“Protector?” he responded dubiously. “It's barely as long as my arm.”
“He's not a constrictor,” she told him while caressing the sinuous shape. “His kind spits poison from a special mouth-throat sac. Not only is it an incredibly powerful neurotoxin, it's also highly caustic. On a very primitive level, individuals of the species are true empaths. He can sense my emotions and react to them.”
Upon being enlightened as to the flying snake's capabilities, it was no wonder that so many of her would-be suitors neglected to ask for a second date. Tambrogh Barryn was not so easily intimidated. He thought the exceptional patient more than worth pursuing, even at the risk of disturbing her unusual pet. Mindful of the depth of his feelings toward her, he had no fear of the minidrag detecting and responding to them—assuming there was more to the business of it being an empathetic telepath than just a clever attempt on her part to deflect unwanted attention. A check of the Nur Shell came up with very little information on the world of Alaspin and next to nothing on the reptilian creature she said had come from there.
Much more than the ever-present minidrag, which after all was nothing more than an odd pet, he was displeased by the unremitting attention that was lavished on her by the peculiar pair of visitors, who came all too frequently. His associates at the complex seemed a little afraid of the large old man and his thranx companion. Barryn could not understand why. The man was big, but also old, while the thranx was merely small and old. Just because they doted on Clarity, he pointed out to his friends, did not mean they would interfere should she choose to enter into a relationship. As to the perpetually absent paramour of whom she sometimes spoke, that entity might be as much an invention as the flying snake's toxicity, with both intended for the same purpose: to ward off unwanted attention. He should be glad of both minidrag and make-believe suitor, he knew. Otherwise the interest that would have been shown to Clarity Held would have been insufferable, and the competition for her attention far more congested.
“Can I buy you lunch?” He did not try to take her arm as they strode inland and up the slight slope that led away from the dock. Having seen her shrug off physical approaches from others he knew better than to force the issue.
She smiled up at him. Despite what others said, he chose to take every smile as an encouragement. “You know that between insurance through Ulricam and aid from friends my stay here is fully paid for. Including meals.”
He made light of her rejection. “So you'd deny me the pleasure of paying for it twice? If I pay, you can have two desserts.”
This time she laughed. Even better than a smile, he mused. The portents were promising. Perhaps later, under cover of the storm clouds and the warm rain that would come with them, he might make bold enough to try to share more than a dessert.
“You're very sweet, Tam.”
“Hey, who else but a sweet guy would offer a woman two desserts?”
Even as he said it, a voice in his head was telling him to shut up. He was big and strong and words had never been his forte—as he had just proved. That had never caused him any trouble with women, however. They never seemed to catch on to the fact that his frequent silences arose not from a sensitive desire to listen to what they had to say but from an inability to put coherent sentences together. This manifest intellectual deficiency seemed to perturb them not at all. They could talk all they wanted to and he would sit in silence. And when they chose not to talk, they could stare at his chiseled features unaware of the silly grins that parasitized their features.
For reasons he could not fathom, this time-tested methodology had failed to make an impression on Clarity Held. It was almost as if she wanted to have an intelligent conversation, wanted him to talk. He did his best to comply. Usually he did better than “Who else but a sweet guy would offer a woman two desserts.” He knew he had to progress, even if the strain made his head hurt.
Pick a subject she enjoys talking about, he thought. Even if you couldn't care less about it. That always works.
“So—tell me more about this guy you're engaged to.”
“We're not engaged,” she replied quickly. That surprised him. It also, of course, did not displease him. “Our relationship goes deeper than that. We don't have to have a formal engagement. We have—shared experiences.”
A safely enigmatic retort, he decided. Could mean anything or nothing. Or it could be another evasion, like the scientific gibberish about the flying creature's venomous capabilities.
“I can't figure it out, Clarity. If you're so tight with this guy, how come nobody ever sees you with him?”
