Shockball (9 page)

I figured there would be security outside the door, so I needed to disguise my face. I spied the Lok-Teel undulating listlessly in its specimen container, and rubbed my chin.

“If you can do it for Reever, I bet you can do it for me.” I took it out and felt it caress my fingers with warmth and what had to be a form of mold-affection. “He did this telepathically, right?”

I wasn’t much of a telepath, but I had been able to successfully communicate with the Pel on Catopsa. And the Pel had used the Lok-Teel as housekeepers. Should work.

I cradled the Lok-Teel between my hands and concentrated, forming a mental image of my own face, masked and transformed into Dr. Risen’s features. The Lok-Teel stopped moving for a moment, then crawled up my arm toward my neck.

It was unnerving at first, to sit quietly as the mold flattened and oozed up and over my face. It worked its way over my lips and my nostrils. I guessed my job was to trust it, hold my breath and keep the image of the Lily’s face—and air holes—in my mind. That, plus no screaming.

Slowly the Lok-Teel covered my entire head, and enveloped all of my hair, pulling it up and flattening it against my skull. Then I felt silky, shorter strands of hair brushing against the thin surface of the mold coating my cheek, and carefully got to my feet.

A glance in a wall unit mirror made me grin. I was the spitting image of Dr. Lily Risen—even down to the smooth, blond hair style.

All I had to do now was walk out of Medical at a brisk pace, carry a stack of charts, look harried, and hope whoever had a weapon fell for my act.

It worked. The guard at the panel never twitched a muscle. Once I got to the lift, I punched it and secured the doors until I reached Reever’s level.

More crew members passed me as I walked down the corridor. I pretended to read a chart, and no one said a word about how odd it was, that Lilly had suddenly shrunk a foot. Maybe height wasn’t something everyone noticed. A few nodded and smiled at me. Using Dr. Risen’s face, I smiled and nodded back.

The guards at the detainment area were big, armed, and looked bored. They gave me the once-over.

“What do you need?” one asked.

“Not much.” I pitched my voice to an equally bored, colorless pitch, hoping Dr. Risen wasn’t always as chipper as she’d been with me. “I’m here to do the last prisoner check before they go onplanet. Open it up for me.”

“He’s not in a good mood,” one of the guards said, and jerked a thumb toward the access panel. “Broke both arms of the last guy on shift when he took in his meal. They just sent him over to Medical.”

Not good. What had the other guy done to Reever?

“Poor thing.” I made a face with Lily’s face. “I’d better hurry up and get this over with so I can get back and take care of him.”

“Want me to go in with you?”

“No, thanks. If he gets antsy with me”—I lifted the syrinpress and waggled it—“I’ll just stick him.”

I held my breath as the guard slowly unlocked the panel and opened the door. Then I walked into the dark compartment, and waited until the door closed before I said, “Hello?”

He was on me in two seconds. Strong arms pinned me to the wall. Something hard with a ragged edge pressed against my neck. “Don’t move. Don’t breathe.”

“Gee, honey, I missed you, too.”

“Cherijo.” Whatever he had against my neck fell to the deck. Lights came on. Hands that had been creating bruises now ran over me, and peeled the Lok-Teel mask from my face. The helpful mold reformed its mass into its neutral old self and slid down in front of my tunic. “What did they do to you? How did you get away? I thought they were going to transport you in a suspension unit.”

Jenner started butting my ankles, and I bent down to stroke him. “I don’t know, I knocked out the dimwit they left me with, and we’re going to steal a shuttle. Let’s go.”

“I think not.”

Jenner hissed. If I’d been a cat, I would have joined him. Slowly I turned my head to see my worst nightmare standing in the open door panel, flanked by a quartet of guards. Then I hissed anyway.

He wasn’t very tall. Like me, he had black hair that reflected a gray sheen in the light. No silver streak in his, though. He had the same exotic-looking dark blue eyes. The same slightly beaky nose.

Understandable. I’d been created from his own DNA, so that made us twins. If you could be twins with a man you’d called “Dad” all your life.

“Hello, my child,” Joseph Grey Veil said. “Welcome home.”

