The Spawning (17 page)

Maybe she just wasn’t
trying
hard enough to summon useful information from her years of education, though? Or maybe some of the others could recall something they’d learned that would be helpful?

Her grandmother had known how to do things, she remembered, and yet, at that,

she didn’t take the raw materials and make things—even when she canned her own vegetables. She went to a store and bought jars and lids and whatever else went into home canning. She had kitchen appliances to help her prepare the food.

For that matter, her grandfather had had all sorts of things he could use to help him
grow
the vegetables.

And he went to the farm supply store for the seeds and fertilizer.

One thing at the time, she told herself when she began to feel so overwhelmed

and hopeless she felt like screaming. They needed to focus on managing the bare minimum of basic needs and then they could aspire to better.

They didn’t manage to complete the hut before it finally grew too dark to gather more materials. She thought they might’ve managed something significantly smaller, but they had to accommodate the entire group. The up side to that was that they were all so exhausted from their work that they, or at least Miranda, managed to sleep better than she had since she’d arrived.

Khan didn’t return to help the following day, but since she knew he had his own work to do and he’d given them a half a day of his time, Miranda tried to take it philosophically.

She hoped that it was just that he had his own work to do, anyway.

A handful of them spent the day learning ‘weaving’ from Stacy and helping her

tie the poles together. Unfortunately, they’d discovered it just didn’t work to put the poles up and
then
try to tie them together. The few that had been set had to be taken down again. The women who’d spent so much time digging holes and putting them in the ground gave her the evil eye most of the day.

It was nice to know that she was making friends.

The following day a Hirachi by the name of Ren spent half a day with them

chopping down bamboo poles and vines. They began sleeping inside the developing shell as soon as they’d managed a couple of sections of wall, but it was a solid week before they managed to complete even the frame of their ‘hut’, which was actually more of a long tunnel since it wasn’t closed at either end.

It also didn’t work that well in keeping the rain off of them, they discovered. The best that could be said for it was that it kept
some
of the rain off.

They spent their second week on the new planet making mud pies to try to fill the THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 75

cracks between the poles and trying out various types of foliage as ‘shingles’ for the

‘roof’.

Near the end of the third week, the Vernamin they’d heard about arrived.

As exhausting as their labors had been, Miranda had spent a good deal of time

considering how she might approach the Vernamin and try to set up some sort of trade with them. She knew well enough what she wanted in trade—she had a list about a mile long. The catch was whether or not they could find something equally desirable to the Vernamin.

She had a very bad feeling that was going to be a resounding no as soon as she spotted the triangular shaped ship drop from the sky and move closer and closer until it finally settled near the beach inside the compound.

The entire group huddled together when they spotted the ship, gaping at it, she didn’t doubt, like cavewomen. They hadn’t seen technology this advanced
before
they’d been taken, though, and they’d lived under the most primitive conditions for damned near a month—which was all it apparently took to revert them to babbling awe at the sight of an object that reflected real civilization.

Khan approached the ship the moment the gangplank came down.

A simpering group of the women sidled a bit closer, as well.

It was the shirkers, Miranda realized immediately—the, thankfully, small segment of the group that worked harder to
not
work than anybody else in their enclave.

It didn’t take much imagination to figure out what they’d decided to offer in trade.

She should’ve tumbled to it sooner, Miranda thought wryly, considering they’d been primping since they’d gotten up that morning.

Not that ‘primping’ was very effective when they had so little to work with. All they had were the ugly shifts Khan had gotten them and weeks of hard labor had begun to tell even though the material was surprisingly resilient. Beyond that, they didn’t have so much as a comb and finger combing only went so far. Her hair, everybody’s, was beginning to look like dreadlocks.

Anger surged through her. She knew damned well that group wasn’t likely to

barter anything to share with the whole, probably not even anything particularly useful.

She tamped her irritation. She still intended to approach them before they left to find out if there was anything on the godforsaken ball of dirt besides
jasumi
that they could interest the Vernamin in.

“We may have to consider leading that little pack off into the jungle and leaving them there,” Deborah said tightly.

Miranda glanced at her. “Don’t tempt me.”

“The only way you could do that,” Stacy, who’d come to stand on her other side commented, “is if you could convince them there was a boutique out there, and I don’t think even that bunch is that stupid.”

“The problem is,” Jan Hutton retorted, “they aren’t stupid enough. They’re just self-centered, manipulative, and smart enough to be really dangerous.”

They quieted as they saw legs appear on the ramp leading down to the dirt—about six. Frowning, they stared hard at the ramp as the legs moved slowly down the ramp until the body they belonged to appeared. Miranda was so stunned and appalled she couldn’t even think for several moments.

“The stock market took a killing blow today when the tit/pussy index hit rock

THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 76

bottom. In other news … Nothing to trade with the Vernamin …,” Deborah announced, a note of grim satisfaction in her voice when the ‘welcoming committee’ let out a gasp, whirled, and beat a retreat back toward the main group.

Jan and Stacy both snickered.

Miranda expelled a gusty sigh. “Unfortunately, that’s all too true.”

Deborah sent her a sharp look. “Don’t tell me you were thinking about offering pussy for goods?”

Miranda glanced at her. “At this point I’d be willing to offer just about anything to get a few things—shit! Even a fucking comb! I begin to understand why the ‘natives’

were so willing to trade for beads and blankets.”

“God! What I wouldn’t give for a blanket!” Stacy exclaimed.

Miranda turned to look at the others. “Well, ladies, we’ve hit bottom. After generations of owning the one commodity men would do almost anything to possess we now find ourselves in the position of owning the one thing no fucking body is interested in. Any suggestions?”

