The Traveller's Song (pt. 8)
by Shipscat
Meara found it very relaxing to have Talyn run the tests on her. She didn't have to do anything, just lie there and watch him fuss around. She would have been a little less relaxed if she had known that he was checking for signs that the fetus had been injured by the radiation exposure, among other things.
After doing a few tests on her blood, he placed a sensor on her still flat stomach and listened. After a microt, he said, "Listen to this," and adjusted the control on the sensor. A fast rhythmic sound filled the room. Meara listened for a microt to the beating and the whooshing sound that accompanied it, and asked hesitantly, "What is it?"
"It's the baby's heartbeat," he said, obviously anticipating her reaction.
"Wow. Just..wow," she said dreamily.
Talyn ran the scanner over her as she lay there listening to the baby. She was almost asleep when he stopped. "Can I see?"
"There's not much to see yet. The baby's only about that big" he said, indicating with his thumb and forefinger a size that was very small indeed.
Meara sat up. "What am I going to look like?" she asked curiously. "I don't think I've ever seen anyone who's pregnant, and if I did I don't remember it."
Talyn grinned and put his arms in a circle that ended at her waist. "Oh, I am not!" she said, disbelievingly. He got a pillow out of the overhead bin and, between the two of them, managed to shove it under her shirt. "You will be full of baby from stem to stern. When the baby's grown, it will go all the way up to just under your sternum."
Meara smoothed her shirt over the pillow and shook her head disbelievingly as she looked at her reflection in the metal cabinets. Talyn was still grinning like an idiot. He came to his senses and remembered what he was doing. He returned to the console to read the results of the scan. Meara heard some pleased sounding muttering. Suddenly it stopped and Talyn looked over at her, still sitting with her hands locked across her pillow pregnancy. The look on his face frightened her. "We shouldn't have done this, Meara."
"Oh, no. There's something wrong with the baby, isn't there?" Her face and spirits fell into despair.
He shook his head. "She's fine." He turned his back on her.
"It's a girl?" Meara tried to assimilate this information. "What's wrong? Talyn?"
He turned back to her. "I'm just saying maybe this wasn't such a good idea." He had unshed tears in his eyes.
"Talyn," Meara said fearfully, now clutching the sides of the table with her hands, "You are scaring the Hezmana out of me."
"We can't do this," he said, shaking his head, "We can't hand another child over to the Peacekeepers."
"What choice do we have?" she said forcefully. "If not this child, then another one."
"Not mine."
"But it would still have been mine," Meara said angrily.
"I'm sorry. I'm trying to tell you that I don't want to give this baby to the Peacekeepers."
"I am a Peacekeeper." Meara said, getting off the table. "Why would you want to give a baby to me?"
"Meara," Talyn said, pleading, "We can go somewhere else. We could join the Travellers, find a colony , anyplace else, please."
"No, we can't. I can't. I am a Peacekeeper, and you are too, even if you don't like to think you are."
"You are also the woman that I love and the mother of my child. Doesn't that mean anything?" he said, eyes flashing.
"I can not be someone's Mother." Meara took the pillow out of her shirt and threw it down. "I don't know how. I have never even held a baby. I never had a mother." She was in a state of near panic.
"I know how," he said, his voice getting quieter. He reached out and held her arm lightly. "You already take care of the baby. You take care of yourself. You don't do what you want if it would hurt the baby, you don't even complain."
"I can't complain. I chose to do this." She shook his hand off and headed for the door.
"Meara, have you thought about how you're going to feel when they take this baby away?"
She turned around and looked at him with the saddest face he had ever seen. "I never thought I would be able to keep her."
"It's the same way you feel about me."
It was true. She always knew that she couldn't have him forever, and she started to tell him that, that she knew it would end in pain and loss sometime, but she couldn't. She couldn't make it more true by saying it. It would hurt too much.
Several arns later Talyn came into the bedroom where Meara was lying in abject misery. She was so unhappy that it didn't even occur to her to find some way to work off her feelings and she had spent the time trying not to think about anything at all. When he came in she didn't turn around and look at him or speak.
"The Johians sent you a special package," he said, holding out a carefully wrapped box. "I have no idea what's in it."
