Chapter 8
Melanie kept pace with Wit, but he didn’t go back toward the lake. Maybe he would take her back to the village. That’s where she wanted to go anyway, so she stayed close to him. He jerked his head back toward the stream. “Thanks for your help back there. I never would have got this thing out without your help.”
“You must have known that when you pulled up the trap,” she pointed out. “It’s much too heavy for one person to handle alone.”
“I don’t handle it alone,” he told her. “My brother usually helps me, but…...” He glanced back over his shoulder. “He’s busy.”
Melanie stiffened. “He’s busy with Amber, you mean.”
He shrugged. “I haven’t seen him since he went to watch her cut the trees. I guess he got stuck there.”
Melanie pursed her lips. “He got stuck there, all right. They made friends, and they spent the night together in a hollow tree near the lake. We saw them there when we went to check on our friends this morning. They went off alone together. Don’t ask me where they are now.”
Wit chuckled.
Melanie hurried to catch up with him. “Does it bother you that your brother is getting cozy with an alien woman?”
He eyed her with his head on one side. “ 'Getting cozy'? I don't know that expression.”
Melanie smacked her lips. “You know what I mean. They could be hidden somewhere together right now—what’s the word you use for it? Joining—they could be joining right now.”
He stopped walking and faced her. “If Wink is joining with your friend right now, I think it’s wonderful. He hasn’t looked sideways at a female since we came back from the Paramilitary Corps. I was starting to worry about him.”
“And what about you? Have you looked sideways at a female since you came back from the Paramilitary Corps?” Where did that question come from? What did she care if he looked sideways at a female?
“There were no females to look sideways at,” he told her. “Rika and Anlea are the only females of reproductive age in the village. Rika's joined with Sonlu, and Anlea…..”
“Anlea’s what?” Melanie interrupted. “Why didn’t you look sideways at her?”
Wit smiled. “Anlea’s my sister. And she’s taken, too.”
Melanie turned bright red. “Oh. I’m sorry.”
He set off with the moggie swinging from his hand. “That’s the problem. We have so few females that, as soon as they reach maturity, they’re taken. This planet is crawling with males and not enough females. If Wink joins with your friend, it's the greatest miracle I could have hoped for.”
“So how’s it going to work?” she asked. “If Amber joins with Wink, and Natalie belongs to Kyan, and Tina belongs to Arno, then….” She didn’t finish her sentence.
“Then that leaves you,” he told her. “You’re the only female among your party not attached to someone.”
“So how’s that going to work?” she asked. “How’s one female going to make it on a planet crawling with unattached men. You won’t start fighting over me, will you?”
He smiled. “We don’t fight over females. The females choose who they want to go with.”
“And the others?” she asked.
“The others have to suffer.” He gave the moggie a good swing to make his point.
She kicked a bunch of rotten leaves on the ground. “I don’t like that very much.”
“Then don’t choose anybody,” he told her. “Stay unattached. Then you can mate with anybody you want.”
Her head shot up. “What?”
“You heard me,” he replied. “If you choose to remain unattached, you can ‘get cozy’, as you call it, with a different man every night of the year. You can satisfy every man on the planet on his chosen night of bliss and delight.”
Melanie stared at him. Then she grimaced. “You’re mocking me.”
“No, I’m not,” he replied. “You don’t owe anybody anything. If you don’t want to make the others suffer, then don't choose a mate.”
“Is that permitted?” she gasped.
“Permitted?” he repeated. “Permitted by whom?”
“I don’t know.” Melanie waved her hand. “By the elders, or by your customs, or whatever.”
“No one could stop you, if that’s what you wanted to do,” he told her. “No one can make you do anything you don’t want to do. If you don’t want to choose a mate, you won't be forced to do it. I don't know how your people handle these things, but….”
“Our people mate with one person,” she snapped. “Get that through your head. We don’t get cozy with a different man every night of the year. What do you think we are?”
He cocked his head to one side. “I’ve seen men at the gatherings. I’ve seen how they behave toward the female slaves. I thought your race might be the same.”
“Did you see any human men there?” she asked.
“Of course not,” he shot back. “The Toom only take human females, and the rest of your species stays at home on your planet. Am I right?”
“Then you never saw any man of my race at the gatherings, did you?” she told him. “You’re jumping to conclusions.”
“If you tell me human men don’t do that sort of thing,” he countered, “then I believe you.”
If only she could fall through the ground and disappear. “No. I hate to admit it, but they do do that sort of thing. The females do it, too, if you want to know the truth. But my friends and I aren’t like that. Natalie is joined to Kyan for good, and I’m sure Amber feels the same way about Wink.”
He started walking. “Then you’ll find a man you want to join with, and the rest of us will carry on the way we always have until the population recovers.”
He broke out of the trees into another reach of the same stream bed. The sun dappled the rocks, and the water sang its sweet music through riffles of gravel. Wit bent over the trickle and cupped the water into his mouth. Then he squatted on the grass and pulled a shiny knife of polished black glass out of his waistband. He set the moggie down in front of him and set to work cutting it open.
