Chapter 319

The Retreat

Supper over and the dining room and kitchen pristine again, Kathy, Jill and Eileen entered the living room where several of the Alphas were sitting around the fireplace talking. Jeff had just finished a second dessert – or was it a third – and from the looks of the empty plates on the table near them, most of the other Alphas had done much the same.

At supper, Eileen had been introduced to all the Alphas presently at the Retreat, but with everything that had been happening, there had been time to do little more than just speak to each of them. Now, she subtly checked them out, her curiosity having been piqued with Arlene's previous comments about Alphas. The men were all wearing casual clothes, mostly some type of pullover shirt and jeans, so their physiques were not hidden by bulky clothes. They all seem to be in great physical condition, she thought. Then with a mental laugh, What I really mean is, they're all hunks. Suddenly it dawned on her. Every one of them ate an awful lot at dinner ... uh supper – more than I've ever seen anyone eat at one sitting, so how in the heck do they manage to avoid getting fat?

As they stood just inside the living room entrance, Eileen nudged Kathy and asked quietly, "How can they possibly be eating again? We just finished dinner, and they ate a lot of dinner. If they eat like that all the time, they should all be obese."

"All part of being enhanced," Kathy answered her, mysteriously. "And I know that you're being discreet by not mentioning it, but you must have noticed that all of us women eat a lot more than most women do, and..."

" ... None of you are overweight, either," Eileen finished for her.

"Yep," Jill inserted with a smile. "We don't have to worry about gaining weight any more than the men do. The downside – if there is a downside – is that we actually have to eat a little more than would be considered normal. Apparently our bodies require that food to maintain our perfect health, additional strength and extra energy. At least that's what I think, anyway."

Kathy reached for Eileen's hand. "Come on. Let's go grab our man and get Jeff to enhance you."

Eileen was worried and, truth be told, more than a little bit embarrassed by being around so many braless women who seemed to have few restraints about showing their love for their husband. Oh, there hadn't been anything overtly sexual, but there had been a lot of innuendoes at the table, prominent nipples showing and a woman or girl accidentally rubbing against her husband far more than could be explained by chance, but Selina, Alice and Terri were present, so nothing happened that was blatant. Still, Eileen was hard pressed to get her mind off sex as her imagination pushed her thoughts into what would happen after all these people went to bed tonight. And, to be honest, she suspected that her own sexual awareness had caused her to notice the byplay.

What's wrong with me? All I can think about is making love with Bill – fucking him – while everyone else here in the Retreat will be doing the same thing. Oh, crap. Get your mind out of the gutter, Girl. But then Kathy and Jill seem to take it for granted that I'm going to be another wife for Bill. Do I really want that? I can't believe it, but I absolutely do. Every time I look at him there's something in me that makes me want to be his, but with two beautiful wives already, I don't know what he sees in me.

Kathy walked up behind Bill, leaned on his chair, then putting her arms around his neck, whispered, "If you and Jeff are ready, we are, too."

Bill turned to Jeff who was sitting in a chair next to him, "Jeff?"

With his sensitive hearing, Jeff had heard Kathy and was already coming to his feet. "Ready if you guys are."

A few minutes later, they entered Eileen's suite. Bill plopped down in the middle of one of the couches, pulling Eileen down beside him and putting an arm around her. Kathy sat beside Eileen, and Jill sat on the other side of Bill.

"What's going to happen?" Eileen worried as Jeff moved the coffee table out of the way and pushed a chair in front of the four people on the couch.

"You're going to meet an alien," Jill said with an odd inflection to her voice.

"Oh, come on..." Eileen started, but stopped as she remembered the conversation about the origins of the mental block. Hearing that something came from aliens – even if she believed it, which she wasn't sure about, anyway – and meeting one, were two vastly different things, she decided as she grabbed Bill's hand. I don't know if I believe any of this, but... Even as she wondered, she was beginning to worry that there really was an alien in the building. These people were too sure of themselves for all this to be a farce. Was there already one here in the suite? Her imagination really took off on that thought as evidenced by the goose bumps on her arms. She tried to still herself and remain calm – at least outwardly.

