239
“Come, Ciara,” Damien said, “walk with us. We… missed you and did not finish what we intended to do.”
I heard Rose beside me. How sweet and loving Damien sounded. She sighed and patted my arm.
I walked with my men out of our quarters. They were intent on finding Hannah before she left. She had probably gone to the main exit for the women. The men usually stayed away from there.
Our rooms were close to the women’s area, so it wasn’t a long walk. We made it swiftly to the exit the men were looking for. Hannah and Ra stood talking to a burly woman. From where we stood we could hear the woman warning them against harming Basin and his Brothers.
“I only wished to see my female breeder,” Hannah said politely. “We are much too young to breed and your men are in no danger around us. They are friends of my male breeder. I would not harm those close to him; it would anger my female breeder.”
The woman noticed us then. She turned and looked at us sharply and asked why we were here.
Damien spoke calmly, “I wished to see this female, Mistress. It is a custom on Earth that I should be concerned with my offspring’s well-being. If my female offspring expects this, I felt it would be appropriate. Hannah’s happiness is my only concern.”
The woman Hannah had been talking to seemed surprised. Damien’s logic was flawless. He was only here for the good of a female. That was a very acceptable reason for his visit.
“This is the custom?” the woman asked Hannah.
“Yes, on Earth a male would have helped to raise me. It is not expected here, but my male breeder understands this strange custom through his slave. It fills a need within me to know him,” Hannah said politically.
The large female considered us all for a moment before she spoke.
“Visit when you are here,” she told Hannah, “but do not harm my men. Do not let your Earth heritage hinder you, but this is not objectionable to me.”
The woman took off out of the mountain and we stood facing Hannah and Ra silently.
“Daddy,” Hannah said lightly, “it is good to see you.”
She opened her arms, inviting affection from Damien. He strode toward her and hugged her, even kissing her cheek. The greeting was warmer than I would have expected, but Damien trusted Hannah. She was family.
“This place,” Hannah said gesturing, “reminds me of Radio Shack.”
The men looked puzzled for a moment at the Earth word, but I understood it. The meaning sunk in quickly. There were recording devices here.
Damien and his Brothers had seen devices that could transmit sound and picture, and knew they existed. It was somehow not surprising the women used those sorts of things.
“We should sit and talk somewhere,” Damien offered. “Your Mama and I have not seen you in a long time.”
“A place in the sun would be good for Mama,” Hannah said leading us away, “I know the perfect spot.”
We followed Hannah and Ra around the inside of the mountains. She went down into a deserted place and we came to a wall. A part of the mountain side had fallen in and the sunshine spilled into the old cavern. It was just barely a large enough hole for Hannah and Ra to get through, a full grown woman would not fit.
Ra spoke loudly and clearly, “Mama will be warm and we can sit and talk. It is a shame the other Earth female fears us or we could go to your rooms.”
“She does,” I agreed. “Poor Rose seems quite afraid of you two.”
The girls nodded and smiled leading us out on a wide ledge.
Once we were all outside Ra looked around casually. I saw her sharp eyes scanning the area around us. Hannah did the same thing.
“The things they use,” Hannah said softly, “glitter in the light… like a camera lens. I did not see any here when we looked at this area.”
I understood the word and I remembered how a piece of curved glass would catch the light. Bane clucked his tongue and leaned back on a piece of rock. Kein made a similar sound and nudged Bane’s shoulder.
“Told you they weren’t just pieces of the wall,” Kein said feeling vindicated.
As children there had been these shiny pieces to the walls of the training grounds. Kein had noticed them and Christof had asked. The Child Keepers said they were just how a wall was made and to leave them alone.
“Nu-reeh and your female breeders have always watched you,” Hannah said gently. “They are a way of sending images from place to place.”
“They watch you still,” Ra said cautiously, “we saw two in the main room with the pool in the area where you all stay. They seemed aimed at the entranceway.”
“We doubt they are in your living quarters,” Hannah said to Damien. “They would want to make sure Mama was safe. They would use them to monitor any men entering or leaving the main area with the pool.”
We would check once we were home. Damien wanted to know what to call them. The word Hannah used was roughly equivalent to camera in English. In my mind, that’s what they were.
Christof wished fervently that I knew more about cameras. Even though my knowledge was limited he was glad for the comparison, so they could understand.
“Your Mama,” Christof said hesitantly, “knows this word. On Earth she remembers them transmitting sound also sometimes.”
It shouldn’t have surprised me Christof would have picked up on that detail. I never would have thought to ask.
“They cannot,” Ra said, “the ore in the mountains disrupts their ability to transmit sound well. You need a pad to do that and it would need to be close to the originator of the sound.”
“Even then it doesn’t always come in clearly,” Hannah finished.
The men thought for a moment about what the girls had told us. There was a more pressing issue here, though and Damien got to it.Content protected by Nôv/el(D)rama.Org.
“She can control us,” he said getting right to the point. “How does she do it?”
Ra explained, because she understood it better. The women could connect to their men. In the past the connection had gone both ways. The women were actually bonded to the men they kept. The families connected deeply to one another.