Anya nodded, and Dr. Jonas got out her equipment, running a tester up and down each of the women’s bodies in turn. She did Anya, the oldest, first, then Nance, and Janelle. Jillian indicated that she should be the last: after doing Suse and Mimi, she set Mimi aside, and tested Jillian. Then she turned back to Mimi, and looked at Jillian over the girl’s head, as she sat in the examination chair.
“This girl is a few weeks pregnant,” she said. “And she’s a little young to be bearing a child. She hasn’t finished growing up herself.”
Jillian swore.
“You’re using those words again,” Suse accused her. “Those ugly ones.”
“This is kind of an ugly situation,” Dr. Jonas said. “Are we looking at the results of abuse?”
“Sevi will have to marry me,” Mimi said hopefully. “Maybe he’ll take me away from the Settlement.”
“Is that what this is all about?” Jillian asked the girl incredulously.
She looked at Suse, then back at Mimi.
“You two were fucking those Organization idiots because you thought that if they got you pregnant they’d have to marry you, and take you to their home world?”
“If a man gets a woman pregnant, he has to marry her,” Suse said primly. “The Elders will demand it. They’ll make him do it.”
“It used to be called a shot-gun marriage,” said Dr. Jonas. “Because an older man, usually the girl’s father would hold a shot-gun to the young man’s head, threatening to kill him if he didn’t comply.”
“Those guys weren’t going to marry you,” Jillian said, shaking her head, and sighing. “And the Settlement Elders couldn’t have made them. To those guys you were no more than warm bodies to be used, to be tossed aside as soon as they got inconvenient. And pregnancy would certainly have rated as an inconvenience.
“Dr. Jonas, there’s no way she can go home pregnant. Her people whip so-called bad girls. She’ll have to have an abortion.”
“But killing an unborn child is a sin,” protested Suse. “Mimi can’t do that.”
“But I can’t go home pregnant; the tough lady’s right about that,” whispered Mimi, her eyes filling with tears. “My parents, and the Elders will whip me if they find out that I’ve let a man who can’t be made to marry me put his thing inside of me.”
“Jill, where did you find these girls, for crying out loud?” asked Dr. Jonas. “This all sounds just incredible. Haven’t these girls received any sex education? They should have birth control clips if they’re going to be playing around with boys, and as for whipping, that’s just beyond the pale. Of course young people experiment, and some of them do start way too young. We have to protect those ones, too.”
“The Settlement is a religious colony near The Organization Facility from which Sarah ‘ported us females to Ferhil Stones. These girls were on the premises when the ‘port happened, and got caught in the net,” Jillian explained.
“We were lying with our boyfriends,” Mimi whispered.
“Yeah.” Suddenly Suse grinned crookedly. “Rolf was doing me, just starting to come, when, poof, I wasn’t there anymore, I was elsewhere, in that weird round room. I bet he was surprised to find himself messing up the bed with me gone!”
Nance and Janelle giggled at the image, Anya smiled, and Jillian had to bite back a half-hysterical laugh. Only Mary Jonas kept a straight face.
“I can’t, as a health professional, condone the continuation of this pregnancy,” she said severely. “I respect your religious beliefs, girls, but Mimi, here—your name is Mimi, right?—is too young to carry a child to term without endangering her own health, the child’s health, and that of her future children. I want to abort; like I said, the embryo is only weeks old, so there should be no problem doing it.”
“It’s not unusual at the Settlement for a woman to have her first baby at fifteen,” Suse said. “Sometimes things get pretty scary; the midwife isn’t able to get the baby out, and praying doesn’t help. Then the mother, or the baby, or both, die. But they die free of the sin of killing an unborn child.”
Anya stepped over to the examination chair in which Mimi still sat.
“Dr. Jonas, will you allow me to do this, using Kordean healing techniques? That way I’m pretty sure that Mimi would not be considered to have killed her unborn child. You see, what we Witches do is more like persuading the foetus that this is not a good time to come into the world. It then withdraws its consciousness from the physical cells, and those cells will be reabsorbed into the mother’s body.”
