The Spawning (11 page)

anxiety about the water, but she was pretty sure it was just a typical salt-on-open-wound reaction. She hadn’t realized how cut up she was from her little adventure until she began scrubbing salt water all over herself.

She hoped to god there wasn’t anything toxic in the plants.

Deborah settled beside her after a few moments. “Do you think that was …

wise?”

Miranda glanced at her. She didn’t have to think hard to figure out what the topic of conversation was. “Probably not.”

Deborah seemed to wrestle with something for a moment. “They’re pissed off

THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 48

because they think you endangered them.”

Miranda turned to stare at her. “Exactly how did they arrive at that brilliant conclusion?”

Deborah’s lips tightened. “We don’t know anything about these monsters,” she

said pointedly. “What’s to say they wouldn’t retaliate on the ones handy if one of us got away?”

Anger swelled in Miranda. It took her a moment to realize that not all of it was defensive. She was offended by Deborah’s reference to the Hirachi as monsters. She didn’t really want to examine that at the moment, though. “Look at it this way,” she said tightly. “I tested the waters. Now we know that we aren’t allowed to leave the compound, that they will come after us and bring us back. We know that, even if furious—and believe me Khan was—they won’t hurt us. They’ve given us food, water, tended our injuries, and Khan insisted on getting clothes for us and some way to test the food to make sure it won’t kill us. I don’t think they’re monsters.”

“I guess all of us should just appreciate you ‘testing’ the waters for us?”

Miranda glared at her. “I don’t think I give a fuck one way or the other, lady! In fact, I’m sure I don’t!”

Miranda’s furious comeback seemed to diffuse Deborah’s anger or, more likely, it set off an alarm, making her aware that she was dealing with an unknown quantity. She swallowed with an effort. “You’re a cop.”

“
Was
a cop,” Miranda said pointedly. “I’m way the hell out of my jurisdiction here, to say the least. On Earth, I was a cop. Before we were taken, I had a job.
Now
, I don’t have a job. I don’t have a duty to anybody here but myself.” She made the announcement loud enough that she was sure everyone could hear and swept them with a narrow eyed, challenging glare. “We’ll
all
be better off if we try to stick together and not get into backbiting, but we all need to try to accept that this is real life. It might seem like a nightmare, but we aren’t going to wake up from it. We’re going to have to deal with it.

“I’m not going to apologize to any damned one of you for trying to save myself, so if you’re waiting for it, don’t hold your breath! If you think snubbing me and giving me nasty looks is going to hold me back for one second, don’t hold your breath. This isn’t a popularity contest. It’s survival.”

Silence reigned for a while. Gradually, so subtly Miranda didn’t even notice at first, the women began to drift in her direction.

“What do you think we should do?”

Miranda, who’d been deep in her own thoughts, lifted her head at the question

and discovered she’d been surrounded by the other women. It was Carol who’d spoken, however. Mildly alarmed at the realization that they were looking to her for answers when she didn’t have any, she scanned the faces around her. Frowning, she considered the question carefully. “I couldn’t begin to guess what their real motives might be. I don’t understand these people anymore than any of you do. Let’s suppose, though, that they’re people—not monsters—and that they’re at least somewhat like us in ways besides the physical similarity. If we can suppose that, then we can also suppose that they’re motivated by pretty much the same things we are—wants and needs.

“They bought us. There’s no point in arguing that we weren’t for sale. It

happened, and there wasn’t a damned thing we could do to prevent it. Looking at it from THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 49

that viewpoint—and the suspicion that we cost a lot—they’d want to take care of their investment, right?”

“That damned lizard didn’t seem to give a damned how well he took care of his

investment,” Joy Freemont pointed out.

Miranda thought about it and shrugged. “True, but he was a trader. One, they don’t get attached to the things they trade—it’s only valuable for the trade. I doubt he saw us any differently than he does anything else. He doesn’t worry about how the things he trades
feel
, just about whether or not they’re intact when they arrive at the trade place.

“Two, he isn’t like us—or the Hirachi. He said we weren’t physically

compatible, so he didn’t see us in the same light as he might have if we had been.

