The men seemed to be arguing. Suddenly, her captor reached down and ripped apart the white suit she’d worn in the transporter, exposing her skin-hugging, nearly transparent cylerian. Lexi cringed under his gaze. His eyes widened, and he put his hand out to touch her.
She swatted it away.
In her world, adults did not appear unclothed in front of each other. Illness was virtually unheard of. Rarely needed medical procedures utilized scanning machines that sent focused lasers and electron beams directly into the tissues while the patient lay covered from head to toe by a sheet. No one had seen her naked body since she was a tiny child, except for her holographic lover. Appearing almost unclothed in front of the savages left her feeling even more vulnerable.
The fourth man, the one wearing a shapeless garment made of bristly animal skin, seemed bent on exploiting the weakness he’d sensed. He sank to his knees and ran a rough hand over her. Lexi shivered. Though her body was completely covered by the cylerian, she could feel his callused fingers through the fabric. He grabbed her breast, cupped his palm around it, and squeezed.
Even as her brain registered the strange sensation, her arm shot out reflexively, backhanding him in the face with her fist. He reeled back, bellowing with rage.
She didn’t need a Tellex chip to recognize the raucous outburst of the others as laughter. The man caught her fist in his hand, clamping his fingers around it and applying pressure until she thought her hand would be crushed. She refused to bow to the pain, staring back at him defiantly until he finally let go.
The man who had wrestled her to the ground stood up and pulled her to her feet. He stood eye to eye with her six-foot frame, though he probably outweighed her by a good hundred pounds — all of it pure muscle from the looks of him. The torn transport suit fell to the ground.
His gaze traveled slowly down her body, making Lexi painfully aware of her nearly naked state. She tried to hide her distress. It could be dangerous to show any weakness in front of these savages.
His eyes fixed on the patch of golden-brown pubic hair visible through the cylerian. Without thinking, she covered it as best she could with one hand. The man who’d squeezed her breast spouted off a remark and grabbed his crotch. She followed the movement of his hand then turned away, shocked and embarrassed when she saw he’d wrapped his hand around his manhood, stroking it roughly.
She’d never seen a real penis before — only the one on her holographic lover. The man’s appendage protruded from the folds of his garment, thick and hard, with a bulging purplish-red head. Not much longer than the width of his hand, but so large in circumference his fingers barely closed around it. She shuddered in distaste.
Her captor stepped in front of the crude savage, blocking him from her view. Then he took off his cloak and put it around her shoulders. It covered her from neck to mid-calf, large enough she could practically wrap it around her body twice.
He turned to the other men. After a terse exchange, they moved as one, heading back the way they’d come. He said something incomprehensible and gestured for her to follow them. When she didn’t immediately obey, the barbarian took her arm and twisted her around. Then he pulled up the bottom of the cloak and struck her sharply on the buttocks with the flat of his hand, propelling her forward.
Shocked at the harsh sting, she glared at him over her shoulder while sizing up her chances against him. He brandished his palm in a threatening fashion. In her training, Lexi had engaged in hand to hand combat and took her share of blows. But she’d never been struck in such a fashion.
In her weakened state, she couldn’t fight him and all the others too. Bowing to defeat, she fell into step, her captor bringing up the rear so she couldn’t escape.
She tried to come up with a plan to get away from the savages, but her head pounded so hard she could barely think. She’d been in contact with the indigenous population for only a short time, yet already she’d been pawed, groped, and physically assaulted. Lexi deliberately dragged her steps, but her exhaustion was more real than she wanted to admit. Frightened and wary, she refused to think about what new torments might be in store for her when they arrived at their destination.
She heard it long before she caught sight of them. Masculine voices in a low rhythmic chant, echoed by a female chorus in a different higher melody. The voices grew louder as they walked, until the chanting seemed to reverberate through the ground beneath her feet.
But nothing in Lexi’s training had prepared her for the tableau that met her eyes when they rounded the bend.
A full moon bathed the scene in an eerie purple light. Flickering torches as tall as her shoulder stood here and there, jammed into the coarse soil. Dozens of men and women swarmed over the carcass of an enormous creature, the likes of which she’d never seen before. Lying on its side, the beast had the squat body of a giant rhinoceros, with a huge horn protruding from the top of its head. A long snout stuck out below, like an elephant’s trunk.
Those animals had long been extinct on Earth. Lexi had only seen holographic images of them as a child. The creature in front of her combined features from both, along with something entirely new. Instead of four legs, the beast had eight. A line of four short thick appendages on each side of its body. The scientist in her noted that the extra legs would help support its bulk against the planet’s strong gravity.
Excitement overrode her apprehension. If she had to land on a strange planet, at least it offered a rare opportunity to make discoveries in her field.I’ll have a fascinating paper to present at the Hall of Science’s next Interstellar Convocation.
The workers atop the animal were stripping the carcass down to gleaming bone. An endless line of others, old and young, marched up to the creature, loaded hunks of raw flesh and small bones into packs on their backs then plodded off into the distance.
Several of them stopped in their tracks when they saw her. The chant died away, and a low murmur spread through the crowd. Dozens of them ran toward them. Her captor and his crew circled around her, forcibly keeping them at arm’s length.
The murmurs faded into silence. The crowd parted automatically as a woman made her way slowly to the front of the group. Lexi stared. She’d never seen anyone who looked so old. On Earth people routinely lived to 150 or more. But with the mandatory hormone injections they maintained a youthful appearance. It wasn’t unusual to see a woman of 130 or 140 looking like she could be the older sister of her ninety-year-old middle-aged daughter.
The woman was much shorter than everyone around her. Lexi guessed her spine had been contracted by the crushing force of Iridia’s gravity over the years. She moved slowly, as though each step caused her pain. She had deep-bronze skin the texture of leather, with a mass of wrinkles on her face. Piercing deep-brown eyes seemed to bore into Lexi’s mind. She wondered if the woman had been gifted with the innate power a trained psychological evaluator spent years perfecting back on Earth.
An elaborate headpiece had been woven into her flowing mane of white hair — gold wires studded with a dazzling array of glowing stones in every color of the rainbow. She wore a full-length purple garment and a pair of flat sandals with crisscrossing laces that disappeared under her dress. Her body was not fat as much as sturdy. Despite her advanced age — or perhaps because of it — she walked with a regal bearing, head held high.
The man who’d captured her said a few words. The old woman went up to Lexi, reached out, and took her chin in a gnarled hand. Lexi shied away. The old woman murmured something, and two of the men who’d found her grabbed her arms, pinning her in place. She struggled, but they held her in an iron grip.
The old woman pulled Lexi’s cloak apart, baring her nearly naked body. She gave a start, then shifted, hiding Lexi’s body from view. Then she looked deep into Lexi’s eyes.
Lexi met the woman’s gaze squarely, while activating the mental shield that kept strangers from invading her thoughts. The woman nodded to herself, as though she’d confirmed something, then issued a terse command. The men holding her let go at once. Lexi drew the edges of the cloak around her, burying herself in it like a cocoon.
Turning aside, the woman spoke in the guttural language, lowering her voice so only the five men surrounding them could hear what she said. The Tellex chip still hadn’t kicked in, and Lexi was forced to rely on body language and facial expressions to figure out what they were saying.
The old woman’s voice took on a somber tone. As one, the men glanced back at her with varying expressions of horror and alarm. Apparently the woman had warned them she could be dangerous. Maybe that would work to her advantage. Lexi glared back at them, trying to summon up her most fearsome expression.
