Rilla's Inheritance Chapter 4

Chapter 4 The menacing stranger glared at me – no, it was more than a glare. He stared into my eyes, and suddenly I felt my senses slipping, my knees giving way, and the room going dark around me. I don’t know how long I was unconscious for. I came round at one point to hear two people talking.
“Have you boosted all the fertility meds?”
“Yes, I’ve done that. What else?”
“We’ll get her out of the medi-suit once they’ve had time to take effect. Then we can put the memory-fogger on her. Did you dump the helmet?”
“Yes. But once you take her name away, no-one will remember her anyway.”
Then someone noticed my eyes opening, and put me under again. The last thing I heard was, “Don’t forget her face either.” The next time I came round, I was lying on a bed in a totally unfamiliar place. My head hurt and I felt sick and giddy. When the room had stopped whirling round, I staggered to my feet and found the bathroom just in time. Where was I? And then I caught sight of a mirror, and went over to see if I looked as rough as I felt. But the face looking back at me didn’t look familiar. Who was she? And then I realised I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know my name. Who was I? There was a door, and I went through it – to find myself in a stone-paved yard, with a metal fence all around it. And no gate. Beyond the fence was a high wall, and beyond that dense trees. I could see no landmarks at all. I had no idea where I was, who I was, or what I was doing there or how I got there. And there was a metal collar round my neck, with little lights on it that changed occasionally. I explored the rest of the building, but there was no other door to the outside. There was a room with cots in it – why did seeing cots make me think of a daisy? And the days went by. There was food in the fridge – and I could go out into the yard and look at the fence and the wall if I wanted. And I was pregnant. I recognised it as familiar. There were other things I knew too – how to cook, how to look after myself. But I didn’t know who I was or where I had come from, or who my parents were or anything like that. When my labour pains started , I knew exactly what they were. And I knew how to look after those three babies. But how had I come to have them? Who was their father? And how did I know how to look after them – did I have more children somewhere else? Or was I part of a big family? A few days later a door suddenly appeared in the wall, and two strangers walked in. Or were they strangers? They frightened me. They picked up the babies and inspected them.
“This is good,” one of them said. “Your turn now, Two.” The first one came over to me and stared into my eyes. My head filled with a suffocating pain, and I could no longer stand. Coming round, I dashed for the toilet. At least I knew where it was this time. My head felt as though someone had been rummaging around inside it – and none too gently either. I have three babies and I’m pregnant again. And tired – this is hard work. I keep expecting there to be someone here to help me, but there isn’t. I have a feeling it’s really important that I have babies, but I don’t know why. And I don’t know who I am! I don’t know my name or anything about me. I do know what this is. This is labour. This is another baby on its way. And I do know that somewhere, sometime, I’ve held babies and loved them. That wasn’t another baby on its way – it was another three. My first three have become toddlers. And the person who calls himself One has come round. He drills them each day. The children look like me – but the face I see in the mirror isn’t a familiar one. And what is this thing round my neck? It hums sometimes, and it’s sometimes warm to the touch. I can’t find out how to take it off though. One came round again, with someone called Three. I have to concentrate to follow what they are saying – it’s as though they’re speaking a foreign language. This time, I knew what he was going to do, but I couldn’t get away from his stare fast enough. The first three children are older again. I’m sure it shouldn’t happen so fast. And they seem so unhappy and mean. I’m sure I’m used to having happy children – but whenever I try to remember things, my mind goes all blurry and foggy. And this thing round my neck hums and the lights flash, and it gets warm. Could it be interfering with my memory? I’m also pregnant again. There’s another baby on the way – more than one, judging from the wriggling going on in there. One has taken the first three children away to live with him. Two comes round and drills the next three, just like One did. The children have no names – and I think this ought to worry me, but I don’t know why. I just feel that they need names – but I can’t think of any. One and Two use letters to refer to them – R and V and so on. Something is wrong here, but I don’t know what, and I don’t know what to do. Can I try and fight back at all? Can I resist them when they stare into my eyes and mess with my mind? While I was lost, confused and trapped far from my home, the children that I could no longer remember had not forgotten me. Abigail and Barbara were the first to feel uneasy about me. And their uneasiness deepened when their father said, “Who? Who are you talking about?” They dragged him round to my house – the place where they had grown up – but he still couldn’t remember me. Barbara and Abigail were so insistent that something was wrong that Adri Adrin went off to find another Adri. And Adri Tallin had had exactly the same experience – only with five daughters this time, all telling him that they had a mother called Rilla, and that something was wrong with her. Very wrong. When all six of the Adris got together and compared notes, they knew they had to act. Not least because all the girls were going to do something off their own bat anyway. Adri Adrin went back to my house and examined it forensically. The place looked as if the owner had just walked out. There was a book on the table, music playing – and the high chairs did suggest that there had been small children or babies here recently. Then he found the medi-aid lying on the floor. It wasn’t one of his – and how had it got there? It wasn’t one of the hospital ones either, but he did recognise it as an original ship’s store issue. And the only reason to use one was to alter the functions of a medi-suit. Which the girls were all insisting that their mother wore. After that, they began to search for me big-time. Adri Valdin and his clan did the planning and co-ordinating. He and Martha and Naomi sat by the fire each evening, planning the next day’s search, co-ordinating the searchers and following up any clues. But it was a big planet, and the ground was full of little hidden valleys – searching took time. And his daughters kept telling their father about me, in the hope that his memory of me would return. Each time they mentioned my name, a little more came back to him. Daisy and Catriona also knew that I wasn’t dead, but I was in trouble. They came and weeded and tended my garden every day, keeping the place looking good for my return. And, like my other daughters, they kept talking about me, kept saying my name over and over again. And with each repetition of it, what the Xydin had done when they took my name away was slowly being undone. My next babies were twins. And one of the Xydin stormed in to my yard, furious with me for only having twins. The others followed him. Again, I had to concentrate to follow what they were saying, but I could understand it.