Melanie squatted opposite him and observed his quick movements. “I didn’t know you’d been to the gatherings.”
“No one knows except my brother and Kyan,” he replied. “We kept it secret from the rest of the village.”
Melanie clenched her jaw. “I’ll bet you did.”
His eyes darted to her face. “You don’t understand. We went there with the Paramilitary Corps. We worked with the Galactic Police to arrest the traffickers. That’s how we wound up there.”
She stared down at his hands flicking back and forth over the dead fish.
All of a sudden, his hands stopped. She looked up to see him staring at her. “Did you think I went to the gatherings as a guest?”
She didn’t answer. She kept her eyes fixed on the blood stain spreading over the grass.
He stared at her and waited for her to answer, but when she didn’t respond, he humphed and shook his head and went back to work. He muttered under his breath, as much to himself as to her. “The gatherings made me sick. I couldn’t stand to look at the women there. I never would have set foot near them except in the line of duty. After we busted three of them, Wink and I agreed to leave the Corps to come back home.”
He talked on to himself with no expectation that she would answer him. “I suppose some people might think that makes us weak. We couldn’t stomach the job, and then those poor, wretched women traveled on our ships to the rehabilitation centers. We had to pass them in the corridors on our way to the commissary for meals. No man with a beating heart could stand it.”
Her eyes crept back to his face. Her voice cracked when she spoke. “And your brother feels the same way?”
“Of course he does,” Wit snapped. “We’re not monsters, you know. We’re not Toom.”
“What about Kyan?” she asked. “He’s been to lots of gatherings, going undercover to rescue the slaves. He and Natalie went undercover together, and they performed before the crowd to find Tina and Amber and…...and me.”
He wadded up the moggie’s guts and flung them into the bushes. Then he wiped his knife on the grass. “I don’t know how it is for Kyan. Maybe if you had a strong mate like your friend Natalie to go undercover with, it would be different. I suppose he didn’t perform with any real slave, did he?”
“Of course not,” she whispered.
“There. You see?” he shot back. “No man could live with himself if he had. He certainly couldn’t show his face on his home world if he treated another living creature like that.”
He took the bloody carcass to the stream and washed it clean. Then he set off through the trees again. Melanie didn’t move. She stared at the sunlight playing on the water as it cascaded over beds of gravel. She didn’t listen to his footsteps fading into the distance.
The light and the whisper of water calmed her and carried her away into a dreamworld where the past didn’t exist. Nothing existed, not even her. She was nothing but a dream, like this stream. All at once, Wit’s voice broke in on her reverie. “Are you coming?”
She didn’t turn around, but her ear detected him standing right behind her. She kept her eyes on the water with its soothing pattern of rainbows and sparkles. He would lose patience in a minute, and then he would leave. How she would find her way back, she couldn’t guess. But that didn’t matter. She would be by herself, at least.
But he didn’t leave. He stood still and waited. Then he squatted down next to her. “Did I say something to offend you?”
Her throat tightened. What was the point of trying to explain? He said how he felt about the gatherings, and the Toom slaves, and everything else. He wouldn’t listen to a word she said. She should have known better than to talk to him in the first place. She should stick to the Eblians who didn’t know anything about her past.
Sure, the Eblians knew the Toom were evil sex traffickers, that they enslaved women and altered them with regeneration beds, and then sold them to the highest bidder at enormous gatherings with thousands of males who used the slaves one after the other. Knowing that was a far cry from experiencing the gatherings firsthand.
Melanie couldn’t stand to look Kyan in the eye if he wasn’t partnered with Natalie. He understood, and he loved Natalie just the same. No other man could hope to understand her innermost feelings. No man could understand the dark secrets lurking in her heart.
All at once, Wit sat down next to her on the bank. He gazed out at the water along with her. He sat in silence for a long time. Then he murmured, “Was it the Toom?”
Melanie closed her eyes. “You don’t understand.” Her voice cracked. “I can’t get them out of my head. It was as terrible as you say, but the regeneration beds made it wonderful. They say not many women respond to the beds the way we did, but it was wonderful. Maybe only the bed was wonderful, but it was the most wonderful experience I ever had. I don't think I could ever feel that way again with any ordinary man.”
He listened in silence.
“Maybe you’re right,” she went on. “Maybe I should forget about choosing a mate on Eblian. The Eblians are good people. You wouldn’t want a woman like me.”
He didn’t say anything, and Melanie’s heart sank into her shoes. He would get up and leave for certain, now that he knew she was that sort of woman. She was exactly the sort of woman he came home to avoid.
At last, he did stand up. Melanie closed her eyes again. The sunlight put her to sleep. At least she could fall asleep and escape this for a little while. She could escape being herself, being the kind of woman a man like him would walk away from and never look back.
He stood next to her on the bank. Then he bent down. He picked up the rock moggie in one hand and took hold of hers with the other. He tugged her upwards. “Come with me to my house. I’ll give you something to eat.”