Alien Mine (21 page)

What was all that bargaining about, if he could just turn his back on her and walk away as if she was nothing?

With him gone, she was once again aware of her blinding headache, but she didn't dare ask the doctor for help. She'd find something in the supply cave after she had breakfast. Her father had left it very well stocked.

Clutching her head, she groaned and was about to get out of bed when Zacar re-entered with a small silver box in his hand. She scowled at the instrument, the same one he'd used to put the tracker and translator in her head.

He pressed his thumb on the side of the device and it emitted two soft pulses. Then he pointed it at her and she had to resist the temptation to cringe. Who knew what he was doing to her brain? Her headache increased until she could almost feel the devices crawling around in her head. Could his bite be causing her headache?

"The translator is working," he said, and she had the impression he wasn't interested in hearing any more about it.

"And the dog tag? Is that still working, as well?" she asked snidely.

"Dog tag?"

She sighed and shrugged on her robe before getting up. She frowned down at the carpet. Normally, the cold seeped through the carpet from the cave floor. When she was barefoot, her knees would ache, it was so cold. Now the temperature remained nice and moderate.

"Did you do something to heat up the floor?" An awful thought occurred to her. They weren't that far from Yellowstone volcano. Her toes curled up, away from the floor and she had to resist climbing up Zacar at the thought of lava running beneath her feet.

"We put in temperature control. I will feed you breakfast now." He moved to the chest and took out some jeans and a shirt for her. He pawed through her underwear until he found the skimpy lace underwear Julia bought her last Christmas. They'd made a pact to give each other feminine gifts they wouldn't buy for themselves.

"I can get my own clothes, you know." If she let him, he'd take her over completely. She grabbed the jeans from him, ignoring his narrowed look. Pointedly, she took out a different shirt. "Some privacy please." She thought he would object, but to her relief, he turned and left.

"Just let him try and feed me like an infant," she muttered under her breath.

"I will feed you, Natlia," he said from outside.

She sighed and pulled on her clothes. She'd wear him down eventually.

When she emerged from the enclosure they built around her tent, she found several of them standing around her fire pit. She recognized that pose. It was the same for men all over, who puzzled over the workings of a gadget.

For the longest time, they stood looking and pointing at it, grunting to each other. Despite what Zacar said, she knew her implant was acting up because when she got closer, she could suddenly understand them. As if a loose wire had suddenly connected. Hearing their criticism, she wanted to protest that not all humans lived like this. If it wasn't for the raiders, she'd be living in the farmhouse, with solar power and better ways of managing the snow.

Without asking her opinion, they took the coal and ashes away, and put a silver sphere in the middle of the stones. When they opened it, it glowed bright, as if sunlight had suddenly pierced through the roof of the cave. It looked like a larger version of the devices they'd put in the hollows of the cave walls, like sconces. Even in the supply cave. The cave immediately heated. If they ever decided to move on, she was so going to steal that particular part of their technology. And the shower would definitely stay behind, too.

"What do you call those glowing stones?" she asked.

Startled, they scrambled to get away from her. Even the surly one took two steps back while glaring at her. Her shoulders sagged and she turned away from them.

Zacar appeared from the back of the cave and stopped to growl at her. He shook out a fur-like cloth and motioned for her to sit down.

Approaching cautiously, she sank down on the luxurious pelt. Their space ship had to be enormous, because he kept producing things she knew weren't found on Earth.

He folded the fur over her with care. His hands and lips had turned her body to fire last night. She blushed, looked down at the pelt to hide her red face. It was soft and silky under her fingers. Whatever animal it had come from must have been huge. Unless...

"Is this from an animal or did you produce it synthetically?" she asked his retreating back. She glared at that broad back when she realized he'd already prepared her breakfast and was fetching it from the kitchen table.

"It is the same as the bears on Earth that became extinct." He sank down in front of her with a graceful movement, while balancing her breakfast and what smelled like very strong coffee in his hands.

"Did you use up my whole stash of coffee?" She sounded sulky, but she didn't care. Who knows if she'd be able to get her hands on coffee once this batch of beans was gone?

"No," he said and held a small piece of bread before her lips.

They glared at each other for a while before she sighed and opened her mouth.

"Are any animals on your planet extinct?" she asked once she'd swallowed the bread. On Earth, very few species had survived. For a while, cloning had seemed like the solution, but it never got past the planning stage.

"No, our environment is strictly monitored to ensure that it never reaches the rate of extinction on Earth." He looked around her cave and she could see the judgment in his eyes. Of course, no one on his perfect planet of Zyrgin had to live in a cave.

