“Sold? You’re actually owned by someone?”
“It might help if you stop thinking of me as a person. While that’s great for my ego, it’s not very factual. Mock Ils are designed to be compatible with one and only one owner, so all programming is geared to that one individual, and his or her happiness and wellbeing are our number-one priority.
“My individual is Tedra, Dalden’s mother,” Martha added. “And her happiness includes her family’s, which is why I was sent along on this retrieval trip, not just to recover the Altering Rods but to make sure her son returns home in one piece. Remember her son, the Sha-Ka’ani who has decided that you’re the only woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with? Do you really think that he would intentionally hurt you by messing with your mind?”
“I’m trying not to think. Thinking right now is going to lead to a nervous breakdown.”
“I wouldn’t allow that.”
“You wouldn’t be able to prevent it.”
“Sure I would. Or have you forgotten the option I was going to use if Dalden had just had his fun with you and left you behind? You can be made to forget us and everything we’ve revealed to you. Is that what you want? To never see Dalden again, to have him leave you behind?”
“And the alternative is? To be taken off into deep space? To never return here, never see my family again? That is what the bottom line is here, right?”
Martha made a tsking sound. “One thing that hasn’t been mentioned yet is that in the universal scope of things, Dalden’s family is about as rich as rich can ever get, for the simple reason that they own the largest gaali stone mine in existence-power that the entire universe is in need of and is willing to pay just about anything for. So with the right inducement, I’m sure you could convince your lifemate to bring you back occasionally to visit your family.”
“I didn’t get asked if I want to be his lifemate,” Brittany said in a small, resentful voice.
“Warriors never ask. On Sha-Ka’an, it’s a male decision that females have no say in. But just out of curiosity, what would your answer have been if you were asked?”
“Before all the rest of this was revealed to me, or right now?”
“Never mind. I’ll ask that question again someday, but right now, you’ll just say something emotional that has no bearing on your real feelings. Humans tend to do that a lot. Silly of them, and half the time those wrong answers cause even more hurt feelings, all of which could have been avoided with a little honesty up front.”
“You have no idea what I’m feeling. You couldn’t even begin to-”
“Now there’s where you’re wrong,” Martha interrupted in a purring I’m-ready-to-impress-you tone. “You’re not used to a computer of my caliber yet, but you’ll find that it’s pointless to argue or disagree with me, simply because my forte is probabilities. So even if I don’t have all available facts to work with, I can still come up with the answers. Let’s take yourself for an example.”
“Let’s not-”
“Too late. I’m proving a point, and I’m a bit hard-nosed when points need to be proven. You flipped over the warrior when you first saw him. There was no getting around it, you were hooked. Even thinking him ‘foreign,’ which was probably at the bottom of your list for acceptable mates, couldn’t detract from the kind of attraction you were in the grips of. You threw up all the standard roadblocks your people favor for stalling the inevitable, but it took no more than a couple of intoxicants for you to break down all barriers and jump in with both feet to a full commitment. And you did commit yourself, by the way, which was all the ‘yes’ he needed to make his own decision to bind you to him for life.”
“I’m not agreeing with you,” Brittany said stiffly and with deliberate emphasis. “But what has any of that to do with now, with this ship, with your ridiculous assertion that you’re aliens from outer space?”
“It’s offworlders, doll. That’s what we’re called. We’re no different from your own people from Asia or India. You wouldn’t understand their language until you learned it. You wouldn’t take to their culture because it’s not yours and you naturally prefer your own. But you can visit them and get along with them and might even like their countries and peoples well enough that you want to stay. The only difference between them and us is, instead of hopping over an ocean for a visit, it takes a spaceship for us to do so and vice versa. Besides, it’s not that you don’t believe any of this, it’s that you don’t want it to be true. And it’s time for the final proof, so you can get around to relaxing and seeing this as an adventure rather than your worst nightmare.”
“You want to rip my life to shreds and I’m supposed to find it adventurous?” Brittany snorted.
“You’re going to be the first from your world to travel into deep space. You’re going to see things that will astound you. You should be excited by the prospect, not crying that you want it to all go away. The facts I have assimilated from your planet show your species to be much more bold than what you’re showing me.”
It was said in a derogatory tone. If the intention had been to insult, it worked wonders. “What final proof?” she bit out.
“You might want to have a seat,” Martha said, and one of the chairs in the room that were bound to the floor turned in Brittany’s direction. “And keep an eye on that wall of observation screens that I’m going to turn on with brief explanations for each. Biggest and center is our frontal view. I’ve been raising us from the ocean floor while we spoke. No point in hanging around down there anymore when we have business to complete on the other side of your moon. We’ll be on the surface in a moment, and then high-speeded out of visual range of the planet’s surface, so sit.”
Brittany bolted toward the indicated chair and dropped into it, gripped the arms for dear life. “There’s no seat belt!” she pointed out in a panic.
“What am I, an amateur?” Martha’s tone turned aggrieved. “There isn’t a pilot born who has a hope of flying these things better than I. Don’t worry about the speed, doll, I adjust gravity within to accommodate for it. You’ll only feel a slight pull and shift in weight.”
