She moved through the next several days like a robot, mechanically going about her life and tending to Cory. She wasn’t certain when she would have awakened from her trancelike state if not for the baby, but one day as she sat just outside the habitat with him he pushed himself upright and smiled up at her. She stared at his hopeful little face for a long moment before she felt warmth begin to seep into the coldness inside of her and dispel it. “Look at you!” she said, smiling back at him and grabbing for him when he began to lose his balance. “When did you learn how to do that, you smart boy!”
His tentative smile broadened into a grin when Bri lifted him up until they were face to face and smiled back at him. Her heart seemed to stammer.
Frowning, she studied his face more carefully. Did he really resemble Kole, she wondered? Or was it nothing but her imagination?
He frowned back at her, looking uncertain, and Bri dismissed the thought, kissing him until he began smiling again. “We should show Consuelo what you can do. I’ll bet Manuel can’t sit up yet!”
The moment she said it, she felt sick to her stomach. Going to see Consuelo meant going close to Kole’s habitat, and she wasn’t certain she could stroll by and act as if it didn’t bother her that he had a new breeding partner.
Even if not for that, he’d asked about the baby, and she didn’t want to talk about it. If he asked again, she’d start blubbering again.
She didn’t know why she was so emotional over it. It was unreasonable given the circumstances, all the circumstances. She could’ve understood her behavior better, and the awful sense of loss, if she’d been far enough along to actually begin to think of it as a baby. Or if she’d been trying a long time to get pregnant--there were any number of situations where her reaction would’ve been completely understandable even if hard to deal with.
It was because they’d taken it, she realized abruptly, discarded her baby girl as if she was completely unimportant without even asking if it was important to her! And it was to her!
She just didn’t know why.
She heaved a sustaining breath. She had to deal with this. She’d dealt with everything after her mother’s death. She could deal with this, too.
But she hated the Sheloni more with every breath she took, and if it was the last thing she did, she was going to annihilate the bastards!
Cory drew her back from her dark thoughts with a noisy complaint, and she forced herself to relax, to smile when she didn’t feel like smiling because he needed to see that. He’d just begun to open up to her again. She wasn’t going to let the Sheloni spoil that, too.
She felt like a prisoner on the way to the executioner as she crossed the yard, taking care not to look in Kole’s direction at all, though she could see him in her peripheral vision well enough to know that he was watching her. Focusing on her breathing to try to stay calm, she smiled and waved at Consuelo. Consuelo smiled and waved back, hurrying to the area where they usually sat and talked.
“What happened?” Consuelo demanded in a low voice the moment she settled.
It was as if the question itself jerked a hard knot in her throat. Bri focused on situating Cory while she fought it, managed to swallow. “I just … I wasn’t feeling well,” she managed. “Cory’s doing better!” she added brightly.
Consuelo studied her searchingly for a moment. “Is he?” she asked finally.
Relief flooded through Bri, and she smiled at Consuelo gratefully. “He’s stopped being so fussy and standoffish. And he’s learned to sit up by himself! He’s getting so big and strong. Just like his ….” Bri stopped and cleared her throat. “Do you watch movies? American movies, I mean?”
Consuelo stared at her blankly for a moment. “Yes. I love movies. I haven’t seen many American movies, though,” she said slowly.
“Slaver movies?”
Something flickered in Consuelo’s eyes. She frowned, but thoughtfully. “I don’t like slavers.”
“Me either. Actually, I really like
murder
stories the best, because there’s always a puzzle to figure out--and suspense--especially
spy
movies where they have something everyone’s after and there’s lots of guerrilla action and they use
codes
. Because they can’t just say something outright, you know. The bad guys might figure out what’s going on because they use all sorts of special devices to listen in and spy on people.
“I don’t suppose you ever saw
five
little Indians?”
Consuelo frowned, thinking. “I think it was six.”
It was Bri’s turn to frown, but try though she might she couldn’t recall ever having seen more than five Sheloni. She shrugged. “Maybe it was six. You’d think it would take more that six little Indians to man a row boat, wouldn’t you?”
