The Widow Page 16

  Quince saw me falter and began wailing against the body with both first clenched, hammering away at it without any regard for the limbs thrashing against him. With years of pent up rage to fuel him, he battered it back into a corner and switched to kicking and stomping. The body partially deflated, but didn’t die and apparently the legs wouldn’t detach until it did. Instead, the creature tried to flee and I hurried over and began tearing furiously at the legs, trying to disable as many as I could while my strength held.

  I finally fell against the table, blood streaming from the gash on my side. The few legs that were still alive were twitching uselessly or trying to drag the creature to safety. With the entrance to the tube so far up the wall, I doubted it could succeed even if Quince weren’t still pounding away at it.

  I stumbled forward and handed him the screwdriver, deeming it safe to kill the thing at last, and watched as he brought the point down against the already badly damaged body. It popped, though with considerably less force than the last one and only one of the legs even bothered to release and make a run for it. Quince stomped on it, breaking it with a crack, and then looked up at me, grinning from ear to ear.

  I checked the man in the corner, forgotten in the fighting, and found he’d fainted. There was blood seeping from between the hands that still cupped his groin, but his pulse was strong and steady and I guessed it was more fear than trauma that had knocked him out.

  Quince grabbed up the mans discarded shirt and bunched it up, holding it out to me. I pressed it against my side tightly and winced.

  “Back to the surface,” I told him, hoping I could make it up all the stairs.

  He took my free hand and gently put it around his neck, placing his arm around me to take some of my weight. At the door, I peeked into the hall. We weren’t concerned with getting caught, but we needed to make sure it happened on the surface. No one was around, though I heard the chatter of distant voices, and we hurried down the long hall and to the spiral stairs leading up to the surface.

  Twice we had to backtrack to landings and hide down passages to keep from being seen, and when we finally reached the door leading in to our rooms, I was spent. I sat down heavily on the top step and tried to catch my breath. Quince went for the door but I stopped him.

  “We have to find a crowd,” I told him. Desperate for my med-kit as I was, I knew there were more important things to be seen to first. “Where ever you can think of that the most people will be. Don’t worry,” I assured him when I saw the look on his face, “it’s only a flesh wound. I’ll be fine.”

  I reached out my hand and let him pull me to my feet, then threw my arm back over his shoulder and went to the door leading outside. He pulled it open and I swore. I’d forgotten all about the storm.

  The lights from the greenhouses shone like beacons, but they and the rest of the colony buildings were nearly a quarter of a mile away and the path that led to them looked inhospitable to say the least. While we had been sweating in the tunnels below, the sky had opened up and now a full blown blizzard seemed to be raging. I’d take winter in Minnesota over spring here any day of the week.

  There was nothing to be done but put our heads down and make a run for it. Even if going into our rooms had been safe, which I doubted, Sebastian and Quince kept their cold weather gear stored somewhere else, probably so I wouldn’t use it to try to escape, and used the tunnels to get everywhere. If that route were an option, I was sure Quince would have let me know. I steeled myself up and took a step out into the lashing wind, wondering how long it took a person to freeze to death.

  Longer than twenty minutes, which is how long it took us to fight our way to the building Quince led me to. The trip was considerably better than I had expected, for a change, since the snow was of the fine powdery type that seemed more inclined to blow around than to stick. It had the added benefit of numbing my side and even scoured off most of the noxious gore Quince and I were both coated in. Still, when we banged open the door and half fell into the large communal dining hall, we caused a considerable stir.

  Silence swept along the crowded tables in advance of our passing and many of the men stood up as we stumbled by. I tried to smile reassuringly, but probably only ended up looking like I was grimacing in pain. It didn’t matter anyway. Not a single one of them was looking at my face anyway, and for once I wasn’t the least offended.

  When we got to the center of the room, Quince found a vacant chair and pulled it around. I dropped into it gratefully and tried to order my thoughts. The men crowded around me and I found their silent reverence more unsettling than any screaming or anger could have been. I opened my mouth to begin what would probably be the most important words of any of our lives and promptly passed out.

  “I said get the fuck back,” Sebastian yelled.

  My eyes flew open and I tried to stand but strong arms held me down.

  “Stop squirming,” he growled at me. The hole in my onesie had been ripped further, exposing my damaged side, and there were men holding both my shoulders and ankles. The only thing that was even marginally reassuring about the situation was Quince’s face looking over Sebastian’s shoulder.

  “Which one of these is the antiseptic?” Sebastian asked, holding up three of the little colored packets from my med-kit.

  “Yellow,” I told him groggily. “Red will stop the bleeding. Green is…” I couldn’t remember what green did. “Don’t use the green,” I finished lamely.

  Since I didn’t seem to have much choice in the matter, I let him patch me up, instructing him on the use of numbing spray and the application of sterile bandages. Thankfully, the wound wasn’t deep enough to have done any serious damage. It was only blood loss and fatigue that had done me in.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked, craning my neck to try to see around the room.