She shook her head and her tight blond braids flew from side to side, sending the last adhering droplets of lake water flying. They were halfway to the nearest building, climbing the walkway that split a lawn of cultured, ankle-high catharia. Thumb-sized beurre flowers of azure and gold sprang from the three-sided flanks of tapering blue-green stems.
“He has to travel a lot.”
“On business? What is he, based in Sphene?”
This generated a broad smile. What had he said, Barryn wondered, that was so amusing?
“Not exactly,” she murmured casually. “His work takes him a little farther afield than that.”
Barryn persisted. “The southern continent? He still ought to be able to make it up here to see you once in a while while you're convalescing. If he really cared for you, that is.”
At that, the flying snake lifted its head from her shoulder to stare fixedly at him. Could it have sensed something? True telepaths were only tall tales—the empathetic kind as much as any other.
“His work is difficult and very demanding,” she told him, not smiling now. “There's a lot of stress. The kind of stress no one can imagine.”
Barryn took mild offense. “I work with seriously hurt people. That involves a lot of stress, too, you know.”
“I know, Tam. You're a good person and you work hard.” Reaching out, she gently patted his right arm. He would have accounted it a small triumph had he been able to escape the feeling that she was patronizing him. The prospect of killing lunch notwithstanding, he decided the time had come for directness.
“Look, you know how much I like you, Clarity. What is it about this guy, who can never find the time to visit you when you're hurt? Why can't you just shake him? Is he better looking than me? Smarter, richer? What? I at least deserve to know what I'm up against.”
She stopped, staring out across the lake whose hues so often mirrored what she was feeling. “Philip and I go back years, Tam. We've been through a lot together. More than I can explain.” Turning back to him, she met his gaze with a look that was at once compassionate and unyielding. “If you want me to be specific, yes: he's richer than you and smarter than you. None of which matters. Nothing matters except what's inside him. I've been lucky enough to have been allowed to see that. I've been damned to have been allowed to see that. You know how people sometimes say they feel like they have the weight of the world on their shoulders? Well, Philip has the weight of the whole galaxy on his.”
Barryn was taken aback. How did one respond to something so outrageous? If it was a testament of undying love, it was the most outlandish one he had ever heard.
“But,” she finished with a sigh as she resumed walking, “you can still take me to lunch. I won't deny that I don't get lonely sometimes, even with Bran and Tru's regular visits.”
“The old guy and the bug?”
Her smile returned. He was glad to see it, though the words that accompanied its resurgence left him feeling, for a second time, that she just might be patronizing him.
“Maybe one day there'll be a chance for you to meet and talk to them. I think you'd be surprised. They also have a tendency to get around….”
Barryn felt that he was making progress. Slow progress, to be sure, but moving in the right direction. Though the occasional condescension she displayed toward him was offensive, he chose to ignore it. If she wanted to feel superior, as long as it advan
ced their relationship he was perfectly willing to let her. Given time, he was confident that would change. While not the brightest guy in the world, or even the brightest at the medical complex, he knew he was not stupid.
It was a routinely beautiful morning. They were lying side by side on the beach, relaxing atop cooling air lounges. From time to time he felt free to admire her out of the corner of a shaded eye. With the body bandage now gone she was more beautiful than ever. And her joy at its removal had only increased his determination to forge a liaison.
Then, and for no discernible reason, that damned cold-eyed pet of hers suddenly went nuts.
One minute it was lying at her feet, a coil of somnolent iridescent color. The next, both he and Clarity were jolted from their dozing by a loud retort. What sounded like a large piece of canvas cracking in the wind was the snap of a pair of pleated wings opening wide. Sitting up, Barryn gaped at the flying snake as it shot skyward. He had watched it take to the air many times before, but never so explosively.
Clarity was no less bewildered. “Scrap—get back here!” The minidrag didn't hear her. It was already rocketing inland, heading straight for the heart of the medical complex. “Scrap!” She looked for support to the man now sitting up on the lounge beside her. Her bewilderment was plain. “I've only seen him react like this once before, and that was a long time ago.”
