Desert Stars (31 page)

“
Yes,” said Mira, looking
up at him. “That’s exactly how I feel. How did you
know?”

“
Because I feel the same
way.”

He looked away for a moment, then
turned and looked her in the eye.

“
Mira, I’m looking for
someone who feels the way I feel. Whatever you did, or whatever
you’ve been through, you can leave it all behind and not look back.
I don’t care about any of it. I can offer you a new life in a new
place.”

The earnestness in his voice took her
aback. His deep blue eyes stared at her with such intensity that
she felt as if he were staring into her soul. She drew in a sharp
breath, but met his gaze without flinching.

“
I need to think about
it,” she said. “I—I don’t know if I can decide right
now.”

“
Of course, of course,”
said Ibrahim, waving his hand. “My father and I expected to stay
here for some time—perhaps we’ll get to know each other a little
better in the meantime?”

He grinned at her. She couldn’t help
but smile.

“
Yes,” she said. “I hope
we do.”

* * * * *

Jalil drifted in and out of a restless
sleep. Time became fluid, and images from the past few months
flashed across his mind in frightening caricatures. He struggled to
find some sense of order to it all, but soon felt lost in a
nightmare over which he had no control.

He dreamed he was with Mira again,
walking through the trash-ridden corridor of the pylon city. A
flickering neon light hung over a doorway curtained by amber beads;
the sweet smell of hookah smoke wafted through, mingled with the
stench of alcohol. Jalil parted the bead curtain, and the two of
them entered the hazy, smoke-filled cantina.

As they sat down at the empty table
against the wall, the lights slowly dimmed. Jalil’s heart began to
pound, and his palms began to sweat. He knew that he needed to get
out, but his legs would not obey him.

Across the room, the three showcase
windows lit up with a warm, mellow light. Sure enough, three
half-naked girls stepped into the showcase windows. Their skin was
smooth and inviting, their bodies full and voluptuous. An
electronic beat began to pulse, and the girls swayed sensually,
making Jalil’s cheeks flush and his heart pound faster.

This is wrong,
he thought frantically to himself.
This is shameful!
He
tried desperately to break free, but the dream would not allow
him.

The girl on the left turned to face
him. He recognized her immediately: Tiera, his adopted sister. She
wore a skimpy bedlah gown of semi-transparent silk and jingling
gold coins.

Jalil’s arms tensed, and his breath
caught in his throat. He’d seen her without her headscarf before,
but never like this.

He wrenched himself free long enough
to face the showcase on the right. The second girl turned around
and smiled—it was Michelle. Her hands slowly undid the clasp
holding up her dress.

No,
he inwardly screamed.
Not
her!
He exerted all his strength to turn
away, succeeding at the last possible second.

He found himself staring at the center
showcase, his heart racing so fast he felt it would explode. The
last girl had her back to him, hands wrapped seductively around her
torso. With her body swaying provocatively to the beat, she pulled
her top over her head and let it fall to the floor.

His arms and legs tensed as he stared
at her naked back, but once again he was frozen in place, unable to
break free. In only a few moments, she would turn to face him,
showing more of herself than was right for him to see. Time slowed,
and his breathing came short and fast as the moment of truth drew
inevitably closer.

With her elbows lifted daintily above
her head, she turned around to face him. To Jalil’s horror, he
realized it was Mira. Guilt swept over him, but there was nothing
he could do but stare.

As her eyes met his, however, he saw
that she wasn’t smiling. Instead, she looked distressed—and
afraid.

Help me,
her eyes pleaded with him through the
glass.
Please, Jalil. Save me.

Unseen hands drew her back into the
darkness—hands, Jalil somehow knew, of evil men. Something within
him snapped, and suddenly he was free. He screamed and ran forward,
pounding on the glass with his fists until his hands were numb and
his knuckles bloody. Hands grabbed at him, pulling him back, but he
fought them off and kept pounding with all his strength. A crack
appeared, splitting into another, and without warning the glass
shattered, sending him falling, falling—

He hit the metal floor of the bunkroom
with a thud, hands and elbows throbbing. He moaned and tried to get
up, but his legs were tangled in the bedsheets. Overhead, someone
flipped a switch, and cold white light flooded the room, making him
squint.

“
What’s going on?” Nash
said from the top bunk. “Are you all right?”

“
Yes,” Jalil mumbled,
struggling to sit up. His arms were still sore, and bruises had
begun to form on his elbows.

“
Having a
nightmare?”

Jalil only groaned.

“
Well, try to keep it
down. Our shift begins in a couple of hours, and I need to get some
sleep.”

With that, Nash switched off the light
and rolled back over. Jalil pulled himself onto the bunk and
collapsed.

Images still flashed through his mind,
however—images he couldn’t forget, no matter how much he tried.
Tiera and Michelle, swaying seductively to the beat, with Mira
standing half-naked before him—

Save me.

The two words brought a flood of
emotions so strong that it all but overwhelmed him. More than
anything, he longed to be with her, to know that she was
safe—

But then, he remembered that awful
night when she’d straddled him below the starry skylight of the
spaceport hotel. A wave of guilt swept over him as he remembered
the feel of her body against his hands. He buried his face in the
pillow, trying in vain to put the shameful memories out of his
mind.

Save me.

Had he made a mistake? Should he have
stayed with her? Was there some meaning to the dream that he didn’t
quite understand?

He bit his lip as he pulled the covers
over his head. In the darkness, only the low purr of the ship’s
ventilation system interrupted his troubled thoughts. Gradually,
exhaustion overtook him, and he drifted back into the void of
sleep.