The three women looked at each other and shrugged. “I don’t know what bug

people, that already seem to have everything they could possibly want, might be interested in,” Deborah said finally.

They watched while Khan and the Vernamin who’d come out of the ship settled

to haggling. Realizing after a little while that it looked like it might be a lengthy discussion, Miranda sat down to wait. Her ankle, despite the demands she’d made on it, hardly bothered her anymore unless she walked too much or stood too long with her weight on it. It still wasn’t healed, though, and she was too tried in general to stand.

Khan, it seemed to her, looked as if he was pretty worn down himself.

She strongly suspected that was their fault. From what she’d been able to see, all of the Hirachi worked from dawn to dusk. She’d noticed, though, that Khan, and any of the others that took time to help them, seemed to make up the time lost by working later and starting earlier.

She felt guilty about it. She hated that they were all so helpless that they were an added drain on the Hirachi, but she didn’t see that they could do anything about it except try to learn how
not
to be a burden. She didn’t think that was something they were going to be able to achieve anytime soon.

The hut, pathetic as it was, was their greatest achievement so far and although they were all proud to have it, it was so far from actually being comfortable that it hadn’t made a big difference in the ‘quality of life’. It was just as well, she thought wryly, that they had to work so hard just to survive. It didn’t leave a lot of time to be miserable about anything else.

She was miserable on a personal level, though, whether she consciously

acknowledged it or not. She had been since she’d learned that the Hirachi weren’t ‘land mammals’ as they were, but primarily sea mammals. When she’d finally broken down and told everyone, they’d been as stunned as she had been, but she didn’t think very many of them had actually carried through with their thinking on the discovery like she had.

Maybe because
they
hadn’t been thinking, as she had, of trying to bridge the species gap and looking for a ‘significant other’ among the Hirachi.

A surprising number of their group had actually seemed delighted to discover the THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 77

Hirachi were ‘mermen’. She supposed it had appealed to the romanticism in them.

It might have her, too, except that she was too practical not to see that it presented huge problems. She certainly wasn’t disgusted by it. The discovery hadn’t diminished their appeal to her by one iota.

Unfortunately, she had a bad feeling the same couldn’t be said for the Hirachi, not when they were already appalled by the diminutive size and ‘weakness’ of the Earth women.

Deborah, whom she’d discovered with a great deal of delight, was a lab

technician, or had been in her previous life, had pointed out that they were clearly mammals, regardless, and there were strong indications that they were closely enough related to the Hirachi that it was possible the trader hadn’t lied to them.

Not that being a lab technician would be helpful to them per se, but it meant

Deborah had a strong background in science that could be useful.

In some ways, she was almost sorry for it, for that matter. She didn’t know if Deborah knew enough to be a reliable judge of the situation or if she was just as hopeful as everyone else seemed to be.

She supposed, though, that it didn’t matter much. The Hirachi had been friendly and helpful … and pretty much kept their distance otherwise. It wouldn’t have been so bad if they’d
seemed
to be keeping their distance to avoid temptation, but she hadn’t gotten that impression. It seemed a lot more like disinterest to her.

Except for the comment Khan had made the day he’d volunteered to help them

gather the things for their hut. She’d spent a lot of time wondering since then if the comment had carried any personal connotations, if he’d been flirting with her even causally. He’d said that she was beautiful—not that she was or ever had been and she didn’t have to have a mirror to know she looked like pure hell now—but he’d been so offhand about it it was hard to take it as a compliment or even interpret it to mean he thought so.

She’d thought he
might
be hinting, at the time, that he’d consider being her lover, but, except for the other comment when she’d asked him point blank what constituted a

‘desirable’ woman, he hadn’t made any attempt that she could interpret as a come on. He was always polite and helpful—not especially friendly. Teron and Gerek and even Adar were a lot more friendly, and also polite and helpful.

Actually, Teron was almost as standoffish as Khan. He’d touched her—all of

them—more than all of the Hirachi put together, and he still managed to make it so completely impersonal it was impossible to take it any other way. He might make her feel warm all over when he examined her ankle and then bandaged it again, or when he’d checked to make sure her cuts and scrapes were healing properly, but he didn’t linger and there were no ‘accidental’ brushes or touches. He hadn’t given her, or any of the others that she’d seen, an opening to try for something a little more interesting.

Gerek was downright playful, which actually surprised her considering she’d

bashed him over the head with the water bottle at their first meeting. She was sure she hadn’t really hurt him—the bottle wasn’t that hard, but she certainly hadn’t expected him to like her after she’d bowled him over right in front of the other males.

Unlike Khan and Teron, who’s features were pleasing in a totally rugged, manly way, Gerek was just downright handsome and the charm of his easy smiles and the gleam of amusement and mischief generally to be seen in his eyes only emphasized, to her THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 78

anyway, that this was a male used to being appreciated by females. Don Juan had nothing on the guy.

Adar was ‘cute’, as ludicrous as it seemed to think about a six and half foot, probably three hundred pound man built like a tank being cute. She thought it was because he was a little bashful, though.

She would’ve been willing to screw any of them if she’d thought they were

interested. She was pretty sure ninety nine percent of the other women viewed them in pretty much the same light, though, and also that she scored somewhere around mid-list in so far as actual ‘assets’ and even lower on the nubile scale since she was pretty sure she was the oldest damned female in the group. She thought Deborah was probably closest to her in age and still younger, but the vast majority seemed to be in the under twenty five age group.

It was hard to say for sure when nearly half of the women present had the

maturity of teenagers.

Deborah nudged her after a while, distracting her from her unpleasant reverie, and she looked up to see that the Vernamin representative was heading back toward the ship.

Her heart beating unpleasantly in her chest, she got to her feet, brushed the dirt from her butt, and resolutely struck off to intercept him—or her.