The Spawning (18 page)

THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 79

Chapter Nine

It occurred to Miranda forcefully as she strode toward the creature with as much confidence as she could manage that the trader had said it was the Vernamin who’d suggested he shop for human women to trade with the Hirachi.

It didn’t make her feel terribly warm toward the bastard. It in fact, irked the hell out of her to be forced to act humble when she would’ve liked to kill the son-of-a-bitch for having a hand in putting them in this position to start with. Trying to put it to the back of her mind, she nodded politely when the creature halted, studied her for a long moment, and finally nodded almost regally in acknowledgement.

“We’d like to try to set up some sort of trade agreement for ourselves,” Miranda began, gesturing vaguely toward the enclave of women.

The creature studied her in silence for several moments. “What do you have to trade?”

Miranda’s lips tightened in annoyance. “Nothing at the moment. I’ve come to

discover if there is anything on this world, aside from the
jasumi,
that the
Vernamin might have an interest in.”

The Vernamin sounded almost amused when it spoke again. “That would be

difficult to say when we’ve not explored this world. There could be any number of things … or nothing of any interest at all.”

She’d thought pretty much the same thing, but that didn’t prevent her from feeling frustrated. “Raw materials?” she persisted. “Vegetable, mineral, or ores?”

She thought she saw a flicker of interest in the Vernamin’s eyes, but that was hard to tell considering how strange it’s multifaceted eyes were, and there certainly wasn’t a hell of a lot of expression to its face.

“The
jasumi
is actually all three … which is why it is so desirable to us. It contains elements essential to us for propagation of our species. Also, it is a valuable energy source for us.”

Miranda nodded, feeling a spurt of hopefulness, her mind instantly leaping to the device Khan had bartered the trader for. If they could ‘borrow’ it to take a reading of the
jasumi
and find out the elements and use it to search for those elements in other things

…. “So … if we found something with some of the same elements you’d be interested?”

“Quite possibly. Assuming you might find something of interest to us, what

would be of interest to you?”

“Weapons and tools,” Miranda said promptly.

The Vernamin looked slightly taken aback. “You are contemplating making war

on the Hirachi? I must tell you I do not approve of that at all. They are a surprisingly honorable species, fierce in protecting themselves and their own, but primarily peaceful.

They have far more admirable qualities than flaws.”

Miranda stared at the thing blankly. “As it happens, I completely agree—we all do,” she said firmly. “There are beasts here that make life extremely hazardous, however—really big, ferocious things. We can’t search for trade goods—or much of THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 80

anything, actually—without some way to protect ourselves. I don’t think sticks or rocks would discourage them much. And it’ll be hard to get anything without some kind of tools.”

The creature nodded, but it was hard to say if she’d convinced it to bring trade goods when it came again.

“What about a trip home?”

Miranda hadn’t really realized that Stacy, Deborah, and Jan had followed her until Stacy spoke up.

She could see right off that the Vernamin wasn’t happy about the suggestion even before it spoke. It spread two of its arms in a strangely human-like shrug. “We did not bring you here. We have no notion of where your home world might be.”

“But you have the capability?”

Again the thing shrugged. “We have the capability of space flight, but

unfortunately not the range the Sheloni are capable of. This is why we did not aid the Hirachi in returning to their home world.”

Miranda studied the thing angrily for a long moment. “Of course it had nothing to do with the fact that they’re so good at collecting the
jasumi.”

“We would not have been happy to return them regardless,” the
Vernamin admitted, “but the fact remains that it is not within our capabilities.”

Miranda was obliged to admit that that was possibly true. Humans certainly

didn’t have a huge range of capabilities in space flight.

It was almost easier to accept it as truth than to consider the bug like aliens might be more technologically advanced than humans.

“But the trader might,” Stacy persisted.

The alien focused on her. The prolonged silence was indication enough of

thought without any sort of expression. “The Hirachi bartered for you, did they not?”

“They said we were free,” Stacy said a little defensively.

“And you feel no obligation to repay their generosity?”

Miranda felt discomfort settle with a twist in her belly. “We don’t have any way
to
repay it.”

“The female of the species always has much to offer the male,” the alien

contradicted. “It is the nature of the female to reproduce young, to nurture, to give comfort … to bring about structure, order, and culture because they have need of it to ensure the safety and survival of their off-spring.”

“They’re not interested in us,” Deborah said flatly. “We aren’t their species.”

Miranda thought the bug-alien looked almost surprised and then amused. “They

are vastly different than their brethren then. The Sheloni has sprinkled the solar system with the Hirachi they stole away from their home world. It was the Sheloni who introduced the Earth females to the Hirachi to begin with. And those who have been gifted with the Earth females seem completely content with them. They have off-spring, and thus the Earth females seem content, as well.”

“I guess they are different,” Miranda said glumly, not completely certain she

believed the tale anyway.

The Vernamin shrugged. “That will change when their spawning season is upon

them, you may be certain. They will have a great difficulty resisting the need … now that the threat of having their young enslaved or being separated from them has been THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 81

removed. And once the deed is done they will be bound to the females who bear their young.

“They are a noble species—as I said, admirable. They have suffered much,

surmounted great tragedy and hardship and still retained a noble spirit. They are strong.

Strange, they may seem to you, but there is much they have to offer your off-spring.”

Miranda smiled thinly. She was sold. She didn’t know about the others, but

she’d been sold before the Vernamin’s praise. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was trying to sell the Hirachi on the idea when
they
couldn’t claim nobleness, or anything else the Hirachi would consider desirable qualities to pass on.

