Alien Mine (36 page)

"What? How could he do something like that? Did your mother have any brothers? Uncles? A father?"

How terrible. If Zacar had killed her family, she would never have come to love him. No matter what he did afterward. She remembered how he'd killed the raiders that first day, the calm way he admitted to killing the man they'd experimented on. Suddenly, his mother's action made a terrible kind of sense.

"She had many male family members." He stood up and walked over to the small table where she kept her few toiletries. Putting the salve down with a loud crash, he kept his back to her.

"Were any of them warriors?" Even as she asked the question, she knew the answer. This story had no good aspect to it.

"No. They were courtiers who wrote poetry and played music every day," he said, clearly puzzled at men preferring such pastimes.

"And your father killed all of them." It was a guess, but not a wild one. She had no doubt Zacar was capable of killing anyone who stood in his way. She could only imagine his father was ten times worse.

"They resisted," he said simply.

"How horrible," she whispered. She was shrinking back from him instinctively, imagining him killing humans who resisted him.

"They would not swear loyalty to Zyrgin," he said so reasonably he might have been talking about the melting snow.

"So if you conquer a planet and they refuse to swear loyalty to your planet--"

"We kill them."

She thought of Julia. Of the innocent children. Of the little girl she'd once seen in town who walked with crutches. Her lungs seized. "Will you do that on Earth?"

"Yes."

"You'd kill anyone not loyal to you? Even women and children?"

"Ultimately, yes. But our plans have changed."

"What? You're not going to conquer Earth anymore?" Her heart started to beat with loud optimistic drumbeats. Would he be willing to live quietly with her? Raise children and make a happy life for them?

"I will conquer Earth, but it would not be much of a war now."

"So, what? You're going to wait? I thought you said our civilization was on the verge of collapsing. If so, it wouldn't be much of a fight."

"The leader decided to run an experiment."

She didn't like the sound of that. "What kind of experiment?"

"I am to see if we can settle in without anyone noticing. If we could take our time breeding little warriors and prepare dwellings, the war would be easier on our breeders."

"Women. For heavens' sake, use the term
women
." Natalie took a deep breath. "So you're still going to conquer Earth, but only in, what? A hundred years?" She still couldn't believe he could conquer a whole planet with one spaceship and a hand full of warriors. Still, she felt overwhelming relief. In a hundred years, she might manage to change his mind.

"I want to re-evaluate the situation in two hundred of your years. What I learn here might be useful to us in the conquest of other planets."

"Oh?"

"In our culture, conquest is everything. Every Zyrgin has two goals in life. Conquer any other civilization we come across and protect our breeders. We always had strict laws for that. Hurting any female who swore loyalty was never socially acceptable in our culture. But we didn't have laws about caring for our women, either."

"But now you do?"

"Yes. Because my father shamed us by not taking proper care of his breeder, we now need laws to ensure it never happens again."

He'd told her a few times that being called
breeder
was an honor. Now, for the first time, she started to understand what he meant. She'd been so focused on what the word meant in her culture, she never stopped and asked what it meant to him.

"Is your father the warrior you talked to as a hologram that day outside the cave?"

"Yes."

"How many children do you want me to have?" she asked.

She wanted to know what was in store for her but she also wanted to take his mind off his family's past. He had such a sad look in his eyes whenever he mentioned his mother and honor.

"We used to insist on about twenty warriors."

Twenty
?

They live for a long time. Over several centuries, it's not that many
, she tried to convince herself.

In centuries past, it was normal for women to have up to fifteen children. But she knew her real problem was having children with a man incapable of loving her. Of having children that wouldn't need her.

"When I taunted you about having children until your fertile period ended, I was playing on your fears." He turned and looked at her. "What I did not tell you yesterday is that it was in ancient times that warriors could insist on the amount of children they wanted. Now it is up to the breeders to decide."

"So what is the average number of children a woman gives birth to on Zyrgin?"

He hesitated. "Fifteen little warriors."

