“Oh?” Marta gave him a grandmotherly smile, and he blushed.
“Well . . . junior year . . . I mean I’d heard about her, and she . . . she said she liked me. I suppose she did, as long as it lasted.”
“She likes men . . .” Marta said, trailing it out.
“She likes sex,” Vericour said. “Sorry, sera, but it’s the truth. She went through our class like-like-”
“Fire through wheat?” suggested Marta. “And now she’s always with that Ensign Serrano, isn’t she?”
“Poor kid won’t know what hit him,” Vericour said, nodding. “I’d heard she was after bigger game, working her way up-but maybe she thinks the Serrano name’s better than rank alone. And right now, when they’re under a cloud, what with Lord Thornbuckle being so angry with them, she probably thinks she has a better chance.”
“She is attractive,” Marta said. “And I suppose she’s efficient in her work?”
“I suppose,” Vericour said, without any enthusiasm. “I was never on the same ship.”
“I wonder if Ensign Serrano is actually taken with her.”
“It wouldn’t matter,” Vericour said gloomily. “She has her ways, has Casea.”
A few days downside, working through the civilian databases and ansible, gave her even more insight into the Suiza controversy. She had identified five classmates, including the sleek blonde Ferradi, who were actively spreading, if not inventing, wicked-Suiza stories. All five were at least one promotion group behind Suiza. If that wasn’t the green-eyed monster, she didn’t know what was. Suiza’s former co-workers and commanding officers, on the other hand, seemed incredulous that anyone would believe such stories. One and all, they insisted that if she had had an argument with Brun Meager, and if she had been insulting, then Brun must have deserved it.
Marta wasn’t sure about that-couldn’t be, until she met Esmay Suiza in person-but she was willing to swear that whatever the nature of the original offense, malice and envy and spite had blown it out of all proportion.
The nature of the original offense still eluded her. Unless Suiza had snapped under the pressure of work-which didn’t seem likely given her history-Brun had precipitated the fight. How? Given Brun’s past history, the most likely cause was that she’d come between Suiza and a lover, but gossip didn’t credit Suiza with any lovers. Indeed, gossip went the other direction. Block of ice, cold fish, frozen clod. Barin Serrano was supposed to have liked her, when he was on Koskiusko, but that could be mere hero worship, and Vericour had said Suiza was cool to him at Copper Mountain.
What could Brun have done? Marta was careful not to ask this question of the youngsters. Most of them, it was clear, thought that being the victim of piracy turned Brun into a shining martyr figure, untainted by any human error other than getting caught. Marta knew better. Brun was, by observation and Raffaele’s report, intelligent, quick-witted, brave, and full of mischief as a basket of kittens. If she had wanted some reaction from Suiza she did not get, she might well have put all her inventive genius to work making trouble. That still led back to interference with a man Suiza wanted-but the problem was that Suiza supposedly had no preferences. Unless it was Barin, but for that she had no evidence.
Chapter Fourteen
The pains started at night. Brun woke up, to find herself knotted around her hardened belly. It eased, but she knew at once it was not a cramp from supper. It was . . . what she most feared. She lay back, stretching a little. She was just dozing off when another pain curled her forward again.
She had no watch, no clock. She had no way to tell how the pains quickened. She had to use the toilet suddenly. Levering herself out of bed, she went into the corridor. Down the length of it, she saw the glint from the door-guard’s eyes watching her. Damn him. She struggled toward the toilets, but another pain caught her, doubling her up against the wall. Through a haze of pain, she saw the guard stand up, move toward her. The pain eased; she leaned on the wall but went on. Into the toilet room . . . at least they had toilets, she thought muzzily. She was hardly a meter from it when fluid gushed down her legs, hot and shocking.
“You!” It was the warden; the guard must have wakened her. “Come on!” The woman grabbed her arm, pulled. Yelled at the others to wake up. Brun doubled up again; the woman tugged at her arm. But it hurt too much; she was too weak. She sagged to her knees, gasping. It was unfair that she couldn’t scream, unfair that this pain could not be met as it should be, with the protest it deserved.
