And, really, it defied all logic that they might be--first off because everyone was far busier than they typically were, aboard ship, because they’d had to shift into high gear to address minimum needs as soon as they began to settle on the new world. Whereas the ship had been constructed with everything they needed to thrive and they had only had to maintain it throughout the voyage.
They didn’t have to work like fighting fire. Their minimum requirements for survival were being met because they had temporary shelter and sufficient food supplies, and a security perimeter had been set up before they even arrived on planet by the security-construction bots they had brought with them.
Theywerebusy, however, because they were still ‘roughing it’ compared to life aboard ship and everyone was anxious to achieve a higher level of comfort and security as quickly as they could.
That should have made it less possible for her to be spotted at all--not more likely.
However, there actually weren’t as many people on the ground as there had been on the ship. Because everyonestillhadn’t arrived on planet--the majority, yes--all, no.
But everyone had been pretty much pitched together, which was not the case on the ship since there had been private quarters on the ship and everyone was assigned to different jobs at various times in different areas and rarely all came together even at meal times.
Maybe it wasn’t those circumstances working against her, though?
Assuming she wasn’t just being paranoid--just because she’d actually spotted three of the five when she’d barely seen any of them enough times to recognize them on sight.
Not even Captain Carnegie except at a distance.
Maybe arriving had triggered her own biological imperative to reproduce because they were ‘nesting’?
She supposed, doubtfully, that that could be the case.
But it was unconscious if that was true--not conscious--because she couldn’t recall any point where she had actually had any particular interest in pursuing a ‘mating’ with any single male that she knew--and was allowed to consider for that purpose.
And she thought that was likely because she knew all of them--too well.
They weren’t all the same age. In some cases there was a fairly wide gap in years between them--as there was between her and Captain Carnegie, who was a full ten years her senior, which no doubt accounted for a good portion of his lack of interest in her--although not a full generation. Even so, there wasn’t a single one of them--the males--whose ‘good’ column overbalanced their ‘bad’.
The boys closest to her in age had tormented her and or bullied her pretty much as far back as she could remember.
Not just her matches, either.
Because all of them were coded with their genetic partner matches at birth so all of them knew who they were ‘allowed’ to consider as a mate--any sexual congress at all with.
And the males, the majority, took that to mean they owned their matches and they could do whatever they pleased with them.
And, since the girls were owned, they were ‘property’ not people. So the boys that weren’t matches also felt free to treat them any way they liked.
Apparently.
Not that that mattered in the ‘mating’. Those who didn’t match couldn’t actually force themselves on the girls that weren’t matches--without some fairly harsh repercussions--but that apparently pissed them off, offended their male persona to be told they couldn’t help themselves to anything they felt like they wanted.
And they retaliated by being total assholes--at a bare minimum--to any of the girls that tried to fight them off and occasionally took it further and slapped them around ‘for attacking them’.
They were jailed, of course--for breaking the peace--but that had led, at least once, to a more violent confrontation.
Where the female had not only ended up hospitalized for her injuries, but she had then been jailed when she recovered enough to be tried for instigating the assault.
It was a harsh lesson for all of them--the females--and Belle wasn’t the only one that had completely lost interest in the available breeding partners.
Fortunately, those who chose to eschew male company altogether actually made up a small number, however--so it didn’t throw the entire colony into a war over the female genitalia.
The majority of the women either still wanted the assholes or felt like they had no choice but to try to settle on one to make a family unit and to have help with their homestead.
So the men weren’t ‘encouraged’ to any worse behavior and the women who opted for a different lifestyle--artificial insemination--were mostly just ignored by the male population and left in peace--at least part of the time.
Belle wasn’t even certain she was willing to opt for that solution to her problem--because it would very likely present a challenge for her in getting along by herself. But it certainly occurred toher that it might be the best she could expect. There would at least be less pressure for her to accept any male at all as part of her household and she could still have children--or at least one--and she couldn’t be accused of upsetting their population/genetic balance.
“Who are you holding out for?”