As always, Barryn refused to refer to the vicious flying creature as a “he.”
“Maybe it senses a threat. You've told me that it responds to your feelings.” Rising from the lounge, he moved to sit down beside her. When he slipped a comforting arm around her now fully healed shoulders, she did not pull away. “Are you feeling threatened?”
“No,” she muttered restively. “I feel fine.” She was staring in the direction of the complex. “I can't see him anymore. It's not like him to fly out of sight.” She started to stand. “I'd better go look for him. If Scrap's sensing a threat where none really exists, he could frighten some people. It's happened before.”
I can't imagine why. Barryn kept his sarcasm to himself. Why would anyone get upset to suddenly find a venomous airborne alien reptiloid darting in front of their face? He couldn't care less about the minidrag or why it had abruptly gone shooting off inland. His real concern, his real interest, lay with Clarity. Anyone else confronted by the flying snake would have to deal with it themselves.
“Just stay here and relax.” He squeezed her bare shoulder a little tighter. “I'm sure your pet will be right back as soon as it determines you're not in any danger. In any event, I'm here.”
She didn't bite on that, but he refused to let it discourage him. If luck was really with him, the flying snake might never come back. As in any large medical complex, there was a security team. Maybe one of them would shoot the little monster.
“Oh.”
Clarity did not shout the exclamation. Her voice remained level and controlled. But the strangest expression came over her face as she sat there beside him. It was one he had not encountered previously and did not recognize. Slipping free of his reassuring, mildly possessive grasp, she rose and started toward the complex.
“Clarity? Clarity, love?” he called after her in confusion. She appeared not to hear him.
Peering in the direction she was walking, he expected to see the flying snake returning to its master. But there was no sign of the minidrag. Meanwhile, ahead of her a single figure had detached itself from the crowd of convalescents, medical personnel, and visitors. It was walking toward her, and she was advancing toward it. Tambrogh Barryn's gaze narrowed.
Though he did not recognize the stranger, Barryn could not escape the certainty that the other man's arrival did not bode well for his hopes regarding Clarity.
Upslope, Flinx halted. She looked exactly as he remembered her. No, he corrected himself quickly. She looked much better than he remembered, because the last time he had seen her she had been enveloped in a halo of sweat and blood, her torso ravaged from behind. Looking at her now, that horrific image finally began to recede into memory. The medtechs and their instrumentation had done their job well. She had been restored to him. Her beauty, her movement, her form intact and unmarred.
Also her full neuromuscular functionality, as evinced by the hard slap she gave him right across his face. She had to reach high to make the necessary contact. Though intimately familiar with her person, Pip still would have reacted to such a hard blow—except that Pip was nowhere to be seen. As soon as they had reached the entrance to the medical complex she had elevated skyward to leave on some unknown errand of her own. Flinx was not concerned. He could sense that she was somewhere nearby. Whatever had drawn her away, she would not pass out of perception range of her friend and master.
Reaching up, he touched his stinging cheek where Clarity had struck him. “I missed you, too.”
“All this time.” She was staring hard at him, so tense that the muscles in her neck were twitching. “One minute we're fighting for our very lives at the shuttleport; the next I wake up immobilized in a hospital chamber. No sign of you, no kind word, no knowing if you're alive or dead. Eventually your big friend and your bug friend show up to tell me you've taken off yet again on your fanatical quest halfway across the galaxy.”
Though appropriately abashed, he did not try to evade the issue. “A galaxy in need of saving, Clarity.”
She nodded briskly. “Uh-huh. We talked about it, remember? We also talked about you and me. We talked about that, too.” She indicated their surroundings, taking in the beurre lawn, the structural complex, the lake, and by inference the entire welcoming world of Nur.
