Page 32 of Devin
“Are you here for a check up? I thought the doctor would come to you.”
“Are you pregnant?”
“No more chocolate cake! We’ve had the last three baby showers with chocolate. I want strawberry!”
“The fake strawberry is gross. I don’t want that.”
“It’s her cake, she can choose what she wants.”
“What kind of cake, sweetie?”
Suddenly, they were all staring at her.
“Vanilla?” she answered.
Her answer set forth another round of tittering, but everyone seemed satisfied with the answer and no one seemed to care that she wasn’t pregnant.
Val was escorted out of the shuttle and into the camp. It was a well formed circle of the same white cubicles of the camp she’d begun to think of as home, except on a much grander scale. There were at least fifty of them set up in two concentric rings that centered onto a large open quad area where there was currently a group of warriors fighting.
Devin was among them, but the other women gathered around her and didn’t seem concerned in the slightest. Out in front of one building, there was a series of picnic tables set up with tarps acting as shelters from the rain.
They settled around her on a bench and demanded her life story. She decided it was best to leave out the part where she’d been in prison but gave a short summary of the rest.
Then they demanded all the news of Humility, Jane and Meadow. Apparently, they were popular here. A bunch of gifts for the three women started materializing around her, as she was made to promise that she would bring them back with her to the main camp.
Val didn’t have the heart to tell them she probably wasn’t going back, that she would be shipped off on the first transport off the planet. Instead, she took them, smiling with her waitress smile that guaranteed she’d get at least mediocre tips for listening to her customers blabber. She was sure that one of the warriors would transport the presents back to the other camp for them.
“What’s the city look like?” one of the women asked.
“Well, right now it’s a hole in the ground,” Val said, “but soon the first shipment of structures is going to be dropped in from space.”
“That sounds dangerous,” the woman said.
“I’m fairly certain Devin has everything under control.”
“Is there really going to be a hot tub in every house?”
Val blinked at the woman. She had no idea what specific plans were going to happen, but that sounded like a tremendous luxury, even for a water-drenched climate. Just her look made the other women dismiss it as a rumor.
“I’m told there will be plenty of amenities,” she said, displaying another waitress smile.
A woman approached and the women parted like water before her. Val got the idea that this was the boss’s wife, Odette, that she had heard so much about. She’d been the human that had started it all, the one that Kave had tricked Athen into marrying, and the one who was indirectly the cause for her own predicament.
Not that she minded, Val thought, considering if she’d stayed on Earth much longer, she would have been dead or beaten and bloody on the floor of some cell and dumped like trash with no family or loved ones in the world.
“Hi,” Odette said simply.
“Hi,” Val responded.
“I hear he did not put you in a cake. At least he learned that much of a lesson. Come on, why don’t we go put Junior here down for a nap?”
The other wives seemed to get the cue and disseminated. Val followed Odette to the pod closest to the command center. It was quiet but cluttered in a happy family way. It wasn’t the sterile white of Devin’s bachelor pad.
The table was pretty much the same, though it was covered with a large selection of plant samples.
“Oh, don’t mind the biologist mess. Even with Junior, I want to stay active in my field.”
“I’m a waitress.”