When Jeff stood, she didn't know what she was expecting, but what happened next definitely wasn't it. Calmly turning away, he bent forward a little, then after a moment turned back and reseated himself. It took her a second to realize he had something in his hands, something translucent and about the size of a thick paperback book. Where did that come from? I could have sworn he didn't have anything in his hands when he stood.

"Meet Little One," the Prime said as he held the object out toward her.

But that's just a glob of plastic, she thought just before the buzzing in her mind made her clamp her mouth shut to stymie a very unprofessional-sounding squeak before it got past her lips – well most of it, anyway. Instinctively, she knew she wasn't actually hearing the buzzing – it was far more ... personal than that. It was as if it were coming from inside her, she decided as the analytical part of her mind tried to understand what was happening.

"She won't hurt you," Jeff said as he held Little One out a bit farther. "Touch her," he encouraged.

Just now, touching an alien was way down on Eileen's bucket list. I'm not even brave around spiders, let alone some alien creature. Does this thing bite? Is it even an alien? she wondered.

"Go ahead, Sweetheart," Bill encouraged. "What's going to happen shortly will probably be the best thing that's ever happened to you."

After a second's hesitation, Eileen reached out a little, but she wasn't sure whether she touched it, or Jeff moved the alien to touch her. Whichever it was, the touch, or its result, rocked her long-held belief that the human race was alone in the universe.

From Little One's association with Jeff and, to a much lesser degree, everyone else at the Retreat, the Healer had begun to understand more about how humans processed thought, and consequently had learned to project feelings much more easily. On occasion, she had even managed to project some small amount of logical thought to some of Jeff's wives, particularly Diana, Arlene, Laura and Helen.

Anything Little One knew, the Ship would know as soon as they were in range of each other. Ship shared her knowledge with Little One and with Ship's AI's that operated the scouts and other craft aboard her. Still, Little One was the Prime's personal Healer and spent most of her time linked with him, but she possessed no ready physical interface like the scouts and interceptors had in order to verbally communicate with their pilots. The sole connection she had with humans was mental, and almost all of that was through Jeff.

So, even though Eileen didn't hear words, she did receive feelings, some of them quite intense. It's hard to disbelieve intense feelings that seem to be coming from deep inside your own brain. In an instant, Eileen knew that this glob of seeming plastic was, indeed, alive and alien. Before she realized quite what was happening, she was sitting with Little One nestled in her lap as she absently petted the little alien.

"Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness," she kept whispering.

A few minutes later, Eileen was lying on the couch, a pillow under her head, Little One now sitting on the young pilot's chest as she continued to caress the little alien. The blue beams bathed Eileen's face and she slept, a smile on her face.

The Prison Planet

... Even with his cautiously slow pace, an hour later, Morales stood looking out at a big valley nestled between the mountains – a valley that was much, much bigger than he had thought when he had glimpsed a part of it through the trees. And in that valley...

A vast plain extended to his right and left, widening in the distance. The morning mists had not yet burned off, but even so, he could see herds of animals grazing in the relative coolness of the morning. A half mile or so away, he identified a herd of the pseudo-antelopes. Maybe I should call them something else. Maxialopes, or giantalopes. No, those names sound stupid. Hmmm. Guess I'll just stick with antelopes. They do resemble antelopes, but they're a lot bigger. To the right of the antelopes and a little farther out was another herd, this one with many, many more animals strewn out over what seemed like miles. As he studied them with his binoculars, he decided to call them buffalo since there was a resemblance, but like the antelope, they only resembled their namesake. Even at this distance, he wasn't sure that he would ever be able to kill one of the big beasts with a crossbow. They had to be at least twice the size of buffalo, or bison, as the book frequently called them, on Earth. Of course, they weren't really buffalo anyway, he thought as his mind rebelled at the idea of a buffalo being that big.

