OUTCAST

by Cheryl Brooks

  “And they can’t live on chocolate, can they?” Bonnie certainly wished that she could. She also wished she could grow it, but hadn’t bothered to try because cacao required a more tropical climate.

  “No,” he admitted. “But I believe they would like to.”

  All three nodded vigorously in agreement.

  “Well, they seem to be thriving,” Bonnie observed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen cuter kids in my life.”

  Cat seemed very pleased to hear that. “They resemble their mother, do they not?” he said proudly.

  “Well, no, Cat,” Bonnie said truthfully. “They look just like you.”

  “But they have their mother's eyes,” he protested.

  Bonnie shook her head. She had noticed before that Jack's eyes had a slight reddish glow to the pupil, but the kids didn’t have even that. “I honestly can’t see any resemblance to Jack at all,” she said. “You’re sure she's their mother?”

  Smiling devilishly, Cat assured Bonnie that she was. Then he cocked his head slightly. “Your child will resemble her father, too, I believe.”

  “Aw, don’t tell me that!” Bonnie groaned as the full meaning of his words sunk in. “I wanted it to be a surprise!”

  “I may be wrong,” Cat said, hedging just a bit. Bonnie had learned from Jack that Zetithians were prone to occasional insights that usually turned out to be true. Cat himself had seen who was responsible for the destruction of their planet in just such a vision, and no one had ever doubted him. Of course, since the culprits had been Nedwuts, no one was too surprised, since they were generally regarded as the premier badasses of the galaxy. There were plenty of other species around who caused just about as much trouble, but the Nedwuts had managed to acquire the reputation for being the worst.

  “I doubt it,” Bonnie grumbled, knowing that Cat's assessment was probably correct. “Vladen was dying to tell me himself. You’re sure it's a girl?”

  “I believe it is,” Cat said meekly.

  “Not that I mind having a girl, you understand, but if she looks like Sylor… well, I’m sure she’ll turn out okay.”

  Cat grinned. “She will be beautiful.”

  “Thanks, Cat,” Bonnie said graciously. “But as long as she's healthy, it doesn’t matter what she looks like. I’ll love her anyway.”

  Cocking his head to one side, he peered at Bonnie curiously. “Lynxsander's children would be more to your liking?”

  Bonnie stared back at him blankly. She had no clue as to where he’d gotten that idea, but it was hitting a little too close to the mark for comfort. “I—I don’t think he has any intention of ever having any children,” she stammered, hoping that Lynx wasn’t overhearing their conversation. “At least, not with me.” Glancing over at Lynx, Bonnie noted that he had gone to get the crate of eggs out of the cart where she had hidden them. When he returned, he gave no hint of having heard anything, but with ears like that, she couldn’t be sure.

  With a skeptical lift of his exotic brow, Cat seemed to disagree but said nothing more on the subject.

  Salan came by later on with some cheese to trade— Bonnie had saved some eggs for her too—and she noticed Lynx right away. The dairyman's daughter was a pretty girl with long auburn hair and a knowing smile, and, being half Terran and half Davordian, had the most luminous blue eyes Bonnie had ever seen. If the way she was looking at Lynx with those fabulous eyes was any indication, it was apparent that she’d gotten the scoop on Zetithians from someone.

  “So, he's your new hand?” Salan asked, not taking her eyes off Lynx.

  “Yes,” Bonnie replied. “He's pretty good help, too. Not very chatty, though.”

  Salan nodded absently, still gazing at him. “I like the quiet type.”

  “He's quieter than most, Salan, but—who knows?— he might actually talk to you.” Since Lynx had always managed to disappear whenever Salan came to the house, this was doubtful, but he couldn’t run away this time—and for all Bonnie knew, the two of them might have been destined to be together forever. “Hey, Lynx,” Bonnie called out, “Salan gets those last two eggs.”

  Lynx got the eggs without a word, then took the box of cheese and stowed it in the cart. He didn’t say one word.

  “So, Lynx, I hear you’re from the same planet as Cat and Leo?” Salan prompted him. Bonnie smiled to herself as she noted the change in the milkmaid's posture—a change that drew attention to her two largest attributes.