She hated to admit it, and wouldn’t, but even
she
thought the Hirachi would be breeding down. Intellectually, she supposed they were on par—at least close. She didn’t think they were superior, particularly in light of the fact that the Hirachi had obviously been plucked from their own civilization and pitched into the same stone age they had—

and were thriving.

Physically, they were just plain inferior. She didn’t think size was necessarily the be all and end all of physical superiority, but the human enclave barely had the strength and stamina to survive the hardships they’d encountered thus far—and that was with
help
. If not for the Hirachi, she didn’t doubt they’d be well on their way into a downward spiral by now.

Accepting the Vernamin’s comments to mean an end to the negotiations, she

nodded. “We’ll have something to trade when you return,” she said firmly, with far more confidence than she felt. “We’ll need tools and weapons. If we do well, we’d also be interested in a few things of comfort—clothing, or at least the materials to make clothing, grooming supplies like soap and combs, some sort of bedding.”

They watched the Vernamin until it had disappeared into the ship again and

finally moved away. They hadn’t actually seen that the ship disturbed the ground much when it moved, but they preferred not to take any chance of being fried. The ship rose, moved slowly across the compound toward the bins. A beam of light not unlike the one that had snatched them up appeared below the ship. When it disappeared again, there was a large bin similar to those holding the
jasumi.
Moving again, the ship hovered over each of the bins, rather like a bee extracting the pollen from flowers, and the beam appeared once more, extracting their goods.

“It was a female,” Deborah said emphatically.

Miranda, Jan, and Stacy all turned to stare at her. “What makes you think that?”

“A male would never give a female credit for civilization—because they’re the

ones who build it. But the truth is, they would’ve been completely content to live in caves and hunt when they were hungry and nothing else if they hadn’t discovered women needed softer ‘nests’ to survive.” She grinned suddenly. “Imagine! We can thank the need to guard the pussy supply for civilization as we know it … knew it.”

After staring at her blankly, they all burst out laughing. “I’m not sure everybody would agree with that,” Miranda said ruefully. “That’s taking things down the simplest denominator, isn’t it?”

Deborah shrugged. “Everything always begins with the simplest denominator.

As some brilliant man once said ‘necessity is the mother of invention’.”

* * * *

It took giving herself a good, hard pep talk to gather the nerve to approach Khan THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 82

about the device he’d gotten from the trader. They needed it, desperately, or she didn’t think she could’ve gotten up the nerve at all.

She was only going to borrow it, though, she kept reminding herself. He’d gotten it, he said, to make sure the food they ate was safe. All she had to do was to point out that they could, and needed to, conduct their own search for edibles. As fecund as the jungle was, there was bound to be food they only had to gather—not kill. Beyond that, they needed more than protein to stay healthy.

She had plenty of time to talk herself in to it. Khan and several dozen others disappeared in to the jungle as soon as they’d finished their negotiations with the Vernamin. Miranda watched the remaining Hirachi as they emptied the bin and sorted the contents. She couldn’t really tell what goods they’d gotten for their labors, but they seemed to be very carefully accounting and distributing it.

They were excited about it. Even if she hadn’t assumed they would be, it was

obvious in the way they behaved. Ordinarily very quiet and orderly, all of them seemed tense with a sort of suppressed excitement and far more talkative than usual.

Occasionally, she even heard laughter.

It warmed her when she did, made her sad to realize she hadn’t heard it before, but she supposed it was possible that they were just in general more sober minded than their human counterparts. Or maybe it was just frowned upon because they were supposed to be—were—fierce warriors?

They
hadn’t felt much like laughing, themselves, she thought wryly. Their future was so uncertain and they’d been so miserable it was hard to find anything to laugh about—to feel real amusement about. More than one of them had yielded to a fit of hysteria over the past several weeks, laughing mindlessly over things they would probably have wept about, or completely ignored, before.

If she hadn’t been so afraid of offending the Hirachi that first time when she’d seen a display of Hirachi ‘manhood’ she thought she would’ve laughed as hysterically as Deborah had.

Not that she could ever have
ignored
that! But it certainly wasn’t the sort of thing that inspired laughter in a woman—fear, maybe—but not humor.

She’d been trying to convince herself ever since that fear of the Hirachi had

somehow distorted her perceptions, but that was a little difficult when she’d seen them a number of times since—they always went down to the water to bathe when they’d

finished cleaning whatever they’d killed to feed the women with.

No, they just had to accept that the Hirachi were big all over.

Not that it looked like they were going to have to worry about handling that much man meat.

The hunting party was gone so long Miranda had begun to wonder if they’d had

trouble before the first of the party began to straggle back into the compound. It was the men who’d gone to collect the wood for the fire and to build a spit, she saw, dividing her time after that between watching the men work at the fire pit and watching the gate a little anxiously.

When she saw the first of the hunters appear at the gate, she searched the faces of those returning until she saw Khan. Relieved when she’d scanned him for any sign of injury and didn’t see one, she transferred her attention to the others. Gerek and Teron were among them, she discovered … and Gerek was limping. Her chest tightened, her THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 83

heart fluttering uncomfortably with anxiety when she saw the gash along one thigh that had been bandaged with a piece torn from his breeches.

She didn’t know whether to be glad that Teron was among the hunters or

dismayed.

She was both—relieved that he’d been there to see to Gerek’s wound and at the

same time unsettled by the thought that he might have been injured himself—on two levels. He was the only one among them, as far as she knew, with any skills for tending the sick or injured. It was almost as disturbing to consider the horrible repercussions of losing the only ‘healer’ they had as it was to think of anything happening to Teron for his sake alone.

To think of something happening to any of them.

Had it not even occurred to her, before, that
any
time they went out to hunt they risked their lives? Or was it only that it hadn’t actually mattered to her before?