"I do." she said, jumping up and grabbing it out of his hands. The box was full of little blue berries and various other things she was sure must be good for the litter. "This is great, "she said, her mouth full. "I was so hungry!"
Talyn noticed that she had puffy eyes and that her hands were shaking as she ate. When he casually put a hand on her knee, she moved it away. "You must have gotten along well with that Johian ambassador." She didn't respond. "Would you like to go for a walk after you've finished eating that entire box? Broc is refueling the ship. It'll take a while."
She nodded. "You're right. I should save some for later."
The walk turned into a trek. They walked through the lovely countryside of Joh. The leaves on the trees were very colorful, with lots of cyan and chartreuse colors. Talyn wondered if they were like that all the time, or if it was some kind of seasonal effect. He didn't attempt to talk to Meara until she showed signs of winding down, which took quite some time. Finally she stopped and sat on a log. "Why did you do that?" she started first.
"What?"
"Tell me you thought it was a bad idea when it was too late."
"It wasn't an idea anymore. It was a real baby that was really going to happen." He didn't know how to explain to her that it had suddenly changed from a pregnancy to his daughter, one that he was going to lose.
"Do you want to change your mind? Would you terminate this pregnancy? You know how to do that, don't you?" she said challengingly.
"No, Meara, I wouldn't do that. And if I tried, you'd beat the dren out of me," he said wearily with no attempt at humor.
"Not even to keep her from becoming a Peacekeeper like me?"
"Meara, there are no Peacekeepers like you. Don't you get that?" Talyn crouched down in front of her and put his hands on her knees. This time she didn't move away. "You have some kind of line that you walk inside yourself and you never seem to fall off. On the one hand you have a warriors code-you believe in fair fighting and being loyal to the peacekeepers and honor and bravery and all that dren. And on the other hand, you do what you think is right and have somehow managed not to stand up and say "no, that's not right" and get your head blown off. Did you know, that of all the hundreds of people I have worked on, you were the first one to open your eyes and ask about someone else first?"
She looked at him disbelievingly.
"It's true. Why do you think I fell in love with you at that microt? Of course, they were really beautiful eyes."
She was still looking at him really soberly. "What about you?"
"Me? That's different. I wasn't born a Peacekeeper. I figure they must have screwed up when they made you or during your training or something."
"Seriously, Talyn. Have you ever killed someone? In battle? Hit someone in anger? Have you ever even gotten into a bar fight?"
"No," he said quietly. "I had to euthanise someone once, but there wasn't any brain function at all."
"See?" she said, as if that explained everything. "There are good peacekeepers and bad Peacekeepers, just like everyone else. The only difference is that we have more power."
"You're wrong, Meara. We are the bad guys. The system is wrong. They don't want us to be together, to make our own choices, to live our own lives. You, me, the baby," he laid a hand on her abdomen, "we would all be happier if we weren't Peacekeepers."
"There isn't anything else," she said as if it were an obvious answer.
"We could join the Travellers. You like the Travellers. You could wear your hair down.." he said, picking up a lock that curled over her breast and twining it in his fingers.
"What kind of way is that to live? They don't have any purpose, no discipline. We would spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders.." She was getting upset again.
"What kind of life do we have now? Despite your best efforts, we have lost half this crew."
Meara's head snapped back as if he had slapped her.
"You did your best. If Rouj had been captain, we would all be dead. But it's dangerous. It's the way we do things, its people like Marik."
"I don't want to talk about this anymore. No, I am not going anywhere. I am going to get this ship home and finish my mission." She was shaking despite her firm words. Her eyes were full of pain and conflict.
Talyn looked up at her. It occurred to him that one more little push might send her over the edge, and he knew what might do it. 'I'll go without you. I'll leave you,' and she might go. She'd resent the hell out of him for a while, but *if* it worked, it would be worth it.
"Oh, Dren," he said, and bowed his head. He couldn't do it. Meara put her arms around his shoulders and kissed the top of his head. She laid her cheek on his beautiful black hair and said, "I'm sorry."
