A Thousand Words For Stranger (10th Anniversary Edition) (12 page)

It was just a game, after all, just children pretending in the dark, giggling with excitement and a touch of delicious fear. There was no risk, no true Joining, no climax. That would come immeasurably later, when, one so-distant day, the struggle would be against the full power of a true Chooser. Young boys talked about it among themselves, intrigued and titillated, sure of their tomorrows.

The ones old enough to be called unChosen didn’t talk about it at all. Their tomorrows were much less certain. Win or even hold your own, and a Chooser’s Power-of-Choice would turn from weapon to a promise of paradise. Win or tie, and become one in the Joining, the forming of a permanent bond through the M’hir, connected across distance, mated for life, guaranteed a future.

Lose, and die.

In the child’s version, the loser got a headache and a fair bit of teasing. Barac had won some matches that long ago night. But of course, as only sud, he’d lost to Osbar.

As Osbar had lost the real game to his Risa.

His thoughts had been unguarded; Rael followed the memory to the present and sighed with him. Her power had cooled but her voice remained harsh.

“Make sure you understand, Barac,” Rael said. “Your Risa ripped Osbar’s mind open like a knife. The witnesses said he didn’t last her testing long enough to draw air for a scream. You must refuse her if you intend to live.”

Barac felt like a moth offered the brilliance of a flame to die in and struggled to keep his mind focused. “Risa?”

“Disappointed. Eager to try another candidate. She’s not getting any older, you know.” Rael’s fingers traced the ripe swelling of her own breasts with an absent pride.

Barac’s eyes followed her movements. Of course he knew. Choosers waited like buds for the stroke of spring, unchanging, unable to flower within the warmth of Joining, as if frozen in time. As Risa waits for me, he thought in a horrified daze of longing, then recoiled. “The Council lied to me.”

“You’re surprised?”

One last burst of need tore through him. “How can I refuse?” he wailed.

Rael raised a brow. “By showing some common sense, Barac. The Prime Law gives the unChosen the right to three refusals. Risa’s only your first. Sira and I will back you if there’re hackles about it.”

Sira. How could he have forgotten? And what of Kurr? The sick realization that his passion had so easily pushed Kurr’s murder aside cleared the last clouds from Barac’s mind. Like the wine in his glass, he felt a centering calm restore the universe Rael had tipped.

“Risa can wait, Rael,” Barac said without so much as a twinge. He returned to his seat, carefully preparing what he had to say. “It’s Sira we need to talk about. She’s in danger.”

Rael raised one elegant brow. “Sira?”

“Yes. Sira. She was on her way back to Camos—”

“Back? What are you babbling about? Sira is studying history or something at the Cloisters.” Rael’s voice was flat and definite. “Ossirus knows why she loves stuffing her head with the stuff, but she waited long enough for the chance. Of course she hasn’t left—”

“I was Sira’s escort on Auord,” Barac interrupted heavily. “I don’t know why Sira left the Cloisters. Or when. Sira couldn’t tell me. Rael, she was under a full stasis block.” He took a deep breath. “Have you heard anything about a candidate for her?”

“Stasis.” Rael’s face seemed to close, as if over an unpleasant memory. She shook free of it with an impatient toss of her hair and her look at Barac was purely malicious. “Well, you can’t be making that up to annoy me. If Sira had been herself, she’d have made shorter work of you than Risa would, dear Cousin.”

“I thought at least Sira was safe from your tongue.” Barac glared at Rael, forgetting power and rank in his anger.

Rael flinched, then made an elaborate and graceful gesture with her right hand. “Forgive me,” she said, the fire in her eyes fading into puzzlement and concern. “Sira knows I sometimes forget her pain and think only of my pride.” Rael paused, then sighed. “No. Of course there’s been no news of a candidate. Why do you say she’s in danger? Where is she?”

Barac relaxed only slightly, the cool evening breeze being drawn down to the room by the wall vents drying some of the sweat on his forehead. He took a deep breath. “I don’t know where she is. I lost her.”

“You lost her,” Rael repeated as if the words made no sense. Her wine spilled and she pushed it away, annoyed at the distraction. “And Sira still in full stasis?”