“What do you think, Mimi?” Dr. Jonas asked, sighing. “I guess, if you’re old enough to do what gets a girl pregnant, you’re old enough to decide this for yourself. I absolutely recommend that this pregnancy be ended in one way or another, but I won’t force an abortion on you. We Confederation medical practitioners are big on the patients’ right to make choices for themselves.”
Mimi stared down at the floor for a moment or two.
“I don’t think that this is a good time for this baby to come into the world,” she then whispered.
She raised her eyes to look at Anya.
“Do you think that you can persuade it to go back to heaven—or wherever?”
Anya reached for the stone that she wore on a chain around her neck. She smiled gently at the frightened girl.
“I think that I can do exactly that,” she said.
*****
Once Jillian had sent the visitors to the Official Residence to be clucked over by Dili and Curt while they fed and looked after them, she was almost sorry she no longer needed to deal with the foolish girls.
She had been glad that Nance was still on Agency payroll, and available to herd the group to the Residence. She told her to get some rest, herself, afterwards, but that if she chose to go home to her and Texi’s apartment, to make sure that the Port Security knew that she was doing so.
“Use the com at the Residence to call them. They’ll probably want you to have an emergency com on you at all times; take one from Coryn’s stash in the desk that houses the Residence com. Stress to Anya and Janelle that they’re not safe without an escort, anywhere in Trahea; remember that Coryn got his head bashed in on the way home from The LockandKey.”
“Yeah,” Nance had agreed sagely enough. “The Hounds will know that they’re sensitives, assuming that there’s been communication among the Neotsarians. And they won’t believe that I’m not one—not even now.”
She would do as asked, Jillian was sure.
At the Office she got Karan to immediately get in touch with the Port Security, to tell them about the targets for the Hounds that she had brought in from Ferhil Stones. Then it was time to sit back and try to think of how to make her report to Marcues. And to fret about Coryn, about Joe and the other men that had been left in danger in The Organization Facility. And about Roland and Elli who had probably already had to endure some serious questioning by the Neotsarians. As they called themselves, she added in her mind, wrinkling her nose. Though, if her historical information was correct, the moniker the elitist idiots had chosen for themselves was more meaningful—and derogatory—than the neutral one that the Agency had been using.
She had to have some ideas about how to go about rescuing Elli and the men, to throw to Marcues. Marcues was an able administrator, but he was not an original thinker. Though he had the smarts to keep original thinkers around him, and to value them; that was why he had championed Coryn Leigh when some others had dismissed the alyen as an upstart pretty boy. Jillian desperately wished that Coryn had been present to swap ideas with her, but he needed to spend a little time dealing with his heartbreak. It was akin to needing medical leave; without doubt Mary Jonas would have ordered him off-duty, and into his bed, had she had the physician’s authority over him at the moment. Not that he would have stayed in bed; it wouldn’t take long, Jillian figured, before he would be back in harness, even if things unfolded badly in the Ferhil Stones Infirmary, telling everybody that the best thing would be for him
to bury himself in work.
In the meantime, she needed sleep, and she needed to talk to Marcues before she slept. He would see to it that rescuers would go to the Settlement world, but, left to his own devices, and those of the Headquarters’ bootlickers, he’d probably act in a fashion that might endanger the Agents of The Mission more than help them. What sort of a plot could she come up with, on such short notice, that would make a rescue mission look to the Neotsarians like a punishment of The Mission members, rather than an attack on The Organization?
There were Jaime’s battleship specs....
Jillian rose from her desk, and moved into Coryn’s office. He had a private code for Fiana Marsh, who was now married to Jaime’s friend, the pilot Steph Clennan. Had she finished with the investigation which she apparently was doing to determine the source of the information leak at the Experimental Craft Division? Even if not, she was working with the head of that Department, Carovan, and surely he had army connections that could be used.