“To the Hirachi, we have a different kind of value. They didn’t buy us for trade.

They bought us for their own comfort.”

A note of hysteria had entered the clamoring voices of the women as they

responded to Miranda’s comments, which had actually been as much an attempt on her part to try to reason through the puzzle as to inform—maybe
more
to get her own mind straight. She was used to it. Whenever she was working on a case, she, and whomever she was working with, usually just her partner, Calvin, bounced their thoughts back and forth while they worked out the mystery they were trying to solve.

The babble was hard to decipher, but she got the general idea.

She shook her head at them, but she didn’t make any attempt to bring any kind of order to the discussion. She wasn’t their leader. She didn’t
want
to be their leader. She didn’t want to be responsible for anyone but herself—not in this situation.

In her job, she’d been responsible for people just like them, but that had been matters of law. This was a whole new playing field—in every way. They didn’t seem to grasp that none of their laws meant jack-shit here. The only reason they had back on Earth was because of the system, which each level, more or less, supported. Here, there was no system. She could spout law at the top of her lungs and nobody was going to back her up. She didn’t
have
an army behind her—other cops, prosecutors, judges, or jails.

“You’re saying you think we should just do whatever they want?” Deborah

demanded finally when she didn’t share any input in the discussion.

Miranda shook her head at them. With an effort, she managed to get to her feet.

Planting her hands on her hips, she looked at them with absolute disgust. “There’s no American embassy. There’s no Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines. There’s no cops, no lawyers, no judges, no jails, no weapons—
pretend
you’re all alone on a desert island and you know that nobody—
nobody
is going to rescue you.

“
Pretend
those beings over there are natives and they can eat you, kill you, torture you—do anything they want and nobody’s going to stop them.

“Because that’s the reality here. Now … you can be stupid, behave as if you’re going to be rescued, the cavalry will arrive and beat the shit out of all those bad old aliens over there and take you home where you have rights. Or you can be smart and make yourself useful and be just as nice as you can possibly be in the hope that, if you’re useful, and you’re really nice, they’ll let you live.

“I’ve got no intention of trying to tell any of you what to do or how to do it. I don’t have time to baby-sit the stupid. I’m worried about my own ass. But that’s the THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 50

way I see it and that’s the way I plan to play it.

“Make up your mind whether you agree or disagree—I don’t care. Just don’t get in my fucking way. I’m not playing the ‘let’s be stupid together’ game just so all of you can feel better because ‘everybody’s doing it’.

“Khan brought us some clothes. I’m going to claim mine—
not
because I think they can’t contain their lust—they’ve been doing a damned good job of it so far—but because it’s a lot more comfortable, and I’m not going to ignore any comfort offered.”

It was a damned shame she couldn’t just stalk off after that glorious speech, but she was handicapped by an ankle that was killing her, binding or no binding. She hobbled a while and hopped.

Deborah came up beside her after a few minutes. “Want help?”

Miranda glanced at her and finally smiled reluctantly. “I did say I wasn’t going to turn down any offers of help, didn’t I?”

Deborah looked at her assessingly a moment and finally smiled back. “You’re a bitch. You know that, don’t you?” she commented as she slipped an arm around

Miranda’s waist.

Grateful, Miranda put an arm across her shoulders. “Being one of a kind is so taxing,” she said dryly.

Carol, who’d arrived in time to hear the remark, gave her a resentful look but finally shrugged, looping her arm around Miranda’s waist from the other side. It was easier with one arm around each of them—awkward, but still easier. Holding her injured foot up, she swung between them. It still hurt every time she jarred the ankle, but not as much.

“You’ll at least admit we’ve got reason,” Carol said irritably.

“I’m not arguing the point. You can even call me Queen Bitch if you want to, but it isn’t as if I’m the only woman here acting like one. I’m just as scared as anybody else here, and just as confused and worried.”

It was a relief to reach the spot where Khan had dumped the gowns on top of her.

