Genesis (4 page)

Seeing that the robot had stopped dragging the woman when she turned in that direction again, Bri rushed to the edge of her compound, dashing the blinding tears from her eyes to study the woman hopefully.

She was breathing!

Bri wilted to the ground, watching, waiting, hoping the woman would regain consciousness.

Human! She’d never realized how happy it could make her just to see another human being! She’d wrapped her arms around herself and was rocking agitatedly when the woman let out a gasp and her eyelids fluttered.

“Hey!” she called, straining forward as far as she dared. “Are you alright?”

With obvious effort, the woman lifted her head. Finally, she struggled upright.

Opening her mouth finally, she uttered a string of … Spanish.

Bri stared at the woman blankly for several moments and then uttered a hysterical giggle. She couldn’t seem to stop once she started. She laughed and laughed until her sides hurt. The woman was giving her a look that spoke volumes, foreigner or not, about her doubts about Bri’s sanity. “It’s just so fucking typical! One Earth woman on this whole god damned ship, or whatever the hell it is, and you can’t even speak fucking English! And I can’t speak Spanish! Isn’t that fucking wonderful?”

“Si!”

Bri gasped for air and started laughing again. “I don’t care! It’s so fantastic to see somebody from Earth I’d kiss you if I could cross this line without being laid out!”

The woman gave her a strange look. “No habla Espanol?”

Bri mopped her eyes and face and wiped her nose. “Not a damned word! Nacho!” she exclaimed, chuckling again. “Taco! Oh god!” she added, chasing the laugh with a sob.

“Anglais?”

Bri nodded, recognizing the word. “At least--Gringo, or maybe that’s gringa? That’s supposed to be insulting, though--not that I am because I don’t know what the fuck it means. American.”

“El Savatore,” the woman responded.

Bri blinked at the woman, finally subduing the hysteria as she struggled with her geography. South America? Central? “We’re neighbors then!” she exclaimed, feeling a kinship--a closeness--she would never have felt before. The woman frowned, and she turned and pointed to the habitat she occupied and then pointed out that it was adjacent to the one the Hispanic woman had come from. “Neighbors.” She placed her hand against her chest. “I’m Bri … Sabrina MacIntyre, but most people just call me Bri.”

The woman stared for a moment before that sank in. She smiled wanly and placed her hand against her own chest. “Consuelo.”

“Kole.”

Both Bri and Consuelo jumped at the deep, resonant voice. Turning, Bri saw that the alien nearest them had come as close to the line as he could. He’d knelt down so that he was nearly on a level with them.

Not quite. Up close, she saw that he was … massive.

Bri stared at him uneasily for several moments before she turned and looked at Consuelo questioningly. They exchanged a speaking glance and turned to look at the alien again.

He placed his hand over his chest as they had. “Kole.”

He couldn’t cross the line--she was fairly certain, for she could see he wore a collar as they did, and Bri still felt uncomfortable, fearful. She might have felt that way if it had been any strange man that was so big and looked so fierce, but that went double because he was also alien.

She couldn’t seem to refrain from staring, though, studying him. Except for a few notable differences, he looked so human it was as if he was--just some race she’d never encountered before. The differences were striking, though. The strange flesh tones and even his hair. His eyes were different, too, not just a different color--a yellowish-brown, but the irises weren’t the same. His ears, exposed by the way he had his hair drawn back and tied, were pointed--sort of like the Vulcans from the Science Fiction TV show that had once been so popular.

The moment that thought popped into her head, she realized that his features rather reminded her of that character, too, for his face was all harsh plains and angles--not handsome by any means, but memorable--interesting.

Somehow she doubted he was the logical, emotionless sort of alien portrayed in the TV show, though.

He was tattooed, she saw now that he was crouched within a few yards of her. His nipples were pierced, too.

