“From the way you look at me I admit that I’ve got my doubts. But I know Racer is dead. He has to be dead. A little trust is all we’ve got to work with, so we’ll take it from here.” He continued to hold out the appendage.
He was right. A little trust and some common sense was all they had to work with at the moment. Uneasily Cidra touched the leathered palm. The inhuman fingers closed around hers. She closed her eyes, waiting for disaster. Then, slowly, the universe seemed to right itself. The hand holding hers felt warm and familiar. She relaxed slightly.
“You’re right,” Severance said, sounding wearily relieved. “Whatever it is, it’s just an illusion.”
“Yes,” she agreed shakily. “But it’s so real. I’m afraid to open my eyes.”
“Try it. As long as you’re holding my hand, you can keep telling yourself who I am. Believe me, you don’t look like Racer any longer.”
Slowly she risked a glance through slitted lashes. When she saw Severance’s familiar face watching her with narrow-eyed concern, she breathed a sigh of relief. “You’re back to normal,” she told him.
“Says who?” But he grinned briefly.
“What happened to you in there? I saw a strange flash behind you, and you fell backward. When I got close to see what had happened, you came toward me looking very blue and very hungry.”
“I don’t know. I felt a sort of shock that knocked me down. I lost the quartzflash. When I got up again, you were screaming but you looked like Cord Racer. I feel all right. Do I still look okay to you?”
She nodded, afraid to let go of his hand for fear that he would turn back into a monster. “I’ve about had it with things messing around with my head.”
“I thought you were the one who was so convinced that mind link was the ultimate form of orgasm.”
She was outraged. “I never said any such thing!”
“I beg your pardon. My misunderstanding.”
“Harmonic mind link is a beautiful, creative, sensitive experience. It is not an . . . an orgasm, and it is not made up of horrible illusions.”
“How do you know? You’ve never experienced it, remember?”
“One doesn’t have to have experienced something to have an understanding of it.”
“I keep forgetting about your educational accomplishments.” Severance headed back to the gaping hole in the ship. “Yell if I start turning into a blue monster again.”
“I’m going to start yelling right now. Severance, I think we ought to get out of here.”
“I agree. I just want to see if I can find the quartzflash first, though.” He used the flame for illumination as he leaned back inside the ship and scanned the interior. “There it is. We’ll need it tonight. Stay here while I get it.”
“The last time you went inside, you came out wearing an ugly blue suit. I’m not sure I could stand it a second time around.”
He was already inside, scooping up the flash. He flicked it on one last time. “Look, Cidra. If I hold the light just right, I think I can see into that case.” He used his fist to scrub off some of the dirt. “Sweet Harmony, I think it’s a skeleton.”
Leaning through the Opening of the ship, Cidra caught a glimpse of a huge skeleton mouth through the murky case cover. She shuddered. “Look at those teeth.”
Severance grinned briefly. “Definitely a carnivore.”
Cidra glanced at his own rather feral smile. “His teeth remind me of yours. Damn it, Severance, if you don’t come out of there, so help me, I’ll—” A flash of black light at the end of the case interrupted her words. Once more energy sizzled, although it seemed weaker this time. “The light! Severance, that’s what happened before!”
Severance felt the same tingling shock he had experienced earlier. Energy clawed him, not as strong this time, but enough to force him to his knees. With both hands he gripped the pulser and aimed for the source of the eerie light. He squeezed off one shot and then another before a small explosion rocked the shattered ship. He heard Cidra call his name, and then everything went still.
Slowly he got back to his feet, watching as the light flickered and died at the end of the long case. “Cidra?”
“I’m all right, Severance. So are you. What happened?”
He examined the charred metal fixture that had produced the crackling energy and the light. “Whatever it is, its useless now Tough to keep machinery working on Renaissance.”
SEVENTEEN
The hike through the jungle to the river’s edge was without further incident. Cidra was exceedingly grateful. When the campsite came into view, looking very much as it had when they left, she smiled with relief and headed for the tent.
“I can’t wait to change these clothes. This habit Wolves have of wearing one set of clothes all day long is bad enough, but to be stuck in the same set for three days is very annoying.” She plucked at the fastening of the oversize shirt as she walked through the silent deflector screens.
“Wait a minute, Cidra. Let me make sure nothing has decided to take up residence in the tent. The deflectors have been off for at least a full day.” Severance caught her arm.
She stopped short. “Yes, of course. Details.”
“Paying attention to details is supposed to be one way of staying alive on this planet.” He stepped around her and cautiously opened the tent, pulser in hand.
“If you ask me, sheer luck has a fair amount to do with staying alive around here.”
Satisfied with the tent search, Severance turned to give Cidra a laconic glance. “I didn’t know you believed in luck.”
“I’ve learned a lot lately.” She sauntered past him as he waved her into the tent. “What I’d really like is another bath.”
“I don’t know how you survived without your usual two hours a day in a lav.”
“A clean body aids in the development of a harmoniously tuned mind,” she quoted from inside the tent.
“One of your Klinian Laws?”
“A minor but important one.” She stuck her head outside the tent and smiled winningly. “Feel like fetching some water for me?”
