Tenacious

20

Kris bounced the baby on her hip. The little girl had been cleaned up, had a diaper on for probably the first time in her life, and looked rather cute in an outfit taken off a teddy bear.

Kris hadn’t asked who had a teddy bear this big, but she’d suspected from the hushed conversation she’d partially overheard that it had been offered up by one of the guys who worked the reactor.

Kris was under the impression that the reactor crew had to pass the highest psychological tests. When things settled down, she might have to look into that.

The woman had also been cleaned up and dressed in civilian clothes donated by one of the contract cooks. She was still asleep.

Jack had had to sleepy dart her. Her capture had not gone well.

It hadn’t been allowed to go as bad as the young man’s attempted capture, but still she’d spotted the Marines moving in even though Jacques had been doing his manful best to distract her.

Now she slept on the couch in Kris’s day cabin. Kris had Gunny go over her day quarters to childproof them. He’d called in the help of several young women Marines who removed a lot of objects that Kris would never had considered a hazard to a baby.

That just went to show what Kris knew about babies.

Now childproofed, Kris hoped her quarters were also alien-suicide-proof.

Jack, Amanda, Jacques, Penny, and Masao rounded out the group eyeing the sleeping woman. The military were in uniform, khakis all. Jacques suggested that the earth tones might soften their impression. Jacques and Amanda were in tan shipsuits.

“When do you think she’ll wake up?” Kris asked. The baby was getting fretful. “I think she’s hungry.”

“Check her diaper,” Penny suggested. “Is it wet or dirty?”

“You check it,” Kris said, and passed the cranky child off to her intel officer.

She made the required checks.

“She’s wet. Do we have any spare diapers?”

Jack pointed to a pile of baby gear on Kris’s conference table. “When Musashi fitted out the Wasp, they equipped us for humanitarian missions, per their law. We have all we need to take aboard and care for hundreds of civilians for a month. I don’t even think they charged us for the package. All their ships come equipped for kids.”

Penny went to do her duty by the little one, with Masao right behind her. From the looks in both their eyes, Kris suspected that procreation was contagious. Whatever Penny’s fears might be of bringing death and destruction in her matrimonial wake, this baby was pulling the two caregivers closer together.

The woman on the couch started at the sound of her baby’s fussing. Still, she did not rouse. Kris settled into the armchair across from the woman’s head and waited.

At the conference table, with the baby dry again, Penny put formula powder into a bottle of water and offered it to the little one. It took the nipple hungrily, sucked heartily for a moment, then spat out the bottle and began to cry. It was a full-throated wail, not at all tentative.

“I don’t think their kids like our kind of milk,” Penny said.

On the couch, the woman stirred. This time, she fully surfaced. She glanced around, eyes wide, then spotted her child and was off the couch and racing toward the baby before anyone could stop her.

Not that anyone did. Penny handed the baby off to its mother without a bobble.

Baby in hand, the alien woman quickly opened the top of her borrowed dress and offered a breast to her child. The little one greedily began to pull down lunch.

Only when the child was settled did the woman look around, eyes going wider still.

~You are on a ship,~ Nelly said in the language Jacques had used among the dirtside. Those on Nelly Net heard it in Standard in their minds. Masao and Amanda heard it from their own computers.

~This is not the ship,~ the woman said, eyes narrowing as she took the room in.

~No,~ Kris agreed. ~This is our ship.~

~Vermin do not have ships,~ was spat more than said.

Jack edged around to cover the door, one hand behind his back where he carried his automatic. Masao put himself between the woman and Penny.

Jacques slowly approached the woman. ~You have shared food with me. I speak your words. I gave you food to eat. You know what all of me looks like,~ he said, running his hands down his side.

~No. No! NO!~ she screamed and began to sidle away, eyes searching the room like a trapped animal desperate for any way out. She paused for a moment, then charged Jack, her hands out, fingers reaching with their long nails for his eyes.

With one hand he used his automatic to put a sleepy dart in the terrified woman’s belly, then used the other to reach out and catch the child as she collapsed like a pricked balloon.

“That didn’t go as well as I had hoped,” Kris said.

“We’re vermin to her,” Jacques said. “And their idea of vermin is a lot uglier than ours, considering the way she said that.” The anthropologist shook his head.

“Kris, I suspect that did not meet your definition of a talk with the aliens,” Jack said.

“Not even close,” Kris agreed.

“So, what do we do next?” Amanda asked.

