Close Encounters (14 page)

“I don’t think so. It may not be incontrovertible scientific proof, but it’s good enough for me. The Buri are descended from the Ashwani, and what’s more, Thor knows it somehow.” I jumped to my feet and headed for the hatch. “I have to find him.”

But by the time I reached the bottom of the ramp, he was gone, the only sign he’d been there the swaying of a few branches at the edge of the jungle.

G
host stood at the bottom of the ramp, a perplexed look on his face as he stared in the direction Thor had gone. I touched his arm, and he swung his gaze to me. “Do you know where Thor is going?”

He didn’t understand me, but he knew who I was talking about. After a few phrases in Buri, he shrugged and shook his head.

Frustration consumed me. “Max, do you see him?”

“Yes. He’s moving toward the village. Quite rapidly for someone who is not enhanced, I might add.”

Well, at least Thor wasn’t running away from his people. Only from me. But he wasn’t getting rid of me that easily. I would clean up Dynatec’s mess if it killed both of us.

Making a brief detour to grab the sanitary plans Max had printed out, I jogged toward the village, Ghost one step behind.

Thor wasn’t hard to spot. He stood outside the new building, hands on his hips and a fierce scowl on his gorgeous face. Brownie and Churka were with him, Churka talking a mile a minute, her voice tinged with desperation. They all glanced at me when I approached, then Churka touched Thor’s arm and her tone turned pleading. The only thing I understood was the word
Shushanna
, repeated several times.

With a snarl, Thor yanked his arm away from her, shot a glare in my direction, and walked into the jungle. My stomach sank all the way to my toes. He was even more upset than I’d first thought, and I didn’t know how to get through to him, to make him understand. I had to try, though. His reaction to that tapestry was too important.

Dusty stood near the doorway of the new building, observing the proceedings, and I took a second to shove the plans into his hand before starting after Thor. I’d only taken two steps when Brownie blocked my path. Considering the mood I was in, this was not a good thing. Brownie and I had tolerated each other after I’d given him the knife, but it was an uneasy peace at best. He wasn’t about to welcome me with open arms, and right now he was feeling distinctly vindicated, as though I’d finally proved him right.

At this point, I didn’t much care if he hated me.

“Move.” My voice came out low and threatening, and I instinctively assumed a loose-jointed fighting stance.

Brownie lowered his chin and shifted his spear to a two-handed grip, holding it point-up across his body, ready to move rapidly in any direction. A menacing rumble came from deep in his chest.

“I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if you don’t get out of my way.” My gaze stayed locked on his, waiting for him to telegraph his intentions as I took another step. Adrenaline flooded my system and my heart pounded in reaction.

But I had forgotten Churka. Before Brownie could move, she threw herself between us, her back to me as she faced him down, her body vibrating from the force of her emotions.

Damn, I’d really wanted to hit someone. However, Churka’s anger was quite impressive. Seeing it was almost worth giving up the chance to pound on Brownie. Especially when it was accompanied by a spate of spitting and snarling that had him looking for the nearest exit.

When she was through shredding him, she turned, patted my arm, and with a final glare at the rapidly retreating Buri, gestured in the direction Thor had gone. It was all the encouragement I needed, and I headed for the jungle at a fast jog.

“Max?”

“He’s approximately two hundred yards beyond the communal kitchen.”

“Is he still moving away from the village?”

“No, he seems to be pacing.”

Exhaling one long breath, I slowed to a walk and tried to calm down. It wasn’t easy. I still had all that excess adrenaline pumping through me from the encounter with Brownie. But I didn’t want to make Thor think I was charging him, either.

Maybe a peace offering was in order. I stopped and searched the jungle around me. There. A gorgeous white flower dangled from a smaller cluster on a nearby tree. Swirls of black and gold made up its veins, the colors running together in the interior. Black and gold. Symbols for me and Thor? Maybe.

By the time I reached him, he’d stopped pacing. He was standing between two trees in a shaft of sunlight that had been filtered to a pale golden hue by the leaves above. Dust motes drifted in the rays, and a mothlike creature danced in and out of the light above his head, a winged attendant to his dilemma.

And there was no doubt he was a man in a quandary. His shoulders were slumped, eyes closed as he lifted both hands to rub his jaw.

