The Ninth Orb (34 page)

“Its passion, desire, caring more about someone than you care about anyone else, caring more about them even than you do yourself. Being willing to do anything for them, wanting to do anything for them. Being willing to sacrifice your own happiness for theirs if necessary.”

He frowned, looking more confused than less and her irritation and agitation mounted. “Have I not said as much? Done as much? This is only another word for care, yes?”

Eden stopped abruptly, blinking at him in stunned surprise. Slowly, as her mind recounted everything that he had said to her, she realized that that was exactly what he had said. He had said that they would go if staying meant that the Earth women didn’t feel safe to have them there, didn’t trust them. He had done everything that he could think to do to make her happy, taken care of her even when she hadn’t particularly appreciated his interference.

She rubbed her head. “You didn’t say ‘I’. You said we.”

He thought that over. “They love you the same as I.”

Frustration erupted. “How do you know?”

“How could I not know when I know their thoughts and feelings as well as I know my own?” He frowned. “You do not want them to love you, too?”

Eden sought patience. “Love is when a man and a woman are devoted to one another.”

“You do not love us because we are more than one?” he guessed.

This was getting worse and worse. Eden was on the point of snapping at him that she was ‘in’ love with him and not his brothers, but even as she thought about it, their faces rose hauntingly in her mind and memories surfaced of all the time she’d spent luxuriating in their attentiveness. She thought about all the care and thought that went into the food they prepared to tempt her appetite when she was too tired to have any real interest in eating, or nauseated from her pregnancy and revolted at the thought of eating. She thought about their untiring efforts to entertain her--the stories, the games, the singing and music, the conversation when she wanted it, the companionable silence when she didn’t. She thought about the massages when she was tired and sore, the baths that were so often only a prelude to sex, but also soothed when she needed soothing. And she thought about the passion they so easily aroused in her, and thoroughly appeased once they had.

She did care about them. Maybe she even loved them, because it was an absolute truth that she would not hurt them, any of them, for the world. It was also true that she was as thrilled about their babies that she carried as she was about Baen’s, and unhappy at the thought that the others would be disappointed.

It might be a very strange bond according to her own customs, but it was real nevertheless, and substantial. Truth be told, she felt for all of them, even the other broods, but it was Baen’s brood that mattered most to her and she supposed, just maybe, that meant that she loved them as family and cared for them as individuals.

She shook her head, closing the distance she’d put between her and Baen. “You’re right. I can’t think of a single reason why I couldn’t love you all.”

He looked at her a little doubtfully, but encircled her with his arms when she embraced him, holding her snugly against his body. “They will be happy when they learn that we are to have young,” he said tentatively.

Eden pulled away from him and looked up at him. “We should go then, and tell them.”

Eden was amazed at how nervous she was with excitement as she and Baen headed for the med lab, wondering which of the others she would find waiting. Her heart was pounding so hard when she paused to catch her breath before she went in that she felt almost faint.

Cal and Trar came to their feet abruptly as she entered the lab with Baen. Behind them, looking as it he was struggling with a desperate desire to flee, stood Miccan.

It was immediately apparent that Deb hadn’t explained to them why they’d been summoned or why they’d been detained because, to a man, they looked guilty as hell, uneasy, as if they suspected they’d done something wrong but just weren’t certain of what it was.

Smiling at them, she turned to look at Deb, who was seated at her desk and obviously struggling to ignore the ‘intruders’ in her lab. “I thought you’d never get here,” she muttered irritably when she saw Eden.

Eden shrugged. “We had things to discuss. Could we,” she asked hesitantly, changing the subject abruptly, “show them what you showed me before?”

Deb stared at her in surprise for several moments before a grin dawned. “I’m not sure their hearts can take it, but sure. Why not? This ought to be fun,” she said with a chuckle, getting up immediately and heading into the examination room.

Summoning the men, Eden followed Deb and climbed onto the examination table once more. Baen entered the room directly behind her, moving to the spot where he’d stood before. Cal, Trar and Miccan stopped at the door as if they’d hit an invisible barrier.

“You can’t see from over there,” Deb said dryly as she positioned the scanner. “Go stand with him,” she added, pointing to Baen. “That way you won’t be in my way.”

After glancing at each other uncomfortably, Cal, Trar, and Miccan did as they’d been told and Deb proceeded with the scan.

When the lasers had completed the cycle and the image appeared on the display, Deb looked up and motioned for the men to move closer. Taking her pen, she used the image to help guide her to the corresponding spot on Eden’s abdomen. “This little speck of humanity here is Baen’s baby girl.”

Cal and Trar leaned closer, stared at the misshapen lump for several moments and then turned to look at Baen blankly. Miccan craned to peer over the shoulders of the other two. “Baen’s?” Cal murmured, clearly stunned.

Baen grinned broadly. “A female,” he announced proudly.

Chuckling, Deb moved the pen to another fetus. “This big, strong fella here,” she murmured, comparing the readouts that appeared side by side, “is Cal’s son.”

Cal’s head snapped upward. After staring at her a split second, he looked down at the image again, and then up at her once more, turning first pale and then bright red. “Mine?” he asked hoarsely. After several stunned moments, Trar grinned broadly and clapped his brother’s shoulder enthusiastically.

“And this little fella is Trar’s son,” Deb continued, ignoring the commotion.

Trar’s grin vanished so abruptly it was almost comical. Reacting much the same as Cal had, he was simply stunned for several moments. A weak chuckle escaped him as Baen gave his shoulder a congratulatory squeeze. Cal pounded him on the back hard enough he might have fallen except for the fact that Baen had gripped his shoulder.