Kris rubbed her scalp. The tension was getting unbearable. “I’m open to suggestions.”

Penny took the child from Jack. It continued to voice its hunger for all to take note of. “Jack, does the equipment we’ve got include a breast pump?” Penny asked.

That got her a lot of blank stares.

“Okay, folks. The baby is hungry, and you just decked her meal ticket. I also suspect that her breasts are full. Jacques, do you remember the last time she nursed the child?”

The anthropologists gave her the manly shrug of one whose interests in that portion of the female anatomy did not extend to sustenance.

“If she goes too long without emptying her milk, we risk her breasts drying up. And then what will we do about food for the child?” Penny said, exasperated. “Nelly, do you have the schematics for a breast pump?”

“Yes, I do,” the Magnificent Nelly said. “You’ll find one on the table next to the diapers now.”

And there was one.

Amanda went for it. “I watched my mom express milk for my youngest brother,” she said. “I don’t know how it will work with her knocked out and having sleepy dart in her blood, but let’s see how this works. Would you strapping men mind lift her back onto the couch?”

Masao and Jacques did. Jack stayed close, automatic in hand. The alien mom was an easy lift. As soon as they had her back on the couch, the men hastily withdrew to behind Kris’s desk, about as far from the women as possible.

“Note how our strong men get skittish at the sight of a woman’s working breast,” Amanda said, attaching the breast pump and activating it. “They just love to get their mitts on our boobs,” she said, aiming a scathing glance at the men, “but let a woman put her mammary glands to the business God intended, and they run.”

“I thought you women might want your privacy,” Jack offered, lamely.

“Thank you,” Kris said. Her brain failed to suppress a sudden question. Might she actually develop some mammary glands, as Amanda so professionally put it, if she was nursing a child of her own? Their own.

How would Jack take to that?

Damn, this reproductive thing is contagious.

The breast pump worked. The bottle attached to it slowly filled. Kris left the woman and child in Penny’s and Amanda’s capable hands and turned to the men.

“Okay, guys, I’m open to suggestions. How do we get this woman to talk to us?”

They stared at her. She stared at them. There was a lot of staring and not a lot of ideas being verbalized.

Penny joined them, jostling the baby on her hip. It sucked at one of her fingers.

Kris eyed the quieted child.

“I swiped one of those sugar packets from the mess,” Penny said. “I put a bit of it on my finger. The kid may not like our milk, but it sure likes our sugar. Maybe we should try putting some sugar in our formula. Or chocolate.”

“But would it actually get any benefit from the food?” Jacques asked.

“You ate their food. Did you starve?”

“I don’t think so.”

“We need another bottle, or two,” Amanda said. The first one looked full.

Two bottles appeared on the conference table, and Penny took them to Amanda.

“Nelly, spin out a small sample bottle. Amanda, if you’ll fill the small one, we’ll get the boffins to do their thing. We’ll know exactly what’s in mother bug-eyed-monster milk in no time.”

“Doing it,” Amanda answered, as Penny retrieved the small bottle, and Amanda switched it onto the pump. After that one was full, they switched breasts and began draining the other one.

Kris turned back to the guys. “I have a problem. You guys are not helping.”

“We’ve tried everything that I can think of,” Jacques said.

“How do we get her to sit still and talk to me?” Kris repeated, with more than a tinge of irritation.

Again, the men came up with only silence.

Kris turned to Penny, now feeding a very hungry child from the first bottle. It seemed happy enough now.

The mother wants the baby, Kris thought. We have the baby.

“If we show her that the baby is fine,” Kris said slowly, and half to herself, “and tell her that she can’t have the baby until she talks to me . . .”

“You’re a hard woman, Kris Longknife,” Penny said.

“A determined woman,” Kris answered. “Penny, can you raise a wall in here? One of those clear walls.”

“So she can see her baby and that we’re taking care of her,” Penny said, catching Kris’s drift.

“But not get near the child. Not until she’s talked to me and answers all my questions.”

“You’re assuming that she can tell you what you want to know,” Jacques said. “I was down there for way too long. I listened to them talk to each other. I still don’t know much more about them and their ship and their Enlightened One than I did when you dropped me off buck naked to be eaten by whatever passes for mosquitoes in that godforsaken place.”

“I can ask direct questions,” Kris snapped. “Questions you couldn’t do without risking your head being bashed in with the nearest rock.”

Jacques glanced around the room.

“No nearest rock,” Kris said.

“She has a point,” Masao said.