Chapter 4

Late Evening

Jane checked herself in the bathroom mirror to make sure she had repaired all the damage from bathing the children. Satisfied, she put down her hairbrush and returned to the main bedroom to get fresh clothes for the evening. She decided on a red and white striped top with a grey skirt. Flip-flops completed the ensemble, hardly elegant but tonight they weren't expecting any visitors and didn't have any plans to go out. Anjali had confirmed that Laura and Bonnie would be reconnecting with Phil that evening and that the planned visit was postponed.

Jane and Viv had known Laura and Bonnie since before they arrived on Waller, the four of them had been on the same colony ship from Earth. They had formed a baby-sitting circle so they could dump all the kids in someone else's pod and have some extended time away from the little terrors. Of course, they got to reciprocate with a double load of kids in their pod sometimes. Bonnie's oldest, Karen, was between Julie and Sam so she had been able to help somewhat over the last few years. Like Julie, she was in the Sutlers and wanted plenty of childcare practice.

The main room was tidy again, Viv and Anjali had put all the children's toys back in the toy chest. Having the chest saved queues at the replicator every morning to get favourite toys. As toys fell out of favour they were quietly recycled, with new ones being introduced occasionally as a surprise for the kids to find.

Viv was reading, a real book no less; not a vid-tablet but an actual book. Anjali was watching something on her tablet, probably a movie as she had the ear buds in place. Sam was playing Go against Jai. Not seeing Julie, Jane asked Viv where she was.

"She's upstairs," Viv said. "She wanted to dance to some music vids so we sent her up to her room for a bit to get her out of the way. She can have it as loud as she likes up there and dance around without disturbing any of the rest of us."

Seeing that everyone else was quiet, Jane went back to the bedroom to retrieve her own tablet. She was re-reading 'Pride and Prejudice' for the umpteenth time. She had studied it at school and had enjoyed it ever since; "It is a truth universally acknowledged..." A world very different from pod life on Waller, but still with some resonances to the present. People were still people despite all the changes since Jane Austen's day. Even without the book it was nice just to be able to sit quietly without having to get up every five minutes to deal with some childish problem or other. In many ways this was the best part of the day, with some relief from the children. She loved them all of course, and they could be immense fun and very rewarding, but it was nice to be free of them some of the time.

Viv sighed, stretched and leaned back from her book, breaking the silence. Jane looked over at her, "A real book Viv?"

"A biology textbook," she replied. "I need to keep my brain active and I think it's easier to cross reference between multiple sections with a real book than with a tablet."

"You miss your work then?" Jane asked.

"Yes," Viv replied, "I'll be glad to get back once Helen is weaned. It's just something different to do for half a day. A change is as good as a rest, though we don't get a lot of actual rest in the Biolab."

As well as helping terraform Waller with the grasses and oxygen production, the biology lab's main job was looking for ways to fight the Sa'arm. They were systematically checking all Waller's native species of bacteria to see if any of the chemicals they produced were effective against the Sa'arm. The local life was different enough from life on Earth that it was practically guaranteed that any proteins found would be different from their Earth equivalents. "They use a different set of amino acids," Viv had explained. "There are some overlaps but they use some that we don't. Anything with more than a few amino acids is going to have one or more of the unusual ones in it."

New proteins were tested on cultures of Sa'arm tissue to see if they were toxic to Sa'arm physiology. They did find some that would kill Sa'arm, but the problem was that the great majority would also kill humans. That would make it difficult for Marines to fight in a Sa'arm tunnel filled with toxic gas. The lab was looking for toxins that harmed the Sa'arm without doing too much damage to humans -- something that would give the Marines an advantage when fighting underground. They had found a few possible candidates which were sent on elsewhere for further testing and possible weaponisation. The Waller lab was specialised for biology and searching; the military and weapons experts were further along the research chain.

"We have whole oceans full of new bacteria to analyse," Viv went on, "Plenty of work for me to do when my leave finishes."