“And this little beauty right here is Miccan’s daughter,” Deb finished triumphantly, looking up at the stunned faces of the men as if she’d done it all herself.

Miccan stared at the fetus and then looked at his brothers, turning white as death. Abruptly, his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell backwards like a felled tree, slamming into the floor before anyone could react with more than open mouthed surprise.

“Oh my god!” Eden gasped in dismay, bolting upright so quickly she almost slammed her head into the scanner. “Miccan?”

Dropping her pen, Deb grabbed her, trying to keep her from falling off the table. Baen, Cal, and Trar, surged toward their fallen brother, crouching beside him and staring down at him as if they weren’t certain whether he’d keeled over dead or not.

Abandoning Eden, Deb rushed to the fallen man, shoving Trar out of the way and examining Miccan’s vital signs first and then his head for signs of trauma. Scrambling off the table, Eden pushed her way between Cal and Baen and knelt on his other side.

“Is he ok?” she asked worriedly, grabbing his hand and stroking the back soothingly.

“A nasty knot,” Deb said. “It didn’t break the skin. I’ll have to do a scan to see if it broke his head.”

Miccan’s eyes opened. He stared up at her blankly.

Eden’s chin wobbled. Impulsively, she leaned down to hug him and then scooted around him to lift his head into her lap and hold his shoulders down when he made an abortive attempt to get up. He looked dazed and confused, but she couldn’t decide whether that was because he still hadn’t managed to recover from his shock over the news or because of the blow to his head. “Shh! Be still and let Deb check you, sweety,” she chided him, stroking his cheek.

He subsided, staring up at her for several moments before he transferred his gaze to his brothers. He frowned after a moment. “She said mine?” he asked. “Is all right?”

Eden uttered something midway between a chuckle and a sob. “Of course it’s all right! If I’d known you’d take it like you did, I wouldn’t have surprised you.”

He tensed, as if he would try to get up again, but subsided when Baen placed a hand in the middle of his chest, eyeing Deb with patent suspicion as she knelt and held the portable scanner over his head.

Deb sat back after several moments. “He’s fine. Good thing he’s got those horns, though. Guess that’s what I heard crack when he hit the floor, because it wasn’t his skull, fortunately, and there’s no sign of trauma to the brain.”

Relieved, Eden leaned down to plant a kiss on his chin, which was all she could reach from her awkward position. When she straightened, Baen and Trar bent down, caught his arms and hauled him to his feet. He swayed dizzily, caught himself, and then his knees buckled.

“Don’t let him fall again!” Eden exclaimed.

Wedging their shoulders beneath his arms, Baen and Trar half led half carried him from the room while Eden, Cal, and Deb trailed in their wake. Miccan looked at Baen a little drunkenly. “Little beauty means male or female child?”

Baen grinned at him. “Female … I think. Mine, too.”

“Fella is male, then?” Cal and Trar demanded almost in unison.

“I hadn’t expected that much fun,” Deb called dryly as they maneuvered Miccan out of the lab.

Eden glanced back at her absently, smiling apologetically at her friend. “I should get him home.”

Deb chuckled. “You should. Home is always the best place to be.”

Epilogue

Eden discovered she’d worried for nothing. Which of the babies to remove to the incu-sys had been a hard decision because she was just as anxious that all of her babies feel loved and wanted as she was that all the fathers feel loved and wanted, but she had yielded to her heart and kept Baen’s baby within her own womb.

The Xtanians hadn’t known quiet what to make of the units entrusted to their care--at first, but she discovered that Cal, Trar, and Miccan were just as pleased to discover that they could watch their babies developing as Baen was that she had decided to keep his in her womb. If she’d been of a jealous nature, she might almost have felt put out by the way her brood hovered over the incu-sys--all of them, Baen included--and Pael, Vladiv, Pizan and Adri, beaming down at them even though they had to know the babies couldn’t see their faces, singing to them, talking to them.

She almost felt unnecessary. Ordinarily, it was crucial to the development of the fetuses in incu-sys that their mother spend as much time near them as possible, recording her heartbeat and the sound of her voice for them to listen to whenever she couldn’t be with them herself. But she had to wonder if the babies would even have noticed her absence because one or more of the brood were always with them.

Parenting, obviously, was not a skill they would have to learn. She might have to, but they wouldn’t.

Baen’s daughter, Georgia, made it into the world a full two weeks before her siblings and enjoyed the undivided attention of her mother and eight fathers, who fought over who would get to hold her every time she uttered anything even approaching a cry. It was a relief when Deb finally announced that the others were ready to see the world because then there were enough babies to keep them all occupied.

Jerd’s brood was bestowed upon Deb, who was very appreciative of the ‘gift’ and delighted them by presenting them with four boys less than three months after Eden’s family had arrived.

Eden settled her other ‘extra’ brood with Stacy, sector chief of the engineers, who also thoroughly appreciated the gift and produced a bumper crop of six bouncing babies the following year.

Houston wasn’t particularly pleased about the fruitfulness of the colony, especially since the fathers were all Xtanian, but none of the colonists particularly gave a damn since Houston was several light years away from having a say in the matter. And, since further studies indicated that the colony on New Georgia was not only the best producers, by far, of any of the colonies they’d established, but also had the healthiest babies and the ‘freshest’ gene pool, they decided to be pleased about the integration of the two colonies after all, and after a few years had even come to realize that it was actually their idea all along.

The contingency plan, due to a majority vote by the colonists, remained in effect throughout the first ten years of the life of the colony, but was neither implemented nor ever actually finished.

The End