They walked back together silently, holding hands. The setting sun brought out more color in the foliage. It would have been romantic if they hadn't both been lost in thought. After a while Talyn realized that he had no idea where they were, but it didn't matter because Meara did. She was quite confidently going in the direction she knew the ship to be.
"I love you," she said quietly.
He squeezed her hand. " I love you, too."
"What did you mean they screwed up when they made me? You make me sound like a broken part in a machine."
He shrugged. "I don't think they are trying for the best and brightest in their genetic breeding programs. I think they want the average soldier, the average tech, with an emphasis on conformity and obedience. Independent-minded children are harder to raise. I was, anyway."
"Well, they certainly wouldn't have put us together."
"More likely you and Broc."
"Or Marik." She winced. "Marik threatened the baby."
"What?" Talyn stopped walking.
"Well, he didn't really threaten the baby. He said he knew I was having an unlawful baby and he would tell."
"When did this happen? Why didn't you tell me?"
"I forgot," she said embarrassedly. "I was a little distracted."
"How did he know?"
"I have no idea but he's gone now so it probably isn't something we have to worry about."
"We'd better find out how he knew. Somehow i don't think he was smart enough to just figure it out."
Soon after they got underway Meara found Talyn sitting at a workbench methodically demolishing metal holograph discs with a small hammer. Broc was standing over him . She heard Talyn say in an aggrieved voice, "Do you have any idea what kind of trouble I would have been in if she'd found a blue hair in our bed?"
"Why would I find a blue hair in my bed?" Meara asked dangerously.
Broc and Talyn looked at her with identical expressions of embarrassment. "Meara, my love, this is not what it looks like." Talyn made a helpless gesture with his hands.
Broc reached over and turned on the projector sitting on the table. Meara very quickly figured out that she was watching Broc and the blue-haired Traveller woman recreating in the Captain's quarters. She gave it a brief glance and shrugged. "You're keeping souvenirs, Broc?"
"Not me." He shook his head.
"I was just asking Broc how he knew the key code."
"Well, Risa did. She knew all the codes to everything on the ship."
"It is the only decent sized bed." Meara said.
"That's not the point. The point is that I found these among Marik's effects. They were mixed in among those pornographic chips he was always watching. There are ones of us, of Risa and Broc, Broc and the Traveller woman," he said bitterly. "It's so pathetic it would be funny if it weren't so disgusting."
"Well, Dren," Meara said. "I guess we let him off too easy. You should be using that hammer on his mivonks."
"Meara," Talyn said, looking very serious, "One of these was in the infirmary."
"Oh. I'll start searching the ship right now. We'll have to go over the whole ship, from top to bottom." She headed out, then turned around. "Why didn't you just throw those in the incinerator? It'll incinerate anything."
Talyn looked at Broc. "The incinerator?"
Broc shrugged and started gathering up little pieces. "Aren't you two overreacting?"
"Don't tell me you are absolutely certain that you haven't done anything that would get you into trouble if your superiors had a holograph of it."
"Yeah, okay. You have a point."
Talyn found Meara standing on the bed and removing a tile on the ceiling. Stifling an urge to complain that she was up too high and standing on something that she could fall off of, he watched as she removed a small camera. She looked triumphant as she said, 'I guessed right. I thought from the angle that the camera must be about there."
"Is it on?"
"No," she said, but she continued looking around for a while. "You know, it's not uncommon to have surveillance on your troops. Marik must have found out about it and taken advantage, that's all," she said reassuringly.
"If it's not uncommon, why didn't we think about it? Do you have any idea how close this was ? He had a chip of us in the infirmary. What we did, what we talked about, everything. It was just lying there. Anyone could have picked it up and looked at it."
"We'll have to make sure we don't leave any evidence. We'll check out the ship, I'm sure we'll find everything." She tried to look confident. Climbing down from the bed, she stood close to him and said quietly,"Do you think they would get rid of the baby if they knew?"
"I don't know, Meara. I just don't know."
She looked thoughtful for a microt, and then asked, "What did the other chips have on them? What was Marik watching? I mean, you know, what did it look like?"