“She’s fighting back,” one of them said. “We need to boost the signal on the memory fogger.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” asked another.
“What does it matter if she forgets everything? She’s here to have babies.”
And the last sentence rang true, somehow. I knew I was here to have babies. But not like this.
“We’ve got an old medi-suit – we could re-boost her fertility meds.”
“Good idea. Then she should have triplets again.”
I didn’t like what I was hearing. But they were bigger and stronger than me – and outnumbered me. When he stared hard into my eyes, I fought back as hard as I could.
“Told you we need to boost the memory fogger,” one of them said. But eventually he overcame me. Once again, I came to lying on a bed. When I looked in the mirror, the face I saw was - surely – not the one I’d seen before. It was really hard to think – my mind felt as though it was full of cotton wool. Or as though it was slipping through my fingers like dry sand. There were people talking in the next room.
“They’re looking for her.”
“This place is too easy to find.”
“We’re going to have to move her – and us.”
“We need to clear this place out completely. We mustn’t leave a single clue that she was ever here.”
Someone was looking for me. Someone was looking for me. This seemed to be terribly important. I needed to leave a clue for them. The other people left the room and I went to see what I could do. It was so hard to concentrate. There was no way out of the yard, but there was a gap between the mesh fence and the high wall. I took a child’s toy and threw it right into the corner of the gap. Maybe someone would find it and know that there had been someone else here. Someone was looking for me. There was more to my life than just this place. If only it wasn’t so hard to think!
The next place was quite a distance away. Walking wasn’t as hard as it might have been – although my head felt fuzzy and confused, my body felt fine. It seemed to be a collection of little buildings, again hidden among trees. And once again, they were protected by high walls and mesh fences. I had thought that the last place was designed to keep people in, but it might equally well have been designed to keep dangers out. Some of the huts seemed like houses inside, but the one I was put in was strange. The internal walls were all made of wire mesh. Later on, I discovered that this one had been meant for storage, and not as living quarters, but it was odd being able to see into every room. When I looked in the mirror, it was harder than ever to recognise the person who looked back at me. Her eyes seemed to be lost and empty. My family were still looking for me. Martha and Naomi were searching all the nearby lakes and other water sources, reasoning that wherever I was, I must be near a water source to be able to survive. They didn’t know that they were being watched in their turn, by a shadowy figure who had no family to call his own. When Nemo heard what they were saying, he crept closer and listened carefully. Years of having to forage for himself meant that he knew the lie of the land better than anyone. Nemo had a very good idea where I might be – but who could he tell? No-one could remember him – and he had no reason to believe that talking to any of my daughters would be any different to trying to talk to anyone else. The Xydin had taken away his name, and he no longer existed in the memory of the clans. He was going to have to look for me himself. Nemo set out on his search as soon as day broke. Three days travelling took him to the place where I had first been held captive. Even as he crept closer, he knew the place was deserted. Nevertheless, he decided to climb the wall and see if there was any sign of me having been there. The hut I had lived in was completely empty – too empty, Nemo felt. He went over to the other building.
That bore all the signs of a hasty exit. No signs of me, but the place had very clearly been occupied quite recently. He was going to have to continue his search elsewhere. And two weeks later, there was a stranger on the other side of the fence that bounded my yard. “Rilla,” a voice whispered urgently. “Rilla. Is that you?”