Another thing that quickly became evident was the horns on the bulls. These guys probably aren't a pushover for anything. They look formidable enough to give even the saber tooth pause. As the thought crossed his mind, there was some sort of disturbance to a small section of the immense herd, and three of the bulls, bellowing, charged toward an area of deep grass a few hundred feet away. While they were moving, the remaining bulls in this section of the herd formed a circle around the females, and as best he could tell, the females had already encircled the smaller buffalo which he decided had to be their calves. But with all the movement of the big beasts, it was hard to tell what they were surrounding. In short order, much of the smaller group was facing outward, forming a virtual wall of horns.

His attention quickly returned to the three charging males. The larger bull was slightly in the lead with the other two flanking him and only a few feet back from his shoulders. Their heads were down and their great horns led the way. Somehow, he thought of tanks as the three bore down on their objective, which turned out to be some feline-appearing creature that was long and black. That something leapt up in the shoulder high grass, then with more great leaps, sped away from the charging, but slower pursuers.

Even from a distance, he could hear the bellow of rage as the three slammed to a halt, pawing the ground, slinging their great heads and making a hellacious racket.

He continued to observe the beasts as they returned to the smaller section of the herd. After closer inspection with his binoculars, he realized that there wasn't one great herd, but many smaller ones, each consisting of one larger bull and several other bulls not quite as large, along with twenty or more females and young. He wondered how they prevented accidentally skewering each other with those tremendous horns. Even the females had impressive sets.

Shit. These fuckers work as a unit. Shooting one of the smaller critters might well get a set of those gigantic horns shoved up my ass, but ... damn, I could sure use some of those hides come winter, not to mention something better than those evergreen boughs and leaves I'm using for a bed now. Hmmm, what the fuck was that black thing that was stalking them? It looked like some type of cat. That's all I fucking need, he grumped to himself as he continued to scan with his binoculars.

The mountain, vague in the distance because of moisture in the air, was a mixture of dark green, shading to gray in the shadows near the bottom, but the very uppermost peaks were capped with white. He had no idea how far away the peaks were, but with the heat, he knew that they had to be very high to have snow on them with the weather here on the plains so hot.

A mile or so to the left and past the first smaller herd was a sparkling thread of silver that must be a river. At this point, he could make out little about it because of growth along this side and the distance involved, but he was determined to explore it as soon as he got the chance.

Returning his attention to the plain he was standing on, he noted that the grasses on some areas were no more than knee deep, while other areas were waist to shoulder high like the one where the stalking cat beast had sparked the buffalo charge.

As he stared at the vast plain, the wind picked up considerably for a few moments, causing some of the areas with the high grass to look startlingly like waves on an ocean. Shit, that grass could conceal anything. Well, if these fuckers don't migrate, I'll have plenty of food – if I can just kill without getting my ass skewered by those horns, or stomped into mush by those pissed-off locomotives that look like buffalo. Then there's that black thing that might be this world's version of a panther that, with my luck, will be trying to eat my ass while I'm stalking my dinner. Well, they told me that the life expectancy here wasn't great. Looks like they damn sure weren't kidding.

There were a few trees scattered about the plain. Finding a good sized one on a small rise, he sat with his back against the tree chewing on a piece of antelope jerky as he wondered how he would go about killing one of the buffalo. Shit, even if I did manage to kill one of the full-grown bulls, I'm not sure I could manage to get the hide back to my cave – at least in one piece. He chuckled aloud at his choice of words, mental though they were. He had meant keeping the animal hide in one piece, but that could apply to his hide as well.

These guys seem to work as a team. Fuck, all they have to do is run over my ass. They don't even need those fucking horns.

While he sat watching, he realized that the nearest herd seemed to be slowly moving as a unit while they grazed, and one of the smaller of them, a young bull about half grown, was a hundred feet or so from the main part of the herd.

Teenage rebellion? he wondered. Looking around himself, a plan began to jell. There's a substantial tree, with limbs low enough for me to climb, in the general direction they're moving toward. If I manage to kill the young bull, I might be able to make it to the tree before the others can get to my ass – maybe. I have jerky and water; I can sit on a limb and wait them out if they come after me.