Now the other women were around her, tugging and pushing, but she huddled there on her knees, unwilling to rise. Why should she? Suddenly the warden stuck something under her nose, an acrid smell that made her throw her head up to escape it. With a grin of triumph, the woman yanked on her arms again. With the others’ help, she got Brun up, and together they half-dragged, half-carried her down the corridor and into the birthing room. By then the pain had eased, and Brun clambered onto the birth-bed herself. She might as well.
To her surprise, the rest of the birthing went faster than the one she had watched. Weren’t first births supposed to be slower? She couldn’t remember; she couldn’t think. One pain after another flowed down her body, pushing, pushing . . . the other women wiped her face with damp cloths, stroked her arms. The warden alone scolded her, telling her to breathe or push, waiting with a folded towel for the baby that was-surely-just about to come.
And then it did-with a last wrenching pain, she felt the pressure ease suddenly; a thin cry rose from nowhere. The women all gasped together; the warden scowled.
“Too little. You have puny babies.”
But then another pain struck, and Brun curled into it.
“Ah-” The warden handed off the first baby to one of the other women. “Two babies! Good!”
The second was born crying lustily. The warden put them on Brun’s chest. “Give suck,” she said. Brun had no idea how, until the warden turned the babies and pressed Brun’s nipples into the little mouths. “Help her,” she ordered one of the other women. She herself washed Brun, while the others cleaned the room.
By afternoon, Brun was back in her own room, lying exhausted on her bed, with a baby on either side. She felt nothing for them. They were no more her babies than . . . than any stranger’s baby. Less. They had been forced on her; strangers had made use of her body to produce them.
Two babies. Brun slid into darkness on that thought.
“No breeding for half a year,” the warden told her the next day. “You feed your babies; you help with work here one month, then you go to the nursery. Nursery for five months-maybe with twins, six months. Then to breeding house.”
Half a year . . . she had half a year to get strong, to escape, to find a way to contact someone who would let her father know where she was.
But in the days after the birth, Brun began to despair again. How could she help Hazel if she couldn’t find her? How could she find her when she couldn’t ask questions? She lay motionless unless the warden prodded her to get up . . . she fed the babies only when ordered, ate only when ordered. Feeding the babies hurt; she had not imagined that babies would suck harder than her lovers had. But she was too weak, too miserable, to do more than hiss in pain each time someone put them to her breasts. She didn’t notice when someone took the babies away, bringing them to her only for nursing. Someone had to put them to her breasts; someone had to clean them-and her-when they soiled her.
Then one day a cooler wind blew through the doors and windows, carrying with it a scent of harvest fields. And something-something familiar. Brun shifted in her chair; the babies shifted. One of them lost its hold on her nipple, and whimpered. Without noticing, she moved it back. Something-what was it? She dozed again, but woke at the next cool gust. Oak leaves, stubble fields. Hunting, if she were home. All at once the full memory hit her: Opening Day, with all three hunts gathered before the big house, the clop of the horses’ feet, the panting and whining of hounds, the clink of glasses, the voices . . . but eve
n in imagination, she saw herself silent, unable to reply to the greetings. She saw the faces of friends staring at her, shocked, disapproving . . . and she was standing barefoot on the sharp gravel, all the others on tall horses, hard-hooved horses stamping near her bare feet . . .
She would never be home. Her thoughts slid down the same spiral of depression . . . but this time stopped short of darkness. No. She was young, she had a long life to live. Lady Cecelia had survived without a voice, and she had been blind and paralyzed as well. Help had finally come; she, Brun, had been part of that help. Somewhere, people were trying to plan help for her. She had to trust that, believe that her family and friends would not leave her here forever, alone. She had survived so far; she had borne twins with no medical care worth mentioning, and lived . . . she would live to hunt again. She would ride; she would speak, and those who had silenced her would listen. Her head came up.