Settling on the dirt, she grabbed one up as Carol and Deborah did, examined it with a mixture of disgust and nausea and finally pulled it over her head and shoved her arms through the holes.

“Lovely,” Deborah commented.

“Yes, there’s nothing like having such a wonderful reminder of our voyage out,”

Carol said sarcastically. “I feel like puking just looking at it.”

“I don’t suppose anything lizard-man had had would have good vibes attached to it,” Miranda said.

“God I feel sexy! Why the hell couldn’t the bastard have forked up the clothes we were wearing when he kidnapped us?” Carol said tightly.

Miranda shrugged. “I don’t want to rain on your parade,” she said dryly, “but we’ve been standing around here stark naked since we arrived. If that didn’t give them a lift, I don’t think anything we could put on would do it for them. And, I might add, as revolting as this fucking gown is, I can’t picture my slinky little black dress faring well here. I’d be back to naked within a week at most.”

“Panties would’ve been nice,” Deborah said sourly. “I still feel naked without panties.”

“You’re really thinking about … making up to them?” Carol asked tentatively.

THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 51

Miranda thought that over. “You know, Carol, attitude has a lot to do with

quality of life. You can look at a turd and say its shit and kick dirt over it or sweep it away in disgust—or you can drop it in a hole and plant something in it and grow it.”

“Yuk. I guess I get the idea … but yuk. Did anybody ever point out that you’re really blunt?”

“Several times,” Miranda said with amusement. “And shockingly crude at times.

Sometimes it takes being blunt and crude to get through to people, though. You know they usually don’t pay any attention when you stick to polite. Anyway, I can’t help it.

It’s just the way I am—blunt. The crude I picked up from working around men all the time … I’m not really good at kicking habits, either.”

“So … you’re saying you would screw one?” Carol said in a ‘let’s get this

straight’ tone.

Miranda burst out laughing. The situation wasn’t funny, but Carol’s ‘blindness’

was. Maybe she shouldn’t have thought so, but she did. “I don’t know, Carol—Do you think anything short of a fucking Sherman tank would stop even
one
of them if they were bent on screwing you?”

Carol looked at her with fear, and Miranda felt a touch of guilt. What was the point in trying to pretend it wasn’t so, though? How was that going to help her … or any of them?

“I think we can rule out rape here,” she added after a few moments. “Don’t you think they would have already if they were like that? I mean, Khan was pretty blunt about us being seriously inferior to their own women. I don’t think he was just trying to talk the trader down on the price. Maybe part of it, but let’s face it—we’re generally more drawn to people of our own race, aren’t we? As strange as they look to us, we have to accept that we also look strange to them.”

“Maybe,” Deborah agreed a little doubtfully. “But I’ve known men that would

fuck a goat if they could get it to stand still long enough.”

Miranda snickered. “Maybe that’s why we haven’t seen any wildlife yet?”

Carol and Deborah both looked at her, horrified, and then started laughing, too.

Carol’s two ‘clubbing’ buddies joined them while they were still giggling over it like kids. Smiling faintly, the two grabbed a gown and pulled it on. “What’s so funny? I could use a laugh,” Joy said finally, suspicion threading her voice that the three of them were laughing at everyone else, or them in particular.

Miranda caught that instantly. She didn’t know if her insight into human nature was a good thing or a bad thing sometimes.

It seemed to go over Carol’s head—lucky girl! She grinned at her friends and

shared the joke.

It was really unfortunate that she was in the middle of it when Teron returned with the salves he’d promised.

Everyone fell silent instantly, staring at him wide eyed and trying to figure out if they’d been speaking English or his language. Miranda didn’t know herself. Whatever the lizard-man had done to them it had made speaking and understanding the Hirachi tongue as natural to them as English—and as thoughtless.

Miranda couldn’t tell from his expression. He seemed stiff and cool, but that could’ve been because the very fact that everybody had gone silent at one time implied that the discussion concerned him, or at least the Hirachi. It might also have been THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 52

because he’d seemed miffed with her after he’d carried her to the water, and she was pretty sure of what had brought that on—her apparent reluctance to have him touch her.