His mouth kicked up at the corner as he took in the blatantly coaxing expression. “You’re not the only one who could use a bath. I smell like the inside of that egg-laying spaceship. I’ll rig up something.”
“You always manage to rig up something.” She ducked back inside the tent.
There were more important things to worry about first, however. Severance stepped into the skimmer and critically scanned the instruments and the innards of the powerhouse. There was still sufficient power to recharge the deflectors. He snapped the power pack out of the pulser, replaced it, and then got the deflectors operating at full strength. When he was satisfied with the security of the campsite, he put in the call to Port Try Again. The comm set worked after a bit of relatively minor tinkering.
“Where in a renegade’s hell have you been, Severance? I’ve had ExcellEx reps yelling at me for two days. Seems they’re expecting some sensors. Where’s Overcash?” The security official sounded short-tempered and inclined to be abusive.
“Overcash became a meal. So did Racer.”
“Racer? He was on a run upriver to the Masterson field camp. How did you connect with him?”
“It’s a long story. I’m requesting a skimmer and pilot to pick us up.”
“Who’s us? Oh, you’ve still got the little Harmonic with you? If Overcash and Racer wound up feeding the local wildlife, how did she make it?”
“She’s tougher than she looks. How about the skimmer?”
“Give me your coordinates. I’ll get someone out to you as soon as possible. Can you make it through another night?”
“Yeah, the deflectors are working, and we’ve got a pulser.”
“I’ll have a skimmer out to you by midday tomorrow”
“Thanks,” Severance said, and waited for the inevitable final question. Nothing came for free on Renaissance. Or anywhere else in the Stanza Nine system for that matter.
br /> “Who’s picking up the tab for the rescue run? ExcellEx?” “No. Charge it to my account,” Severance said.
There was a short wait while his account was pulled up from the computer. “Good enough,” the security officer said. “Your credit is still first-class. Looks like you always pay your bills.”
“Always,” Severance murmured, and switched off the comm set. He sat for a moment in the gently rocking skimmer and idly watched a pair of dracon eyes that were watching him.
Nothing came for free. There was a price on everything. How much of a price had he forced Cidra to pay in order to survive? He’d had no right to subject her to the events of the past few days. He should have taken better care of her. His job was to protect her.
Instead she had taken care of him. He remembered the comfort she had given him when he had been swimming in and out of his fever. In addition to the hazy nightmares he saw fleeting images of her gentle touch, the cooling baths, and the soft warmth of her lap as she cradled his head. She had come aboard Severance Pay as a delicate, cultivated creature accustomed to the finest manners and the most elevated of lifestyles. This morning he had awakened to find a young huntress rising from the edge of a stream to bring in the day’s meat. Because of him she had been forced to become a carnivore. That seemed unpleasantly symbolic to Severance.
She had learned other things from him too. He’d had no right to teach her about passion. But even as he berated himself, Severance knew deep in his gut that, given the chance, he would have repeated the lesson. The woman pulled too strongly at his senses and his mind. T he two weeks on board Severance Pay alone with her had been sweet hell at times. He had known then that if she stayed with him on the run to QED, she would end up in his bunk. As long as he was anywhere near her, he would have no peace unless he knew he could possess her. He could not allow her a choice. She affected him too fiercely, made him ache with need, filled him with the desire to put a claim on her. At the same time he was aware of a violent desire to protect her. The possessiveness and the protectiveness went hand in hand, seeming natural and inevitable until the twin goals foundered on the ultimate dilemma. How could he protect her from himself?
Everything he did for her and to her took Cidra farther and farther from the one thing she wanted most in life. Because of him her goal of becoming a true Harmonic was more distant than it had ever been. He had forced the Wolf in her to the surface after she had spent years struggling to suppress that part of her nature.
As he watched, the dracon eyes disappeared under the water. Severance continued staring unseeingly at the point where the creature had vanished. It seemed to him that Cidra had given him more than he’d had any right to take. She had welcomed him in her arms, drawn him into her with an honest, sweet passion that had taken away his breath. She had given him an intense loyalty, the kind he had learned not to expect from anyone since Jeude had been killed. Severance could not imagine any female of his acquaintance who would have thrown herself into a river full of dracons rather than have allowed herself to be carried off and used against him. But Cidra offered more than loyalty and passion. She radiated a sense of rightness, a quiet certainty that he didn’t fully understand.
“Severance? Where’s the water?”
He shook off the bittersweet mood and got to his feet. She was standing on the bank, gazing curiously into the shattered wall of the skimmer’s cabin. He grinned. “I’ll have something ready in a few minutes.” He opened the skimmer’s cargo hold. As she had said, he was good at rigging things. Fixing a bathing apparatus for a fastidious lady from Clementia shouldn’t be an impossible assignment.
In reality the job wasn’t difficult, given the contents of the skimmer’s cargo hold. He was cutting a length of plastic tubing when he noticed the carton of sensors. The bright red COD seal was still in place. Mail still waiting to be delivered. He looked at it for a long moment and then went back to work on the bathing arrangements.
