Discovery (5 page)

POVRE CRIED OUT IN DISTRESS
upon reaching her camp.

Nothing was there. No one. No cases of equipment, no shield emitter, not one scuff mark or footprint.

“No! Oh Goddess, please no!”

She sank to the carpet of dead brown spikes from the strange needle-leafed trees rising tall above her. Her leg throbbed.

She reached for the communications device on her belt. Even as her fingers closed over it, she knew it wouldn’t work. That, or any other device she carried. A signal from H’renzek would have rendered them useless. It was a standard precaution in case any of them were caught.

The comm device fell to the ground. She dropped her head into her hands. “What am I going to do now?” Her throat tightened and her eyes started to burn with dryness. “Am I stuck here forever? What am I supposed to do?”

For starters, Povre, you should have obeyed orders!
You got yourself into this mess and you’d better stop whining about it and start thinking!

Pulling off her boot, she rubbed her sore ankle and leg. She was surprised that the distance between here and the native being’s camp wasn’t all that far, although she felt as if she’d traversed an entire grid sector. She’d started off well before the primary star even brightened the horizon, and now that radiant sun was fully in view, casting a brilliant golden light over the planet she once thought too lovely to resist.

* * * * *

“DAMN.”

Sunlight, warm and golden, warmed his chilly body. His fire was a heap of sullen, smoking ash. Why was he outside and not in his tent? Snug and warm in his sleeping bag? Why was his sleeping bag spread across his lap?

“What the hell am I doing? Sleepwalking now? Great.”

He groaned. His back felt as if it molded itself into the shape of the tree trunk behind him. Kent’s stiff fingers chafed at his arms. The crinkly rustle of the Gore-tex cloth made him feel even colder. He grabbed the limp sleeping bag on his knees and wrapped it around himself, hunching together for warmth and trying desperately to remember. Like the brisk morning air, the memory of his night’s adventure hit him cold and hard. He jumped to his feet, staggered, tripped over a vagrant piece of firewood and narrowly avoided falling into his fire pit.

“Marvelous. Not only have I completely lost my scientific composure…I’ve lost my coordination, too. It’s a good thing I’m not mountain climbing.”

His gaze raked over his camp. Fitful light breezes made his open, empty tent suck in upon itself then balloon outward, as if it was an odd gray animal breathing. The same breeze caused the unzipped opening to flap like a limp handkerchief waving a farewell.

The alien with the six fingers on each hand and shaggy black hair was gone. Gone as if she never existed.

“Of course she didn’t exist,” Kent said to himself. “It was a nightmare. I was sleepwalking. Twelve-fingered, black haired gorgeous aliens don’t exist.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “It was that freeze-dried stew last night. Lynn always said that brand of backpacker’s dinners gave her nightmares.”

Lynn. How he wished she was just a stew-induced nightmare.

A rustle behind him made Kent whirl in that direction.

“Damn!” He laughed nervously as a golden-mantled ground squirrel scampered into the low brush. “Now you’re jumping at fauna. Great.” He began gathering pinecones and dead branches for a fire. He was hungry and needed some coffee, badly. Then he’d break camp and start heading back.

The image freshened in his mind. His empty stomach tightened. Jim, jumping up…Lynn, still basking in the afterglow, asking Kent why he hadn’t called ahead. Savagely, he snapped a thick branch in two over his knee.

A severe pain in his face made him realize he clenched his teeth.

“Damn her. Damn it. Put it out of your head. It’s over. It’s done. Just thank the Lord you found out now and not later.” He had been prepared to take the vows of holy matrimony seriously, and had they been married…

He stripped twigs from another branch and let them fall at random near his feet.

“Look, Kent,” he continued, reasoning with himself. “This is hardly your first relationship or breakup.”
This was however, the first time you’ve loved someone enough to propose and to want to spend the rest of your sorry life with her,
argued his wounded ego.

“No, I don’t love her! Not any more. And I’m darned glad I always used protection,” snarled Kent. “Who knows what I could’ve picked up from her.” He still felt dirty. He’d have himself tested for STDs as soon as he got back. Thank the Lord she also used contraceptives. The thought of her getting pregnant and having a child, passing it off as his when it could’ve been anyone’s! It made him sick.

Things would have been different if she’d loved him, admitted her affairs were mistakes, and wanted to work through this. He wouldn’t have cared who biologically fathered the child. Wouldn’t be the poor kid’s fault. After what happened, though…

“Damn it, stop thinking about it!”

Another three-inch branch cracked over his thigh; the pain felt good. He could deal with physical pain. The burning ache in his guts and heart was another matter. Memories of nights of fabulous sex and exchanged declarations of love tore at him. Discussing children! All the while that little bitch had been doing half the campus. Well, Jim at least. She implied there had been others. How many? He couldn’t bear to think about that.

“I loved her. I loved her. That little sneaking…Probably entertaining herself and her boyfriends while I was at work.”

He tilted his face to the sky. The tall, long-needled trees surrounded him like a comforting wall. “I loved her. I trusted her. What a jerk I am.” He grabbed another thick branch from the ground and started to bring it down in another vicious and angry motion toward his knee, but a soft husky voice and slender hand stopped him.

“W’inno! J’lem neka mak’le.”

