Abiogenesis (16 page)

"Oh!" Dalia commented, covering her mouth with her hands and trying to look suitably repentant. She failed. Despite her best efforts, she burst out laughing and kept laughing until tears were streaming down her face. "Oh, I’m so sorry, Pierce," she said when she could catch her breath.

"No you’re not," he said without rancor. "You’d have laughed yourself silly about it then, if you’d known it, you heartless baggage."

Dalia mopped the tears from her cheeks, stifling the urge to laugh with an effort. "I am."

His eyes gleamed. A slow smile curled his lips. "Paybacks are hell, you know."

"You wouldn’t!" Dalia said, managing to give him a wide-eyed look of remorse.

"You needn’t bat those beautiful brown eyes at me. You know I’ve always been a sucker for you, baby, but nothing will save you now. Those females still glare at me every time they see me."

"Well!" she said indignantly. "You got me first, remember?"

He laughed. "Yes, but you got me better."

She bit her lip to keep from smiling back. "Are they here?"

He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, they’re here."

"You’re serious? You’re not making it up?"

"Which part?"

"The slap."

His eyes gleamed and she knew he’d been teasing her. "Maybe I exaggerated a little bit."

"How little?" Dalia asked suspiciously.

He sighed. "All right. I only got slapped once, but I did get glared at. The main thing is, it made you laugh. I always loved the way you laughed, Dally."

Dalia’s heart skidded uncomfortably at the look in his eyes. Despite the teasing way he’d said it, she realized suddenly that he meant it. He’d always meant it, all the times he’d looked at her in just that way and said ‘I love your eyes’; ‘I love your hair’; ‘You’re beautiful’--he’d been saying ‘I love you’.

It was disconcerting the transformation that seemed to occurred right before her eyes. He looked the same--blond, gorgeous, playful and addicted to teasing and annoying pranks, but quite suddenly she ceased to feel almost as if he were her brother and saw him as a very desirable man.

Why was it that everyone else had seen what she’d been blind to? The programming? Or had she just been too close? Had distance and time and the situation changed the way she felt? Or was it because Reuel had opened the door to passion and then deprived her of it? And, if that was so, was it mere animal attraction? Or more?

She looked away from him uncomfortably. "Is she here?"

"The psycho woman? Yeah, she’s here. Still looks at me like she wants to boil me in oil or something."

Dalia was instantly distracted from her uncomfortable new awareness of Pierce. "Zenia?"

"How’d you guess?"

She sighed shakily. "She looks at me the same way."

Pierce sat up, all traces of humor gone. "What’d you do to piss her off?"

Dalia shrugged. "Breathe, I think."

Pierce looked her over searchingly. "You’re not worried about her, are you? Because I know you can kick her ass any day of the week."

"I could. I can’t now."

His gaze dropped to her belly and remained there for several moments. Finally, he reached across the couch and caught her hand, giving it a squeeze before he released it and sat back. "Don’t worry about it, Dally. I’m your man."

Relief seemed to roll off of her like a boulder. "Thanks!"

He grinned. "If she so much as looks at you in a way I don’t like--I’ll grab you up and run like hell."

Dalia chuckled. "Good. I don’t think I could outrun her by myself right now."

He waggled his eyebrows at her. "And, by the way, since you brought it up, if you think you might be interested in fucking, I’m your man there, too."

Dalia chuckled dutifully, but despite the fact that he’d said it jokingly, she realized joking had always been a smoke screen for Pierce to hide his behind. He was making it clear that he wanted to be considered if she intended to look for a lover.

When they returned to the holding cell, Pierce walked to the opposite end, collected his belongings and returned, depositing them on the floor beside her cot. She looked at him in surprise. "Not enough cots. I guess there was more of us than they were expecting, but I figure the floor’s as comfortable at this end as the other."

For the first time since they’d been confined, Dalia actually managed to sleep deeply. The following morning when she woke, she discovered that Zenia’s cot was empty.

She sat up and glanced around in surprise.

"The guards took her last night," Camile volunteered.