When Viv had first explained the real work of the biology lab, Jane had been worried. "Is any of the stuff in the Algae tanks dangerous?" she had asked, remembering her work assignments there.

"Not really," Viv had told her. "If you get a mouthful it might give you an upset stomach, but nothing more than that. The native stuff here has never had to evolve to cope with anything like our immune system so our bodies can kill it off easily. Of course," Viv had continued, "that cuts both ways. None of the Waller microbes are likely to be useful as a direct biological weapon due to the Swarm's own equivalent of our immune system."

Back in the present Viv went on, "Besides, it'll be nice to see my friends there again after my leave is finished. I'll take Helen to show them so they can all coo over her."

Their conversation finished, they both returned to their reading. After some time Viv put down her book, "Do you want some tea Jane?"

"No thanks Viv, I'll just be peeing all night if I have some now." She patted her growing belly.

Viv got up and went into the kitchen to get tea for herself and Anjali. Sam paused his game against Jai and came over to sit next to Jane. He looked a bit embarrassed as he started talking, "Mum Jane, can I ask you about dad. Not Keith, but Mike, from back on Earth."

"Sure Sam," Jane answered, smiling. "Ask away."

"Well..." Sam paused, uncertain, "were you both virgins when you married?"

Jane just about managed to suppress her laughter. She couldn't stop herself smiling though. "Lord, no. We'd both been around a bit before we met, and we were sleeping together for months before we got married."

"When did you lose your virginity?" Sam turned red as he asked.

"Years before I met Mike. Do you want to hear the story Sam?"

He nodded, still blushing.

"Well, I was sixteen and legal so I decided to get my cherry popped. One of the boys in school, Ryan, had a reputation among the girls. He was good in bed but he wouldn't keep any girlfriend for long. He would treat you nice for a few months till he dropped you. He was a charmer, always on the lookout for another girl to charm out of her panties.

"One good thing about him was that he didn't blab. He didn't name names; there was the assumption that he slept with most of the girls he went out with but no-one was exactly sure which ones. You could always claim, 'He dumped me because I wouldn't do it with him.'

"So I let him know I was available and after he dropped Nancy he went out with me. He wasn't bad in bed; he certainly had a lot more experience than I did. Even looking back on it, he was pretty good for a seventeen year old. Later on I had some older men who weren't as good as him. He wasn't as good as Mike though, but Mike was older when I met him and we both had a lot more experience. He was another charmer was Mike, but at least he stayed around for longer than Ryan did before he left to find more girls to charm. Once a charmer, always a charmer."

"Is Keith a charmer?" Sam asked. "He doesn't seem like it."

"Ha!" Jane laughed aloud. She noticed Viv briefly look up from her tea at the noise. "No, Keith is definitely not a charmer. He's Mister boring and reliable. If he'd been a charmer I wouldn't have agreed to be his concubine. A charmer would have exchanged me for a new concubine after a few months. That would have risked separating me from you and Julie and I wasn't going to take a chance on that. No, I'd made my mistake with Mike; no more charmers for me."

Sam returned to his original topic, "So, when you had your first fuck, you went for someone experienced?"

"Yes I did. It seemed the obvious thing to do. Most of the reports about Ryan said he was good at sex. Not good for an ongoing relationship, but a good choice for breaking my cherry. I wasn't looking for a long term boyfriend then anyway. I was far too young to settle down. Some of the other boys had an awful reputation among the girls and I didn't want to risk a complete unknown for my first time. Ryan's not talking about it afterwards was a point in his favour as well. I didn't want a reputation as a slut, not back then anyway. That was before the Swarm of course; things changed afterwards. These days at sixteen I would already have a couple of kids and be in someone's harem." Jane paused, looking at Sam, who was trying not to seem too embarrassed about the questions he was asking his mother. "What's behind these questions? Is it about you and Becky?"