Cat smiled. "We have all been very lucky," he said. "Lynxsander perhaps even more so than the rest of us."
"How do you figure that?" demanded Jack with her hands on her hips as she tried to imagine why Cat would have thought that anyone was luckier than he. "Did you want a wife with blue eyes?"
Her chin was stuck out in that belligerent fashion that always made Cat want to sweep her off her feet and mate with her. "You are sounding like Trag," he said, doing his best to keep from taking her in his arms and kissing her so hard she would never doubt that it was she he wanted, and always would. "And no, it has nothing to do with blue eyes. It is true that you rescued me from slavery, but Lynx had already been freed when Bonnie found him. The chains on him were much more difficult to remove. It took a great deal of love to do that."
"Well, maybe you're right," she admitted. Looking questioningly at her husband, she added, "Would it have been the same for you if someone else had freed you?"
"Perhaps," Cat said, "but it was not. You, my lovely Jacinth, freed me, and bound me to you in the same moment."
"Aw, now, Cat," Jack protested. "I did no such thing!"
"But you did," he purred. "No matter where you go or what you do, I am still your slave — and it is how each of us feels about our mates."
"Natural born slave boys, huh?"
"Perhaps," he admitted. "But only when our master is a female we love."
"Ooo, and guess what?" Jack exclaimed as she remembered something else from the message.
"Bonnie is pregnant?"
"How the hell did you know?" she demanded. Then she shook her head and answered her own question before he had the opportunity to reply. "Never mind," she said. "It's what you do, isn't it?"
Cat shrugged. "Yes," he said, "But there is something else, as well."
"What's that?" Jack asked, her eyes dancing with glee. "Did the Nedwut homeworld finally get blown to bits?"
As hopeful as she appeared at such a grisly prospect, Cat hated not to be able to accommodate her, but also knew that his news would bring her even more delight. "It is about Kyra and Tycharian," he said. "They have had three sons."
"Really? That's fabulous!" Jack exclaimed. Looking up at her husband expectantly, she went on.
"So, what are we going to have? More boys?"
Cat grinned wickedly. "I will not tell you that," he said, knowing it would drive her crazy until she knew. Cat liked his Jacinth to be a little on the crazy side. It made for much more interesting times — not that their time together was ever dull. "It will be a surprise."
Cat would tell her eventually — when he knew himself — but for now, he let her think he knew. He liked the idea of what she would do to persuade him to let her in on the secret. She could be very persuasive...
The wedding took place in the meeting hall at the spaceport in Nimbaza. Bonnie wore white, and Lynx thought she looked more angelic than ever. Her attendants wore emerald green, which Leo appreciated because it matched Tisana's eyes. The men were resplendent in their black formal attire with vests to match the bridesmaids dresses, and in Jack's humble opinion, all looked good enough to eat.
Drummond performed the ceremony and then announced his retirement. Vladen gave Bonnie away and then told Lynx that he had to deliver every baby in the sector from then on. Lynx said he was okay with that as long as he got paid a decent salary. Zuannis, who had made the most scrumptious wedding cake imaginable, was the matron of honor, with Cat as the best man. Jack was a bridesmaid, and it was difficult to say which of them was feeling more "desire" at seeing the other all dressed up for the event — though Cat's reaction was more obvious than Jack's.
Tisana, who made a bewitching bridesmaid, brewed up some more herbal tea for Jack and Bonnie to get them through the ceremony without throwing up. The effectiveness of the potion was tested when Gerna and Hatul showed up as guests, nearly causing Jack to lose her breakfast. Having learned a bit more about Norludian sexual practices, Bonnie was beginning to suspect that Jack had once been propositioned by one of them, which would account for her reaction. Hatul waved his suck-ery fingers longingly at Salan but stopped when Gerna smacked him on the butt.
Althea, who had just learned to walk, was the flower girl. Leo, along with Larry, Moe, and Curly, were the ushers, and Alrik and Aidan were ring-bearers, but could only toddle down the aisle because they were holding on to Max and Kipper. Max thought it was a lovely ceremony and did some serious howling at the end. Kipper was just glad he got to eat cake.