Maybe things could be arranged so that an Armed Forces ship—or a few—would go looking for the person, or persons, who had leaked such vital information to the opposition? They’d want to question Roland and Elli, of course, as the leaders of the little cult that had joined the Settlement. And they’d certainly want to talk to all the other members! It would be better if the guys had fought themselves free of the Facility and holed up somewhere—but, they would have. Joe, for one, would never have sat back and allowed himself to be imprisoned. And Jaime was not only brilliant, but also a crafty bastard. When he had given the ship specs to Jillian he had mentioned that he had once spent a few months with some rebel guerrilla cell on his home world.
“I was young and idealistic,” he had explained. “And in lust—I wouldn’t call what I felt love—with this woman. She was a member of this group, led by a guy who called himself Che Ernesto, of all things. This woman came on to me, and when I agreed to join the band, she would share my bed, occasionally. So I fought with them, and learned a lot of tricks while I was at it. But doing damage to strangers wasn’t my style, and the guerrilla business palled pretty quickly—besides, they didn’t have much of a cause, as I saw it. That’s why they had trouble recruiting members, I realized, though the leader and a few core guys loved what they were doing. Well, I found out that this woman I was bonking was actually Che’s girlfriend, and he’d send her to me whenever it looked like I was about to bolt. That’s when I did get out; just left when nobody was looking, and kicked myself for having allowed myself to be led around by my nether parts.”
“Sounds like it was at the time of your life when it’s easy to be led around by those parts,” Jillian had laughed. “And you learned stuff that’ll probably come in useful during your Agency career!”
“However long it lasts,” Jaime had said.
“Coryn’s going to try to keep you around, never fear.”
*****
It took the flyerful of fugitives more than a diurnal cycle to make it to the Island Settlement. Not even Jeb had had any idea of what they would find there, before they landed, so the sophistication of the place was a surprise to them. Although the town was smaller than the Religious Settlement on the continent, it had a functional, paved Space Port where The Mission people landed their flyer.
Jaime told the others to tread softly; for all they knew they had jumped from a frying pan into the fire. They could have landed into a place controlled by the Neotsarians.
“I sort of doubt that,” objected Jeb. “In the time I’ve been on the planet, the impression I’ve had is that the Neotsarians have shown very little interest in this world, except for their Facility, and the nearest Settlement, and the Settlement only because it has been useful to them.”
“Nevertheless, we ought to be careful what we reveal, until we know where the inhabitants’ loyalties lie,” Jaime insisted. “We want to get back to Confederation space intact.”
“Ready to play the next round in this crazy game,” added Roge. “I suspect that it’s not nearly finished.”
“True,” Peter said. “They’ve got the specs for that amarto-reflector; if they can get another scientifically minded person or two to look at them, they can rebuild it, even if they have to start from scratch. And the talented women are still at risk, since, I understand, that they were turning out those amarto-detectors by the dozen, at some factory on their Home World.”
“Where were they getting the amarto-shards for them?” Texi asked.
“They bought a few stones from jewellers on Confederation worlds and Space Stations. The Terrans consider them decorative pieces, and sell them freely, if at exorbitant prices,” Peter replied. “But one little gem yields a lot of tiny shards, and the shards we designed the detectors to use were pretty minuscule.”
“Yeah,” Jaime said. “Texi and I know how minuscule. We took one of the detectors apart, and though I suspected that the little things were amarto-shards, I wasn’t sure until a very talented young Witch examined them for me.”
“Sarah?” Peter asked.
Jaime could hear the slight tremor in the voice. He shook his head.
“No. Sarah didn’t want to deal with the detectors at all. She said that the emotional feedback from them was very disturbing to her. She hadn’t finished her training at Ferhil Stones, the Stronghold of the Circle of the Twelve, and her defences were not adequate to block the backwash.”
“Yeah, the backwash.” Peter nodded. “Anya said that we had somehow created that with our attempts to get a Mayday into the reflections and refractions. She also said that it was a good thing, as it certainly would attract the attention of the Kordean Witches.”