  Lynx nodded warily.

  “I’ve always thought they were just about the handsomest men I’ve ever seen,” she gushed. “But that was before I met you! I must say, I like the shorter hair—and your black-tipped eyebrows! They’re so… exotic.”

  Salan was openly flirting with him, and Bonnie held her breath waiting for his response.

  “You are Davordian,” Lynx said. “I have seen your kind before.”

  “Oh, really?” Salan purred, taking a step closer to him. “And where was that?”

  “There were many in the brothels of Paemay,” Lynx replied, taking a step backward. “Their blue eyes were greatly admired.”

  Bonnie bit back a laugh while Salan, completely missing the insult, went on to ask, “And did you admire them?”

  “No,” he said. “I did not frequent the brothels.”

  “Well, then,” she said with a sly smile, “how did you know they were there?”

  “Other men told me of them,” Lynx replied, “and I have seen them lying drunk in the street.” In a bitter voice, he went on to add, “Some were slaves as I was and were used as concubines.”

  That got through to her, leaving her momentarily speechless. Blushing scarlet, Salan turned away from him, muttering, “Nothing like Cat or Leo!” To Bonnie, she merely said, “Thanks for the eggs,” and stalked off.

  Well, thought Bonnie, Salan couldn’t say no one had warned her.

  After they closed up shop, Bonnie went round to the receiving office and picked up the engine parts for the speeder from Wilisan.

  Wilisan was a Terran of Middle Eastern descent, and if there was any man, aside from Lynx, living on Terra Minor that might have inspired Bonnie to fall in love, it would have been him. He had a long, lean body, flashing black eyes with dramatically upswept brows, dark skin, and lots of wavy black hair. He was a feast for female eyes, almost as much as the Zetithians were, and, better yet, he was single. Salan had tried catching his eye more than once, but he’d never seemed interested.

  “Finally going to fix that old clunker, eh?” Wilisan asked Bonnie with a smirk.

  “No,” she replied firmly. “Lynx is going to do that.”

  Wilisan looked at Lynx with interest. “Ah! You can fix it?”

  Lynx nodded. “It only needs replacement parts and”—with a glance in Bonnie's direction, he added— “better maintenance.”

  “Not my fault,” Bonnie muttered under her breath.

  Wilisan exchanged a look with Lynx that plainly stated what he thought of female mechanics—which wasn’t a whole lot, apparently.

  “You two should get along just fine,” Bonnie said dryly. “I can see you have a lot in common.”

  Completely missing the barb, Wilisan nodded at Lynx, saying smoothly, “I have an old speeder I would like to rebuild. Perhaps you could look at it?”

  Lynx glanced at Bonnie as though seeking her permission, which surprised her a bit. “Uh, sounds like a great idea to me,” she said, hoping it was the right thing to say. “He's been working on all of my equipment, and it's running much better than it ever did before.”

  “I will pay you well,” Wilisan said.

  Lynx nodded, and Bonnie thought he looked… better… for some reason. Then she realized that it was the prospect of doing work for someone other than herself that had brightened his countenance. He was almost smiling.

  Not wanting to be one to deny him what he clearly saw as a treat, she said, “Sure, take a day off whenever you like, Lynx. I can manage without you.”

  Wilisan seemed very eag
er to discuss this with Lynx, so Bonnie left them to make arrangements while she carried the box of parts out to the cart. “Wish he could get that excited about working for me,” she said to Kipper as he trotted alongside her. “But I guess that's too much to hope for.”

  Kipper could sense that Bonnie was unhappy, but why that was escaped him, so he just wagged his tail, wishing for perhaps the millionth time that Tisana was around to translate for him.

  The return trip wasn’t quite as silent as it had been that morning, but Bonnie was the one doing most of the talking. As she saw it, Lynx was a captive audience, and she should have taken advantage of that fact on their previous hike—though he could have always turned around and gone home then. This time, he pretty much had to go in the same direction as Bonnie did, whether he liked it or not. She pumped him for information about Zetith, figuring that was a more neutral topic than what had happened to him since the war. As it turned out, he had been in the same unit as Cat and Leo, but the similarities ended there.