With her first avocados, Bonnie had made a big bowl of guacamole for the reception. Drummond ate nearly all of it and then fussed at Bonnie for not selling him her entire crop.
Salan was also a bridesmaid, but sobbed throughout the entire wedding because another Zetithian had gotten away from her. However, after dancing with Wilisan at the reception, she rebounded quickly. Lerotan and Trag sent their love, but couldn't be in attendance because arms dealers weren't allowed to land on Terra Minor — a rule that Jack had tried very hard to have changed but without any success. In fact, she'd come very close to getting herself deported — it seems that some government officials object to having someone make a request while fingering their pistol — but got off lightly, only having her permit to carry a weapon revoked.
Lynx had the opportunity to fight off yet another rival, though with less fatal results than his previous battle, when Hatul came through the receiving line.
"My dear Bonnie," Hatul said, making the most of the opportunity to hug the bride as he enfolded her in his skinny arms. "I am so pleased for you and Lynx! Words cannot express the happiness I feel on this joyous occasion."
Bonnie noted the dreamy look in Hatul's eyes as his fingertips grazed the skin exposed by the low back of her wedding gown and was about to warn him off, but Lynx reached out a hand to stop him.
"Hatul," he said gravely. "If you want to live long enough to eat some of Zuannis' cake, you should stop right now."
"So sorry," Hatul said meekly as he moved on. "Couldn't resist..."
Bonnie might have hugged him back — however reluctantly — but Jack couldn't even look at Hatul without wanting to barf. "I just can't stand those guys," she said to Cat, who merely smiled.
"Well, at least he didn't try to kiss me," Bonnie murmured to her new husband. "You know what they do with their tongues, don't you?"
"I can guess," Lynx replied, shaking Vladen's hand as he passed through the line.
"They are so weird," Zuannis agreed. "I'm not even sure I want him eating my cake!"
"He'll probably put fingerprints all over it," Bonnie agreed. "We'd better hurry and get a piece before it's too late."
Hatul, however, behaved impeccably during the reception, only fingering his own piece of cake, after which he and Gerna made a rather sudden departure. Seems the cake Zuannis made for the occasion tasted every bit as orgasmic as it looked.
During the reception, Jack took a moment to take Lynx aside. "So, tell me, Lynx," she said, dropping a casual arm around his shoulders. "Been thanking those lucky stars of yours?"
Jack's use of language puzzled most people, but Lynx even more so than the rest. "I do not understand."
"The ones you must have been wishing on," she said. "Those must have been some damn good stars... and you know it, don't you?" Judging from Lynx's blank expression, Jack knew she'd lost him and decided to make it easier for him. "How does it feel to be adored?"
Lynx smiled warmly. This much, he understood. "I believe you should ask Bonnie that," he said.
"She understands that far better than I."
"Oh, I doubt that," said Jack, noting Bonnie's expression. If there had ever been a bride who appeared to adore her new husband more, Jack hadn't seen her yet — though if she'd happened to glance in a mirror during her own wedding, she would have seen the same thing. "I doubt that very much, indeed."
"P ush again," L ynx urged his wife. "O nce more."
The head crowned, and suddenly the infant slipped from his mother and into his father's waiting hands. Lynx noted the sharply pointed ears and gazed into the blinking feline eyes of his newborn son. Then his two beautiful daughters followed their brother into the light. Out of the scores of babies he'd delivered, these were the first to be his own, and at long last, Lynx understood what it truly meant to feel joy.
SLAVE
I found him in the slave market on orpheseus
Prime, and even on such a godforsaken planet as that one, their treatment of him seemed extreme.
But then again, perhaps he was an extreme subject, and the fact that there was a slave market at all was evidence of a rather backward society. Slave markets were becoming extremely rare throughout the galaxy — the legal ones, anyway.
I hitched my pack higher on my shoulder and adjusted my respirator, though even with the benefit of ultrafiltration, the place still stank to high heaven. How a planet as eternally hot and dry as this one could have ever had anything on it that could possibly rot and get into the air to cause such a stench was beyond me. Most dry climates don't support a lot of decay or fermentation, but Orpheseus was different from any desert planet I'd ever had the misfortune to visit. It smelled as though at some point all of the vegetation and animal life forms had died at once and the odor of their decay had become permanently embedded in the atmosphere.
