Civilization Page 6

  “How was your bath?” Murdock asked.

  “Heavenly!” Annie responded enthusiastically. “How does it work?”

  “Volcanically heated rocks transfer heat to the water that comes in, continually, close to the bottom of the pool,” Murdock explained. “The water overflows the pool, replacing the water that is dragged out by anyone getting out. The heat and the constant replacement keep the water clean.” Murdock had gotten to his feet. “I’m going to take a bath. Mei Lee will give you some venison and get your hammock slung.”

  “Is this your first?” Annie asked Mei Lee after Murdock had left for his bath.

  “Hardly! This is my third,” Mei Lee answered as she rubbed her swollen belly.

  “How many were left behind on Earth?” Annie asked innocently.

  “None. I delivered them all here and they’re all sleeping in the loft. The youngest is one year old and Chun Hua, my eldest, is four years old.”

  “Oh, so there are just the two kids here,” Annie stated.

  “No, I have two, three with this one. Murdock has one, a son, from his first wife.”

  “Did you know his first wife?” Annie asked innocently.

  “Of course, Kevin knew my first husband, who died shortly after I became pregnant.”

  “Did Murdock know this Kevin who was your first husband?”

  Mei Lee started laughing. During her laughter, Murdock walked in, still wet from his bath.

  “Did I miss something entertaining?” he asked innocently.

  “Did you know this Kevin who was Mei Lee’s first husband?” Annie asked Murdock.

  Now, it was Murdock’s turn to laugh uproariously. Annie just looked from one to the other and was very confused.

  “I guess I don’t understand,” Annie said finally in frustration.

  “I think you’re confused,” Murdock said through chuckles. “I don’t like it to be generally known, but I’m Kevin. Mei Lee’s first husband was Thomas, Thomas Collier.”

  Annie started chuckling after she finally understood what she had said.

  “I guess I did make a mistake!”

  They all sat, once they had their laughter under control, and nibbled on venison that Mei Lee had set out for them.

  “What did you think of the meeting with the elected delegates?” Murdock asked while chewing.

  “It went a little better than I expected,” Annie commented. “It did surprise me that Palmer would attack you like he did.”

  “I wasn’t surprised. I knew he would,” Murdock said.

  “I knew Phylicia would say what she did, but how did you know Palmer would attack you?” Annie asked.

  “We had a few words before the meeting, when I made the announcements. He saw me as his rival. He attacked to demonstrate that he thought he was in charge.”

  “Well, he is, to some degree,” Annie added.

  “No, he isn’t,” Murdock stated. “I’d say Phylicia is in charge. If she isn’t totally, she does tell Palmer what to do.”

  Annie sat back to think about what Murdock had said. All three adults sat in silence for some time.

  “I’m tired and going to bed,” Murdock said after a short while.

  “I think we all need to turn in,” Mei Lee said. She had slung a hammock for Annie while Annie was bathing and took her to it. It took Annie a few tries, but she finally figured it out and settled in. Mei Lee joined her husband in their bed and snuggled into him.

  “What do you think of her?” Murdock flashed.

  “She does need to learn to listen, but she does seem to be competent,” Mei Lee responded.

  “I like her,” Murdock responded. “She’s a lot tougher than you’d think and she’s polite and well-mannered.”

  4

  Murdock, Mei Lee, and all the kids were awake shortly before dawn, as was their habit. Murdock and Mei Lee had decided to let Annie sleep after her extreme exertions of the previous day. Andrew and Chun Hua went about their daily chores, loading the hearth with logs and kindling, refilling water skins, and keeping an eye on Rosa Lea. Murdock and Mei Lee had gone out to commune with their friends Beron and Bridget.

  #

  Roughly an hour after everyone else was awake, Annie, being mostly asleep, felt like she was being watched. When she opened her eyes a little, she saw a little girl of about one year in age sucking her thumb. It was obvious that she was Euro-Asian mix. Annie didn’t say anything to the youngster and the youngster said nothing. They both just looked at each other for a time.