Misery in his eyes, Barac nodded. “We were attacked on Auord, in Port City itself. Clean, professional job—if I hadn’t had an Enforcer on my tail, they’d likely have finished me,” Barac rubbed one hand over his eyes. “When I came to, Sira was gone and a Pact Investigator named Bowman was set to ask all the wrong questions.” He took a large gulp of his wine, not tasting it. “This Bowman knew about Sira, if not who she was. I wasn’t that groggy. I think Sira did the only sensible thing and ran. Somewhere.” Barac hesitated. “You know I can’t scan for her in stasis.”

Rael sat up suddenly, tension in every line of her body. “You’re hiding something. Something worse.”

“Bowman is investigating a murder—Kurr’s murder.” Barac felt Rael’s shielding break; her shock echoed in his mind as it flooded through her clear, cold thoughts.

Then the sensation vanished as Rael regained her control. “What of Dorsen?” Rael’s words were clipped.

Barac shuddered and dropped his head. “Gone.” Three lives lost, now. Kurr’s Chosen, her link to her mate locked through the tiny mind of their unborn child, had been dragged into the M’hir at the instant of Kurr’s death. Even so, she might have been held in reality by her Watcher, but for tragic timing. Kurr had been sleeping, his life signs strong, the customary time to grant the Watcher a short reprieve from what was almost always a routine vigil. Death had surprised them all.

It wasn’t thought to be a quick ending, dissolving in the M’hir; the taste of lost power and personality lingered to haunt any who traveled nearby, encouraging nightmares as well as caution.

Barac roughened his voice deliberately, knowing this wasn’t the time for grief. “Kurr and I were about to start some scanning along the Acranam Corridor. Harc asked me to help guide Sira through her stopover on Auord. I was kin, after all, and had met her before. Kurr went on, alone.” And alone had been vulnerable. Barac nursed that pain, drew strength from it. He would find Kurr’s murderer.

Rael rose, seemed to stand right in front of his eyes. “Let me see,” she demanded imperiously. Barac considered for a moment, then nodded slowly. His mental shields thinned and dropped as their surface thoughts merged.

Barac allowed Rael to direct his memories, cringing despite himself at the pain bound inseparably to reliving the blast globe’s explosion. She followed his path to the present, experiencing with him the disastrous news that Sira hadn’t reach Camos. And the quick excuses he had produced to quell suspicion here that all was not well on Auord.

“Bah!” she spat, severing their linkage so abruptly Barac felt disoriented. “Bad enough you contacted that Human again. But to deliberately lie to the Council about Sira? What were you thinking of?”

“Betrayal.”

There was silence as their eyes met and Barac watched Rael add the word to the facts she had just obtained from his mind. He saw reluctant conviction settle small lines around the edges of her mouth. “Yes. You’re right, of course,” Rael said slowly. “How else could such attacks be timed? But who? The Council may use pawns like Kurr or Dorsen, you or I. But not Sira. I can’t believe they’d risk her in any way.”

“You know what they’re capable of, Rael,” Barac argued. “What would they do if she was escaping them?”

Rael drew in a startled breath. “What do you see that I don’t? What do you think has happened to Sira?”

Barac shook his head. “I don’t know. My Talent, as you so often remind me, is not the strongest. Yet since losing Sira, I’ve had the taste of change in my thoughts. A foreboding.” He watched for her reaction. “I think it has to do with the Human, Morgan. He might just be other than he seems—”

“Your Human?” Rael’s mouth curved around laughter she restrained with an effort. “You Scouts are obsessed by them. I doubt your Morgan has tried to find Sira.”

“You could be right, Rael.” Barac was unconvinced. “But we have to find her. I have a ship ready to return to Auord.” He paused, then added more to himself than to her: “But I will talk to Jason Morgan again.”

Chapter 6

I RAN my fingers along the smoothness of the spoon one last time before tucking it lovingly in its place beside the pen and record tape. I replaced my extra coverall on top of my illicit collection, then closed the drawer with a satisfied pat.

So now I was a thief. When I worried about this, I consoled myself that I couldn’t have been a real criminal before losing my memories. I was lousy at it. And soon my victim, who wasn’t exactly blind, would notice how things were vanishing whenever I watched him work. I cringed at the thought.

But anything Morgan touched, held in his hands, was completely irresistible. I had to have it, as if second-hand it was Morgan himself.