“You were gone over a year. More than enough time for me to heal—physically. How long are you here for this time? A week? A month?” Her unhappiness was manifest in her tone as well as her expression. “I'm not letting you leave again. Ever. Not without me. I can't take it. I wouldn't have made a good wife to an ancient Terran sea captain, Flinx, waving understandingly as her husband disappeared over the horizon for two or three years to hunt cetaceans, or discover uncharted islands, or …”
She was crying now. Tenderly, he took her in his arms. One moment she was sobbing against his chest and the next she was pounding on it with both fists. “I won't let you leave me again, Philip Lynx! I won't! I'll have your heart if I have to cut it out and keep it next to me in a cryosac!”
He smiled affectionately down at her. “I've never met another woman capable of such an extreme degree of homicidal affection. You really think I would risk losing someone so unique? Okay.”
Sniffling, furious at her own emotional vulnerability, she rubbed crossly at first one weeping eye and then the other as she frowned up at him uncertainly. “‘Okay’? What the hell do you mean, ‘okay’?”
“I mean okay, that I concur.” He stared evenly into her damp eyes. “I'll never leave you again.”
Anger and ardor merged in confusion. “You're giving up your search? For the Tar-Aiym weapons platform? But what about the Great Evil, the danger that's coming toward us from out of the Great Emptiness? You showed it to me, I know it's real. Have you given up all hope of somehow confronting it?”
What is it you want me to do? he thought in bewilderment. Marry you or save civilization? Make up your mind. He felt a headache starting, only this time the basis was utterly different from the one that usually plagued him.
“No, I haven't,” he finally replied. “Here lately it seems I was always getting sidetracked by other matters, but that's all over and done with now. I've recommitted myself. I intend to do my utmost to relocate that example of ancient advanced technology—even though I don't think it will do any good. Not when pitted against what's coming this way. But I promised Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex that I'd try to find it, and that's what I'm going to do. With one adjustment.”
She blinked, waiting. “Adjustment? What adjustment?”
“You're coming with me. Just as you were supposed to do before the fanatics from the Order of Null attacked
us at the shuttleport outside Sphene.” He lowered his eyes. “That is,” he mumbled awkwardly, “if you still want to.”
Staring back at him, she sounded incredulous. “You didn't stick around long enough for me to heal sufficiently or I'd have gone with you this last time. Do you really think I'd say no now?”
“I—I wasn't sure. After leaving you that way…. Clarity, everything was happening so fast. I felt I had no choice. Bran and Tru felt I had no choice.” He met her gaze once again. Strolling staff and patients were staring at them, murmuring and pointing. He ignored them.
“I've learned more about myself since I've been away. A lot more. Some of those things I needed to know, like whether civilization is really worth saving. Some were things I didn't want to know. Some I had to know the answers to whether I wanted to learn them or not. I'm still struggling to deal with the consequences.” He would tell her what he had discovered about his patrimony later, he decided.
She saw the pain in his face, heard it in his voice. “And,” she whispered as she put a hand on his arm, “what have you decided? Are you continuing with this crazy search to fulfill a promise you made to your friends—or because you believe that civilization really is worth saving?”
He managed a smile. “Both, I think. But one of the things I realized is that I can't do this without support. For a certainty, not without you.” He put a hand on each of her shoulders. “No matter where I was, no matter what outlandish world I was on—Arrawd, Jast, Visaria, Gestalt, Blasusarr—I wondered if what I was doing was the right thing, because everything I was doing and all that I was experiencing was without you.” His fingers tightened. “I need you with me, Clarity. Not waiting for me if and when I finish with it. Whether I can find this artifact again or not, whether the finding of it portends anything effective or not, whether the whole galaxy, or for that matter the entire universe, goes to hell or not—none of it matters to me anymore if I'm not with you.” Reluctantly he let go of her shoulders, dropped his arms, and looked past her, his gaze coming to rest on the quiet waters of the vast lake. His voice threatened to crack.