Consuelo considered that. “Maybe we’re both wrong,” she said finally. “You should talk to the others and see if any of them remember the story.”
Bri didn’t want to talk to them. She was still mad about that comment that woman had made about Cory. The two of them weren’t near as likely to manage what she wanted, though, as all of them together.
Nodding, she got up and leaned down to pick Cory up. Settling him on one hip, she turned to look at Consuelo again. “Just think about, ok? Really hard, because it really bothers me when I can’t remember
exactly
what something is.”
She met Kole’s gaze as she turned to head to the other side of the yard. Her heart seemed to stutter to a halt before it kicked in again in overdrive. He didn’t attempt to speak to her, however. He merely watched her as she moved to the edge of her enclosure nearest the group habitat. Forcing a smile to her lips, Bri called out to them with false gaiety. “Hello fellow Earthlings!”
The women, who’d been gathered in a knot talking to one another, turned to look at her blank faced with surprise.
“Consuelo and I were just talking about movies, but she isn’t a big movie buff like I am. I was wondering if any of you might remember this really old movie called, The Great Escape?” She paused for several moments, waiting to see if anyone seemed to grasp what she was trying to do. Most of the women continued to look at her blankly, as if they suspected she’d gone off the deep end, but several moved away from the others, focusing on her expectantly. “It was an 007 movie, I think, and he sent cryptograms to the other side because of the Nazis’ surveillance.”
“I remember that movie!” one the women called back, moving closer. “But it was ….”
A second woman joined her, cutting the first off. “Yeah! I remember it, too. 007 was kick ass, but the Nazis gave me the creeps.”
Bri nodded. “I thought that was the name of it. The Nazis were really good de-crypting, though, so they had to be careful.”
The woman nodded. “I’m Angie. Com … PC software specialist.”
Bri blinked. Slowly a real smile curled her lips. “Nice to meet somebody from my home state! Any familiarity with Trojans, worms, or bugs?”
“Mostly from the extermination end. I’d try to grow one … just for a pet … if I had a proper habitat.”
“Oh, that’s too bad, but maybe we could improvise?” She paused when the buzzer sounded. “Maybe we can play movie trivia sometime?”
Angie curled her lips in a facsimile of a smile. “That would be fun! Relieve the boredom. It’d be nice, though, if we could figure out a way where everyone could play.”
Bri couldn’t resist glancing at Kole. “Everyone?”
The woman thought it over, turning to look at the Hirachi nearest her. Obviously, when she’d said everyone, she’d meant the women who couldn’t speak English among them. Finally, she shrugged. “If you want them to play, I guess. You know more about them than I do, I imagine. Unless they’ve seen Earth movies, though, they wouldn’t be any good at movie trivia, but we might be able to think up another game and include them. The more the merrier, right?”
“I’ll give it some thought,” Bri said and turned, hurrying back to her habitat with Cory. She tried to tamp the hope that had suffused her like a high energy drink, fearful that so drastic a change in her wouldn’t go unnoticed, but it was impossible to hold all of it inside.
Settling on the floor to play with Cory, she divided her attention between him and the thoughts whirling in her mind. A software specialist! Of course, the likelihood seemed remote that they’d be able to use Angie’s talent, but at least it was
something
. She had to wonder what talents and/or skills the other women had that could be useful.
They needed to know that so they could figure out what they had to work with and formulate a plan. They also needed to know everything they could about the Sheloni and that didn’t seem like nearly as impossible a task with so many pairs of eyes and ears. They were closely monitored, and the
Sheloni
had obviously mastered the languages, which meant they would be very, very good at breaking down speech patterns and figuring them out--which meant they’d be good at codes, too.
She still thought the movie trivia game could work well for them to pass information back and forth. It seemed doubtful the
Sheloni
would be familiar with their movies, and they could refer to plot lines without actually saying anything at all. The tricky part would be passing the info from one person to another, because they didn’t all know the same language.