  “Mother said we should let you sleep,” the little girl said clearly after removing her thumb from her mouth. “I was just checking to see if you were finished.”

  Annie couldn’t help but smile at the little girl. “I suppose I should be,” Annie said with a grin. “My name is Annie Cooper,” she said as she tried to sit up.

  “It would be more efficient to swing your legs over the edge of the hammock as you sit up,” the child instructed matter-of-factly and without smiling back.

  When she did as the child instructed it was easy to sit up. She rubbed her eyes a little to make sure she was awake. It seemed more than a little odd to have a one-year-old talk to her in that fashion.

  “You must be . . . Rosa Lea?” Annie asked the child still smiling.

  “That’s what some would say,” the little girl responded stoically with a suspicious sideways glance, “but who can say for certain?”

  Annie heard the door open and saw Mei Lee walk in.

  “Rosa! Be nice! Annie is a guest. You’re such a precocious child!”

  “I was being quite cordial, mother,” the child said to Mei Lee, “Considering that she’s a stranger to me.”

  Mei Lee turned toward Annie. “Please excuse her, Annie. We get so few guests that she is uncertain of what her actions should be.”

  “Yes, please forgive me my precociousness in my ignorance, Ms. Cooper.”

  “Does she always speak in that fashion?” Annie asked Mei Lee, amazed.

  “Unfortunately. She’s at that stage where she hears a word and then uses it as often as possible,” Mei Lee explained.

  “Does she know the definition of the words?” Annie asked incredulously.

  “Not completely. She derives most of the meaning by the usage.”

  “It’s because I’m a genius.” pronounced little Rosa Lea very matter-of-factly as she turned circles. “Descendant of geniuses!”

  “That is enough, young lady!” Murdock said sternly as he entered the cabin.

  Annie saw the child immediately become silent; not in fear, but with an expression of self-satisfaction. Two other children came into the cabin.

  “This is Andrew and Chun Hua,” Murdock introduced with a hand on each of the children’s shoulders.

  “Nice to meet you,” Annie said offering a hand to each in kind. Andrew bowed slightly when he took her hand and shook it. Chun Hua dipped a bit when she took her hand. Neither child blinked, nor took their eyes off Annie for a second.

  Annie stood and stretched her tortured muscles. She walked outside to get a look at the cabin and surrounding area in the light of day. She squinted in the bright sun light as she exited the cabin and stood on the covered porch off the front door. The air smelled a little damp, but not overly so. This reminds me of brochures I’ve seen of…where was it? Idaho? Maybe it was Montana or could’ve been Alaska, she thought as she looked around. It’s very picturesque. “It’s very nice, here,” Annie said to Mei Lee, who had exited the cabin to join her outside.

  “We like it,” Mei Lee responded conversationally.

  “How long did it take Murdock to build it?” Annie asked.

  “I have no idea. I came after it was built.”

  “Did you know Murdock’s first wife well?”

  “Very, we were co-wives.”

  Annie looked at Mei Lee, shocked, her mouth agape. “That’s terrible,” she said, aghast.

  “Why is it terrible?” Mei Lee asked innocently.

  “W
hy, being forced to share a house and a husband, of course!”

  Mei Lee chuckled. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said quietly, but forcefully. She looked Annie in the eye and didn’t smile or blink.

  “Care to elaborate?” Annie asked snidely.

  “I came for a visit, sometime after I was elected leader of the first group. I had just found out that I was pregnant and no one was friendly to me and they all kept their distance. When I was replaced, Kevin and Rose took me in, fed me, and cared for me when I needed it the most. I wasn’t forced into anything. I requested the position of co-wife. There was nothing sexual until well after Kevin’s first wife was killed.”

  Annie was watching Mei Lee’s face while she gave the information. She did see a tear start to trickle down Mei Lee’s cheek before she wiped it away.