She dragged her gaze from his hairless, tattooed chest to the knotted ridge of flesh that ran along his arms from his wrists, across his shoulders, and along the sides of his neck, wondering if, like the tattoos and piercings, if it was something he’d done to his flesh to ‘adorn’ it or if it was a genetic trait. There was extra skin on his forearms, a loose flap of skin, a thin, almost transparent membrane that she didn’t notice initially. She couldn’t imagine what purpose it might serve, either.

He must be every bit of six and a half feet tall, maybe taller, she decided. Not that there weren’t humans that tall, but when combined with the sheer mass of muscles that bulged all over him it made him seem like a veritable giant, because he was no bean pole. He was large boned and fully loaded with hard, bulging muscles. She suspected he could play ‘make a wish’ and snap her in two without straining himself.

His palms were roughly the size of her face, his fingers--five she noted, almost surprised--were about as long and thick as an average human dick--then she wished she hadn’t thought about dicks at all. If his was proportionate to his size, it was a behemoth--scary thought!

She didn’t want to talk him. He was scary. Being deliberately rude wasn’t something she felt comfortable with, though.

Besides, she didn’t want to get on his bad side.

She managed a tremulous smile. “Bri.”

He frowned faintly and said something to her in a language that was as alien to her ears as he was to her eyes. She exchanged another look with Consuelo. Consuelo shrugged.

A look of frustration crossed his features. Finally, he lifted his head and pointed to the sun above them, making a sweeping motion as if following the path from horizon to horizon.

Bri frowned in confusion, but it occurred to her after a moment that he must be asking how long she’d been there. She shrugged and held up three fingers. “I think,” she added.

Consuelo apparently understood, as well. She held up five fingers.

Abruptly, the spurt of happiness Bri had been feeling from even a modicum of human contact deserted her. She needed to talk, desperately. She’d lived alone for years. She’d thought she was used to not having anyone to talk to, but she wasn’t. She’d always been surrounded by the sound of voices when she went anywhere, voices on her TV, her radio--not being able to hear any familiar sounds, not even being able to share work related conversations with her co-workers was worse than everything else.

She would’ve welcomed listening to Consuelo babble in her own language, even if she couldn’t understand a word of it, because it was at least somewhat familiar.

Resisting the urge to yield to another emotional outburst, she struggled to communicate with hand motions and finally began to draw in the dirt.

The alien, Kole, lingered, studying both her and Consuelo, but she couldn’t help but notice most of his focus was on her. Every time she glanced in his direction she met his gaze.

She couldn’t tell how much he understood of anything that she was doing, but there was a look of intelligence in his eyes that encouraged her to think he wasn’t as primitive as she’d first thought.

What possible difference that could make, she had no idea.

Apparently, the aliens didn’t particularly care for her efforts to communicate, however. They had not been together more than fifteen minutes when a shrill noise erupted around them. It brought her head up instantly.

Kole met her gaze and lifted his hand, pointing toward her habitat. Bri merely stared at him blankly until he rose to his feet and made the motion again.

Surging to her feet, she glanced around and discovered that everyone else had already turned toward their quarters. As reluctantly as she’d left it a short time before, Bri nodded her understanding, waved unhappily at Consuelo, and headed back.

Chapter Three

Bri found her safe corner and huddled when she had returned to the room, dropping her head across her arms and weeping for the first time since she’d been captured. When she’d finally exhausted herself, she moved listlessly to the bed and sprawled across the hard surface, trying to figure out why she felt like crying when she’d actually had the best day since she’d been there.

She realized after a while that it was a sense of hopelessness. She allowed herself to think of her despondency as disappointment for a while, that she’d finally gotten the chance to interact with a fellow human only to discover there was as much of a language barrier between them as between her and the aliens.

She
was
disappointed, vastly. She was also disappointed that she hadn’t been able to make physical contact. She’d yearned to just be able to touch, hug, hold hands--anything to feel the reassuring warmth and closeness of being around another human being after having been kept in a sterile tank for days.

After a time, though, she acknowledged that it was a sense of hopelessness that had brought on the bout of tears. She forced herself to face the fact that the root of that was a growing certainty that the aliens who’d captured her meant to keep her, not simply study her and put her back.