Maybe it would be better, though, if everyone didn’t know everything?
Maybe it would also be a good idea to include the
Hirachi
? However they felt about Earth people, they had a common enemy. And the
Hirachi
had been with the
Sheloni
longer than anyone else. Whatever she thought about their customs, Bri knew the
Hirachi
were neither primitive nor ignorant nor stupid. They might well have a plan of their own they had been working on since they’d been taken. Their war-like society, it seemed to her, meant that they would be well acquainted with battle strategies. Of course, given their brute strength they might not be familiar with guerrilla tactics--which they would have to use. She was pretty sure they outnumbered the
Sheloni
, but the
Sheloni
still had a tremendous advantage. They had an army of robots, which were more powerful even than the
Hirachi
. They knew the territory--the ship and the planet they were going to--better than any of their captives--who knew almost nothing about either one--and they had superior technology, whereas their captives had no technology they could use and no understanding of the
Sheloni
technology.
Those thoughts made her hopefulness take a nosedive, but she refused to allow defeatism to overwhelm her. There
had
to be a way.
Realistically, she knew the odds of ever getting home again were almost non-existent, because even if they could take over the ship and figure out how to fly it, they knew nothing about space travel. There hadn’t been enough exploration from Earth for any of them to know how to navigate such vast distances.
It would still be better to be free of the
Sheloni
. They could find a way to survive, and they’d have an easier time of it without the
Sheloni
standing over them ready to exterminate them.
Or their children.
She
could
kill. She knew she could now, and without suffering a moment’s qualm. Any doubts that had lingered before had been banished by the cold blooded way the bastards had snuffed the budding life inside of her only because it had been a girl.
The only thing she regretted about knowing she was going to find a way to kill them was that she knew she was going to have to strike with whatever means came to hand. She couldn’t make them die slowly in horrible agony, unless she, or the group, was unable to devise any other method of wiping them out.
The one thing that worried her was that she was afraid she wouldn’t be useful in the rebellion she was instigating. She wouldn’t be satisfied with merely being a bystander or part of the cheering section.
It was almost a surprise when she realized that. The person she had been before wouldn’t have wanted that either--she would’ve wanted to get as far from something that unpleasant and potentially dangerous as she could possibly get.
This was a personal battle, though. She wasn’t a bystander here, watching and condemning cruel behavior toward others.
That was only part of it, though. She, like everyone else, had been brought up to believe in the ‘system’ set up to protect them. One called for help, or justice. Not only was a person discouraged from helping themselves, they were likely to find themselves on the receiving end of justice if they ‘forgot’ they were just supposed to hope somebody came, not do anything.
It was not an altogether happy thought. She’d liked the person she was. Maybe she’d been fairly colorless and commonplace, but she’d been comfortable with herself. Maybe she wouldn’t like the new self as well.
She still meant to push herself, though. She knew it was the only way. She would deal with the ugly side of herself later. At the moment, she was only relieved that she had a vicious side she could call upon. To survive, she needed the strength it gave her. To ensure Cory survived, and any children she bore had a fighting chance of survival, she needed to cultivate her own inner barbarian. Soft would only get crushed.
Wrack her brain though she would, however, she couldn’t think of anything she was capable of that was really useful. In her other life, she hadn’t really been anything but a glorified housewife--a housewife for hundreds of working mothers who needed help in providing nutritious home-cooked meals for their family--but still just a housewife. As fulfilling as she’d found that at the time, as much pride as she’d taken in the thought that she was helping to support family life by giving families the chance to sit down to a dinner together, she couldn’t see that it was anything that could be turned into warfare--not unless the
Sheloni
would let her bake them up a batch of poison brownies.
Shelving that anxiety for the moment, she considered the
Hirachi
, wondering if the
Sheloni
had implanted the knowledge of their language in all the women. If she was right about their motives, it seemed that they would. The
Sheloni
seemed to be counting on the Earth women to nurture their new crop of slaves and ‘tame’ their wilder side. A common language was necessary for a group to work together.