  “Cowering in the kitchen, scared shitless,” Sebastian said.

  “How long was I out?”

  “About five minutes,” he told me. “I saw you and Quince limping through the storm, grabbed the med-kit and followed you. None of this was necessary,” he told me peevishly. “I had a plan.”

  “Did it involve rape?” I asked pointedly.

  “No,” he grumbled. “It didn’t involve your foot connecting with my neck either. Or getting Quince involved in this whole mess.”

  I didn’t have the time or the energy to bicker with him.

  “Call everyone back in here,” I told him. “There are some things we need to discuss.”

  “Maybe you’d better run those things past me first,” he said cautiously.

  “So you can edit out the important bits and keep everyone here ignorant and safe? I don’t think so,” I snapped, struggling up to a sitting position.

  Sebastian went to the kitchen and called the rest of the men back into the room and Quince helped me up until I was standing on the table. When the crowd had gathered back around me I cleared my throat and the deafening silence descended once more.

  “Hello,” I said, trying for a smile. “My name is Chapel Ward and I was sent here as an agent of the Colonial Board.”

  That got a reaction. There were mutterings and rumblings and even Sebastian looked a little shocked, though he must have known something was up when he’d cleared out the secret stash in my crates.

  “I know none of you are fond of Earth, that you feel you were betrayed and abandoned, but that was a long time ago, long before any of us were born. The Colonial Board is no longer a part of Earth’s government and for over fifty years they’ve been sending requests, inviting you to open a dialog with them and to become full members of the ruling body. Titus and his ilk have kept this from you because they like things the way they are. Even if you agree with them, you should stay and listen to what I have to say. It might change your mind.”

  I saw a single man dart out of the back of
the room and guessed he was going to get Titus, but ignored him. Let him come. He’d be too late to stop the fire I was about to start.

  “Today, Quince and I went down into one of the tubes. Do you know what we found?”

  “Them,” someone close to me spat.

  I nodded.

  “Lots of them. But also lots of women.”

  They looked around at each other, asking their neighbors if they’d heard me correctly.

  “Women like me,” I clarified. “Human women. They’re being kept in pens like animals not a hundred feet below us, right now. Whatever you thought was going on, whoever you thought was providing you with children, it was all lies.”

  I looked down at Quince and saw his eyes, urging me to tell them the rest.

  “We also saw something else. A man, dressed just like you, picking a woman out of the pit she was being kept in and having one of them bring her to him.”

  I knew I was giving them too much to process all at once, but I had to go on.

  “Not only are those things not the ones producing the children, the children aren’t even yours! They’re all the product of Titus and his cronies. They’ve known all along and used the countings as a means to keep you in line. Rape is never a crime of sex,” I told them carefully, hoping they realized it was their rape and not the women’s I was talking about, “It’s about power. They used the spiders to scare you, the children to keep you providing for them, the women, your sisters and mothers, any way they liked!”

  I had to yell the last bit to be heard above the general uproar. The room seemed split on whether to believe me or not, and once again it was Quince who came to my rescue. He whispered something to Sebastian who then climbed up onto the table beside me.

  “Quince says it was Thomas,” he bellowed over the crowd. “He says he saw the women and he saw Thomas come in and pick one out. If you doubt her, ask Quince. If you doubt Quince, I think you should go find Thomas and see what he has to say on the matter.”

  The debate raged for hours. I answered questions when asked but stayed out of it as much as I was able, choosing instead to let them find their own way through the confusing tangle of lies they’d lived with all their lives.

  Quince and I moved to a table near the wall where we could listen but avoid the tight press around the center of the room and he brought me mug after mug of hot broth.

  We watched as men bundled up against the storm and went out only to return after a short time with more of their fellows. Every time the doors to outside opened I expected Titus, but he never came.

  “How many men live below?” I finally asked Quince.

  He held up four fingers.

  “Four hundred?”

  He shook his head derisively.

  “Forty?”

  He nodded.

  Well, that explained why he didn’t storm in. There were already over two hundred in the room and while they were far from being of one mind on the subject of the women, none of them seemed pleased to know that their own leaders had been lying to them.

  “Is there a tunnel leading in here?” I asked him thoughtfully.

  He shook his head.

  “And the spiders don’t like the cold?”

  He nodded hard, as if that were an understatement.

  So Titus couldn’t come, even if he rallied all his men. The only enforcers he had in enough numbers were the spiders and even if he could communicate the need to them, they wouldn’t venture out to get us here, certainly not with the storm still raging.

  I sent Quince to retrieve my med-kit from Sebastian and went to work on my hands while they tried to figure out, as I had, how the system might have started. Popular opinion seemed to be that the spiders had taken the opportunity of the plague to steal all the women from the weakened men and hold them ransom for food. At first, the men would have known what was going on, but eventually the current caste system had evolved where the bulk of the population was kept in the dark.