If she understood why, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad--maybe it would be worse. She tried to comfort herself with the belief that they meant to keep her alive for some reason. As awful as it was to think she might never go home again, she didn’t want to die. She especially didn’t want to die horribly.

She didn’t want to consider why there were so many male aliens, but she couldn’t avoid it.

However intelligent or technologically advanced the yellow aliens might or might not be, it seemed unavoidable that they had been chosen for their powerful physiques. She’d only seen the one who called himself Kole close up, but she’d noticed all of them at least appeared to be as big and strong as oxen--and that seemed to indicate the aliens that had taken them all needed or wanted them for something physical. She had only a vague idea of what the other aliens had been like, but she had had the impression that they were physically frail, taller than her, but thin and weak--robots seemed to do most of the physical labor for them.

The collars they had all been fitted with, she realized, might signify more than simply a means of controlling their ‘lab animals’. There was a very real possibility that they might all have been enslaved and just didn’t know it yet.

The thought boggled her mind, but as enlightened as the human race was, slavery still existed all over the world. It might be illegal everywhere, frowned upon, despised, but it was still going on--mostly sex slavery.

An image of Kole rose in her mind at that thought, and she shuddered.

She pushed the half formed thought aside. If the slaver aliens had taken her for a sex slave, it wouldn’t be to toss her to their other slaves--she didn’t think.

What purpose could she serve for them, though?

She’d never thought of herself as particularly weak, frail, or dainty, but beside this yellow race she certainly was, so she couldn’t delude herself into thinking they had taken her for physical labor or because she was an excellent physical specimen. They didn’t seem to have a great deal of respect for other intelligent beings, so she couldn’t imagine they’d wanted her for her mind either.

Maybe she was just scaring herself? Maybe she really was just a part of some bizarre experiment and they would take her back when they were done studying her?

She wanted to believe that, but, deep down, she didn’t, not anymore. The fact that they did not come for her that night seemed to support instead of refute that fear.

The door was ajar when she woke the following morning as it had been the day before. She studied it distrustfully, but instead of dawdling as she had the day before, she rushed through her morning ritual, ate, and moved to the door.

In her rush to see Consuelo, she almost fell over the thing lying on the ground just outside the door.

Horror filled her even as she jolted to a halt and stared down at it.

She thought at first that it was dead, but as she cringed, clamping a hand over her mouth to stifle a scream, she saw it’s eyes flicker.

Shocked, revolted, she glanced around, half expecting someone or something to appear and scoop the thing up--as if they’d dropped it or inadvertently left it. Slowly, it sank into her mind that the appearance could not possibly be accidental. It had been placed there for a reason. She just didn’t know why.

What was she to do with it? What?

Calm was slow in returning, and her revulsion didn’t abate. Pity began to seep into her, however, as she studied it’s emaciated body. After several minutes had passed, she knelt down to study it more closely.

It was male infant, she saw, for it was naked, lying naked on the cold dirt as if it was no more than a discarded piece of garbage. Unlike the hulking brutes she’d seen the day before, the infant looked frail, starved, near death. It lay completely motionless, merely staring at her blankly, unblinkingly, as if appealing to her for help.

Releasing a shaky breath, she reached to touch it. The infant’s eyes followed the movement of her hand, but otherwise there was little reaction until she touched it lightly with her fingers. Its face crumpled then, and she expected it to set up a wail of fear. Instead, it merely jerked and twitched uneasily as she stroked her hand over it soothingly and finally captured one tiny hand in her fingers. Slowly, its hand curled over her finger.

A knot of emotion welled in her throat, partly because it clutched at her, partly because, despite the heat, she could feel that it was cold.

A wave of panic followed the empathy. She didn’t know anything about babies, not even human babies! Was she supposed to take care of it? Or had they simply placed it there to see how she would react?

She had no clue, but she found she couldn’t ignore it. Clumsily, she scooped a hand behind his head and bottom and lifted the infant, cradling it against her chest. It wiggled, but it didn’t put up a fuss, didn’t cry.