His muscles turned to liquid and his hands fell limp. The branch dropped from his nerveless fingers with a thud. He dragged his unwilling gaze from the ground and sidled it sidewise like a slow pan camera shot. First, the tips of narrow boots with odd designs, gleaming a dark, gunmetal blue in the golden morning sunlight. Up long, slender legs encased in material of the same color. To a tiny waist cinched by a heavy, thick belt containing odd pouches and…things. To the six-fingered hand on his jacket sleeve.

He blinked.

A hand blue as the Oregon sky.

Thick, shaggy jet black hair framed her face and dangled into her huge, tilted eyes, which were a jewel shade of purple with blue overtones and fringed with black lashes so long they looked fake. Her small nose tilted over a small mouth with full lips of pale lavender. Her face, as exotic and beautiful as he recalled from last night, was the same color as her hands.

Blue as juniper berries.

Kent had no trouble understanding his first-glance error of the night before, thinking this…this…
being
standing before him with such concern was human. At least until he’d seen the six fingers on each hand.

But if he had any lingering doubts of her origins, they vanished in an instant.

She
wasn’t
human.

P
OVRE GAZED UP AT THE
being with concern. Her feeling of utter abandonment and worry faded away.

“Stop that,” she repeated. “You’ll hurt your knee.” She pressed her hand lightly on his arm, which had fallen to his side as if the ligaments were cut.

In the light, she saw her rescuer’s long, straight hair was a beautiful deep brown. A fine band of some unknown material gathered it behind his neck so it hung like a tail down his back. She felt an urge to smooth the mussed strands behind his strange, stiff-looking oval ears with their ridges and valleys. His eyes were also the loveliest shade of brown—smaller, rounder eyes than those of her kind. He stood half-a-head higher than she did, and Povre was considered tall. She and H’renzek were the tallest Sirgels aboard the ship. This being was taller than H’renzek and broader shouldered. The rest of him appeared lean and fit, but hard to tell under the clothing he wore.

Just as she thought this native looked very handsome, even by her standards, his face changed, becoming darker and flushed into a reddish shade. He roughly shook off her hand and stepped back. He reached for the stick he dropped, brought the length of wood up in a defensive motion, and started to shout at her.

Povre’s ears flattened. She covered them and her head in a protective reflex, turning away and stumbling as she forgot her injury. “No! Please!” Her ankle buckled and with a cry of pain she fell to the ground and remained in a small crumpled ball as he continued to rage.

“My fault for coming back,” she whispered in misery. “My fault for not listening to orders.”

Povre hunched even tighter into herself and the cold ground as the being ranted over her. If she moved, he would hit her. If she didn’t…Povre shuddered, letting out a soft whimper of fright as the stick hit the ground an arm’s length from her body. Chances were good he’d hit her no matter what she did. For her to fight back meant for her to injure him. She was capable of self-defense, even offense if the situation called for it. But fighting with intent to injure or kill a living, sentient creature was unthinkable. More unthinkable than her accidental contact.

“You warned me, H’renzek,” thought Povre as she waited for the blows that would end her life. “I didn’t listen.”

~~

“…and I’m not going to. Do you understand? Jeez! I came here to be alone, damn it! Not to find another female problem. I don’t want to be with anyone. Especially not with someone who’s blue! You should’ve stayed as a freaking dream. Why did you have to come back and be real? Damn it! Oh, I get it. You’re one of her actress girlfriends, playing some trick on me? Bet you have one of those battery shockers up one of your sleeves, huh? Well, I’m not falling for it.”

Kent stopped mid-rant. He turned to glare at the female as he brought the heavy branch down in a final, vicious arc. Instead of landing with a thump on the ground, there was a resounding, sickening crack. He saw her cringe at the sound, and the stick fell. A second later, so did Kent, realizing too late that shifting his glance had also altered the course of the branch. That wet meaty sound had been his left shin. With a groan of pain, he curled over his injured leg and fought the tears of pain and scream he wanted to let loose.

“Damn!” escaped in a harsh breath through his clenched teeth. He tasted blood, probably bit his tongue or lip. Whatever. The fiery pain across his shin obliterated everything else.

~~

Surprised she remained whole and unhurt, Povre cautiously lifted one arm and peeked. Her empathic sensitivity to the feelings of other living things allowed her to sense his pain. The intensity of it overshadowed her fear and wiped out her exhaustion. “I told you you’d hurt yourself,” she said under her breath.

The being curled on the ground, hugging his injured limb, rocking back and forth with a never ending stream of harsh words and sounds escaping his lips. He didn’t look at her as Povre unfolded her body from its protective knot.

“You poor thing,” she said, scrambling closer. After a second of hesitation, she touched him again on the shoulder. “This is all my fault, isn’t it? I suppose it must be.”

The emotions seethed from him: anger, resentment. He shrugged off her touch.

“Let me help. It’s the least I can do.”

His round dark eyes glared at her through a glaze of agony.

Povre set her jaw. “You are a stubborn headed male! You must be a male. Only males get so emotional and violent and end up hurting themselves.” Her grip re-tightened on his shoulder and her other hand pressed on his chest and made him lie down. “Now let me have a look.”

He fought her, trying to shove her hands away, scrambling out of reach. All the while, she kept her ears flat against her skull in response to his loud voice and hard sounding words. His roiling, savage emotions made Povre wish she wasn’t an empath. All her fur stood partly on end. Very uncomfortable.

“By the Goddess who birthed us! I’m not leaving you alone until I see your injury. Since I caused it in the first place, the polite thing to do is see if I can help. Now stop.” She had to shout at a volume she was sure reached right up to the ship in its orbit. Maybe they would hear her. She hoped so.