Roark (Women Of Earth Book 1) (4 page)

“The hard part comes after we land. Learning a language from textcasts is not the same as speaking it to people who use it every day.” She started to laugh. “I learned my lesson the hard way on that one. I once told a table full of dignitaries I was pregnant when all I meant was that I’d had enough to eat. Full. The textcast never told me it was a euphemism for pregnancy. I thought Vochy was going to choke on his tail.”

Mira laughed with her. “Just so you know, if a woman says she has a bun in the oven, you ask when it’s due, and knocked up doesn’t mean she was beaten.”

“Are there many buns in the oven?” Ahnyis asked as she took another cracker and loaded it with a fishy smelling paste. She must have seen Mira’s hesitation. “Professional curiosity. In local communities I usually take care of the females and their offspring. Vochy and I have found that the females in new territories tend to trust another female with that sort of thing before they’ll trust a strange male. And children love my tail,” she laughed. “Win the trust of mothers and children and the rest will soon follow. As a race, the Godan love children, particularly little girls.”

It wasn’t only what Ahnyis said, but how she said it that made Mira take notice. There was a message in that statement, but she wasn’t sure what it was. Something in her stomach curdled, but she managed to swallow her mouthful of sandwich and tried to keep her voice as falsely casual as Ahnyis.

“Why little girls?”

Ahnyis was watching her closely. “I suppose it’s because the Godan can’t have any of their own.”

Thoughts of missing children dissolved into thoughts of Roark. “What are you saying, Ahnyis? Are you telling me that Roark, I mean the Godan aren’t, um...” She waved her hand because she couldn’t think of a word she could use. She couldn’t very well say human because they weren’t, but that really wasn’t what she was asking. “Are they like robots or something?”

“Of course not. That’s something entirely different, although there are those who hold some pretty strong religious objections to some of our medical practices.” The healer’s eyes crinkled at the corners and her mouth opened in a very catlike grin.

“Ahnyis, stop teasing! You know what I’m asking.”

“I’m not teasing. The Bodusak have very stringent notions... Oh, all right,” she said as if Mira had spoiled her fun. “The Godan are fully functioning sexual beings who for some unknown reason only produce sons.”

Science was always Mira’s worst subject in school, but there were a few things she remembered. “What about that XY chromosome business? If a guy is missing one or the other, he’s not, um, fully functional. Right? And if he can’t produce those little Ys to make girl babies, he’s...”

“You’d be right, if that were the case, but it’s not. The Godan have all the necessary genetic material. It’s just that those little Ys always lose the race. They’ve tried combining them in the lab, but the result is never viable. And here’s something else to turn your very basic education upside down. The resulting male offspring is always Godan, no genetic markers from Mama at all except for skin, hair and eye color. It’s as if the mother is only a vessel and a paint brush. Researchers have been trying to figure it out for hundreds of years. No one has.” The eye corners crinkled and the grin came back. “Strictly in the interest of science, and because your knowledge is so limited, I’ll reiterate that Godan males are fully functioning and rumor has it they function extremely well. As your healer and friend, I don’t want you to think about that before you go to sleep tonight and above all, I don’t want you to think about Roark. We females need our rest.”

“No sex, no Roark, no problem,” Mira laughed. “I have no reason to think about those things.”

But, of course, she did. By 3 AM she was ready to kill the little healer for her power of suggestion and the dreams that were the result.

Chapter 4

“If Sgt. Mohawk listened to the same textcast Ahnyis did, his book was missing a few pages,” Mira muttered as she tried to figure out his current message. “Or maybe whole chapters.”

The man’s usage was atrocious and she wasn’t sure how he was chosen for the job of Local Communications and Development. It was either punishment or a joke, and the poor man had no idea how incompetent he was. He would become furious with any correction no matter how gently it was offered, but Mira couldn’t let the notices pass. No one would understand what was being offered.

On her first day, he handed her a help wanted ad and ordered a thousand copies to be distributed around the city.

“Operatives required for tedious holes in surface for alarm containers on outer limits. Reward waged on talent and capacity.”

It took her half the morning and numerous questions in two languages to figure out what the notice meant and when she did, he didn’t like the result.

“Needed: Heavy equipment operators, masons, and unskilled laborers for construction of early-warning towers surrounding the central city. Pay scale commensurate with skills and experience.”

Fortunately, Harm showed up as she was being berated for twisting the Sergeant’s words. Harm, who held the title of Prime, though she wasn’t sure what that meant, was also a War Sergeant, which she’d learned was the highest rank a noncommissioned officer could obtain. He took one look at her version of the flyer and nodded to Sgt. Mohawk.

“Good work,” he said, and Mohawk beamed.

But did Mohawk learn? No. The next day, she was given an equally garbled announcement looking for workers to clear away the rubble of bombed out buildings so repair and reconstruction could begin.