The screen, had turned on to reveal mostly a torrent of small bubbles in the water outside. Martha’s voice was heard vaguely echoing distantly in other parts of the ship, warning anyone else on it that flight was imminent. Another screen lit up, but with a large dark mass in it that looked like a misshapen rock.
“This ship is capable of disguise, and that’s our current one. Nice rendition of a meteor, eh? I believe we even made some of your local newspapers when we arrived.”
Brittany’s eyes rounded on the computer as she recalled Jan telling her about the meteor that disintegrated just before it would have caused widespread disaster. “There were other UFO sightings last week. You didn’t hide yourself in the ocean immediately?”
“That wasn’t us. That was Jorran’s captain being stupid. Watch the screens, I’m switching to a cloud disguise for the takeoff. Less conspicuous, since rocks are known to drop out of space to the surface of the planet, but not the reverse. And you’ll be able to see through it, while anyone else will merely see a dense cloud-for a millisecond, just long enough for them to discount it.”
The middle, larger screen revealed the break to the surface of the water, while the smaller screen showed a cloud hovering over the ocean. Another screen came on, showing a bottom view, and the ocean quickly became an entire view of the planet from the sky that steadily shrunk in size as it was surrounded by black space. The main screen now showed the moon steadily growing larger.
Brittany was beyond speech at that point. Had she just been taken off the planet with no hope of being returned to it? Or were these screens she was viewing mere computer-simulated special effects, made to look real?
30
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“DON’T BACKTRACK ON ME, GIRL,” MARTHA SAID IN A sharply annoyed tone, somehow reading Brittany’s mind just from her expression. “I’ve delayed Dalden get
ting here with the takeoff. He hates takeoffs, hates spaceships, hates space travel, and will be glued to a chair right now just as tightly as you are. His planet is not high-tech, if you haven’t gathered that by now, but since they’ve been discovered, they’ve been forced to deal with the rest of the universe, which wants one of their resources. Now, you were accepting everything you’ve been told for a moment. Don’t revert back to thinking we’re trying to pull one over on you.”
“I’ve seen space movies, Martha, and seen how they do the special effects to make them look real.”
“And I thought Tedra wrote the book on being stubborn,” Martha mumbled, then, in a more perky voice, asked, “How would you like to walk on the moon?”
“Are you out of your mind?”
A chuckle. “There you go mistaking me for a person again. The more apt comment would be ‘out of your motherboard’.” Another chuckle. “No, it won’t take but a moment to land there, we’ve landed. And we happen to have an emergency exit here in the Control Room that I’m opening-”
“Wait! Don’t do that! Don’t I need a spacesuit? The atmosphere isn’t breathable-”
“Not to worry, kiddo. This battleship is capable of landing on a planet, no matter what it’s made of, and creating its own air. I’ve released a domed shield around the ship and filled it with a breathable substance. Go ahead, the platform extending out from the door works like an elevator to lower you to the surface, currently in single-person length. It can be further extended to accommodate up to thirty people comfortably. The enclosing handrails will retract as soon as it touches ground, so you can get off.”
Brittany stepped to the doorway. She didn’t step on the short platform. Some twenty or thirty feet below was the surface-of the moon. She began to laugh, and only half hysterically. The moon, and she was within mere feet of it. A few rocky bumps, a few dents, but otherwise a flat gray surface lit almost white by the overhead lights on the dome. Beyond was infinite black space-the sun didn’t reach this side of the moon. But inside, the dome was well-lit. It was a large dome, mammoth. It encompassed a really big ship.
“You’re not going outside?”
“No, I’d rather our astronauts hold that distinction. They went through hell to get up here, while you make it seem like mere child’s play.”
“Sweetie, you’re comparing apples and oranges. This battleship, which makes this seem like child’s play to you, was designed by a people that have been in existence for more than twelve million years. How many years have your people been evolving? Look at your own age of inventions. In just a few hundred years, just about all the known improvements of your world came into being: electricity, flight, mass communication, convenient travel, and so forth. Look at your history and what you had available prior to these inventions. And imagine what you will create a thousand years from now. Your people are progressing normally; they are just still young compared to some of the worlds in other solar systems. If it’s any consolation, there are other worlds out there younger than yours that haven’t advanced nearly as far as yours has.”
Brittany glanced back at the console. “Really?”
“Most definitely. Take Jorran’s planet, Century III, for instance. Medieval in government, advancement, and mentality. They’ve been discovered, could buy modernization, but prefer their feudal way of life and a government that favors only a select few, the ruling house. And until those High Kings get toppled in revolution, nothing will change there. Another thousand years could pass and they’d still be medieval.
“Jorran is one of those High Kings of Century III, but the only one without his own kingdom,” Martha continued. “It was his intention, with the rods he stole from the planet Sunder, to make your country his kingdom first, then your entire world. He might have succeeded. The Sunderans haven’t reached the space age yet, either, so they couldn’t track Jorran down to retrieve their rods. We just happened to be passing by on our way home and picked up their distress call-and knew Jorran for the jerk he is, so we decided to put canceled to his plans. Our good deed for the century, you could call it.”
