“This woman is from Earth, isn’t she?”
“How do you know?”
“She speaks one of the Earth languages I do.” I lifted the half-eaten disk in my hand. “Cookies. That’s English, one of the many languages from Earth, my planet.”
To my knowledge, Svetlana Kostyk was the only Earth woman who’d come anywhere near the Dark Anomaly. She was of Ukrainian background but spoke fluent English. All of my spaceship’s international crew had also spoken English to some degree, in addition to Universal. Though most were more fluent in the latter.
Back in Svetlana’s time, however, Earthlings had just been introduced to the Universal language. Not many spoke it back then, and not on the same level as we did now.
It’d been assumed that Svetlana was long dead. Could she have been living on the Dark Anomaly, for the past fifty years? Baking cookies for these savages? Or was it someone else?
“Where is the woman who made the cookies? Can I meet her?”
“No.” Wyck shook his head, evading my gaze. In fact, he’d been avoiding looking into the room ever since he got here. His body angled sideways, he persistently kept his gaze on the metal side of the doorway.
“Why not?”
His jaw muscles twitched. “It’s not necessary.”
“But I’d love to—”
“What you’d love is irrelevant,” he snapped abruptly. “It’s up to the captain to decide who meets her. She is his woman.”
That was puzzling. The only Earth disappearance I knew of that had happened in this area was that of Svetlana Kostyk. It happened over fifty years ago, though. If Svetlana survived here somehow for that long, she’d be an elderly woman now.
“What exactly do you mean by her being his?”
“It doesn’t matter.” He shrugged, jerkily. “It’s not her you should be worried about, anyway.”
He wasn’t wrong. I should be asking questions about my future. But this topic was too remarkable to give up. After all, I’d come here to find out what had happened to Svetlana. Now, there appeared to be another woman from Earth, which was a completely new mystery to me.
“Have you ever heard of a human woman named Svetlana Kostyk?” I asked. “She might have crashed here about fifty years ago. I know it was long before you were born...” Wyck appeared to be about my age, maybe even younger as errocks’ massive size often made them look older and more mature than their age. “But maybe you’ve heard something from the others?”
Finally, he turned his head to me. His eyes narrowed to slits as he stared at me in some odd calculating way, not saying a word.
I took another bite of the cookie in my hand. “These taste similar to the ones we have back home.”
“Don’t all baked goods kind of taste the same?” he replied. “There’s just so much one can do with eggs, bark flour, and some pollen sugar.”
Clearly, he’d never been to an international bakery on Earth and hadn’t been exposed to the vast variety of flavors different nations gave to the same ingredients.
“Could you at least tell me the name of the ‘captain’s woman?’ How did she get here?” I insisted.
He shook his head resolutely. “What difference would that make to you?”
“I need to know. Is there anything at all that you could tell me about her? Who is she? How long has she been here? What else does she do, other than bake cookies?”
He made a face as if he’d bit into something bitter. Clearly, the “captain’s woman” was not one of his favorite subjects.
“The only thing you really need to know,” he said curtly, “is what you’ll be doing here.”
I vaguely remembered bits of what the captain had said back at the ship—something about entertainment.
“What is it?” I asked carefully.
He kept staring away from me, rubbing the back of his neck. The edge of his vest lifted up with the gesture, revealing the clean bandage on his side. Someone at least had taken care of his wound, I noted with relief. The sight of the blood-oozing hole I’d made in his flesh had been unnerving.
The medical capsule on our ship would treat a flesh wound within seconds and significantly speed up the healing. It might’ve gotten damaged during the crash, though, or the captain had ordered it taken apart, by now.
“Tomorrow night, I’ll take you to the mess hall,” Wyck said, bringing my attention back to him.
“Why? What is the mess hall here?”
“A room for large gatherings, among other things.” He stared at the wall again.
“What am I to do there tomorrow night?”
“You’ll have to take your clothes off. In front of everyone.”
“What?” I nearly choked on the last bit of the cookie. “That’s a joke, right?”
Please let this be a joke.
Alarmingly, after everything I’d seen of this place, what he’d just said seemed entirely possible. Dread gripped my heart with icy fingers.
“What are they going to do to me?” I asked, swallowing hard.
“They’ll look at you.” His casual tone sent a chill down my back. He obviously didn’t think what he was saying was wrong.
“Why?”
Wyck had saved me before. Every time someone had tried to assault me, he’d put a stop to it. Was it because he’d been saving me for this?
“Because seeing you naked would excite them. And excitement feels good.”
“Why should I care about them feeling good?” I raised my voice. Fear made it sound squeaky. “And who are they, anyway?”
“The crew of the Dark Anomaly.” He pressed his hands into the wide metal stripe of the threshold, leaning into it as if for support.
Something was bothering Wyck. Sadly, it didn’t seem to be the subject matter of our conversation.
“They’ll want to see you naked, and they’ll want to watch you come.”
“Co... What?” Horror and shame rolled over me in a suffocating swell. “You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s just—”
“You can do it yourself,” he said without a shred of humor in his tone. I couldn’t fool myself; he wasn’t joking. “Touching I mean. Or like the captain said, you can choose one of the males to touch you instead.”
“In front of everyone?”
“Yes.”
It was simply ridiculous, except that he spoke of it earnestly.
“Do you even realize how absurd you sound?”
He glanced my way but quickly diverted his eyes again, staring back at the metal in front of him. I couldn’t see his expression clearly, and it unnerved me.
“It can’t happen.” I breathed faster, as the room suddenly appeared to be short on oxygen. “You know it’s wrong—you can’t even look me in the eye when you say it.”
What was up with that? What was so fascinating about that wall that he wouldn’t take his eyes off it?
“I’ll bring your dinner soon.” He shoved away from the wall. “Tonight, you’ll rest. Tomorrow, you’ll do what you’re supposed to do if you want to stay alive.”
“Is that a threat?” Fear shook through me. “Is it a live-or-die thing? Are you going to kill me if I don’t disrobe and let one of you touch me? Is that it?”