By Friday, Mira was doodling in the margins of her notebook. Every drawing was a little bowling ball head with beady eyes, a bushy mustache and the namesake haircut running between two little bumps that looked like the precursors of horns. The shape of the head, mustache and bumps were real. Since the man was bald, the haircut was her addition, as was the little arrow entering one ear and exiting the other.

She also assigned Wynne the job of finding her a thesaurus since it was evident the man had a badly mangled one in his head. Surely someone in the neighborhood had one. It would be helpful to translate Mohawk’s English into the real thing.

Harm stopped by every day to ask how things were going and if there was anything she needed. His short visits provided a break from the grumbling contrariness of Mohawk. She liked the gruff Prime and liked him more when he saw one of her Mohawk doodles.

She’d tried to slide the paper with the unflattering pictures under a stack of others, but she was too late. Straight faced and stern, the Prime held his hand out for it, and red faced and mortified, she’d handed it to him. When he looked up, his dour expression hadn’t changed, but the weathered lines around his eyes had deepened. He handed the paper back.

“That arrow won’t do a damn bit of good. There’s not enough between his ears for it to cause any damage.”

Mira looked forward to her afternoons when she taught two classes each day which she called English as a Second Language, though it was more about cultural usage than grammar and vocabulary. Different officers attended each class and she soon learned that her students found the program’s title either offensive or amusing since all of them already spoke more than one language.

She got the message in week two, when one officer asked, smiling with good humor, “Excuse me, good madam, can you direct me to the room where English as an Eighth Language is being held? I would happily attend this one, but I was born speaking two.”

Godan was the unifying language of all who served under the Godan flag, but much like Earth, each country or independent state had its own language as well. A third language was used for communication between member nations of a larger political body.

“Okay, I give up.” She laughed and raised her hands in surrender when one group tried to explain to her the web of languages, sub-languages, and dialects involved. “I chose poorly. I’m open to suggestions.” She moved her fingers in a come-on gesture. “Let’s have it. You guys don’t like the name. Give me a better one.”

“Improper English for Proper English Speakers.”

“Poor English for Officers.”

“Ridiculous Words and Gestures.”

“English in a Land Called America.”

They finally settled on Basic Idiomatic American English.

“I’m sure you realize that a name change will cause an exorbitant number of communiqués since the official name has already been filed with Supreme Command,” a serious looking officer in the second row intoned. He was a strikingly handsome young man, tall and slender with angelic eyes. If he was released into the city, the female population would be in grave danger.

“So you’re saying that somewhere in a galaxy far, far, away, someone I don’t know is laughing at me, too.”

He missed both the reference, which was expected and the joke, which was a shame. While others laughed, he nodded solemnly. “Oh, no, only in this one. We haven’t gone beyond this galaxy yet.”

Mira decided the female population had nothing to worry about. The poor man had no sense of humor.

The exchange broke the ice and what began as formal lessons turned into informal discussions spoken in Godan and English. Mira learned more than she taught. She learned that Godan not only described a nationality in the same way as American or French was used, it was also a separate race of people and a strange one. She learned this when the discussion turned to greetings.

She’d just gone over the common gesture of shaking hands and how it was sometimes accompanied by a clasp with the second hand or a touch to the arm or shoulder.

“We have something similar. We clasp forearms.” The officer demonstrated with the man next to him. There was a shoulder bump after the clasp and Mira laughed.

“Thus proving that males of any race or species have a lot in common,” she said with a wink to the three female officers in the class. “You also might see some more elaborate hand greetings that are definitely not required.”

She coerced another young Legion Officer to be her partner and proceeded to demonstrate a fist bumping, hand wiping, elbow touching greeting David had shown her when he was twelve. He’d made her practice it over and over with him until he was smooth and perfect enough to impress his friends. It ended with a shoulder bump like the one they’d just seen.

She thought the class would laugh, but when she moved forward for the final clasp and shoulder bump, her partner stepped back with a horrified look.

“What did I do wrong?” she asked immediately.

“You’re a female,” someone in the back answered.

Ah, it was a guy thing, she thought, and asked aloud, “How would you greet a female? No handshake? No air kisses?” She demonstrated that, too.

“No touching,” said the same voice.

“Particularly if she’s a Godan’s female,” muttered another.

“Why?” she asked, but no one answered.

Mira saved her question for the following day during her lunch with Ahnyis where she was greeted with exciting news.

“Vochem has received permission to open a clinic inside the city. He didn’t think he would be allowed the funding, but Roark sent word this morning. Vochem will change his title to Doctor to help put the humans at ease and take Dr. Mason with him which means I will be going out into the city, too.” Ahnyis’s cat-like features broke into a grin.

“I’m happy for you.” Mira smiled. She knew how much the female hated being confined to the grounds within the base. “But I’m confused. How does allowing Mason to go mean you can go, too?”

“I have been ordered to keep him on my leash.”

“Ah, we’re not talking literally, are we?” Mira asked warily.