"I thought we looked good together. Well, you looked good anyway. I am not going to tell you any details," he said definitely. He also didn't tell her that he kept a chip that Marik had made of a time that they were sitting in this room and she had been singing. It was the only one that didn't involve any recreation or nudity, and he thought Marik had probably kept it because they had actually talked about her being pregnant, to go along with the one where they sabotaged the contraceptive device. After careful editing, Talyn managed to keep the part where she was singing and cut out all mention of the pregnancy.
After a thorough search of the ship, they found themselves with a small collection of recording devices and a few more chips. They all sat together staring at the little collection. "Who cares what's on them, let's just destroy them all," Meara said.
"Won't someone miss the recording devices?" Talyn asked.
Meara shook her head. "It doesn't matter. It's supposed to be secret, who's going to say anything?"
"That's not going to solve all of our problems. I've been thinking," Broc started hesitantly.
Talyn suppressed a sarcastic remark that immediately came to mind. Meara nodded encouragingly.
"I think Meara's going to be reprimanded when we get back."
Meara felt Talyn stiffen beside her.
"We should have killed Marik. If Meara had shot him for disobeying a direct order or brought him back for court-martial it would have been legal. Giving him to the legal system of an alien world is an unlawful act."
"Broc, I would be in trouble anyway," Meara said kindly. "When we pulled you and Risa out of that room we broke a cardinal rule. You know perfectly well that we were supposed to let you die in there."
Talyn stared at her. "When you said that, you meant that it was a mandate, not just a safety precaution."
"Well, yes. It's a stupid rule, but it's meant to keep from having everyone on the ship go in one after the other and get killed." She turned to Broc. "It's really not important, Broc. What's done is done."
"It's important to me," he said stubbornly.
"This is easy," Talyn said. "We just rewrite history. We'll change everything in the datastores to match."
"I don't like keeping secrets," Meara said.
Talyn kicked her booted foot under the table.
"Well, I don't. So... I shot Marik? Broc was never in there, and Talyn didn't save him. It's too bad nobody will know what you did."
"Doesn't bother me a bit. I'd rather not come to anyone's attention for anything, good or bad," Talyn said. "But why not let Marik stay in the room, he caused the leak and was overcome, Risa went in to save him and we let them die." He shook his head as if to clear it.
"What about the repair?" Meara asked Broc.
"It looks good. I don't think anyone will know it was repaired if they aren't looking for it."
"I'm not sure if this is the right thing to do," Meara said, sounding uncharacteristically uncertain.
"I think we can do this," Broc said firmly.
Talyn and Meara rewrote Rouj's journey notes. They took out his complaints about Meara and the remarks about her going on maternity duty as well. Then they wrote a modified history of the journey, placing the Traveller's gathering place on a non-existent planet.
"While we are at it, Meara, I am going to give you a few tips about lying. Most people are terrible at knowing if someone is lying or not. The main things to remember are to try to feel what you should be feeling if it were true. If you would be mad, be mad."
"Talyn, I really don't think this is necessary."
"Meara, sometimes you are so innocent it scares me."
She glared at him but remained silent.
"Now, if someone asks you about something, remember to ask questions about it. When people lie, they forget to ask questions because what they're talking about is already reality to them. For instance, if someone tells you your contraceptive failed, you say' how could that happen?' not 'I didn't do it.' Get it?"
She nodded.
"And don't change your story unless they present new evidence."
"I really don't understand why I have to cover up when I don't think I've done anything wrong. It wasn't wrong to try to save Broc and Risa, it wasn't wrong to make Marik face up to what he did, and it's not wrong..." she stopped and looked up at where the camera had been.
"It's because we're Peacekeepers," he said as if he hated the fact.
The rest of the trip was uneventful. Talyn was sure Meara was more affected by the discovery of the holochips than she let on, because she ceased talking about the pregnancy at all. Talyn did not push the issue because he thought it might be her way of preparing for what was coming. Meara continued to sleep twelve hours a night and soon the entire ship was cold. It made Talyn wonder if Sebacean women in the past had actually hibernated. Feeling it necessary to tell Broc something, he told him that Meara had contracted a virus. When Broc expressed concern, he told them it would be cured when they got to proper medical facilities or that time would take care of it. Broc accepted that readily, and he and Talyn took over most of the duties on the marauder.