Dalia felt her jaw go slack. "They just took her?"

Camile shrugged. "They were in and out so fast, I wouldn’t have seen it except that I’ve been sleeping with one eye on her. What do you think it means?"

"It means we don’t have to worry about the psycho bitch anymore," Pierce said, yawning hugely and scratching his head as he sat up. "And everything we say is heard."

Dalia looked at him sharply. "You think so?" she asked quickly, mentally reviewing their conversation the day before.

Pierce shrugged. "Like you said, they’ve got no reason to trust us, and every reason not to. I know if I had nearly a hundred prisoners I was transporting, I’d want to keep up with what was going on."

"What do you think they’ll do with her?" Camile asked nervously.

Pierce sent her a look. "You’re not going to pretend you care?"

She glared at him. "She’s not a ... rabid animal that can just be put down."

"She doesn’t miss it by much," Pierce said dryly. "Look, I know what you’re saying, but the company would’ve fixed the problem if it was fixable. You’ve been around her long enough to know she’s dangerously unstable."

"Yes, but--she’s a human--she’s a being. If they do something to her, what’s to stop them from doing the same to the rest of us?"

"We’re not psychotic?"

Camile threw her pillow at his head.

"If it was me, I’d ship her back to the company. They deserve her. She’s their problem."

Dalia said nothing, but she felt uneasy about it, wondering if it was something she’d said. She didn’t like to think she might be responsible if they did decide to terminate Zenia.

She watched the guards as they brought in the morning meal, but none of them seemed to pay her any more attention than any of the others. After they’d gone through the particle baths, however, the guards rounded up nearly half the men, including Pierce, and marched them out.

The place was strangely quiet without them even though no one had been inclined to talk much since they’d been imprisoned. When the noon meal came and went without any sign of them, Dalia wasn’t alone in her increasing anxiety. Finally, late in the day, the men returned. All of them were tired and filthy, but Dalia was so glad to see that Pierce was among them she it took an effort to keep from bursting into tears and throwing her arms around him. The only reason she restrained herself was her certainty that Pierce was right. They were being monitored.

"You’re all right?" she asked anxiously when he dropped down beside her bunk.

He nodded, then threw her a tired grin. "They had us cleaning out a new section all day. Looks like they mean to take care of the overcrowding problem."

Camile and Dalia exchanged a look. "You think so?"

"I hope they didn’t have us lugging all that stuff around for nothing."

He seemed so certain, that Dalia felt her anxiety diminish.

None of them were greatly surprised, therefore, when they’d finished the evening meal and been herded through the particle baths once more to discover that some of them would be moving to new quarters. They were surprised when they learned it would only be the females.

Pierce, Dalia realized feeling a surge of anger, had been right. Everything they’d said the day before had been heard, and everything they’d done observed. Reuel didn’t want her, but he wasn’t about to let her be with anyone else.

Pierce was angry, as well, but not so much because he would be deprived of Dalia’s company as he was because the move prevented him from watching over her. He could complain, of course, but he doubted it would do any good. Instead, after studying Camile speculatively for some moments, he pulled her aside. "I need to ask a favor of you."

Camile looked him over suspiciously. "What?"

"Look out for my little Dally for me. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t worry about her, but she can’t defend herself right now. I’m a dead man if anything happens to her because I’m going to have to kill somebody, but I’d much rather prevent it."

Camile nodded, but then shrugged. "I would have anyway," she said, smiling faintly.

Chapter Sixteen

After nearly three months, Dalia woke to the sensations that told her the cargo ship had arrived at last at its destination. At first, she thought the scarcely noticeable vibration was no more than the shudder of an engine, or the hull of the ship being pelted by micro meteors. The vibration increased steadily, however, quickly becoming a hard rattling that was impossible to interpret as anything but a descent into a gravitational field.

Sitting up, she looked around at the vibrating walls of the bulkheads and then at the faces of the other women who shared the compartment with her. Their fears and uncertainty reflected her own.

