? I didn’t see you communicate with them!”
“I left orders. I’m not accustomed to having my orders ignored. We were perfectly safe.”
“But you’re assuming they managed to recalibrate and focus on us. You don’t know they did! There could’ve been a malfunction with the equipment, atmospheric interference … any number of things.”
Ivy gave Eden a look. “I didn’t formulate these plans,” she pointed out. “That was the decision of the council. It’s just that it occurred to me that it would be an opportunity to see just how dispassionate they really are.
“And I’ll tell you one thing--I may not be a behavioral specialist like Liz, but these aliens are not emotionless automatons! They are amazingly well disciplined--even the workers--but I saw the look in their eyes when we were looking them over like choice pieces of meat. They were damned anxious to be picked, every one of them, and very disappointed when they weren’t! You may be certain that I will have my entire army on full alert when they come!”
“It’s no more realistic to assume the worse than it is to assume the best,” Liz snapped. “I noticed, as well, but you could be misinterpreting the reason. It doesn’t necessarily follow that they were anxious to get inside to attack us. Maybe they just wanted to be picked because they’re curious about us. Maybe it was nothing more than the chance to engage in a little entertainment. It doesn’t appear to me that they do much besides work.”
Upon their return to New Savannah, they were greeted at the landing pad by a good third of the colonists. Dismayed, Eden nevertheless found a point of vantage and addressed them, explaining that a representative group of Xtanians had been invited to join them in giving thanks for a safe voyage and successful beginning to their enterprise.
An air almost of hysteria gripped the entire city thereafter so that Eden began to wonder if she’d made the right decision. Reluctantly, she admitted there had been no choice. From the moment the colonists had realized the city across the valley was entirely male, for most of them, caution had gone right out of their thoughts. There would have been even more problems to deal with if she had tried to stem their enthusiasm.
It was hard to condemn them when she completely understood their desire for male companionship. Fifteen years was a very long time to spend in the company of women, without even children to break the monotony.
If the Xtanians had not already been across the valley when they arrived and they had had time to settle in and impregnate the first draw of colonists, the focus might have been on ‘nesting’ and babies. But that had not been the case and now all of them were in ‘mating’ phase and nothing short of doing so was going to appease them.
The one positive side to the entire business, as far as she could see, was that morale was at an all time high. The colonists were so anxious for their promised treat that they worked far longer and harder than they might have otherwise in establishing order to the colony so that they could prepare for their celebration.
She had a very bad feeling that Ivy and her troops were going to have their hands full trying to keep an eye on the visitors. If these males were the least bit like their human counterparts they weren’t going to have any trouble at all coaxing the colonists off for a tryst during the festivities.
Chapter Eight
Hunting wasn’t something Eden cared for. She had mastered the skill like all of the other colonists because the project leaders had considered it necessary. They would take what they could to establish the colony from Earth. They would begin to produce their own food on the new world as soon as possible, but it was thought to be unavoidable that there would be a void that would have to be filled, where they would have to supplement the food that remained from their trip with available resources until they managed to establish their own supply through agriculture and animal husbandry.
Protein was in shorter supply than anything else. They’d produced much of the food for the trip in route in the ship’s garden and everything that could be transplanted to the surface had been and was already beginning to flourish.
Meat was another matter. Except for what had been processed and packaged, they had no source but the ‘pops’, frozen embryos, they’d brought with them and they couldn’t even begin to develop their farm animals until they’d had time to investigate whether the introduction of these animals would upset the natural balance of New Georgia.
If they were to have a meat course at the celebration, they were going to have to chase it down and kill it.
As revolting as that thought was, Eden was as hungry for real honest to god protein that hadn’t come from a freeze dried pouch or a tin as everyone else was. Moreover, she considered it essential to practice what she preached, not simply order someone else to do it.
Sometimes that could be a real hardship. This was one of those times when she would have preferred to send someone else to handle the job.
After the probes had assimilated the data on the local beasts, therefore, she selected a group to accompany her and set out on a hunting expedition. Three days of disappointment followed. Logically it seemed to her, the same techniques used on Earth should work here, but the native beasts weren’t cooperating. They found tracks. They found droppings, but they didn’t find any targets they could hit.
After the third day, she acknowledged that their method was probably the problem. A half dozen hunters stumbling through the woods sounded like a herd of buffalo. They were scaring their prey off by trying to stay together for the sake of safety.
There hadn’t been any threatening activity from the Xtanian compound, regardless of what Ivy seemed to have expected. On the fourth day, Eden broke up the hunting party and sent everyone off in a different direction. No one was particularly happy about the prospect of wandering through an alien landscape alone, but they were all armed, both with bolts for their hunting bows and phazers for anything else, communicators, and even personal locators and vitals monitors in case anyone was injured and unable to call for help.