  “Cark was good with all weapons,” he said, giving Bonnie the distinct impression that Lynx didn’t consider himself to be as adept. “But Leccarian, whom you call Leo, was the best with a blade.”

  “Well, you seemed awfully glad to see them,” Bonnie observed. “Were you good friends?”

  “We were in the same unit,” he said, his expression becoming wary.

  Which had to count for something, but his attitude now was quite different from the way he’d acted when he’d first seen Cat. At the time, he’d seemed overjoyed, but now he was reticent again—almost as if meeting up with his former comrades reminded him of things he would have preferred to forget.

  “All soldiers, huh?” Bonnie said with a nod. “I guess facing life and death together makes you closer.”

  “I was not a soldier,” Lynx muttered, suddenly appearing fascinated with the ground in front of his feet.

  “Oh, then what did you do?”

  “I did not… fight,” he said uncomfortably.

  “I didn’t ask what you didn’t do,” she said pointedly. “I asked you what you did.”

  “I… helped.”

  “Helped with what?” The way he was acting, Bonnie thought he might have been the one responsible for making sure everyone had shoelaces—which was certainly important, though not particularly heroic.

  Head down and still not looking Bonnie in the eyes, he replied, “I maintained the weapons and the other machines.”

  While this might have explained why he’d been able to tear apart a speeder engine, it didn’t explain why he’d feel ashamed about it. “And I’m sure you were very good at it, too,” she said promptly.

  Lynx's response to that was a noncommittal shrug.

  “You couldn’t all be warriors,” Bonnie said reasonably. “I mean, somebody has to work in the support positions! I’ve always felt that the cooks were the most important people in anyone's army, because if the soldiers don’t eat, it's pretty hard for them to keep on fighting! And with a weapon that doesn’t work, you can’t do much of anything either.”

  Lynx still didn’t seem convinced, so Bonnie kept talking. “I think I’d much prefer to have a good mechanic helping me on the farm; a soldier wouldn’t be much use when it came to keeping my equipment up and running. Wilisan seemed to think it was pretty neat that you could fix a speeder too.”

  He made no comment about that, either, though to Bonnie's eyes it was perfectly obvious that he didn’t give a damn what she thought.

  “And a guy who can deliver a baby is a wonderful thing for a pregnant woman to have around—not that someone else couldn’t help me out, but experience in such situations is always comforting.” Bonnie was rapidly running out of appreciative things to say. “Guess you’d rather I just shut up, huh?”

  Another shrug was all she received in reply. Bonnie was trying to be admiring, but he obviously wasn’t buying it. “Lynx,” she said, trying her best to smile, “all I’m asking for is a little conversation! It's fairly obvious you don’t like me, and I know you’d rather be anywhere else but here, but couldn’t you at least pretend once in a while? I’m not the enemy!”

  The look he shot in her direction said otherwise.

  Bonnie tried to see it from his side but was having trouble relating. “What happened to you, Lynx? Cat doesn’t act anything like you, and when Jack found him, he was in chains! You’re driving me nuts! Just when I think I might actually be getting somewhere, you clam up again! You’re not a slave anymore, Lynx! That part of your life is over and done with, but you’ve got a chip on your shoulder the size of Arcturus, and it's got to be getting heavy!”

  Realizing that her little speech had been liberally laced with Terran expressions, Bonnie knew that Lynx probably didn’t get the exact meaning of a lot of it, but she didn’t care. It was happening again; she’d been trying so hard to be nice to him and was finding it extremely frustrating when it didn’t work. Lynx had nothing further to say, so Bonnie just gave up after that. Indulging in an erotic fantasy might have kept her mind off her swollen, aching feet, but she figured that Lynx would have smelled her desire and gotten all weirded out again, so she focused on her baby instead.

  Her little girl, actually. It might have been better to know it was a girl or a boy ahead of time so she could think of it as something other than an “it.” A name was needed, too. A girl name… something that sounded good with Neurath, because Bonnie wasn’t about to give her baby girl Sylor's last name! They hadn’t been married anyway, so she didn’t need to—wouldn’t have needed to even if they were—though she thought that Halen might have been easier to match up a first name with than Neurath.

