Once we were all outside Ra looked around casually. I saw her sharp eyes scanning the area around


    us. Hannah did the same thing.


    “The things they use,” Hannah said softly, “glitter in the light…like a camera Lens. I did not see any


    here when we looked at this area.


    I understood the word and I remembered how a piece of curved ss would catch the light. Bane


    clucked his tongue and leaned back on a piece of rock. Kein made a simr sound and nudged Bane’s


    shoulder.


    “Told you they weren’t just pieces of the wall,” Kein said feeling vindicated.


    As children there had been these shiny pieces to the walls of the training grounds. Kein had noticed


    them and Christof had asked. The Child Keepers said they were just how a wall was made and to


    Leave them alone.


    “Nu-reeh and your female breeders have always watched you,” Hannah said gently. “They are a way of


    sending images from ce to ce.”


    “They watch you still,” Ra said cautiously, “we saw two in the main room with the pool in the area where


    you all stay. They seemed aimed at the entranceway.”


    “We doubt they are in your living quarters,” Hannah said to Damien.


    “They would want to make sure Mama was safe. They would use them to monitor any men entering or


    leaving the main area with the pool.”


    We would check once we were home. Damien wanted to know what to call them. The word Hannah


    used was roughly equivalent to camera in English. In my mind, that’s what they were.


    Christof wished fervently that I knew more about cameras. Even though my Knowledge was Limited he


    was d for theparison, so they could understand.


    A N G E L A ‘s L I B R A R Y


    “Your Mama,” Christof said hesitantly, “knows this word. On Earth she remembers them transmitting


    sound also sometimes.”


    It shouldn’t have surprised me Christof would have picked up on that detail. I never would have thought


    to ask.


    “They cannot,” Ra said, “the ore in the mountains disrupts their ability to transmit sound well. You need


    a pad to do that and it would need to be close to the originator of the sound.”


    All rights ? N?velDrama.Org.


    “Even then it doesn’t alwayse in clearly,“ Hannah finished.


    The men thought for a moment about what the girls had told us. There was a more pressing issue here,


    though and Damien got to it.


    “She can control us,” he said getting right to the point. “How does she do it?”


    Ra exined, because she understood it better. The women could connect to their men, In the past the


    connection had gone both ways. The women were actually bonded to the men they kept. The families


    connected deeply to one another.


    “Families of women kept as many men as they safely could. They shared a sacred bond with each


    family. The bonds took time to grow, but often they were as strong as the bonds you share with your


    Brothers,” Ra calmly exined. “Once the women decided to keep the men separate from them, the


    bonds withered away. Soon the women Learned they could force a bond, but they didn’t like giving the


    men ess to themselves.”


    Hannah interrupted and finished the story sounding angry, “Now there is a chip. Women that own men


    attune it to the families they keep. You cannot connect to her and she can’t fully integrate into your


    bond, but she has ess to you. She can imnt a thought or a summons into you. The idea is ced


    so deeply that you all believe it originated there.”


    We were shocked, every one of us surprised to our core. The men never evaluated where an idea


    originated. If it was agreeable to the majority, it was just epted. Of course some ideas were so


    strong from one of us, we just allowed those things to happen. That must be what Nu-reeh was using,


    our desire to make the most opinionated Brother happy-


    “If she finds you know this,” Ra warned, “it will mean your death. The other women are protective of this


    information.”