He was in profile to me, so I studied him covertly. I had no idea how to get through to him, to find out why the tapestry had upset him so much. The subject was a little too complicated for the fingers-on-the-temples trick I’d used before. Showing him an image of the tapestry might set him off all over again, and I didn’t want to risk that happening.

The frustration of being unable to communicate almost overwhelmed me again before I got it under control. It was imperative that I come to a decision, and I did it instinctively. Getting back in Thor’s good graces was more important right now than anything else I might discover. Not to me, personally, I assured myself, but to the mission.

Okay, maybe it was a tiny bit important to me. There was no other explanation for this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, or the sudden case of nerves I’d developed. And no explanation for this certainty that there was a lot more at stake here than the mission.

I don’t know if I made a noise, or if he simply sensed my presence, but he dropped his hands and spun to face me. His shoulders went back, body straightening as he wiped all emotion from his expression. It felt as if he’d slammed a mental door in my face, and that hurt. More than it should have, damn it.

“I’m sorry.” I took a tentative step forward, holding out the flower, bombarding him with all the emotions streaking through me. Confusion, regret, humility—that one was a stretch, but I managed—and most of all, the fear that something special had been damaged beyond repair.

He blinked once, his forehead furrowing, but I saw some of the tension leave his muscles as he took the flower.

I moved closer.

“Please, don’t shut me out,” I whispered, flattening my palm against his chest. To my absolute horror, tears misted my eyes. But the sad truth was, no one had ever treated me the way he did, like I belonged, like I was a real person and not a freak created under a molecular microscope. Even with the boss, who had never been anything but kind, my nature was always an issue. Considering the uncertainty of my creation, it had to be.

“I think I know why that tapestry distressed you so much,” I continued. “But it wasn’t intentional, I swear. The Ashwani are your progenitors, aren’t they? I don’t know how your people got here, or when, but you recognized the Ashwani in that tapestry as being the same species as the Buri.”

His eyes shut, and a shudder went through him. Then, in the space of a single breath, his arms closed around me, pulled me tightly to his body. I lost all track of time as we stood there, his cheek resting on my hair, hanging on to each other as though our lives depended on it. And gradually, the buzzing in my head returned. Only then did I realized that it had been with me since the first night I’d encountered Thor outside my hut, low and constant, always in the background. At least, it had been there until Thor spotted the tapestry.

Relief nearly buckled my knees because I had it back, and it was all I could do to keep from soaking him with sobs of joy.

That’s when the truth jumped up and bit me on the ass.

I was falling in love with the big guy.

“Check my hormone level,” I ordered Max as I paced outside the open hatch.

“I’ve already checked it twice, and it was normal both times.”

“It can’t be love,” I wailed aloud. “It’s got to be lust.”

When Thor and I had returned to the village, Dusty was waiting, scratching his head in confusion as he gazed down at the plans I’d shoved into his hand. I’d been fine until Thor released my hand and went into the new building with the other Buri, both of them pouring over the simple drawings.

As I watched him vanish inside, panic had set in. My feet barely touched the ground, I’d headed for Max so fast. It had taken Junior and Ghost completely by surprise, although I expected one or both of them to show up any second now.

“I’m a GEP, Max. Alien Affairs owns my service and loyalty. I have to leave when my job is done. Plus, I learned my lesson with love. There’s never going to be a happily ever after for me. I’m just too damn different.” I reached the end of the trail I was blazing in the grass, spun and marched back in the other direction, mentally cursing Gertz. The man had given me all these built-in
needs
, and then insured I’d never fulfill them, by making me a freak.

Crigo was sprawled on his side in the shade Max cast, taking halfhearted swipes at my ankles whenever my path brought me within reach. “This simply cannot be happening.” I threw my hands into the air. “Maybe it’s a virus.”

“You’re immune to viruses,” Max pointed out. “Do your palms become sweaty every time you’re near him?”

I rolled my eyes. “Max, its thirty-nine point four degrees Celsius even at night. I sweat all over.”

What he was doing was obvious. He was going through our extensive library of old holovids, looking for anything that might give us a clue as to whether or not I was truly falling in love with Thor. Not only were the vids good entertainment, they served as our main reference on the life and times of Naturals. I had little personal experience with Naturals, having been raised in a crèche. And since leaving the crèche I’d spent 60 percent of my time with only Max and Crigo for company. The other 40 percent had been spent with alien species, so that was no help.

