Alarm of War, Book II: The Other Side of Fear (8 page)

Leila smiled.  “’Larger marital units,’” she repeated, bemused.  “Such a dry, clinical phrase for something so profound.  For hundreds of years Moroccan and Israeli cultures had the traditional husband and wife marriages.  One man, one woman, bonded together.  Then after the massacre at Ait Driss, with winter coming and the grogin packs running thick in the forest, there were so many shattered families that the people here in the mountains had to change.  Change or die.”  Leila shrugged.  “No one knows exactly how it started, but it worked and eventually became accepted as a norm.  It certainly hasn’t replaced the traditional man-woman marriage, still lots of those around, but particularly here in the mountains, it is pretty common.”

Emily glanced about to make sure none of the children were close, then leaned forward and spoke softly.  “But what if you just don’t
like
one of the husbands?  What do you do?  How do you not have sex with him, and if you do sleep with him, how do you stand it?”

Leila smiled and touched her arm.  “I won’t say it’s not a problem, because it does happen.  But most of all it means that all the wives and husbands are really, really careful when they pick a new spouse.  It’s a big decision, and sometimes the new spouse will come and live with you for a few months, kind of on probation. Jealousy and greed are the things that ruin it usually.”  She shrugged. “It doesn’t always work out and sometimes the new spouse has to leave.  It’s hard, Emily.  Hard enough to match personalities and to be sexually compatible with one person, with more it just gets harder.”  Her eyes twinkled.  “But when it works, it works
very
well.”

Emily gazed across the room.  “But Yael and Danny and Amin all seem so
different.
”

Leila laughed.  She leaned forward and whispered,  “That’s called
spice.” 
Emily looked uncertain.  “I guess if you’re born to it, it doesn’t seem so strange-“

“Born to it?  Gods of Our Mothers, child, didn’t Rafael tell you?  I’m from Victoria, same as you.  I came here when I was nineteen, looking for a job and maybe a little adventure.  When I learned about these mountain marriages, I couldn’t believe my ears!  Then when I met Amin and Aicha and they asked me to join them, well, it was quite a shock, quite a shock.  But-“  she grinned mischievously and for a moment Emily glimpsed the bold, impetuous girl Leila had been at nineteen – “I must say it was pretty exciting.  And no, you don’t have the same relationship with all of the men, but you most certainly do have a relationship with each one, and each one is different.”  Leila’s eyes drifted upward and she smiled.  “When I need comfort and safety, I go to Amin.  When I need a rousing good time, Danny, and when I need to really talk about something, Yael.  It’s more complicated than that, of course it is, but whatever your need at the time, or your mood, there is always someone to turn to.  Not for everyone, no, but my goodness, it can be fine when you’ve got the right people.”  Her face softened in memory.   “And they have the most
beautiful
wedding ceremony.”  Her fingers touched the token hanging on a leather thong about her neck.

Emily’s curiosity, never far below the surface, welled up.  “Leila, I noticed that all six of you wear something around your neck on leather thongs.  What is it?” she asked.

Leila lifted the thong from beneath her blouse and held it out.  Emily leaned forward to see it better.  The leather thong was old and worn perfectly smooth.  At the bottom hung a small stone carved in the shape of a
shatah mallah,
the tree known as ‘Dances with God.’  “It is the token of the Eitan family, chosen originally by Amin and Aicha when they first moved here and married.”

Emily remembered gazing in awe at the
shatah mallah
as the mountain winds blow through them.  She brushed her fingers over the necklace.  “It is very pretty.”

“I haven’t taken it off in thirty years,” Leila told her.  “As part of my wedding ceremony, Amin and Aicha tied it around my neck.  Each of them tied a knot.  Aicha tied the first knot and told me: ‘This is for love, for it is love that brought us together this day.’  Then Amin tied his knot and said: ‘This is for perseverance, so that the love may endure even when life brings us trials and hard times.  We tie these knots with joy and commitment.  These knots bind us unto you and you unto us. No one may separate us until each knot is untied.’”

“Gods of Our Mothers,” Emily whispered.

Leila nodded.  “As we bring in a new spouse, we add another knot to their thong and to each of ours.  Each makes us stronger, even during the times I am so exasperated with them I could spit!”  She laughed.  “Got to give it to these mountain folk, they know how to make a family!”

Emily thought on that awhile, trying to get her mind around everything she had heard.  She could, almost, understand the idea that three men and three women could love one another enough to share a marriage and each other, but one thing still eluded her.  “But doesn’t it bother you that you don’t know who the father of your children is?” she asked finally.