He had a scary knowledge of her planet. The kind of knowledge an advance scout would have. "How do you know so much about Earth?"

"We uploaded the databases."

"Oh."

"How long does the snow normally last?" he asked while feeding her another piece of bread.

"At least seven months, but it could be longer. The weather has been strange lately. One year, we had no snow at all. The year before last, we had snow for the whole year." She shivered, remembering how close they came to freezing to death. If her father hadn't known how to fix their generator, they'd have died. She really hoped the snow melted soon this year and they had a long hot summer. And if it did melt, she would try and get away from Zacar.

Though Natalie didn't know what she'd do if an opportunity to escape presented itself again. She'd never felt safe in all the time she went to school in town. After her parents died, she'd been lonely and scared. Now, for the first time, she didn't fear raiders, or hunger, or anything else, except that she might have an asthma attack in front of Zacar.

"We can keep the cave warm, but it is better if you do not try to go out into the snow. Humans get hypothermia easily."

She knew his very lack of inflection was supposed to hide his disdain for human weaknesses from her.

She nodded her agreement, instinctively pushing her toes closer to the warming stone. They ached with remembered cold. She wasn't going away from the delicious warmth of those stones anytime soon.

"How come you seem immune to the cold? Don't your kind get hypothermia?"

He had to have some weakness. Not that she planned to harm him if she discovered one, but it would be good to know, just in case.

"I am a warrior."

She mentally groaned and couldn't help rolling her eyes.
That's his answer for everything.
His arrogant statement still didn't explain how he managed to be out in the cold without a severe case of hypothermia.

She'd been foolish trying to escape into the snow. If not for Zacar, she could've died. He'd moved over the boulders and snow as if out for a stroll. And he'd done it all while carrying her over his shoulder.

She gently cupped his hand as he moved to place another piece of bread to her lips. It was warm and solid, capable of keeping her safe. "Thank you for saving me. I would've been dead by now if you didn't come for me."

No reaction, he simply turned his hand and gripped hers briefly before feeding her the next piece of breakfast.

Natalie sighed. It was business as usual. Feeding time at the breeding program.

She'd hoped eating breakfast would help ease her splitting headache but it only got worse. What if he'd infected her with something when he bit her? Gingerly, she touched her neck but she couldn't feel anything. No dent, no scab, nothing. What if she got rabies or some weird alien germ that turned her into a zombie? She wanted to ask him about Zyrgin diseases but he might take offense. She wasn't as scared of him as in the beginning but she still felt the need to be careful.

Zacar and the others moved over to a square area that had no metal boxes or anything of hers. They lined up and she watched avidly. She never tired of seeing their swords appear as if by magic. All of them moved with beautiful precision. But it was Zacar's form her eyes followed. She watched, fascinated, for a while. In spite of the beautiful display of male power in front of her, she kept wondering what the raiders could possibly want from her. Why would they bother to threaten one lone woman on an isolated mountain? She had nothing worth stealing. They'd burned most of her possessions. The only thing anyone might want would be her supply of medicine.

The medicine
! She gasped. When Zacar looked over at her, she smiled, hoping it didn't look as sickly as it felt.

For a very short time, her father had worked as a chemist. He was brilliant but retired early and moved to the mountain, disillusioned with the pharmaceutical industry and human nature in general. He'd always told her to sell his notebook to a pharmaceutical company if she ever became desperate for money. But only if she was so desperate that selling it meant she would survive.

But it still didn't make any sense. Even if the notebook had something worth stealing in it, how on earth would the raiders know about it?

Under Zacar's fierce scrutiny, she walked to the back cave where some of her father's books were stored in water-tight containers. She stroked a finger over a beautiful leather cover. All her father's books were actual printed copies, as opposed to digital versions. Apparently, there was a time when everyone read books in this primitive way. Her father had loved it, but she preferred reading on the cell. The mustiness of these old books was bad for her asthma, as well as a sad reminder of her father.

Fishing out her headache medicine, she took two tablets before spending almost an hour sifting through the books, looking for the notebook. As she worked, her breathing became laboured and difficult, though not as bad as it would have been a week ago. The next book she picked up was heavier, the texture different from the others. When she opened it, she found, instead of pages, a hollow space hiding a slimmer book with a colorful dust jacket inside. Her heartbeat echoed in her ears as she took it out and opened it. The dust jacket concealed her father's scuffed, old, handwritten journal.

Could this be what the raiders wanted? It was only useless formulas, written in her father's scrawling penmanship. She paged through it, dust rising into the air, and she coughed.

Another cough and her lungs seized. She gasped for breath, the book falling out of her hand.