“This is good,” the warden said, coming out to pat her on the shoulder. “Many mothers feel sad after babies, especially twins. But now you’re better. Now you will be all right.”
She was not all right, but she could be . . . perhaps. Brun fought the darkness back, made herself begin to live again. The next day, she reached out for the babies as they were brought to her. She didn’t even know what they were . . . not only whose, who was the father, but whether they were boys or girls. She looked. Boys. Both boys . . . one with pale orange hair, one with darker, thinner hair. She could see nothing of herself in either one, and she knew that one of the men had had red hair and a shaggy red beard.
She still felt nothing for them, not even the mild flicker of interest she used to feel for other women’s babies. She had thought babies amusing at times, when they were older than this and had learned to smile. She had felt the odd pang of tenderness . . . but not now. These were just . . . little animals who had lived in her flesh, and now fed at her expense. At least the nursing was less painful-even a relief, when her breasts were swollen with milk.
She watched the other women with their babies. Muted though they were, they clearly loved the babies, cuddling them, stroking them, laughing soundlessly when one of the infants did something amusing. They spoke to them in hissing whispers and little clicks whenever the warden was far enough away. They peered at each other’s babies, smiling and nodding over them-and the same with her twins. She could not reciprocate.
Now that she could force herself to her feet again, she was expected to help with the work. But she had never cared for an infant, let alone in these primitive circumstances. The wrapping of diapers baffled her completely.
“It’s as if she never did anything until now-can you believe a grown woman not knowing how to peel vegetables? To put a child to breast?” The warden complained to the other women, who nodded and hissed in response.
Brun seethed. She could have told them why she didn’t have their backwards, primitive skills. She had not been trained to make beds and clean toilets and chop vegetables and wipe the bottoms of dirty little brats. She held pilots’ licenses on half a dozen worlds; she could ride to hounds with the Greens; she could take down and reassemble the scan systems of a medium cruiser as fast as any technicians . . .
And here her skills were worth nothing. They thought she was stupid or crazy, because she couldn’t do what they did so easily.
“She’s an abomination. Of course the heathen don’t teach their daughters properly.” That was the warden’s explanation for everything she did wrong.
She was not a heathen, nor an abomination, but surrounded by those who thought she was, she found it harder and harder to remember her real self. It was easier to scrub the floor the way the warden insisted on, even if it would have been more efficient the other way. Easier to change the babies the way she was told, to cut vegetables the way she was told.
If only she had been really stupid . . . but her intelligence, recovering from the birth, awoke again. Recipes were boring, perhaps, but she remembered them just the same, automatically assigning them to categories. Sewing was even more boring than recipes, poking a needle in and out of cloth over and over. Why did they have to do everything the hard way? Not everything, she reminded herself . . . just the work assigned to women. Electricity for light, running water . . . but only men had access to computers and all that computers stood for.
Scraps of history she had hardly listened to in class floated up from a retentive memory. There had been other societies which resisted making life easier for women, because then they might turn away from the traditional role of wife and mother. Way back on Old Earth, cultures which didn’t let women drive groundcars or fly or learn to use weapons-others which forbade women to teach in mixed classes, to become doctors. But that was long ago and very far away . . . and this was here and now.
* * *
In the quick glimpse she caught of the street when she and the babies were transferred to the nursery, she could not distinguish any landmarks. It was a chill, raw day; she shivered in the wind that whipped down the street. She was put in the back of the same kind of closed groundcar, where she could see nothing of her route, and driven some incalculable distance with four definite turns.
The front of the nursery looked slightly more welcoming, with shuttered windows instead of blank stone overlooking the street. A distant roar-Brun looked up to see the obvious plume of a shuttle launch in the distance.
“Eyes down!” said the driver, slapping at her head. But she exulted . . . she knew now where the spaceport was, or at least what direction.