  “It was very advantageous for all concerned, especially for me,” Mei Lee added knowing that Annie was watching her expression.

  “I still find it to be an appalling situation,” Annie said vehemently.

  “If you were out here, alone and pregnant, with no idea of how to survive, I wonder what you would do?” Mei Lee quietly walked back into the cabin and closed the door behind her.

  As Annie stood there, she tried to imagine herself in the same situation as Mei Lee. She could see that being pregnant would make a woman do things they wouldn’t normally do.

  She had classmates that found they were alone and pregnant, but they just took a pill to rectify the problem. The financially challenged women, whom she treated when they came in after their boyfriends beat them, often stayed in untenable situations simply because they had no other choice. She was wondering if that was Mei Lee’s situation. It was then that Annie felt she needed to apologize to Mei Lee.

  “Is there somewhere I can examine you in private?” Annie asked Mei Lee after re-entering the cabin.

  “We hide nothing from the children,” Mei Lee said without expression.

  “I’ll take the older two with me,” Murdock said quickly. “I need to catch some fish for lunch and they can help.”

  Mei Lee started removing things from the table. “I assume you want me to lay down on a hard surface?”

  Annie looked around blankly and realized the table was the only hard surface available, except for the floor. “Yes, I would,” Annie said as she helped Mei Lee.

  When it was cleared, Mei Lee climbed onto the table with practiced ease. “You did that quite easily,” Annie commented.

  “I made this table with delivering babies in mind,” Mei Lee stated. “In fact, all of the kids were born on this table and I expect to deliver this one on here as well.”

  Annie shook the table a little and found it to be amazingly stable. “It is really well built! Would you remove your dress so we can start?”

  Mei Lee sat up on the table and quickly removed the buckskin dress that Murdock and Rose had made for her. Once done, she lay back down.

  “Is that a burn?” Annie asked indicating the brand on Mei Lee’s upper breast while her hands expertly pressed on Mei Lee’s belly.

  “It’s a brand, courtesy of Whittier!” Mei Lee spat.

  “It looks like an M to me,” Annie said professionally.

  “No, it’s definitely a W,” Mei Lee said. “I was there, I should know!”

  “Who was this ‘Whittier’ person?” Annie asked conversationally.

  “How should I answer her questions on the first pod?” Mei Lee asked Murdock telepathically.

  “Anyway you want to, but I would be as vague as possible. Why is she asking questions?” her husband asked.

  “She saw the brand that Whittier put on all the women.”

  It had been many years and Murdock had seen the brand so many times that he had stopped seeing it. Thinking about Whittier brought back all the hurt he had felt at the time of Rose’s death.

  “Put her off as best you can,” Murdock told his wife telepathically. “We need to discuss the possibility of a sharing with her. It would be the only way to explain to her everything that happened before.”

  “He was someone on the first transport pod,” Mei Lee said to Annie. “He was not a nice man.”

  “But would she believe what she was shown was true?” Mei Lee asked.

  “You appear to be in your third trimester, about thirty-four weeks along, with a healthy baby,” Annie said to her patient. “I would feel better about it all if you had been seeing a doctor regularly and there were a scale to chart your weight gain, but those things can’t be helped in this situation.”

  Murdock smiled to himself when Mei Lee relayed the information. “If she continues to ask questions about the first transport pod, we’ll have to deal with it, but we do need to consult Beron!” He had speared two fish and Andrew and Chun Hua helped by cleaning them, as their father and mother had taught them. When they were finished, they all headed to the cabin. By the time they had gotten to the cabin, Mei Lee was dressed and was replacing all the things that she had cleared from the table.

  “You have another healthy baby on the way,” Annie said to Murdock, with a smile, as he and the children entered the cabin. “At least, that’s what I think considering the lack of equipment and facilities.”

  “That’s reassuring,” Murdock said.

  “Did you want me to examine your children, as well?” Annie asked Murdock.