CHAPTER FOUR

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The Inevitable

Y
ou should have let me stab him,” I said to Reever as they marched us to the launch bay a short time later. I felt a small sense of relief when I heard Jenner yowling, and spotted his carrier stowed inside the shuttle, under the seats. “A dermal probe to the aorta, and all our problems would be over.”

“There were too many guards around him.”

“I could have gotten him in one shot.” And I would have, except Reever had grabbed me, then the guards had grabbed and searched both of us. So much for my syrinpress and dermal probe. “After everything he’s done to us, don’t I deserve the chance to hack his heart out?”

“Killing your creator now will not improve our current situation.” Reever looked over the interior of the shuttle, the rigging they were putting us in, and the distance to the helm. His mouth still bled from the tussle he’d had, trying to get me away from Joseph’s guards. “Another, better opportunity will present itself.”

I thought of the Lok-Teel, which was still hidden under my tunic. Maybe Reever was right. Not that I was going to stop nagging at him. “Okay, but I get dibs on his heart. Assuming he has one. Hey, cut it out,” I said to the guard manhandling me. “I’m not talking about stabbing
you
.”

“Shut up,” the Terran said. He had a blunt, ugly face that hadn’t been improved by Reever’s fists.

“If I throw a stick, will you go away?”

He grabbed the front of my tunic. “You shut up or I’ll knock you out.”

Reever jerked against his bonds. “Let her go.”

“Guard. Release her.”

Joseph came in the shuttle and took a seat across from me and Reever. At the same time, Jenner let out a low, scary sound that make me smile. Joe had better have secured the latch on that carrier tightly.

The guard let go of me as if my tunic had scalded him, turned, and bowed toward my creator. “The prisoner was making threats against your life, sir.”

“She generally does.” Joseph gestured for the guard to leave, then watched me and Reever for a few minutes.

Outwardly, my creator hadn’t changed that much in three years. He had always looked remote, attractive, and powerful. And short.

Evidently he’d gotten some cosmetic work done since I’d left him—the faint silver strands in his hair were gone, and some minor wrinkles around his dark blue eyes had been lasered away. His body appeared even more muscular than it had been when I’d lived with him, but he’d always been obsessed with developing his body. That was his compensation for being so short.

“How did you get the streak in your hair?” he asked me.

I turned to Reever. “Did you hear something? I could have sworn I just heard something. Sounded like a… a rodent, squeaking, didn’t it? A small, diseased rodent, maybe?”

Joe smiled faintly. Or sneered. It was always a toss-up. “You cannot provoke me into anger with your childish insults.”

No, but I was going to try. “On second thought, it’s not a rodent,” I said to Reever. “Could belong to a lower order. Like slime. Slime sounds like that when it oozes out from under a rock.”

Joe fastened his harness as the shuttle’s engines came online. “Evidently your natural capacity for violence has tripled. I had to treat Dr. Risen for severe contusions. You nearly fractured her mandible. Extensive psychological evaluation will have to be performed on you.”

My
natural
capacity? I felt a twinge of guilt at learning I’d almost broken Lily’s jaw, but ignored it. “Then again, slime sounds much more pleasant than that. Waste. That’s it. Has to be unprocessed waste.”

Stop taunting him, Cherijo
. Reever slipped into my mind without effort.
He is unpredictable and we are vulnerable like this
.

I tried to casually throw up my mental blocks, hoping he would think I was sulking. Even now, I couldn’t risk Reever knowing what was on my mind.
You never let me have any fun anymore
.

Reever leaned forward.

“What are you doing?” Joe asked Reever, his gaze bouncing between our faces.

Reever bent down and pressed his mouth against mine, then gave Joseph one of his blank looks. “Kissing my wife.” He sounded almost amused.

“She is not your wife. Marriages with nonsentients are not recognized under Terran law.” Still, Joseph seemed fascinated by what Reever was doing. Namely, rubbing his cheek against my hair. “She routinely responds to your tactile stimulation?”

“Yes, she does.” Reever made it sound like I tore off my garments and danced nude for him whenever he touched me.

Which wasn’t an unappealing idea, actually.