By the time they got to the outpost, Meara was sleeping normally and not avoiding food cubes anymore. She also had a small but definite rounding of her previously flat stomach. Meara handled the routine suspicions and questions about who they were and what they were doing there with complete nonchalance. None of them knew what would happen to a marauder with half the crew and the captain dead, but at least they had completed their mission. Broc mentioned casually that Meara should be checked out by the medtechs.
"Yeah, right," she said. "We'll all end up in quarantine." She looked over at Talyn, who nodded encouragement. "Well," she sighed. "I might as well get it over with."
The medtechs listened to her symptoms without much comment. They looked her over a bit and didn't find any obvious signs of illness. A quick scan elicited a gasp and a shaking of the head from the medtech running it. "Did you know you were pregnant?" he asked hesitantly.
"What?" she said. "That's not possible, is it?"
"I've never seen one before but I think that's a fetus."
"Oh, she is not," said the second medtech, coming over to look at the scanner. "You'd better do a blood test."
The first tech ran the test twice. He then looked in the datastores and started asking questions about her eating and sleeping habits. "She's definitely pregnant."
"How could this happen?" Meara was trying to sound indignant.
"We haven't seen you here before, have we?" he asked looking at her chart. "Good, we haven't. It's not our fault, however it happened. There are accidents. I guess we should..um..take a look at your contraceptive device."
Meara was grateful that he was quick and competent at the removal. There was very little scarring on the underside of her arm, but when he saw the condition of the disk he asked her if she had been burned and she told him the story about the crash. Satisfied, he dropped the device in a trash receptacle and asked, "Do we have a form for this?"
The other medtech said, "I think we should call the chief medtech. I have no idea what to do.
The chief medtech arrived shortly and tested the blood sample again. By this time, Meara had gone from being afraid of discovery to being irritated. "Are you done yet? Because I have things to do."
"You can't leave," the chief medtech replied.
"What do you mean, I can't leave?" Meara said angrily.
"There are certain procedures for cases like this. I'm afraid we have to wait for the commander to get here."
"You alerted the commander?" The first medtech asked.
"We needed someone of higher rank," the chief medtech said, with a gesture towards Meara.
Meara was about to stomp out when the commander of the base appeared with security in tow.
With no preliminaries, he said, "The proper procedure for a case like this is for you to go to a maternity facility as soon as possible. We don't have one, but luckily Captain Travalya's command carrier does. They are close by."
"That's not my regiment. I am originally from Captain Garn's armada. I have a mission-"
"You're mission is over. You don't have a choice about it. You will go to the maternity ward immediately. Hand over your weapons and security will escort you."
"What? Why do I have to hand over my weapons? You are treating me like a criminal and I haven't done anything wrong."
The commander looked embarrassed. Meara pressed the point. "If I have to go somewhere I have to get my personal items. I have people I'm responsible for. I am not going anywhere without taking care of my responsibilities. You are all going farbot just because I'm having a baby."
They all stared at her. She glared back. The chief medtech broke the standoff. "We could just terminate the pregnancy. Problem solved."
"Do we have the authority to do that?" the first medtech wondered.
"Sounds like a good idea," the Commander said.
Meara crumbled inside. She wondered if she should tell them that she was supposed to have maternity duty anyway, but decided that it would be better not to let them know she knew about that if she could avoid it. She lifted her chin and stiffened her spine. "I think I would be better off with medical personnel who knew something about reproductive technology," she said in haughty tones, and handed over her weapons to the Commander.
She felt as if she were being court-martialed or hauled off to execution as she walked out surrounded by armed guards. She knew her cheeks were burning as she stared straight ahead.
"I have two crewmen left from my mission. i want you to make sure they are taken care of."
The Base Commander agreed.
"I want my personal items from the marauder, and I don't want to find anything missing."
"I'll have them sent to you."
"We acquired a weapon on our mission. It must be inportant to someone. One of my crew members can demonstrate its use. Do NOT let anyone else touch it. It's extremely dangerous if you don't know how to use it."
"I will make sure that all of your conditions are met," he said, as if negotiating a surrender.
"Give me your word," she said, giving him a look guaranteed to make him look over his shoulder for the rest of his life if he didn't abide by it.