“It did attract the attention of the ‘august ladies’, as my boss, Coryn Leigh, was fond of referring to the Witches,” Jaime said. “Which reminds me, Jeb, before we start mingling with the island locals, can you send a message directed to Coryn that we made it out safely from the Facility—with the three male captives—and pass on our approximate position? Maybe we can get ourselves off this mudball, yet.”
“Already done it, Jaime. And don’t forget that Joe’s very efficient, if sometimes irritating, wife was scooped up to Kordea with the rest of the women.”
“She’s Coryn’s Second in Command, don’t forget,” Joe said. “She’ll have been doing some briefing by now. And she knows that we’d fight our way out of the Facility, the first chance we got.”
“Well then, let’s spill out onto the tarmac and see what sort of a reception is waiting for us,” said Jaime. “Doesn’t look like there’s any sort of a welcoming committee come to meet us.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Castle Fortune looked very much like it had when Sarah had seen it during her earlier visit to Eden. A fairy tale castle with turrets and towers, set in the middle of a dark wood, it was an anomaly in the pastoral landscape. Sarah recalled what she had been told before, that it was something which existed because she needed it to exist; the road back to her reality lay inside it. Why she could not be transported to Ferhil Stones directly from the meadow, or the forest of the friendly-barked trees she did not know, but that’s how things apparently were. She needed the help of whoever would be in the Castle—assuming that she did, in fact, decide to go back. The last time the Castle itself had aroused her curiosity; she could have spent days exploring it.
The road through the wood was gloomier than the meadow had been, and she found herself feeling apprehensive as she walked towards the Castle.
“I think that I’m getting closer to trials and tribulations,” she muttered to herself.
Maybe, this time she really would stay in Eden, instead of returning to her own reality. What was left there to compel her?
The golden-haired, ageless woman greeted her on the Castle grounds, even as she had, the time before. She was the woman from her dream, Sarah recognized, the one who had given her a message for Coryn. Well, they had needed Coryn on Kordea; the woman had been right about that. Would Marlyss have agre
ed to release the whole cache of amartos keyed to Sarah, had Coryn not been there to persuade her? Marlyss was cautious; she would likely have offered to release a few of the stones, fearing that the power unleashed by them all would have had negative consequences. Sarah had known—or that knowing Sarah had known—that she needed them all to break the hold of the reflector-refractor, and to transport the number of bodies necessary, such a long distance. And the only ill consequence had been that she herself had been separated from her physical self, and tossed here to Eden by all that energy that she had been using.
How had Coryn persuaded Marlyss to do what Sarah had asked for, anyway? Well, he was a very persuasive man. Sarah almost expected that other self to jump into her mind and explain the matter to her in great detail, but nothing like that happened. Instead, the golden-haired guide gestured for her to follow her into the building.
Like the time before, they walked through many rooms, and up several sets of stairs to reach a tower room, the highest room in the Castle. The rooms they traversed were not the same ones that Sarah had seen the last time, which meant, she assumed, that they were taking a different route. They did not speak while they walked and climbed; Sarah’s companion seemed reluctant to talk.
In the tower room they met Aris, another woman, who had been introduced to Sarah the last time, as the ageless woman’s assistant, and apprentice. This time, it was Aris, who took the lead in dealing with Sarah.
“So do you want to go back to your reality?” Aris asked.
“I’m not sure,” replied Sarah. “I seem to be of two minds. Earlier, while walking in the meadow, I had actual words with myself—I mean that literally—about the issue. I know that sounds crazy, but, apparently, I was debating the subject with myself.”
“That happens here in Eden,” Aris replied with a smile. “The rules of reality are different here. Parts of a person’s less conscious self can show themselves as separate aspects which can communicate with her, or him. That can help when it comes to figuring out one’s motivations.”
Love and Intrigue Under the Seven Moons of Kordea Page 27