“I find that quite intriguing. She demonstrated no interest in exploring her own sensuality before she left Terra.”

He had no idea what I’d explored since I left Terra.

Cherijo
. Despite the blocks, Reever could tell how angry I was getting. I looked at him.
Don’t respond to it. Ignore him
.

Oh, I’m going to respond to it, Duncan. With a blunt, cold instrument.

“What are your intentions, once we reach the surface?” Reever asked my creator.

“Due to the League’s involvement in reclaiming my property, there will be an official hearing before representatives of the World government.” Joe shrugged, like that wasn’t consequential. “Cherijo will be legally remanded to my custody, and then I will continue my work with her.”

He’s lying
. I nuzzled my husband’s neck.

Reever rubbed his cheek against my hair.
How do you know
?

You can hear it in his voice. He never tries that hard to sound confident. Something’s wrong.

Joe wasn’t finished, either. “If you will convince my daughter to cooperate, Linguist Reever, I will recommend the committee show lenience toward you. It is likely you will have to serve some time on a penal colony for your role in the Varallan disaster, but with my recommendation, the length of your sentence could be drastically reduced.”

Don’t, Cherijo
—

I shoved Reever out of my mind. “You think dangling that carrot is going to work, don’t you? You son of a bitch. He’s not like you. He won’t use me.”

Reever stopped the rest of the stuff I planned to yell with another kiss.
You’re only giving him more ammunition to use against you
.

I thought about biting my husband on the lip, then sighed into his mouth.
All right
.

By that time the shuttle was landing at a Terran Transport Center. New Angeles, from the look of it. The guards double-checked our bonds before we were permitted to disembark.

This was the world I’d been born on. I’d never thought I’d see it again. Now that I was here, I couldn’t wait to get off it.

Soon. We’ll escape, and find a way back to the
Sun-lace.
We have to
.

“How long has it been for you?” I asked Reever as we stepped onto Terran soil. “Since you’ve been back, I mean?”

“Twenty-two years, six months, three days, nine hours, and two minutes.”

“Not long enough.”

We went from the shuttle directly into a secured glidebus, where they chained us to the seats on separate sides. Joseph sat behind me. Because my hands were tied, I ignored him.

“When you were here, did you ever spend any time in New Angeles?” I asked Reever as the glidebus pulled away from the cargo-loading zone.

“No. My school was in Paris.”

I watched the impeccably manicured landscape whiz by my window. “You didn’t miss much.”

I’d never liked the tasteful, precisely sculpted scenery surrounding the sterile structures that made up downtown New Angeles. Not one tree had been planted too close to another, not one stray blade of grass grew untrimmed. Three years away from the homeworld had only increased my aversion. What I wouldn’t have given for a walk through a nice, uncivilized jungle, like the one surrounding the colony on K-2.

“The region resembles Paris a great deal.” Reever wasn’t looking at the scenery. He was watching the guards. “Terrans appear to embrace consistency almost as fervently as their xenophobia.”

“They’re picky about things like shrubbery and the threat of genetic pollution.”

“You are both Terran,” Joseph said suddenly.

We turned to glance at him. I laughed. Reever only went back to watching the guards.

My creator leaned forward and without preliminaries started interrogating me. “Your vitals indicate a recent trauma involving blood loss. However, I found no evidence of internal injuries. What caused it?”

I wasn’t going to tell him about the baby. “I ran into a vampire. He reminded me of you.”

“Have your menstrual cycles been regular?”

No topic was sacred. That was my dad. “Make someone happy, Joe. Mind your own damn business.”

He didn’t like me calling him “Joe.” I could tell from the way he tightened his jaw. “You are currently ten pounds lighter in weight than when I last had you scanned on K-2. Explain the difference.”

I pretended to think for a minute. “I’ve always wondered—how many angels, do you think, could dance on your head?”

“Your flippancy serves no purpose. Answer the questions.”

“I’m kind of busy now.” I gave him a lovely smile. “Can I ignore you some other time?”

The glidebus came to a stop at the back of a large federal building. More guards came on to remove me and Reever. We were marched into a private lift and whisked up to the top floor, where we were shoved through more biodecon and weapon detectors.