The Widow Page 6
So I made up the words myself, and watched the little drama of everyday life unfold. The communal dining room was my favorite. People complained about the food, discussed their plans for the next day, and told jokes, or at least in my mind they did. Since my imagination had to supply their words, they might as easily have been plotting my death for all I knew.
I heard footsteps on the ladder and dialed down the focus on my vision, not bothering to turn the implant off. It was pitch black, so they couldn’t see me fooling with it and being able to switch to night vision gave me a distinct advantage.
I felt suddenly sorry for Sebastian and Quince. They didn’t have any light at night either, and had no technological gadgets imbedded in their skulls to assist them. I’d never bothered to ask why we weren’t allowed so much as a lantern, but I assumed it was because the sudden appearance of light in a previously disused building would arouse too much talk. They must resent me, I realized. Being stuck here as my guards, kept away from their families and friends and having to spend half of their time in complete darkness.
“It’s just me,” Sebastian said as he pulled himself into the room. “I didn’t hear the bed scrape over so I knew you were still up.”
I waited. He’d never visited me at night before and I knew it couldn’t bode well. Was it already time for the chains to be brought out? I clicked on my starlight vision and dialed it all the way up, making the black around me lighten to a medium gray. The contrast was bad at that level, but I could still see his grim expression.
He stood at the top of the ladder, peering around the room.
“I’m up here,” I told him helpfully.
He sighed.
“How are you going to get down from there in the dark?” He asked, as if I were a child who hadn’t thought the matter through. “You’ll break a leg.”
I wanted to hop down easily, just to show I could, but thought better of it. Even with his height and size advantage, rooting me out of this spot in the dark would be almost impossible for him. I put my hand around the neck of the bottle and thought of what I’d do if he came at me. A few kicks to the head, a broken bottle in the face… Would they buy me enough time to get to the screwdriver? And if they did, what then? I had no doubt that I could disable him, but there was nowhere to run. I didn’t like my odds if I make a mad dash for one of the other buildings and hoped someone there would help me. My only other option was the children’s dormitory and a hostage, which seemed equally pointless. What would my demands be? Send me home? If these people had the ability to get off this rock, they would certainly have done so long ago.
“I’ll manage,” I said, when it was clear he had no intention of going on without prompting. “What do you want?”
“I have a message from Titus,” he told me. “He wants to know if you’ve come to a decision.”
So, my time was ticking away, but not gone just yet.
“Can I see Julian?” I asked. I had no intention of forcing a man who didn’t even want to kiss me into my bed, but I needed to stall. Assuming I was as blind as he was, Sebastian didn’t bother to hide his expression. Hatred. Disgust. Jealousy? That one I hadn’t expected. Had Sebastian really believed there was any chance I’d choose him?
“I’ll get him,” he said, then turned to go, fumbling around for the hatch.
“Wait,” I called, a new thought tickling at my subconscious. If I had no husband, which Julian had certainly known, then why had he bolted the other night?
“Is he married?” I asked.
Sebastian turned back, his face clothed in wry amusement. Did they even have marriage here? I suddenly wondered. Titus certainly hadn’t batted an eyelash at the idea of polygamy or promiscuity. Monogamy had been the norm of Earth for a good long time, but that didn’t mean it held sway here. Still, the idea that, if I did eventually have to choose, I might pick a man who belonged to someone else, was unsettling.
“No,” was all he said, though there was clearly more to it than that.
“What about all the rest of them?” I asked. “Titus said I could pick anyone I could see, and he’d have them sent up. But surely some of them are spoken for?”
His eye went wide with surprise. So he hadn’t known the details after all.
“All the men up here are bachelors,” he said after a slight pause. “Any ones who are spoken for live below.”
Well hello. Finally, a tidbit.
“But Julian doesn’t live up here,” I told him, though I couldn’t be positive it was true. I only knew that I hadn’t seen him through my window.
“He’s a doctor,” Sebastian reminded me, “and we don’t have many. He goes where he likes or where he’s needed.”
Titus had said Julian enjoyed privileges. Apparently they were more extensive than I’d imagined. Was he worried that being chosen by me would force him to live under the same restrictions I did? Was that the cause of his reticence?
“You aren’t being very helpful,” I pointed out.
Sebastian looked at the floor. And if having one eye and half of his face pulled askew by his scar made him hard to read, that made him impossible. Well fine.
I fiddled with my implant again, switching it over to body heat. Expressions were the easiest way to read a person, but they were far from the only one. His body glowed a pleasant orange with traces of blue, but I could see blobs of white around his eyes and lines of it on his forehead. He was under a lot of stress, probably caused by lying his pants off.
“If you want to know if he’s attracted to you, ask him. I’m not your matchmaker.”
“But he isn’t married?” I asked again.
“No.”
“Does he prefer men to women?”