Save me.

Part V

Chapter 15

“
Well?” said Surayya,
practically beaming with excitement. “What do you
think?”

“
I don’t know,” said Mira.
The coins on her headscarf jingled as she took it off, safe in the
women’s quarters.

“
He’s a beast,” said
Amina. “You are
so
lucky.”

“
Maybe,” said Mira. She
thought of what Ibrahim had said about taking her away from her
past life—from everyone around her who judged her wrongly, from her
controlling mother and distant father, from her sisters who didn’t
understand her. She had to admit, his offer was tempting. Besides,
Ibrahim was certainly an attractive man—surprisingly
attractive.

“
You shouldn’t marry him,”
said Tiera, ducking her head as she stepped inside. Her clothes
were dusty and soiled from a hard day of work, and when she slipped
off her headscarf, her hair was sun-bleached and
uncombed.

“
What?” Surayya exclaimed.
Amina said nothing, but from the venomous look on her face, it was
clear she disagreed.

“
I said you shouldn’t
marry him,” said Tiera, looking straight at Mira. “If I were you,
I’d refuse to give my consent.”

“
Why?” asked
Amina.

“
Because he’s not what he
seems to be,” Tiera answered. “I used the shortwave to talk with
some of the people who know him, and everything I’ve heard tells me
this marriage is a bad idea.”

“
Oh, come on,” said Amina,
hands on her hips.

“
Yeah,” said Surayya.
“What could you have possibly heard?”

Please don’t fight,
Mira thought silently to herself. She hated it
when her sisters fought.

“
Some strange things have
been happening in Nazar’s camp,” said Tiera. “In the last two
years, three young women have been married off suspiciously
fast.”

“
Yeah, yeah,” said Amina,
rolling her eyes. “Nazar probably has twenty young men living in
his camp. The girls could have slept with any of them.”

“
Perhaps, but the brother
of the last one challenged Ibrahim to a duel to defend his sister’s
honor.”

“
That proves nothing,”
said Surayya. “We don’t know the full story. How can we judge him
based on that?”

“
Mira needs to judge him,
if she’s going to decide whether he’s worthy of her
hand.”

“
What happened to him?”
Mira asked. All three girls turned their heads at her
question.

“
Who?” Tiera
asked.

“
The brother,” said Mira,
her voice barely a whisper. “What happened to him?”

“
Ibrahim killed
him.”

Mira felt a chill run down
her back.
Ibrahim has killed
someone,
she thought to herself.
He’s a murderer.

But wasn’t Jalil a murderer, too? She
remembered the fire in his eyes as he’d brought the gun to his
shoulder, the complete lack of hesitation as he’d shot her captor
right between the eyes. Had that stopped her from loving
him?

“
Well of course Ibrahim
killed him!” said Amina, waving her hand as if to dismiss the whole
story. “The boy challenged his honor and insulted his good name.
What was he supposed to do, stand aside and let the kid get away
with it?”

Tiera shrugged. “Perhaps if he hadn’t
slept with the boy’s sister—”

“
You don’t know that,”
said Surayya, her anger spilling over. “How can you judge him
without knowing all the facts? You weren’t there!”

He told me he wanted to
get away from everything and start a new life,
Mira thought quietly to herself. Now she knew why.

“
Mira,” said Tiera,
ignoring the others for a moment. “You don’t have to marry him if
you don’t want to. I’m advising you, as your older sister,
to—”

“
And
I’m
advising you as your
full
sister that you
shouldn’t listen to
her,
” Surayya yelled, cutting Tiera
off. “She doesn’t know the whole story, and even if she did, who is
she to boss you around?”

“
Yeah,” said Amina. “If
Tiera knew what she was talking about, she’d be married by
now.”

Tiera’s cheeks turned bright red, and
without another word, she turned and left.

“
Pssh,” said Amina, making
a face at the door after Tiera had gone. “Self-righteous little
bitch. What does she know about men?”

“
Please don’t say that,”
said Mira. She shuddered and turned away.

“
She’s right,” said
Surayya. “That was low, Amina.”

“
Maybe it was, but Tiera
started it, not me.”

Please just stop
fighting,
Mira wanted to scream. Instead,
she rose to her feet.

Surayya frowned. “Where are you
going?”

“
Outside,” said Mira,
stumbling for the door. “I—I need some fresh air.”

She left before either of her sisters
could object.

* * * * *

Lena and Mazhar’s tent stood nearly a
hundred yards from the main camp, at the base of a small mesa. The
wall that surrounded the compound had not yet been extended to
include their household, but two of the plasma turrets had been
moved to include them in the camp’s defenses. They stood like
silent statues, their dusty, age-worn barrels pointing up into the
hot desert sky.

Mira walked alone to her older
sister’s tent. Before the pilgrimage, she might have considered the
long walk a bit of an ordeal; now, it was nothing. She entered
without knocking and loosened her headscarf, letting her hair spill
out over her shoulders. Mazhar was out on a scouting expedition, so
there was no danger of running into him here.

“
Lena?” she called out,
taking off her shoes as she stepped over the green-carpeted
threshold. Green was a Jabaliyn color—the rug must have come from
Mazhar’s family.

“
Mira!” came Lena’s
excited voice from the back of the tent. Within seconds she
appeared in the hallway, arms outstretched.

“
Welcome, welcome!” she
cried, embracing Mira and kissing her nearly half a dozen times on
both cheeks. “How are you? How is your health? It’s so good to see
you, my darling sister!”