Chapter 22: Heavy Metal Contract — Part 6

Susan had to pause, feeling suddenly nauseous. “C’rona has suggested that I take my ability to bear children seriously, and that I have at least one child. I’ve lost children before, on Earth. I don’t want to go through it again, giving birth to a stillborn child, or miscarrying early on.”

“I wish I could say I empathize.” Drake admitted. “I’ve only lost my dreams, and I’ve found them again on this world. I’m sorry to be rude, Susan, but I need to finish my duties.”

Drake began to fade into the ground, a neat way to end a conversation, all things considered. Before his head sunk beneath the surface of the mud and mush of Antans, he smiled. “Besides, if we keep talking about having children, you might just convince me to give you one.”

With Drake gone, Susan walked home. More accurately, she hovered home. Hundreds of years ago, she thought absently, I would have needed a verdo stick just to levitate for a few minutes.

“How far our people have come.” She said aloud, considering that even many of the new arrivals were close to her in power.

That night she spoke to Devon about having children, and through mutual decision, they made hard, fertile love. Due to the symbiont, a child could not occur unless both parties wanted it. It intervened consciously with both the man and the woman on this issue, and stopped fertilization from occurring unless the individuals were mentally willing to have children. When both parties were willing, having a child would be practically unavoidable. Sometime toward dawn, Susan remembered her earlier responsibilities.

She woke Devon. “We’ve got a ship coming, new human visitors. They’re damaged and on a barely controlled entry. Think you can ease them in gently?”

“No doubt the morning shift is already on top of it.” Devon sent a thought out to the Antansi Observatory. “The staff on duty says the ship is on its way to ground even as we speak. They were unable to bring it into a controlled orbit. Their focus, at this point, is on bringing it to ground in one piece. They did manage to bring it within five miles of our village, however they assure us that this was pure coinicidence.”

Susan considered the situation, decided she would need others in this first contact with strangers. She called Laura and Charles to her side. They entered her room, with Seva in tow. The three of them had obviously been out playing a good portion of the night, leaving Susan to wonder, curiously, how common threesomes were among those of her tribe. Their minds, their thoughts, and the actions among them that harmed nobody were not hers to know of, after all. Susan let her suspicions go before her nose, keen to the merging of scents, told her too much of their mutual involvements.

“I have a special mission for you three. We’ve got visitors coming. The Antansi are going to encourage their ship to land near the city. I want you folks to greet them for me. I’ll be detained with other duties this morning, mind you, but I will catch up as soon as I can.”

“Sure.” Charles said. “I take it this is a small ship.”

“Yeah, but keep your guard up. No telling what kind of people are on board.”

“Yes ma’am.” Charles saluted and led his friends to the Antansi enforced landing site.

Had Charles known it was Shadow’s ship landing, and been familiar with Shadow’s reputation, he might have brought a dozen extra hands along. Had he known how ticked she’d be about having an outside force control the descent of her ship, he might have simply evacuated the area and let her figure things out on her own. If Susan had even known that a member of the Storm Clan had come to visit Antans, she would never have left Charles with the delicate a task of first contact.