Which was the other side of my current obsession. Folding my guilty hands together, I sat down slowly, shaking my head. There was something not quite right about how I felt when I thought about Morgan. Despite the pushes and pulls in my mind, I knew there had to be more to life than daydreaming about the warmth of a man’s hand.

However, the part of me that could think for itself had little better to offer. And at least I had a home.

I curled up in the chair Morgan had found for me. It, a plas crate for a table, and my hammock now constituted my world for however long I could convince Morgan to let me stay.

And I had no intention of leaving the
Fox
at Ettler’s.

I had a plan—if I could overcome my criminal urges before being caught. Morgan had given me a selection of training tapes. He was trying to keep me busy. But I knew the
Fox
was easily big enough for both of us. All I had to do was make myself so useful he’d want me to stay.

I pulled out the tape marked
“Calculating Stowage in a Vacuum,”
and reached for the hand viewer. Two weeks to Ettler’s meant no time to waste.

The light in my room dimmed briefly. The signal for shipnight. My second night on the
Fox,
with Morgan. I prepared for bed, planning my dreams carefully. If they revolved around a certain ship’s captain, that was my own business.

But dreams rarely obey one’s waking fantasies. As I slipped deeper into sleep, it was harder to hold on to thoughts of Morgan, to remember I was safe on his ship, and he was only steps away. I lost control, falling into a dream that had nothing to do with pleasure.

Sounds—babbling, incomprehensible sounds—battered me. I was moving, yet the sounds followed. Moving, no, I was running. I couldn’t stop running over the grassless plain, pursued by voices in overlapped confusion, forcing me to run more quickly than was possible, yet never quickly enough.

At first, the dream plain stretched featureless and flat, but wherever I passed, misty forms heaved themselves out of the ground to pace beside me, to pluck at my hands and arms. I could feel my heart pounding, as my gasping breath tried to fill aching lungs. There was no sense to this bizarre race, which was perhaps the most terrifying part of all. I willed myself fiercely to wake up or at least to turn and see my pursuers. Instead, I stumbled in the dream world and went down beneath a moving, whispering mass of shapeless weight. A scream tore from my lips.

And from someone else’s. I jerked up in my hammock, thoroughly awake and trembling, to stare at the man once more silhouetted in the doorway. A silence filled the space between us, making me confused by what I thought or dreamed I’d heard.

“Finally,” Morgan said, his voice oddly ragged. “I thought you’d never wake up this time.” Dropping his hands from the sides of the doorframe, he leaned against one side of it instead, his face tucked in shadow. Gradually, his breathing grew quieter. “Are you all right?” he asked, more calmly.

“Lights,” I ordered instead of answering, squinting as the little portlight anchored to the cubby’s ceiling obeyed. Its brightness washed most of the shadow from Morgan’s face, revealed his tired-looking eyes and tousled hair.

“Lights out,” Morgan countermanded, fading back to a silhouette. “It’s late, and we go insystem today. Good night, Kissue. And no more dreams for a while. Please.”

After he closed the door, I ordered on the light and searched my room for a com panel or anything that might be a listening device. Morgan’s ability to notice my nightmares was becoming more than an embarrassment.

 
Morgan didn’t join me for breakfast, so I couldn’t ask him how, if he’d been asleep in his cabin at the aft end of the
Fox,
he’d known I was having a nightmare. What I remembered about dreams didn’t suggest anyone could share them.

I tried to make sense of the tapes until my eyes were sore and my thumb red from flipping the view advance. Time for a break, I decided, refusing to admit to myself that the walls of my tiny room were closing in or that I was noticing a slightly metallic taste to the air. If I wanted to become crew, I’d have to learn to prefer this metal-shelled home to open sky.

But there wasn’t any reason I shouldn’t take a walk. Once out of the galley, I found myself drawn to the aft section of the
Fox.
I stood outside the closed door to the control room.

He was inside.

I turned away, though a compulsion wheedled at me to lurk outside the door until Morgan came out.

I discovered it was possible to walk through the
Fox
without retracing any steps, since there were two possible routes from the engine room to the control room, one that passed the galley and the other one that passed Morgan’s quarters. A short corridor connected the two about midway down the ship.