Whoa! His whole face went so white with heat that I thought his head might explode. I had to blink to clear my vision. That had certainly struck a nerve.
“Well?” I persisted.
“No,” he told me through clenched teeth.
“Do you?” I asked, unable to resist.
He took a step forward, nearly banging into the bed in the dark. I thought he might have hit me then, if I’d been on the ground. Clearly homosexuality was a taboo subject. Interesting. Homosexuality bad, polygamy okay? It made a sort of sense in a place where having the maximum number of children was important for the communities survival.
“Come down here and I’ll show you,” he snapped.
That was clearly designed to goad me into telling him to leave, and since I was fairly sure I’d gotten everything I was going to out of him, I decided I might as well.
“No thank you,” I said coldly. “Just ask Julian to come up when he can.”
I hadn’t really expected him that night, Quince and Sebastian hadn’t left after dark since my arrival, but when he also failed to come the next day, I began to wonder. Was he down below right now, arguing with Titus about being forced to sleep with me? It wasn’t a flattering notion.
Sebastian brought me a haunch of rabbit for lunch, a rare treat from the usual soup that I took as a sign that Titus had gotten my message and was pleased, but he’d failed to bring a napkin and without a fork it was messy eating. Quince never forgot the little things, but I realized I hadn’t seen him all day.
I poked my head down the hatch to ask for a rag and saw him curled on the bed, his arms wrapped around his legs like a frightened child.
Sebastian saw me and got up from his own bed. He tiptoed over to the ladder and ascended the first few rungs.
“What?” He whispered angrily.
I looked over at the boy, the closest thing to a friend I had, and forgot about the napkin entirely.
“Is he sick?” I asked quietly.
Sebastian shook his head.
“Just tired,” he told me. “He hasn’t been sleeping well. Nightmares.”
“Did you need something?” Sebastian asked.
“No. I…” Retreating back up the ladder, I left the hatch open and sat on my bed for the rest of the afternoon, worried more than I would have thought possible for a boy I barely knew. How young was he really? Fourteen or fifteen would have been my guess, but it was only that. Did he miss his parents? Siblings? And if so, could I talk Titus into sending him back home, or would that only make it worse. If Titus thought he’d displeased me, would he get in trouble?
I worked at the problem all afternoon, but could find no answer beyond asking Julian when he finally showed up. I was so lost in thought that I didn’t notice my half eaten lunch being taken away or my dinner being brought up. I just laid in bed with my eyes closed, trying to reason my way through yet another puzzle on my increasingly long list. Sebastian must have thought I was asleep, because he left me alone and I suppose I did nod off because the next thing I knew, I was awoken by the sound of voices from below.
“It’s getting dark,” Sebastian said, his voice gentler than I’d ever heard it. “You can’t put it off any longer.”
There was no reply, which made sense since he was probably talking to Quince. With my hatch still flipped up, I certainly would have heard the downstairs door open. And then, as if to prove me right, it did.
“Evening boys.”
Julian. About time.
“What are you doing here?” Sebastian asked rudely.
“She asked for me,” Julian reminded him. “I got away as soon as I could.”
“Isn’t that a bit risky? What if they need you again?”
Risky? Had he been attending some medical emergency I wasn’t privy to? His voice certainly didn’t sound stressed.
“What’s wrong with Quince?” Julian asked, changing the subject.
“He doesn’t want to go,” Sebastian told him. Well, at least being cooped up here with me didn’t seem to be the cause of his distress.
I heard the bed squeak, and imagined Julian sitting on the edge.
“You’ll feel better afterwards,” Julian said kindly. “You know you will.”
“I usually go with him,” Sebastian pointed out.
“So go,” Julian said easily. “I’ll be here to keep an eye on her.”
I expected Sebastian to protest. I knew he didn’t trust me and I suspected he didn’t feel much better about Julian, but apparently concern for Quince and a need to take care of whatever it was that was going on below outweighed that. And what could that be? Something that he was afraid to do but which would make him feel better. Something risky that might require a doctor close by. I was at a loss.
The only thing I could think of that they might need a doctor on hand for was a sporting event, and that certainly wouldn’t make Quince nervous enough to curl up in bed all day, would it? Did they practice some sort of blood sport? If so, that would explain why having Sebastian around might make Quince feel better. It might also explain the man’s hideous scar. The creatures we’d passed in the sled hadn’t seemed interested in attacking us and there was no sign of anything else on the planet, hostile or otherwise. That left an accident or a human assailant, and Sebastian didn’t seem like the kind of man who had accidents. If it were true, I didn’t want to see what the other guy had looked like after that fight.
“Are you staying the night?” Sebastian asked, his voice clipped.