"You have my word. And good luck," he said, as she entered a waiting transport.
When she got to Captain Travalya's ship, she was given a thorough medical exam and asked a thousand questions. They did not seem to think it was strange that she hadn't suspected pregnancy as the cause of her symptoms, but they did say she was farther along than they usually caught an accidental pregnancy. However, as the fetus looked healthy and she was assigned maternity duty anyway, they were quite accepting of the fact that she was already pregnant.
"Well, at least we know this one can catch," one of the techs said.
"Can you give us a few names so that we can narrow down the search for the father?" another tech asked her.
"Why do you need to know that?" Meara asked curiously.
"It's for the records. We keep very careful track of genetics for our breeding programs. The genetic testing is only part of how we decide who to breed with one another." This particular tech sounded a little more knowledgable.
"How do you do the search?" she asked, looking up at him from the table.
"We just compare the DNA in the database. We already know what your DNA looks like and the fetuses, so we just compare them to possibles until we establish paternity."
Meara rattled off about ten names that she could think of. The tech did not appear to be startled by the number of 'possibles'.
After the exam she was escorted to a section of the ship that had self-contained living quarters. They took her clothes and her ident chip and gave her a shapeless shift, like a long tank top, guaranteed, they said, to expand to the largest proportions. The shapeless dress made her small expansion look like she was definitely with child.
There were twenty women in various stages of gestation or waiting to be impregnated. Meara was very interested in the 7 or 8 women who were farther along than she was, wondering if that's what she would look like when she was that far along. Also of interest were the women who hadn't 'caught' yet. Meara was told that they would keep them up to a cycle before deciding they weren't going to conceive. Risa had been right-the food was good, the duties were light and extremely boring, and a lot of the women seemed to enjoy the whole experience.
Meara, on the other hand, was miserable. She missed her life, she missed her freedom, and most of all she missed Talyn. She found that after several monens of sharing a bed with someone that she couldn't sleep at night. She had no idea where he or Broc was and she wasn't privy to any source of information. It was almost as if the outside world had ceased to exist.
At first, she tried reasoning with them, telling them the reasons why she needed to leave and why she could be trusted. To that she was told that it was for her own good and that of her progeny's. They needed to protect them from the dangers of the outside world. She tried to persuade them that anyone who had risen to the rank she had could take care of herself. She even pointed out that the baby had done just fine before she got to the maternity ward. When this got her nowhere she just walked out. That almost worked, as it took them by surprise. After being restrained and brought back at gunpoint, they threatened to take disciplinary action.
"So, are you going to shoot me before or after I deliver?" Meara asked sarcastically. She had been afraid to fight back for fear of hurting the baby.
"Look, it's for your own good. You could do something you shouldn't-drink or fight or recreate with someone." The medtech who seemed to know what he was doing turned out to be the head of the reproductive techs.
"I am a grown woman. Why can't I be trusted to take care of my own child?"
"It's not your child. It's a potential Peacekeeper soldier."
"I've been trusted with those before. I had soldiers to lead. I promise I would never do anything to hurt the baby," she said in a voice that defined credibility, combining it with the charming smile that almost always got her what she wanted.
All it got her this time was a strange look. "If you want out of here so badly, maybe you shouldn't be here. We could arrange for you to not be pregnant anymore, if you want."
Meara was fairly sure that this was an empty threat, if only because he presented it in such a speculative fashion, and because the woman in the bunk next to her was absolutely horrified at being in the same condition, and no one had offered to relieve her of her misery.
"You win," she said with a sigh. "I'll be good."
"Well, look at it this way," the man said, in an almost reassuring fashion. "You won't have spent nearly as much time here as anyone else. You're nearly halfway through already."
Meara went to her bunk quietly,trying to resign herself to lasting out the rest of her sentence and wondering why she wasn't supposed to be doing any recreating. Talyn certainly hadn't said anything about that.
Meara returned with a different tactic. She was granted a private meeting with Science Officer Fossa, as it turned out the medtech was called. He also explained the he was not a medtech, but a science officer with some kind of gobbledygook title that indicated that he was an integral part of the genetic breeding program.