"Oh." All that pain for nothing. "But you won't force me to give birth fifteen times?"

"No."

She wanted to kick him. "So that story about the fifty warriors in a spaceship breeding enough warriors to take over a planet was a lie?"

"They could multiply in a short period but that is not our plan anymore."

"That's just semantics, Zacar. You lied to me."

"I will never lie to you again. But, Natlia, you have to understand, there will be times I cannot tell you everything."

Natalie thought about it. When her father was alive, he'd never talked about his time at the pharmaceutical company, and his silence wasn't wholly due to his wanting to forget the bad experiences there. Then something else occurred to her.

"So why did your mother have so many children?" If it was only the old days that women were forced to give birth year after year, why did his mother give birth to ten children with a warrior she despised?

"She thought every time she became pregnant, it would be a child that she could love. She knew it was impossible but she still hoped for a daughter. Instead, they were all born warriors."

She opened her mouth to ask if his mother had ever cared for him, but thought better of it.

As if reading it in her eyes, he answered, "No, she never cared for me. I am almost as big as my father. Of all of us, I look the most like him. She wanted children who looked like her."

What a truly sad situation. His poor mother, trapped on a strange planet with a man who had killed her family.

Could a man who was so affected by his mother's suicide blame her for having asthma?

"What about my asthma? I don't know if my babies will be born with it."

Yesterday he'd looked as if he hated her for having a weakness.

"Viglar said they are fine, with no trace of the asthma. He cannot cure you, but he can keep it dormant. It will have to be carefully managed. My bite will not cure it but eventually it will be better."

"You don't mind that I'm weak?"

"No."

After all her agonising over it, could it really be this easy? Did she run around hiding her inhalers for no reason at all?

"How many little warriors do you want, Natalie?" He put stress on the word
warriors
.

"It's all right. I understand that they will be born little warriors and not babies. And I don't know how many little warriors I would want." She'd have to give birth to these two first.

He walked over and sat down again. Taking her hand in his, he fiddled with her fingers. "Our women have been extinct for a long time now. We do not have marriage customs anymore."

"How did you marry before, when there was still women born on your planet?"

He looked up briefly and then studied her hand again. "It was a ceremony that lasted three days but I think you would prefer Earth custom for marriage. It is best we leave Zyrgin marriage rituals extinct."

"Why? I'm sure most women wouldn't mind observing some of your customs."

"They involved chains and that was some of the kinder rituals."

"Oh." Best not to go there.

She was still wondering what kind of rituals their marriages used to involve when something moved over her finger. She looked down to see him sliding a huge diamond ring onto her finger.

She gaped down at it. "Where did you get this?"

"In town," he said, as if he'd simply gone shopping for a ring. "Do you accept what this means?"

"What does it mean?" She wasn't about to make assumptions and find out a ring in their culture meant divorce or something equally horrible.

"That we are husband and wife, according to Earth customs."

"Oh," she said. He'd obviously missed a few steps, like the actual ceremony, but this was all she needed. His commitment. If he loved her, she didn't need a church wedding or a stunning dress. Though, she might push for a honeymoon.

"Now, you have to say
all right
."

She looked down at the ring. He was trying to change, to adopt some of her customs and she loved him for it. "Do you know what love is?"

She didn't doubt that he cared for her, but she still wondered how deep his emotions ran. He seemed to be made up of warrior strength and very little human feeling. But she'd rather have honesty now, than pain later when she realized he wasn't capable of the feelings she wanted from him.

"When Murdoch took you, I wanted to destroy everything in my path to save you. If he had demanded I hand over my sword in exchange for you, I would've done it."

"Your sword?" She didn't know if she liked being compared to his sword. She wanted to be more important to him than some inanimate object.

"When we reach full warrior status, we are gifted with a sword. This sword only appears to our hand. No other warrior can steal it or use it. It represents everything we are."

"It's really that important to you?" Natalie asked, unable to fathom putting that much importance on a mere weapon.

"It is linked to our honor and to give that up, is to give up a part of myself."