Inside, the matron greeted her less harshly than the warden at the maternity house, and she could hear women’s voices in the distance. Women’s voices? The matron led her to a room large enough for a bed, two cribs, and a low wide chair with a leg rest that was obviously intended for nursing. She had a small closet, a chest, and the inevitable sewing basket was on a bedside table.
The matron helped her settle the babies in their cribs, helped her make the bed, and then led Brun off to show her the house. In the upstairs rooms, the more privileged women could look out through slatted shutters to the streets below-but Brun had only a glimpse before the matron pulled her away. An upstairs sewing room had rear-facing windows that looked out on a long, walled garden full of fruit trees; a few apples hung from some of them. Beyond the wall-Brun tried not to stare, told herself she would have time to look later-beyond the wall she could see a street, and the buildings across it . . . and beyond more buildings, open land, rough fields and distant hills.
* * *
The women in the nursery had slightly more freedom. They were supposedly regaining their strength for another pregnancy; they were encouraged to walk out in the orchard, as well as do the housework and cooking. Not all the women were muted, either. They had come, Brun learned, from other maternity homes or from private homes . . . servant women whose children would be reared elsewhere when they returned to their duties. The women who supervised them inspected the babies and mothers daily for cleanliness and any sign of illness, and supervised the preparation of household chores and cooking, but otherwise treated their charges with pleasant firmness. The muted women had perhaps less pleasantness and more firmness, but no active unkindness.
They continued to teach Brun the skills they thought all women should have. Brun had not known that such things were possible, but she watched the other women produce socks and gloves and mittens from several wooden sticks and balls of fuzzy yarn. She was handed a pair of sticks, and shown-over and over-how to cast on, how to knit a plain stitch. It was the most boring thing she’d ever done, the same little movement of the hand over and over and over, even worse than sewing seams. Then they handed her another stick, and taught her to knit a tube. Something clicked in her mind-this sort of thing, done with finer yarn and on a machine, made some of the things she’d worn. Sweaters, for instance: three tubes sewn together. Stockings . . . leggings . . . tubular knits. It was interesting in an intellectual way, one of the few things that was.
It got colder, and Brun shivered. The other women, warm in their knitted shawls and sweaters, shook their heads at her.
“You must work faster,” one of them told her. “You will be cold if you have no winter clothes.” In winter, they explained, they wore long knitted stockings under their skirts, held up with a peculiar arrangement of straps and buttons. The stockinged feet did not break the rules against shoes, because they were not hard-bottomed. In households, some women even wore backless clogs in wet or snowy weather, if they needed to go to market, but here they would not.
Here also Brun was formally introduced to the beliefs of her captors. They assumed that outlanders had no morals, and no beliefs worth mentioning. So they began with the basics, as Brun assumed children were taught. God, a supernatural being who had created the universe. Man, the glory of creation. Woman, created to be Man’s comfort and help. Evil powers, rebellious against God, who tempted Woman to usurp Man’s position.
For once muteness had its utility; Brun could not be made to recite the Rules and Rituals, as the other women did. And since women did not “discourse”-a word which they interpreted to mean speaking or writing about Godly matters-she was not asked to write answers to the questions asked ritually of others. Women were not encouraged to read or write anyway-although recipes and compendia of other household knowledge were permissable. But they clearly feared contamination by anything a heathen abomination such as a Registered Embryo might commit to paper, or do to a book she read from. She was not allowed to read or write anything at all. They could not test her memory, or her understanding.
But she had an excellent memory. She could not hear the same words over and over without storing them away. The words of the prophets . . . the word of God Almighty. The rules and their corollaries . . . quite reasonable, if you accepted the premises, which Brun did not. If in fact you believed that women had been created as men’s servants and comfort, then . . . anything women did which was not serving men would clearly be wrong. And this was not something women could determine. Only God could make the rules, and only men could interpret them.