When he was finished, he handed the bucketful of water and the plastic tubing to Cidra. “Try this. When you’re done, I’ll use it.
She eyed him critically. “Do you have any depilatory cream left in your travel pack?”
“Don’t worry, Cidra. You’ll look just as cute with hairy legs.” “My legs are fine,” she informed him. “The cream I use lasts for a month. It’s your beard that needs work.”
Severance touched the side of his face, felt the stubble, and grimaced. “Oh.” For some reason he was oddly embarrassed. The knowledge annoyed him, and he frowned. “There’ll be a skimmer out from Try Again at about midday tomorrow.”
She nodded, seemingly content as she examined the bucket and hose she was holding. “What about your ExcellEx delivery?”
“Funny you should mention it. I was just thinking about that myself. As late as it is, I’ll be lucky to collect for it.”
She looked up, alarmed. “If ExcellEx doesn’t pay for it, don’t give it to them.”
“It’s better for Severance Pay, Ltd.’s reputation if I deliver late rather than not at all. Besides, I’m getting tired of people trying to steal those reeting sensors. Let ExcellEx worry about them.”
“Severance,” she said sternly, “you are not going to simply hand them over without getting paid for them. Not after all we’ve been through to protect them.”
His gaze narrowed in faint amusement. “You’re beginning to sound like a real member of a mail ship crew.”
Her chin lifted proudly. “I am a real member of the crew. I don’t know why you insist on forgetting that fact when it suits you. You certainly had no trouble remembering it the night you came into the Bloodsucker and announced that we were leaving on this little joy run up the river.”
She was right. “I should have left you behind after all.”
“Nonsense. Racer would have gotten hold of me one way or another and used me as a hostage or something. He was a very determined man, wasn’t he?”
“Yes,” Severance said, thinking about it. “He was.”
“As long as you were alive, you were a constant reminder to him. He couldn’t forget his actions that day in the sinkswamp, and he never knew when you might tell someone else about them. On top of that he was the one who got your brother killed. He must have known that if you ever figured it out, you wouldn’t rest until you’d settled the score. It must have eaten at him for ages before he finally decided to take care of the problem permanently.”
“You’re a very perceptive woman at times, Cidra Rainforest.”
She smiled. “I’ve been trained to be perceptive. Now turn around, Severance. I want to take my bath.”
He hesitated, wanting to ask her how she really felt deep inside about the fact that he had killed a man. Then, deciding it might be better not to know the answer, he turned his back and went to work foraging in the skimmer’s cargo hold for other useful items.
“I’ve been thinking about that skeleton back in the alien ship,” Cidra said later as she finished eating her vegetables. She had been tremendously relieved to find a prespac that contained something besides meat. She didn’t think she would ever grow to actually enjoy the taste of meat. Severance had no such qualms, naturally. He was into his second full prespac meal. Wolfing it down, as it were.
“Don’t think about it. It’ll give you nightmares,” he advised. “I wonder if that creature was the pilot of the ship,” she persisted, ignoring his advice.
“That sphere didn’t look big enough to house two monsters that size. Whatever it was must have been traveling alone.”
“Except for the eggs.”
Severance paused, chewing thoughtfully. “Yes, the eggs. That’s going to give several biologists a lot to think about. I wonder if the ship was a small colony vessel.”
“Maybe we humans aren’t the only ones who have started settling other worlds.” Cidra had a sudden thought. “What if that ship was just one of many, Severance?”
“If there were others, we have to assume that they didn’t fare much
better than that one did. No one has recorded a sighting of anything like that blue monster. At least, I’m not aware of any such sightings.”
“It’s a big planet.”
“True. But an aggressive, intelligent species would have probably made its presence known by now. We’ve been here for several decades.”
“They did appear aggressive, all right.” Cidra shuddered. “Didn’t do them much good, though. They didn’t survive.”
“Thanks to you.”
Cidra allowed herself to absorb the shock of his simple observation. All by herself she had destroyed the only known members of an intelligent, space-faring race. She was unnerved by the thought.
Severance saw the look on her face and hastily changed the subject. “I wonder how old those eggs were. The skeleton in the case wasn’t exactly fresh. It could have been lying in the ship for hundreds of years. But the eggs were ready to hatch.”
“They might have been capable of staying viable for years in the shell until the right conditions occurred for them to hatch,” Cidra pointed out. “Perhaps the pilot of the ship was wounded in the crash. He followed the mind call and left the eggs in what appeared to be a safe location. Apparently that telepathic call works on any sort of intelligent mind. He set up his own protective device to insure that eventually something would wander into the safehold and become food for the eggs. Then he went back to die in the ship. The case in which we found the skeleton might have been some sort of medical facility.”
“Which failed.”
“As people keep observing, it’s hard to keep machinery working on Renaissance.” She smiled. “You seem to do a fairly good job of it, though.”
He shrugged. “I told you, I’ve always been good with my hands.”
“We make a good team, don’t we? My brains and your brawn.”
He gave her a sardonic glance. “I may not be a near genius like your friend Mercer, but once in a while I manage to think my way through things. I can still take every piece of sardite you have in a game of Free Market.”