“Good point,” he said. “Would you die for him?”

“Of course. It’s my job to save him and his people. I’d die for any of them. I wouldn’t enjoy it, but I’d do it.”

You could almost hear his awesome brain shuffling info. “Do you have an insatiable craving for turnips?”

I plowed to a stop, almost stepping on Crigo’s extended paw. “Turnips?”

“Gone With the Wind
.”

My eyes closed in exasperation, and I dropped my forehead to my hands, not sure whether to laugh or cry. “Max, the turnips didn’t have anything to do with Scarlett being in love with Rhett.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

My pacing resumed when another thought occurred to me. “You aren’t recording this, are you?”

There was a split second of silence, then in a small voice, “End recording.”

Hands on my hips, I turned to glare at the ship. “Don’t you dare send that to the archives. The boss would haul me in for a full psych exam.”

“I’m sorry, Kiera. You know everything goes straight to the ship’s log.”

“Great. Absolutely wonderful. That’s all I needed to really make my day.”

My mutterings were interrupted when Junior staggered out of the jungle, sweat dripping from his chin, his chest rising and falling in hard gasps. He shot me an accusatory look, then collapsed full-length in the shade near Crigo. A contingent of dragon birds had followed him. They settled on Max’s hull and promptly fell to scolding me for leaving them behind. It seemed every time I turned around lately the beautiful little creatures were there.

“Okay, Kiera,” I coached myself. “Deep breath. You’ve handled things a lot worse than this. People fall in and out of love all the time. Goddess knows you’ve proved that. It doesn’t have to be permanent. I’ll simply think of it as a temporary affliction, like…like…”

“Insanity?” Max prompted.

“Right.” I nodded vigorously. “Like temporary insanity. That’s a perfectly acceptable defense. And worrying about it isn’t going to help, so I’ll just concentrate on my job.” I glanced across the lake toward the Dynatec encampment.

“Did you contact Claudia Karle yet?”

“Yes. She sounded worried. But all she said was to tell you she has the day after tomorrow off, and will be happy to meet you that evening.”

“Good. Anything from the boss?”

“The original report from the exploration team that discovered Orpheus Two came in. And Dr. Daniels said to inform you that he has three of his best investigators working to uncover information on Quilla Dorn. He’ll let you know what they find.”

“Anything unusual about the exploration report?”

“Two things, actually. First, they only counted twenty Buri, all males. But then, they weren’t really doing an in-depth study, and it’s possible they simply didn’t see the others.”

“Either that, or the others were in hiding. There’s a ton of caves in the mountains. Okay, what’s the second thing?”

“According to Dr. Daniels, of the original five-man team, four are deceased, and the fifth has vanished.”

“Natural deaths?” I started up the ramp.

“Accidental.”

The boss wouldn’t have included that tidbit if he hadn’t thought it was suspicious. I agreed with him. Having one or two deaths over a ten-cycle span might be expected, but an entire crew individually wiped out? It stretched believability to the breaking point.

“I’ll take my remote terminal and look the report over later today. Goddess knows, as much sunlight as there is on this planet, it should be easy to keep charged. Anything else that comes in, you can send to me directly.”

I picked up the palm-sized terminal, slipped it into my pocket, and headed back to the village, trying to convince myself that I could maintain my relationship with Thor without endangering the very fabric of my existence.

The rest of the day dragged along at the speed of mud, and Thor seemed to go out of his way to keep my attention centered on him. “Lust,” I chanted for the hundredth time as he casually hoisted a block to another Buri on top of the building, muscles flexing and relaxing with each movement. “Its just lust. If I ever sleep with him, I’ll be back to normal.”

For some reason, construction on the building had swung into high gear. All the Buri not busy with other jobs were now focused on completing the edifice. At the rate they were going, it would be done sometime tomorrow, and my curiosity was killing me. Twice now I’d tried to go in and look the place over, and both times Thor had stopped me from entering. Even trickery didn’t succeed in getting me inside. When I’d calmly picked up a block and strolled nonchalantly toward the door, Thor had just as calmly taken it away from me and gently pushed me to one side. It didn’t help that he smiled each time, or that several of the females went into giggling fits whenever he blocked my entrance. Easy for them to laugh. They weren’t the one being kept out. It was really getting on my nerves.