  With a grandmother named Lucretia and a mother named Eudora, Bonnie didn’t have any intention of naming her daughter after either of them, so she knew she would have to come up with something else. On a whim, she asked Lynx what his mother's name was.

  As deep in thought as Bonnie had been, she’d almost forgotten how reticent Lynx could be, but, surprisingly, he answered her quite normally—not even asking Bonnie why she wanted to know. Perhaps he saw it as a welcome change of subject.

  “Shaulla,” he replied.

  Shaulla Neurath… it sounded exotic and mysterious, and shortening it to Ulla wasn’t bad either. It was a thought, but then another occurred to her, completely erasing the original.

  “So tell me, Lynx,” she began. “Did you dislike your mother?”

  He wasn’t sure why she needed to know, but answered her anyway. “No,” he replied.

  “Did you love her?”

  It may have been Bonnie's imagination, but his expression seemed to soften slightly.

  “Yes.” Lynx recalled his mother's gentle touch and her warm smile. She had loved him as a mother should, and he had loved her in return—but that was very long ago.

  “So you don’t hate all women,” Bonnie asked, interrupting his reminiscent thoughts. “Just all of us except your mother?”

  When he didn’t reply immediately, it became evident that he was giving this some thought, so Bonnie pushed a little further. “There are some of us who are probably a lot like your mother, you know,” she said neutrally. “Would you hate them too?”

  “Perhaps not,” he admitted.

  “But you haven’t met any of them yet, have you?”

  “No.”

  Apparently Bonnie wasn’t anything like his mother—which was probably just as well. “Would you be inclined to think more kindly of a girl who had your mother's name?”

  “Perhaps,” Lynx said cautiously, still unclear as to her purpose.

  “Well, then,” Bonnie said roundly, “if Cat's right about my baby being a girl, I’ll name her Shaulla.”

  Bonnie couldn’t tell if he approved or not—his expression was once again as enigmatic as ever—but if her baby girl was going to be growing up around Lynx, Bonnie did not want him acting as though he despised her! It was bad enough that he felt that way about her, and besides, she did like the
name.

  “And her last name?” Lynx prompted—though Bonnie couldn’t begin to guess why it would have mattered to him.

  “Neurath,” she replied firmly. “Unless I marry someone in the next few weeks.”

  “You will not give the child her father's name?”

  “I wasn’t married to Sylor,” Bonnie said evenly, “and he left us. I see no point in giving her his name. Any man who would leave a woman while she carries his child deserves no recognition.” She tried to keep the anger and bitterness out of her voice, but it was difficult.

  Whether Lynx agreed with her sentiments on that subject didn’t matter to Bonnie. Sylor was gone, having left shortly after her pregnancy was confirmed. It was possible that the reality of becoming a father may have frightened him—though they’d talked it over and he’d agreed to it—but so far he hadn’t found the courage to return, and with Bonnie's delivery date rapidly approaching, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for him to convince her to trust him again.

  “You no longer like men?” Lynx inquired.

  Bonnie wasn’t sure why he thought she wouldn’t like any of them—she’d already admitted to liking Cat, and Lynx had been sniffing out her desire—but she didn’t bother to quibble, because for all she knew it was true. “Yeah, and you don’t like women—though you could have at least tried to be a little nicer to Salan. A few more exchanges like that and she might start charging me more than two eggs for her cheese!”

  Trudging onward, her mind nearly as weary as her feet, all Bonnie could think of was how sick she was of it all. She was tired of playing this stupid game; there ought to be at least one person in everyone's life that could be counted on, and she hadn’t had someone like that in a very long time—probably not since her mother. So far Lynx had proved to be trustworthy, but not friendly, and Bonnie figured that it would have been too much to ask for a man to be likable and trustworthy. She was reminded of an old joke she’d heard once about how men were like parking spaces; the good ones were always taken and the rest were handicapped. Unfortunately, she knew from experience that it was too true to be very funny.