They’d arrived. Would they be freed? Or would they find that they were only exchanging one prison for another?

"Do you think they’ll let us out?" Camile asked, voicing her own question.

"Some, at least--I think," Dalia responded cautiously.

As they had when she’d first been captured, the cyborgs had begun to allow them the run of the ship in small numbers and for short periods after they’d been kept isolated for more than a month.

It was as effective a strategy on most of the hunters as it had been on her. The natural fear of the unknown, coupled with incarceration, had made them cautious of their freedom, and careful not to abuse it. They were openly watched, of course, and certain areas were still off limits, but being allowed even so much after so long was enough to make them grateful. The cyborgs were neither welcoming nor hostile, but that, too, seemed almost calculating, as if they knew the hunters would be suspicious of any overtures of friendship.

Little by little, they had begun to relax their guard, to feel less like prisoners and more like mutual travelers. She’d noticed that some had even begun to form tentative friendships among the cyborgs. There was no reason that she could see that the cyborgs would consider it necessary to continue to imprison them.

Even if they’d wanted to leave, none of them had any idea of where they’d been taken. They had no way to leave short of stealing the ship they’d just spent the past three months on, and she rather thought most of the hunters would prefer almost anything to spending three more months on it.

The truth was that Dalia was almost certain that most of the hunters would find themselves absorbed into the cyborg community immediately. There were others, however, who wouldn’t, some who might never be accepted and that was the part that worried her. What would happen to those who wanted nothing to do with the cyborgs? Would they simply ‘disappear’? Or would the cyborgs, as Reuel had hinted, simply take them elsewhere and leave them?

She couldn’t help but wonder if she fell into the latter category--not because the cyborgs in general didn’t accept her, because they seemed far more welcoming toward her than any of the other hunters, but because Reuel, in particular, didn’t accept her.

Reuel had been most conspicuous by his absence. She didn’t think it was purely coincidence that he was rarely to be seen when she was allowed the freedom of the ship. She thought he was aware of everything that happened on the ship, including the schedules and that he made certain he was occupied elsewhere when she was allowed out.

She wasn’t certain why. It hardly seemed necessary. He’d made his position clear enough the last time he’d spoken to her. It might still hurt. She might still care, but she certainly had no intention of making either of them uncomfortable by forcing any sort of confrontation.

Of course, she supposed, after the incident in the rec room, he might have reason to think a chance meeting could get ugly.

She might have been tempted except that that incident had cost her Pierce’s company and she didn’t particularly relish the thought of giving Reuel any reason for further retaliation. She missed Pierce almost as desperately as she missed Reuel. Having someone for companionship would have made the trip less unbearable. It would have left her less time to dwell on unpleasant memories, to worry about things beyond her control. She’d caught no more than a glimpse of Pierce from time to time after they were separated, and she knew that that was Reuel’s doing, most likely because she’d very nearly created a serious disturbance by her outburst.

As the vibration of descent became a hard rattle and then a gentle bumping and finally a horrendous bucking that threatened whiplash, Dalia clung to her cot and mentally clocked their descent through the atmosphere. As many times as she had made descents, each and every one terrified her as much as the one before. The bucking was a very graphic expression of having reached the absolute peak of danger. From the time the ship began until at last the bucking slowed to the occasional jolt or sudden, weightless drop, she could never manage to do anything but listen intently to every rattling bolt, waiting to see if something would break off and send them spiraling planet-ward at a speed that insured that their grave marker would be a crater.

Sighing in relief when they at last passed through the critical zone, Dalia consciously peeled her fingers loose from the bars of the cot and sat up once more. She was almost immediately sorry she had, for the artificial gravity was disengaged at that moment and a wave of nausea rushed over her. She lay back again, closing her eyes and waiting for the planet’s gravity to right her internal gyro.

She could feel the ship dropping steadily and wondered if they’d entered the atmosphere close to their destination or if they might expect hours more of cruising before they landed at last. Concentrating on that instead of the sickness, she almost felt as if she could count the miles they dropped, see the land rushing up toward them.