Leila snorted and shook her head impatiently.  “Of
course
I know.  Oh, I know the men say that, but every woman here
knows
.  We don’t plan it, though sometimes a woman might make sure she sleeps with a particular husband at the right time, but what really matters is that every one of those men treats all of the children as his. That’s the ironclad rule, the one we absolutely insist on. The children in this marriage family do not lack for love, Emily, they most certainly do not.”

A little overwhelmed, Emily allowed herself to be taken back to the dining room for tea, which was made with a pad of butter and a pinch of salt, then infused with steamed milk.  She sipped it tentatively, finally deciding it was probably an acquired taste in a culture where both fat and salt were hard to come by.  Meanwhile she listened as Rafael’s mothers and fathers argued the merits of a new school proposal for the province, while the children played a complicated strategy game that seemed to involve collecting hidden treasures from the forests and hiding from marauding grogin.  Hours later, Hakima and little Nouar took her to her room for the night, where she lay down,  wondered for the briefest of moments if the morrow could possibly be any stranger than today and then crashed into sleep.

* * * *

In the morning the mothers greeted her warmly and fed her a hot breakfast while the fathers helped Rafael pack the horses.  Yael gave Rafael a hug, shook Emily’s hand and went inside.  Danny and Amin led Rafael and Emily to a barn that Emily quickly realized also served as the family armory.  One wall had three dozen rifles of various makes: slug throwers, sonic rifles, flechette rifles, pulsers and even a plasma rifle.  Some had scopes mounted, some did not.  Ammunition and spare energy packs lined storage shelves.

Amin walked to a stand that held a large map of the area from the village all the way to Ait Driss at the top of the mountain. A short, stout man with heavily weathered features, he was the family’s outdoorsman and knew the woods and the mountains as well as anyone in Ouididi.  He pointed with thick, stubby fingers that had never graced a piano.  “We’ve had three sightings between here and the Temple,” he explained mater of factly.  “Big pack, maybe a super-pack that has absorbed two or three smaller packs.  Seventy, maybe eighty grogin, led by a female alpha.”  Amin looked at Rafael.  “If they find you, don’t try to run.  Horses will tire out before they do.” 

Rafael nodded.  Grogin had oversized cardio-vascular systems, with one large heart in the main chest cavity and a second, smaller heart that served to re-oxygenate the blood near the grogon’s haunches.  Their lungs were like furnace bellows.  They could run for hours as fast as a horse could gallop.

Amin looked hard at Rafael, then at Emily.  “Listen now,” he said to Rafael, but Emily understood he was really talking to her.  “You run into this pack, you get your back up against something so they can only come at you from the front, then you get the electric fence up as fast as you can.  Then you hit the panic button” – he held up a transceiver with a large red button on its face – “and we’ll come for you as soon as we can.  The energy pack on the fence will last for twelve hours.  If you can climb a tree, make sure you go at least thirty feet up.  Big grogin can jump twenty feet easy.”

“Gods of Our Mothers!” said Emily.  “You guys sure do know how to show a girl a good time.”  The men chuckled, but Rafael looked at her seriously. 

“Emily, the chances are we won’t even see the grogin.  They hunt over a territory hundreds of miles long and it might be months before we see them here again.  But if you want, I’m happy to just take you back to the valley.  This is your vacation, your time to rest and relax.  I can take you down and you can be back in Tinjdad in a day.”

Emily considered it.  Tinjdad had art museums, books stores, movie theatres and miles of beaches; she could have a wonderful few days there.  But Admiral Douthat had specifically wanted her to see the Temple of Ait Driss, and Emily couldn’t help but wonder why.  And, she admitted to herself, there was Rafael.  Spending a little more time with Raf in the mountains had a certain appeal, more than spending time alone in Tinjdad.  She wondered with some bemusement if that was part of Douthat’s plan as well.  Or perhaps the good Dr. Wilkinson.

“Go back to Tinjdad and give up a chance to ride Rosie in the Atlas Mountains?  Not on your life.”  Amin looked at her and nodded once.  Danny smiled.  Rafael looked at her hard, studying her, then nodded as well.

“Okay, then,” said Danny briskly.  He had served with the Fleet Marines and was now the village armorer.  “Time to pick a weapon for each of you.”  He turned to Rafael.  “You want the usual or have they given you an even better toy to play with since I saw you last?”