Shuddering as a wave of nausea hit me, I walked casually closer to the line of wretched creatures lined up for pre-auction inspection, but even my unobtrusive move wasn't lost on the slave owners who were bent on selling their wares.
"Come closer!" a ragged beast urged me in a rasping, unpleasant voice as he gestured with a bony arm.
I eyed him with distaste, thinking that this thing was just ugly enough to have caused the entire planet to smell bad, though I doubted he'd been there long enough to do it. On the other hand, he didn't seem to be terribly young. Okay, so older than the hills might have been a little closer to the mark. Damn, maybe he was responsible, after all!
"I have here just what you have been seeking!" he said. "Help to relieve you of your burden! This one is strong and loyal and will serve you well."
I glanced dubiously at the small-statured critter there before me, and its even smaller slave. "I don't think so," I replied, thinking that the weight of my pack alone would probably have crushed the poor little thing's tiny bones to powder. I know that looks can often be deceiving, but this thing looked to me like nothing more than an oversized grasshopper. Its bulbous red eyes regarded me with an unblinking and slightly unnerving stare. "Its eyes give me the creeps, anyway," I added. "I need something that looks more... humanoid."
Dismissing them with a wave, I glanced around at the others, noting that, of the group, there were only two slaves being offered that were even bipedal: one reminded me of a cross between a cow and a chimpanzee, and the other, well, the other was the one who had first caught my eye — possibly because out of all the slaves there, he was the one seeming to require the most restraint, and also because he was completely naked.
I studied him out of the corner of my eye, noting that the other prospective buyers seemed to be giving him a wide berth. His owner, an ugly Cylopean — and Cylopeans are all ugly, but this one would have stood out in a crowd of them — was exhorting the masses to purchase his slave.
"Come!" he shouted in heavily accented Standard Tongue, "my slave is strong and will serve you well. I part with him only out of extreme financial need, for he is as a brother to me, and it pains me greatly to lose him."
His pain wasn't as great as the slave's, obviously. I eyed the Cylopean skeptically. Surely he couldn't imagine that anyone would have suspected that his "brother" would require a genital restraint in order to drag him to the market to part him from his current master!
Rolling my eyes with disdain, I muttered, "Go ahead and admit it. You're selling him because you can't control him."
"Oh, no, my good sir!" the Cylopean exclaimed, seemingly aghast at my suggestion. "He is strong!
He is willing! He is even intelligent!"
I stifled a snicker. The slave was obviously smart enough to have this one buffaloed, I thought, chuckling to myself as it occurred to me that no one around here would even know what a buffalo was, let alone the euphemism associated with the animal.
I blew out a breath hard enough to fog the eye screen on my respirator. Damn, but I was a long way from home! Earth was at least five hundred long light-years away. How the hell had I managed to end up here, searching for a lost sister whom I sometimes suspected of not wanting to be found? I'd followed her trail from planet to planet for six years now, and had always been just a few steps behind her. I was beginning to consider giving up the search, but the memory of the terror in her wild blue eyes as she was torn from my arms on Dexia Four kept me going.
And now, she had been — or so I'd been informed — taken to Statzeel, a planet where all women were slaves and upon which I didn't dare set foot, knowing that I, too, would become enslaved. The denizens of Statzeel would undoubtedly not make the same mistake that the slave trader had, for I was most definitely female, and, as such, vulnerable to the same fate that had befallen my lovely little sister. That I wasn't the delicate, winsome creature Ranata was wouldn't matter, for a female on Statzeel was a slave by definition. Free women simply did not exist there.
Which was why I needed a male slave of my own. One to pose as my owner — one that I could trust to a certain extent, though I was beginning to believe that such a creature couldn't possibly exist, and certainly not on Orpheseus Prime! I was undoubtedly wasting my time, I thought as I looked back at the slave. He was tall, dirty, and probably stank every bit as much as his owner did. I was going to have to check the filter in that damn respirator — either that or go back and beat the shit out of the scheming little scoundrel who'd taken me for ten qidnits when he sold it to me. I should have simply stolen it, but getting myself in trouble with what law there was on that nasty little planet wouldn't have done either my sister, or myself, a lick of good.