  “That doesn’t seem to be necessary,” Murdock told her. “All of the kids seem to be healthy and well-adjusted.”

  “Is that your professional opinion Doctor?” Annie asked with some smugness in her voice.

  “I know them better than any stranger ever will.”

  “And being their parent doesn’t color your opinions?”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Mei Lee answered vehemently. She had been listening while over-seeing the older children cooking lunch. “I don’t think you’ve noticed that my husband and I have no delusions about our children. We know them as they really are.”

  “If that’s true, then you are the first parents I’ve ever heard of that didn’t have delusions about their kids,” Annie stated emphatically with a little chuckle. “Should they be cooking like that?” she asked somewhat excitedly, concerned.

  “Why shouldn’t they? They know the fire is hot. Even little Rosa knows that! They’d have to do the same if they were alone in a survival situation,” Murdock stated. “They’re old enough and both are quite good cooks.”

  “But they should be protected,” Annie said adamantly. “Children are our future!”

  “Yes, they are,” Mei Lee responded, “but to what end if they can’t take care of themselves? On Earth, everyone thought children had to be protected from everything. You’re a product of that mindset, as am I, to a lesser degree. Can you take care of yourself in the wild? I can, after years of living here and being taught. The rest of your group is also products of that childhood-protectionist mindset and there were how many outdoors men?”

  “Three,” Murdock answered.

  “Only three, out of two hundred,” Mei Lee continued. “Maybe more from our group would have survived if they had learned how to listen, how to work together, and how to take care of themselves rather than waiting for someone else to do it for them.”

  Murdock applauded.

  Mei Lee blushed. “Sorry, but I had a strong opinion to express.”

  “That’s the most words she’s said, at one time, in years,” Murdock said conspiratorially with Annie.

  “I was raised to only speak when I know what I’m talking about,” Mei Lee said quietly with a shrug and a sideways glance to Annie.

  “But it was well said,” Murdock said praising his wife.

  Annie had decided, in the future, to keep her opinions to herself as much as possible. She had come to the realization that her views and opinions weren’t relevant anymore. They pertained to a time and a place that was long gone. Now, she had to break lifelong habits that were developed with her vocation as well as those develop
ed by growing up being overly-protected by society as a whole and her parents in particular.

  “Sorry,” Annie said with her head down. “It would appear that a lot of self-reassessment needs to be done.”

  “I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” Murdock said with a sideways glance. “Eventually,” he added after a short pause.

  “You’re newly arrived here,” Mei Lee explained. “Once you get used to the conditions here and see what is required to survive, your attitudes will change soon enough. That’s when mine changed.” Mei Lee indicated that lunch was ready and they should help themselves.

  #

  Phylicia Cunningham, Declan Griffen, and Ben Palmer had designated, and taken possession of, an area for their council meetings that was on the stream side of the transport pod and a little downstream of Murdock’s campsite. Actually, it had been Phylicia and Palmer who had done the designating. Declan had just gone along with what the others wanted.

  Declan Griffen had figured that his sister was dead, or worse, after the take-over on Earth. He had heard that bowing to the control of the masters was worse than death. But there was always some small thread of hope that maybe she would be alive somewhere. To find out that there was no longer a need for that small shred of hope was almost more than he could bear. Hearing that she was happy here did help some, but he felt like he had a huge dark hole through his heart.

  “Declan! Did you hear what I said?” Phylicia asked in a scolding tone. “Honestly! I don’t understand why you’re on the council if you aren’t going to participate!”

  Griffen just looked at her. He hadn’t heard much of anything since Murdock had told him about his sister.

  “We need to get the workmen started on some sort of meeting house with council chambers,” Phylicia repeated.

  “I think it should be stone and look like the court houses did on Earth,” Palmer offered.

  “Where are you going to get the stone for such an edifice?” Phylicia asked sarcastically. “It needs to be more practical. It needs to be multi-functional. If it isn’t, we won’t get it built and the rest of the people will protest.”