“So you didn’t have to come after him?”
“No, indeed. But by the time the proper authorities could have been notified to pursue him, he would have been long gone. And even if they could have found him eventually, the damage would have been done. We already had him on tracking, were able to follow him, were the only ones who had a chance of stopping him before he ruined too many lives.”
“And Sha-Ka’an?” Brittany said. “How does it fit in the age of development?”
“Sha-Ka’an is unique. It’s not really barbaric, that’s just a convenient name the modern worlds give it. It’s perfected some crafts beyond manufactured quality without the pollution of factories, has an ancient formula for making the strongest steel ever created that even a laser can’t penetrate, has palatial-like architecture in some of its cities, regulates birth control as well as sexual aggression, treats gold like you would common metals-”
“How can they regulate sexual aggression?”
Martha chuckled. “With another thing unique to their planet, the dhaya plant. The juice made from it will put even the strongest sex drive on temporary hold, and no amount of stimulation can break through its effect until it wears off naturally. In wine form it will prevent pregnancy.”
Brittany frowned. “Why would they want to do away with sexual aggression?”
“Hold up, you’ve gotten the wrong impression. Dhaya Juice is only taken in certain situations, when the warriors go off to hunt alone-and when they raid.”
Brittany made a face. “Are we getting to the part that gives them their ‘barbarian’ label?”
“You betcha-at least, part of it. There’s a difference, though, from what you’re thinking. You hear the word raid and associate it with killing, pillage, mayhem. That’s not what Sha-Ka’ani warriors are about. They don’t go to war with each other. There are a lot of countries, each with their own leaders, but all in all, they consider themselves one. Raiding for them is sport, something fun to do. They’ll go in, take something from their neighbor, try to keep it, but if the neighbor raids and retrieves it, they’ll shrug and say well done.”
“So it’s just a game to them?”
“That’s one way to put it. As for the other reasons for the label they wear, I’ve already mentioned it’s a cultural thing, the way they view things and view themselves, the antiquated laws they uphold. These things differ slightly per country, yet one thing is universal on the planet. Warriors treat each other as equals, but treat their women like children.”
“Excuse me?”
“You have enough to assimilate for now without getting into the things that still drive my Tedra nuts. And Dalden will be here in about five seconds. He’ll be glad to know you no longer think you’re dreaming.”
“Like children?” Brittany persisted. “You were joking, right?”
No answer, and the main door to the Control Room slid open to reveal seven feet of very annoyed male.
31
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DALDEN WAS REALLY ANGRY, THOUGH BRITTANY WAS A BIT surprised that she could actually tell that, since it wasn’t revealed in his expression. It was more that she sensed it, or maybe just that she was expecting it, after Martha had warned that he was annoyed.
He walked into the room, took her hand, and started walking out, dragging her with him. He didn’t pause as he told the computer, “You have interfered with a warrior and his lifemate. You know that is unacceptable, Martha.”
“Beneficial interference is acceptable,” Martha disagreed. “Besides, since when do I ask permission when something needs doing? It’s not as if there’s a way to stop me, or that anyone using common sense would want to, when my actions calculate all probables beforehand.”
“Is there not?”
“Not what?”
“A way to stop you.”
“Tedra would never agree to pull my plug,” Martha replied in sm
irking tones.
“My mother is still answerable to my father. Would he hesitate?”
“Now just a minute��� Dalden, come back here!”
He didn’t, nor was it necessary for him to even stop, since Martha’s voice followed them down a wide corridor and into an elevatorlike cubicle whose door closed, then immediately opened again to reveal a different corridor, this one with a slight curve to it. There had been no movement of the cubicle; at least, Brittany had felt no movement of the thing, yet it had apparently transported them elsewhere on the ship��� oh, God, she really was starting to, believe-everything.
“It’s a good thing, actually, that it’s going to take us nearly three months to get home.” Martha’s voice continued to follow them from each wall monitor they passed, every twelve feet or so along the corridor. “Plenty of time for you to settle into your commitment and possibly even get over some of the anticipated hurdles.”
Mentioning expected problems didn’t work to stir Dalden’s curiosity, though it sure did Brittany’s. He said merely, “Warriors have long memories.”
“More’s the pity,” Martha mumbled, and then said, “It worked, by the way, which is the bottom line, if you haven’t figured that out yet. You certainly weren’t getting anywhere in the convincing department. And what’s more important: that she accept what you are and where you come from, or that she continue to think you were lying to her, which was going to put a big dent in the recent bonding you did?”
He stopped at that point to look down at Brittany, wanting confirmation. “Do you?”
She knew what he was asking her, and although she would have liked to relieve his mind, since he did seem to be worried about whether she believed them or not, she had to consider her own peace of mind first. And there were other explanations, albeit elaborate, incredibly expensive ones, yet ones much more palatable than that she was traveling into deep space. When she thought of what it must have cost to create a studio big enough to give her the impression that she was looking out at the surface of the moon when she’d looked through that door��� it simply boggled the mind, the effort these people were going to in order to fool her.
Heart of a Warrior l-3 Page 18
