Jared and Wes looked at me with shocked eyes. I was sure that if I could see the others, their expressions would match. Maybe not Jeb’s. He was the master of the poker face.
“I am female,” I complained. “That ‘it’ business is really getting on my nerves.”
Jared blinked in surprise. Then his face settled back into harder lines. “Because of the body you wear?”
Wes glared at him.
“Because of me,” I hissed.
“By whose definition?”
“How about by yours? In my species, I am the one that bears young. Is that not female enough for you?”
That stopped him short. I felt almost smug.
As you should, Melanie approved. He’s wrong, and he’s being a pig about it.
Thank you.
We girls have to stick together.
“That’s a story you’ve never told us,” Wes murmured, while Jared struggled for a rebuttal. “How does that work?”
Wes’s olive-toned face darkened, as if he’d just realized he had spoken the words out loud. “I mean, I guess you don’t have to answer that, if I’m being rude.”
I laughed. My mood was swinging around wildly, out of control. Slaphappy, like Mel had said. “No, you’re not asking anything… inappropriate. We don’t have such a complicated… elaborate setup as your species.” I laughed again, and then felt warmth in my face. I remembered only too clearly how elaborate it could be.
Get your mind out of the gutter.
It’s your mind, I reminded her.
“Then… ?” Wes asked.
I sighed. “There are only a few of us who are… Mothers. Not Mothers. That’s what they call us, but it’s just the potential to be one…” I was sober again, thinking of it. There were no Mothers, no surviving Mothers, only the memories of them.
“You have that potential?” Jared asked stiffly.
I knew the others were listening. Even Doc had paused in the act of putting his ear to Kyle’s chest.
I didn’t answer his question. “We’re… a little like your hives of bees, or your ants. Many, many sexless members of the family, and then the queen…”
“Queen?” Wes repeated, looking at me with a strange expression.
“Not like that. But there is only one Mother for every five, ten thousand of my kind. Sometimes less. There’s no hard-and-fast rule.”
“How many drones?” Wes wondered.
“Oh, no—there aren’t drones. No, I told you, it’s simpler than that.”
They waited for me to explain. I swallowed. I shouldn’t have brought this up. I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Was it really such a big thing to have Jared call me “it”?
They still waited. I frowned, but then I spoke. I’d started this. “The Mothers… divide. Every… cell, I guess you could call it, though our structure isn’t the same as yours, becomes a new soul. Each new soul has a little of the Mother’s memory, a piece of her that remains.”
“How many cells?” Doc asked, curious. “How many young?”
I shrugged. “A million or so.”
The eyes that I could see widened, looked a little wilder. I tried not to feel hurt when Wes cringed away from me.
Doc whistled under his breath. He was the only one who was still interested in continuing. Aaron and Andy had wary, disturbed expressions on their faces. They’d never heard me teach before. Never heard me speak so much.
“When does that happen? Is there a catalyst?” Doc asked.
“It’s a choice. A voluntary choice,” I told him. “It’s the only way we ever willingly choose to die. A trade, for a new generation.”
“You could choose now, to divide all your cells, just like that?”
“Not quite just like that, but yes.”
“Is it complicated?”
“The decision is. The process is… painful.”
“Painful?”
Why should that have surprised him so? Wasn’t it the same for his kind?
Men. Mel snorted.
“Excruciating,” I told him. “We all remember how it was for our Mothers.”
Doc was stroking his chin, entranced. “I wonder what the evolutionary track would be… to produce a hive society with suiciding queens.…” He was lost on another plane of thought.
“Altruism,” Wes murmured.
“Hmm,” Doc said. “Yes, that.”
I closed my eyes, wishing my mouth had stayed closed. I felt dizzy. Was I just tired or was it my head wound?
“Oh,” Doc muttered. “You’ve slept even less than I have, haven’t you, Wanda? We should let you get some rest.”
“’M fine,” I mumbled, but I didn’t open my eyes.
“That’s just great,” someone said under his breath. “We’ve got a bloody queen mother alien living with us. She could blow into a million new buggers at any moment.”
“Shh.”
“They couldn’t hurt you,” I told whoever it was, not opening my eyes. “Without host bodies, they would die quickly.” I winced, imagining the unimaginable grief. A million tiny, helpless souls, tiny silver babies, withering…
No one answered me, but I could feel their relief in the air.
I was so tired. I didn’t care that Kyle was three feet from me. I didn’t care that two of the men in the room would side with Kyle if he came around. I didn’t care about anything but sleep.