“The usual, I think,” Rafael replied.  Danny handed him a heavy caliber pistol and extra ammunition clips, a flechette rifle and the heavy plasma rifle with the twenty pound energy pack.  Danny turned to Emily.  “And you, young lady?”

The sonic rifle was a Bull Pup model, similar to the one she had trained on at Camp Gettysburg.  She took it down off the rack and examined it closely for damage, ejected the energy pack and examined the contact points carefully, then snapped it back into place.  Keeping the safety on, she activated the energy pack and saw it was fully charged.  She turned it off and slung it over her shoulder.  “This should do fine.  I’m not a great shot, but with this I can set the firing zone to a large cone and stand a pretty good chance of hitting whatever I aim for.”

Danny nodded, but insisted that she also carry a pistol.  She picked a flechette pistol because it had almost no recoil.  They were ready to go.  With the pistol on her belt and the rifle in a sheath by her right leg, Emily felt like a storybook hero setting off into the wilderness.  Unbidden, she had a sudden vision of Cookie laughing at her, and could almost hear her say,
“Havin’ fun now, girl!”

Emily leaned back in the saddle, lifted her head to the white clouds kissing the mountain tops, and sent a prayer for Cookie’s safety.

Chapter 7

On the Dominion Ship
Tartarus

When they came, there were five of them.

At first Cookie fought them, but they stunned her with neuro-batons and chained her spread eagle to the bed.  She tried to bite them and they beat her, then stuffed a filthy rag in her mouth.  She cursed them through the gag and they laughed.

Then they took turns raping her.  And beating her.  When they were done they left her, bleeding and bruised and torn and weeping with helplessness and rage and shame.

The next day, they came back and did it again. 

And the next.  And the next.

At the end of the second month, Cookie allowed herself to go mad.

She went away. 

Deep.  Like diving into sea-green water and watching storm waves roil the surface far, far above.  All sensation was muffled.  The animal thrusts, the slaps, the curses and the beatings.  She saw it and heard it as if at a great distance.  Twice removed.  Insulated from fear and feeling.  Cocooned in the amniotic fluid of her detachment. 

Eventually they grew tired of raping an unresponsive victim.  And, for a time, there was nothing.  No noise.  No pain.  No unrelenting violation.  Peace.  Peace approaching the final blessed embrace of death.  She dreamed of Hiram and the curly haired daughter they would never have. She floated on lassitude, feeling the life gently ebb from her body. 

Then one day there was the sensation of a warm cloth gently cleaning her cuts and bruises.  A soft humming.  The cloth smelled of soap; the hands were gentle.  She tried to ignore it, but it pulled at her.  Slowly, unwillingly, Cookie rose to the surface of bleak consciousness.  She opened her eyes to a harsh light in an antiseptic room.  A young man in a white smock was washing the grime and filth from her face. There was an IV drip in her arm.  She smelled of blood, semen and urine.  Her body was a field of pain, all being harvested at once. 

With a terrible effort, she spoke for the first time in ten weeks.

“Let…me…die.”

“Ah, you’re coming back, are you?”  he asked cheerfully.  “You had me worried for a while there, but I think you’ve turned the corner.”  He smiled reassuringly.  Her eyes flickered to his name tag: Karl. 

“Yes, I am Dr. Karl.  I am the junior physician on this ship.  You probably don’t remember, but we had to perform surgery to stop the bleeding.  They, ah, well, you were bleeding a lot and Dr. Farber had to patch you up.  So you are here in the infirmary until we discharge you back to Detention.”   He smiled brightly.

Cookie could have withstood more beating and brutality, but his kindness completely undid her.  Tears sprang into her eyes and before she could collect herself she was sobbing and weeping, covering her face with her hands.  Karl sat on the edge of her bed and put an arm around her shoulder.  “Now, now,” he soothed.  “Nothing to worry about.  The worst is over, you’re safe here.”  She hugged him desperately, holding him close to her and after a long moment she felt him stir. 

Then he reached up and stroked her breast. 

“I can protect you.” He told her softly, “you’ll just have to be nice to me, that’s all.”  At first she recoiled, but then a surprisingly cold, calculating corner of her mind assessed what he wanted and what advantage it might give her.  If she went back to the tender mercies of the five guards, she would not survive very much longer, but if she used this young doctor for protection, she might be able to buy some time.  She forced herself to relax and leaned into him. His breath quickened.  She buried her face in his shoulder and let him hold her and thought,
“I’ve got you, you bastard!”