The strategy seemed to be working. Eden came close to nailing two beasts that appeared to be mammalian. She didn’t succeed, but she at least managed to sight something and fire at it. As the morning wore on, however, and the prospects of capturing anything dwindled, she made her way toward the small stream that bisected the valley, hoping she might come upon some tardy arrival at the watering source.
She wasn’t prepared for what she did come across. The sight that met her gaze when she finally reached the roaring noise that told her there was at least a small waterfall, or rapids, nearby so completely stunned her that she simply went catatonic for many moments, as frozen as if she’d been hit with a stun ray.
Sure enough, there was a tiny waterfall.
Baen was standing in the middle of the rush of water without a stitch of clothing on. When the frozen state of shock finally wore off, banished by the unaccustomed sound of fluttering wings, she discovered that he was staring back at her, a half smile playing about his finely etched lips.
Aside from the curling horns that sprouted from his skull and the leathery wings he’d just shaken the water from, there was nothing about his anatomy that looked the least bit alien--except there seemed to be more of everything and he was completely hairless except for that on top of his head, leaving nothing to the imagination.
Dragging her gaze from the impressive male genitalia to his face, Eden felt color rise in her cheeks and pulse as she met Baen’s gaze and saw the half smile.
She was in no state to interpret his expression and torn between a craven need to charge off in full retreat and an unaccustomed desire to completely assuage her curiosity and study him to her heart’s content.
“I--uh--beg your pardon. I didn’t realize there was anyone here bathing.”
A frown creased the space between his dark brows, but his expression was puzzled, not irritated.
It dawned on Eden after a moment that, although she’d brought the translator in case of need, she hadn’t really expected to meet up with any of the Xtanians. The headset was off and curled around her neck.
She was suddenly uncertain of whether she really wanted to set her weapon down to adjust the headset. They were completely alone in the woods. If his intentions were to do her harm, now would be a very good opportunity for him to do so. No one would know but what the attack had come from some of the local wildlife. He tapped his ear and for the first time she noticed his ears were formed into a peak at the top, almost elfin in shape.
Abruptly, he started toward her. Panic washed through Eden, but it didn’t occur to her to raise her weapon and fire. It also didn’t occur to her to run. She simply stood where she was, unmoving, bolted to the ground by her chaotic thoughts until he walked straight up to her, grasped the translator and fit it firmly on her head.
His palms grazed her cheeks as he adjusted it. His hands were chilled from the water, but it wasn’t the coolness of his hands that sent a shiver through her. Even though at least a foot separated them, she felt the warmth of his body, felt bathed by his pheromones as if caressed, and the shiver that went through her was an awakening that was both unexpected and unwelcome.
“I did not understand your words.”
Eden gaped at him. To save her life, she couldn’t remember what she’d said for several moments. It took an effort to gather moisture into her mouth. When she finally did, she swallowed audibly. “I apologized for intruding,” she managed finally. “I didn’t expect to come upon anyone.”
He nodded, his gaze moving from her face, over her breasts and downward. She almost butted heads with him when she looked down to see what had caught his attention, for he leaned down at almost the same moment.
She would certainly have come off the loser in that head butt, she thought wryly, studying the horns at close range for the first time.
He took her crossbow from her limp hand. Instinctively, Eden’s other hand crept upward to rest on the butt of her phazer pistol, but he didn’t seem to notice as he lifted the hunting piece to study it. “This is for hunting?”
“The phazers burn the meat,” Eden responded.
Baen’s gaze flickered from the crossbow to the phazer on Eden’s hip. When he saw her hand was resting on it, he lifted his gaze to hers for a pregnant moment and finally returned his attention to the bow, handing it back to her almost reluctantly. “I have something similar to this.” He frowned. “Had. We were not allowed to bring many personal belongings because of space and weight limitations.”
Which she supposed explained why his quarters were so painfully uncomfortable looking.
She struggled to think of a response to the comment that would keep the conversation going. She didn’t want to say they’d had limitations, as well, since the Xtanian’s were laboring under the impression that her party was ‘native’ to this world and she feared at least some of the amiable relations they’d had thus far were due to that misconception.
She also felt uneasy about offering to let him use it.
It wasn’t as if he was unarmed, though. His weapon was lying with his clothing a goodly distance from where they stood but he was big enough and close enough that his physical presence could have been enough of a threat if he’d felt the inclination.
Someone had to make the first overture of trust.