  A second, slightly less popular and to my ears rather ridiculous theory was that the spiders had kidnapped all of the women in such a way that the men thought they were dead and the original colonists had truly believed that the spiders were having their children. Then, they argued, it might have been only recently that some man had discovered the truth and decided to take advantage of it.

  I wanted to tell them that none of it mattered, that what they should be arguing about was what to do now, but I knew that they needed time to come to terms with everything they’d learned. So I let them stall, concentrating on the abstract debate instead of the current crisis and instead of joining in, I folded my arms on the table to use as a pillow and went to sleep.

  I didn’t wake up until someone shook my shoulder. I looked up blearily into Sebastian’s face and tried to force a smile. The nap had stiffened my side and the pain pills I’d taken that morning were wearing off, making my body feel like it had been put through a ringer.

  “I’m sorry,” Sebastian said gently. “But we have questions only you can answer.”

  I pulled an assortment of pills from my med-kit, placed them on my tongue to dissolve, and then washed the taste away with a swig of my now cold broth.

  “Where’s the equipment from my cases?” I asked quietly as he helped me to my feet. I was glad he’d taken it. Otherwise he’d be dead and Quince and I would never have learned the truth, but now I wanted the feel of a gun on my hip and the satisfaction of knowing I’d reported in to my superiors.

  “I’ll send Quince to get it,” he promised, leading me back to the center of the room carefully, as if I might break.

  “Don’t let him go alone,” I warned.

  He gave me a nod of agreement and then boosted me up onto the table. I felt dizzy and immediately sat down on it cross legged, eliciting a groan from the crowd.

  “If everyone would sit down,” I said, raising my voice, “Then you’d all be able to see.”

  My words spread outward like a ripple from a pond and they took my advice. When the chairs were full, they sat on the floor. I looked around at all of their faces, so expectant and hopeful, and felt exceedingly ill at ease. This was my first solo mission, though I had no intention of telling them that, and I’d been sent here at least partly because it was believed that there was a minimum of damage an inexperienced agent could do in a place like this. Boy had they gotten that wrong.

  “So,” I said when they’d all settled down, “Sebastian said you had questions?”

  Everyone tried to talk at once. I waited until the chaos subsided, then looked around the room. I pointed to an older man close to the front.

  He rose to his feet and gave me a polite nod of greeting.

  I smiled, hoping he asked an easy one.

  “What is it you propose we do now?” He asked.

  It was the question I’d been dreading.

  “That’s entirely up to you,” I told him honestly.

  They all looked somewhat crestfallen, and I imagined in their place it would be very nice to have someone just come in and tell me what to do, but I had no intention of being that person for them.

  “And if we decide to fight?” He asked. “How long would we have to hold out against them before help got here?”

  “We can’t fight!” Someone in the back yelled. “They’ll kill us all.”

  “They’d die if they did that!” Someone countered.

  “You go explain that to them!” Another man chimed in.

  I ignored them and focussed on the original question. I wanted nothing more than for them to all take up arms and storm the tunnels below, but I couldn’t lie to make that happen.

  “You won’t get any help,” I said softly. “Not the kind you mean.”

  Another uproar.

  “LET HER TALK,” Sebastian scr
eamed.

  “You have to understand that the politics are very complicated,” I tried to explain. “The Colonial Board is made up of representatives from all of the colonies and there are going to be a lot of very different views on how something like this should be handled. I don’t doubt that you’d be given aid in the form of medical assistance and supplies, but as far as weapons or troops… The current makeup of the Board is such that I doubt you’d get anything at all. You’re talking about the forced extinction of an intelligent alien life form on its home planet. The prevailing opinion on such matters is that they were here first and you should deal with them or leave.”

  “Deal with them?!? How the hell are we supposed to do that?”

  I shrugged.

  “So we have no options at all,” a man close to the front spat. “You’ve come here and stirred up a hornets nest and now you’re just going to abandon us. Again.”

  There were too many angry nods of agreement for me to ignore him.

  “I was sent here with orders to find out why you refused all diplomatic contact with the outside. Having done so, I felt it was my duty to inform you as well. Would you really prefer I hadn’t told you? To just go on with your miserable excuse for a life, showing up at countings, letting Titus and his cronies perpetrate god knows what horrors right beneath your feat?” I gave him a hard look. “I didn’t say there’s nothing you can do. I didn’t even say there’s nothing I can do. All I said was that you shouldn’t expect help from off planet.”

  He looked somewhat mollified.

  “And what can we do? What can you do?” It was Sebastian, standing right behind me and not bothering to raise his voice so the rest of the room could hear him.

  “I can help you fight,” I said, turning so I look him in the eye. “I can help you end this.”

  The room erupted but Sebastian ignored them, holding my eyes for a long, solemn moment.