“I wish it was. Then I’d have to take him home, too,” Ahnyis giggled. Her tailed rippled and snapped behind her. “Nevertheless, he is my responsibility and I am under Roark’s orders.” She squirmed in her chair.

“You like him, don’t you?” Mira asked with a grin. “You like him a lot.”

“Oh, Mira, I do, and he likes me, too. He stroked my tail yesterday. My tail! I was so excited, I almost peed my pants.”

Since learning that particular idiom, Ahnyis almost peed her pants at everything. Mira laughed aloud, though she wondered if Mason knew his action was considered a sexual overture. She decided to mention it to him when she had the chance. Now, however, she had her own questions to ask.

“Ahnyis,” she began quickly before she lost her courage, “Yesterday in class...” She told the healer everything that happened and finished with, “But no one would tell me why.”

Ahnyis shrugged and though she hadn’t blushed before, her cheeks now burned a dusky violet. Her tiny front teeth left little dents in her bottom lip. “They were probably embarrassed to talk about it. Godan males are very...” she paused, searching for a word, and nodded when she found it, “protective of their women. Very protective,” she emphasized. “It’s deeply ingrained in their culture. Feuds have begun because of it and in the early days, even a few wars.”

Something in the pit of Mira’s stomach knotted. She’d always been attracted to dominant men. Unfortunately, what she first perceived as protective strength usually translated as jealous control.

Her last and worst relationship with such a man left her fearful of her own preferences. For the next few years she only dated men with more passive personalities, but never found a satisfying relationship with any of them, either. Then Earth was invaded and dating and sex became a distant memory.

Wouldn’t it be just her luck that her reawakening interest would be for a man whose whole society was based on what she’d tried so hard to avoid?

“Just how protective are we talking here?” she asked cautiously.

“Extremely would be the word I’d use.” Ahnyis said it as if it was a good thing. “Godan males see their women as precious gifts to be protected and cared for. They can’t help it if they sometimes get carried away. It’s embedded in their culture. A man would be a fool to approach any woman already spoken for. I’m sure there are exceptions, of course, but the penalties would be severe.”

“Right. So what has that to do with me?”

Her friend gave a hesitant shrug and then said bluntly, “They think you’re Roark’s female.”

That came as a surprise. “What do you mean, Roark’s female? I only met the man once.”

Ahnyis sighed happily. “Yes, and you’ve asked about him every day since you returned. Sometimes two or three times a day,” she added with a snicker and then changed her tone to soothing. “There’s nothing wrong with that. He asks about you, too.”

“He does?” Even to her own ears, she sounded girlishly giddy. She took a breath and tried again. “He does? How odd. What kinds of questions does he ask?”

She obviously failed the course in nonchalance because Ahnyis was assailed by a fit of giggles. Mira thought those giggles could become annoying under certain circumstances. Like now.

“What?” she snapped.

“I don’t know,” Ahnyis answered, suddenly sober. “He doesn’t ask me and Vochem won’t say. He probably thinks I’d repeat it, which I would, but that’s not the point. You could ask Harm or Mohawk or any of the other half dozen spies he has keeping watch over you.”

“That’s taking stalking to a whole new level,” Mira grumbled, but it didn’t have the same creepy feel as when Anthony had stalked her years before.

She almost wished she had a spy system of her own.

First Commander Roark was away, supposedly observing his new troops and their performance in the field. Mira not only dreamed about him at night, her mind wandered to thoughts of him during the workday. She was, after all, a normal, healthy woman and he was an attractive man. And yes, those dreams had slowly become nightmares after she overheard Harm grousing about that ‘god cursed fool’ who wasn’t observing anything.

Roark was in the midst of it, fighting alongside the rank and file. Wasn’t it only natural that she should be concerned and ask questions?

“You know how he hates this end of it.” Harm was speaking to Vochem, but she couldn’t help overhearing his complaint. “He wants to be out there on the field where he belongs. He’s a warrior, born and bred, and you know the boy, stubborn as they come. He’ll do what he wants, but I’ll tell you this, he damn well better find another body to be the base’s babysitter. I was meant to die in battle and not to die of boredom while holding some prissy assed officer’s hand.”

Mira had seen the bombed out buildings and seen the bodies being carried from them, including those of her parents. She’d searched through the rubble of those buildings for the missing and injured, but those images faded before the visions she created in her mind of the golden god bloodied and fallen on the battlefield.

She wasn’t obsessed. Her days and evenings were full. She didn’t have time to be obsessed, but the seeds of worry were planted and they grew in those in-between moments when her mind wasn’t fully occupied. She needed to know that he was alive and safe. She didn’t think her questions and concern had been that obvious.

“He’s the First Commander. He probably wants to know everything that’s happening on the base,” she said, more to convince herself than Ahnyis. “He’s hardly spoken to me and all I wanted to do was thank him for all he’s done.” Mira tipped her water bottle up higher than she needed to so Anyis wouldn’t see her face.