She quickly presented her case. "I've noticed that you have some problems with discipline and petty squabbles with the women on the ward. The female medtechs aren't very imposing and you never send any males into our area," she stopped for a microt to see if he had a reaction to that. He didn't. "I could keep them in line for you. I could even make sure that they use the exercise area."
"I'm sure you could," he said warily. "And I've noticed that you are the only one who uses the gym. But what do you want?"
"Just access to the datastores," she said casually. "I'm really bored. I'm tired of the little grot's work you have us doing and I need something to keep my mind busy."
He looked at her speculatively. "You're a soldier. I would have thought you would be glad of the opportunity to not have to use your mind."
"You are just saying that because I called you a medtech."
"Actually, while your offer is interesting, I can't take you up on it. There's no way to let you have access and keep you away from communications and keep you ignorant of current events."
"And why do I have to be ignorant? What would be so wrong with letting me know where we are? For instance, how far are we from the base you picked me up on?" She tilted her head and smiled at him.
"It's against the rules. Is there anything else?"
Meara looked at him, trying to gauge him. While he was entirely too smart, in her opinion, he didn't seem like a bad guy.
"The woman next to me, Diebe?"
He nodded.
"She's really despondent. Can't you do something for her?"
"Some of the women have a lot of trouble emotionally," he admitted. "That's one of the reasons we have to keep you under lock and key. Time will take care of it."
Meara was doubtful about that. Diebe wasn't even as far along as Meara was.
"I have a question for you. None of the names you gave us panned out. It would take a long time to check the DNA of every warrior in the Peacekeepers. You want to give me a clue, here?"
"Well, you know, I spent some time with some..um.colonists. Sebacean, of course. I don't imagine that you'd have their DNA on file. There was Eldric and Etylred and..Oh...Senex. Can't forget him," she said with a dreamy smile.
"You do realise that we are talkng about a specific time period, don't you?" he said, shaking his head.
"Sure," she said, crossing her legs. She knew that the shift and the little slippers they made them wear were revealing a lot more leg than anything she would normally have worn.
"I have a hard time believing that you're that much of a trelk."
"You're only a trelk when you get paid for it. I do it because I enjoy it." Fossa was looking a little uncomfortable. Meara got up and leaned across his desk. "Don't you enjoy it?" She had positioned herself so that she could look directly into his eyes, but his were riveted on the front of her shift. She leaned a little closer so that she could say softly, "Wouldn't you enjoy it with me?"
"I can't," he gulped, and moved as if to push her away. She danced out of reach of his touch and said gleefully, "Aha. I knew it, you aren't allowed to go near us, are you?"
"No." He took a deep breath. "The rule applies to all of you but it's only important for the third or so that aren't pregnant and are running around without any protection. It wouldn't do to have a medtech take it into his own hands to reproduce, now would it?"
"Well, that's too bad for you, isn't it?' she said with mock sympathy, and turned to go.
"And if you're thinking about blackmail I record everything that goes on in my office."
She turned and snapped her fingers and smiled nastily. "Dren," she said.
Meara was rather surprised at herself. She had never been a tease, and although it had started out as an effort to convince him that she was indeed capable of forgetting who she had been recreating with, she had enjoyed his discomfort. But why wouldn't she? He was getting in her way, and no amount of negotiating or reasoning had gotten her one step closer to what she wanted. And she wanted out. If not that, than at least some line to the outside world.
She didn't want out because of the boredom, the stupid holopictures about their doing their duty by producing formations of 5 or 6 cycle children in uniform (she was still somewhat under the impression that she was going to give birth to something smaller than that) or even the woman who wept incessantly at night in the bunk next to hers. She wanted to find the part of herself that was missing. Sometimes it surprised her that she was still walking around when she felt so incomplete, like she'd forgotten her arm or could only use one leg.
She was also incredibly angry that she had no control over her environment. She almost started to wonder if any rights she had thought she had were an illusion. They were all treated like they had no rights at all, but were constantly reminded that it was only temporary. Deep down inside, where she didn't have to admit it to herself, she was afraid. She had never met a situation that she couldn't impose her will on, and she had no faith in anything else.