“That’s up to her,” Julian said chivalrously. He certainly didn’t sound upset at the prospect, which I took as a good sign. Perhaps the earlier incident had just been a cultural misunderstanding. There were certainly enough rules about sex in various cultures on Earth to fill volumes, and every colony had its only quirky little variations. Special words that had to be said, permissions from male relatives granted, weird underwear worn, fasting, feasting. This place, completely isolated as it was, might require that we complete any number of silly rituals before anything could happen, or it might be as simple as needing Titus’ okay.
I heard rustling, presumably Sebastian and Quince getting ready to go.
“Pull the bed over the hatch up there if you do,” Sebastian said as the downstairs door opened. “She’s trickier than you think and I wouldn’t put it past her to try to sneak out. I think we can both agree that would be bad, especially tonight.”
“I think I can manage,” Julian said with a chuckle. “How much trouble can one girl be?”
“Do you ever read anything other than your medical books?” Sebastian asked.
“Not really,” Julian admitted.
“Next time you’re in the library grab a copy of the Bible. The first chapter is very informative on the subject.”
Julian poked his head through the hatch, smiling when he saw me on the bed.
“No tricks,” he said in a hilarious parody of Sebastian’s voice.
I laughed. It was nice not to have to pretend I hadn’t been listening.
“Where are they going?” I asked, not really expecting a straight answer.
“Come help me with this stuff and I’ll tell you,” he promised with a conspiratorial wink.
I hurried over and assisted as he reached down and handed up his haul. There was a lantern, a large bag that was heavy, but soft - clothing I guessed, a second chair, an extra pillow, and a little folding table.
“Don’t worry,” he said with a grin, “I’m not moving in. I just thought you might want to be a little more comfortable.”
“I’m not supposed to have light,” I warned him.
“That’s okay,” he assured me. “I’ve told everyone that I’m using this place to conduct experiments on a highly contagious new pathogen I’ve found. They’ll expect to see lights now and they certainly wont come to investigate.”
He climbed up, flopped on the bed, and drew from his pocket one last little treasure: A small pouch made of the same material as my onesie.
I made a grab for it and he held it away playfully.
“What’ll you give me for it?” He asked.
I smiled.
“I was under the impression that you were to be mine to do with as I chose,” I said haughtily. “What you should be asking is what will I do if you don’t hand it over.”
“About that,” he said, tossing me the bag and sobering instantly. He got up and looked down the hatch, checking to see that Sebastian and Quince were indeed gone, then shut it carefully. “I want you to know I don’t approve of this, and I’ve argued with Titus about it since he told me.”
“You don’t have to be here,” I said, a little hurt. “I can tell Titus that you don’t strike my fancy and he’ll get me someone else.”
He rolled his eyes.
“I don’t mean this,” he said, gesturing at the two of us and the room in general, “I mean, bringing you here under false pretenses and then making you pick a harem. It’s wrong for a hundred different reasons. That said, I should tell you that he’s very determined and pretty relentless as a rule. I came here tonight to, well…” He paused, obviously trying to find the right words. “Look, we close the hatch, we push the bed over it, who’s to say what does or doesn’t happen?” He asked. “Titus will take my word for it and it’ll keep him happy for a while.”
I wanted to ask what constituted ‘a while’, and what I was supposed to do then, but he was one step ahead of me.
“I did some digging in the old medical logs,” he told me. “There’s a lot of evidence of temporary infertility in women after long space voyages. I can provide him with enough documentation that he won’t even start to question it for months, maybe longer.”
It was touching, the lengths he’d gone to to avoid having to have sex with me. Really it was.
“So you are moving i
n?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“I can’t stay up here like Sebastian and Quince do, if that’s what you mean. I have too many responsibilities. But I can come a few times a week and spend the night.” He reached into the big bag and pulled out a long, narrow bundle. Unwinding the cloth around it carefully, he revealed a beautiful carved wooden box. How long had it been since I’d seen wood?
“Are there trees here?” I asked. The only plant life I’d seen was in the greenhouses, though of course there had to be some somewhere, or the atmosphere wouldn’t be breathable.
“One of the original colonists brought this with him,” he told me, a hint of reverence in his voice. I reached out and ran my hand along it, admiring the graceful curves. He opened the hinged lid and smiled up at me.
“Backgammon?” I asked, delighted.
“You know how to play?”
I nodded vigorously, grinning ear to ear.
“The people who raised me didn’t believe in ‘modern entertainments’. They said they’d rot our brains. So we played a lot of board games.”
“That’s right,” he said, “I remember reading in the paperwork that you were raised in an orphanage. Titus said that was good because you wouldn’t spend all your time missing your family back home.”
He set up the table and placed the chairs on either side, then put down the board and began organizing the rounded little markers.
“Not an orphanage really,” I explained. “A Foundling House.”
“What’s the difference?”
I picked up the dice and examined them, not sure how to go on. The things these people didn’t know about modern society were staggering.
“Well,” I said, going with the easiest explanation. “Orphans are children whose parents are dead. Foundlings are abandoned.”