Stolen Dreams (20 page)

 

She tiptoed around
the
edge of the room to where their bags had been left to fetch her
microputer and a tiny pair of scissors. Slightly larger than her hand,
the microputer would be difficult to conceal, and it would be
impossible to pretend that it was something other than a
technologically advanced piece of equipment. Possession of such a
device could cause suspicion among the Friends even if she weren't
sneaking around in the middle of the night. Soft snores and gentle
rustlings had her gaze darting from side to side as she expected to be
caught any second.

 

Gabriel pointed to the individual cells up
in the
loft, and Shara nodded. It was logical to assume that was where Zeus
and his immediate family would be found, and all of them went to Earth.
Shara and Gabriel climbed the ladder in one corner and began their
search.

 

Shara bolstered her nerve and peeked into the first
draped
cell, but it was too dark to see. Gabriel stepped forward and extracted
his paralyzer rod from inside the top of his tunic. Shara's eyes
widened with confusion until she saw him change the setting, and a beam
of soft white light brightened the interior.

 

When she
recognized the single occupant, she touched
the key on her microputer that brought up the list of names and
scrolled down to Hestia. Another key checked off the name and prepared
the device for input. Holding her breath, she approached the sleeping
woman, snipped off a single hair, and hurried out.

 

Her hands
were
shaking a bit as she fed the hair into a slot at one end of the
microputer. The unit analyzed the cell structure and recorded the
memory molecule s combination of genetic codes under Hestia's name. A
third key instructed the microputer to compare the codes with those of
Khameiras, and a fourth triggered a comparison with Shara's.

 

She
did
not tell Gabriel which was which, for if a match to hers came up, he
would undoubtedly insist they stop the search, and she had no intention
of stopping until she found Khameiras match as well.

 

When no
match
occurred for Hestia, Shara went on to the next cell. Beauty was needed
to identify the young couple inside, but only the woman required
testing.

 

Shara got braver as they moved along the row of
sleepers,
though she found herself flustered by some of the situations she
witnessed. It was soon clear why love was part of their traditional
greeting.

 

It was also obvious that they believed in freedom
from any
moral strictures. Although the average Innerworlder's attitude toward
sexual relations was much freer than what Shara's mother had been
raised with on Outerworld, they drew the line of acceptability at
incest and using children.

 

Artemis slept with her head on
Athena's
bared breast. Apollo shared his cell with a pretty, preadolescent boy
named Hyacinthus. Isis and her two brothers were intimately entwined as
if they had all fallen asleep in the midst of foreplay. Very few
people slept alone and several cells were occupied by more than two.

 

Shara
and Gabriel were three-quarters of the way around the loft when they
found Zeus's cell. They had not located a match among any of Zeus's
children, but Shara still wanted to test him to be completely certain.

 

The
huge man was sprawled on his back, embracing a woman on each side of
him. Shara had been slipping in and out of the cubicles, trying not to
look at anything but faces and hair, but she couldn't help but notice
Zeus's manhood. Even at rest it was abnormally large. She felt a shiver
of fear at the thought of the pain he could cause if he wasn't in a
gentle mood.

 

Distracted, Shara accidentally bumped into
someone's
foot. One of the women's eyes blinked open and she squinted at the
intruders.

 

The beeping of the telecommunicator
awoke Rom from
an already fitful sleep. Peculiar nightmares kept disturbing him, and
he was uncomfortably aware that Aster was having a similar problem. All
day they had been bothered by the sensation that they had forgotten
something, without having any idea what it could be.

 

Aster sat
up as he accepted the call.

 

"This
is Illana in Communications. I'm sorry to disturb you, Governor
Romulus, but you had requested that we contact you as soon as a message
was received from Norona."

 

Aster reached for Rom's hand as he
said, "Yes. Go ahead."

 

"The
security squad assigned to locate Shara Locke reports that, although
there are witnesses who report she was on board and no one saw her
leave the ship after it docked, authorities were unable to locate her
after a thorough search. Another passenger, Gabriel Drumayne, Professor
of History and Chief Procurer of Antiquities for Norona, is also
unaccounted for."

 

"A history professor?" Rom asked aloud,
though he knew he'd heard correctly.      
 

 

Aster squeezed his hand. "Shara always had problems
in her history classes."

 

Rom
ended the call before responding to his mate. "Apparently she's now
having problems obeying orders also. Drek! If she used the tempometer
in direct defiance of the Tribunal's decision, she's actually broken
laws."

 

Aster gaped at him in disbelief. "Are you saying our
daughter is now a criminal?"

 

"I think we'd better start
assuming the worst."

 

"Dear Lord! What could have possessed her
to fool around with that device?"

 

Rom
shook his head. "It certainly doesn't sound like her to do this. At
least she had the sense to take someone knowledgeable with her, though
I would have preferred that she had a guardian more resourceful than
most of the academy professors I've known."

 

Aster rose from
the bed
and was out of the room before Rom caught up with her. "What are you
doing?" he asked as she sat down in front of the computer.

 

"I'm
checking on the professor."

 

Before
she began her query, the telecommunicator beeped again. This time it
was Gerald, Chief of Scientific Research. He skipped the usual
pleasantries. "Sorry to disturb you, but I didn't think this should
wait. We've just had another incident, only this one occurred in front
of witnesses. A new cargo ship changed shape."

 

Rom and Aster
glanced at each other, then asked him to explain.

 

"The
ship was in Hangar B, looking normal; then, in the blink of an eye, the
structural design changed. Because of the other incidents, we
immediately checked
with an engineer who had worked on the ship. He verified that the new
body was the one discarded when the ship was first designed."

 

"Excuse
me, Chief," Rom said, feeling very confused and almost overwhelmed by
the sense of forgetfulness. "What are the other incidents you
mentioned?"

 

"You don't remember either?"

 

Asters
stomach was getting queasier by the second. "What is it we've
forgotten?"

 

Gerald
pinched the bridge of his nose. "The day before yesterday, you were one
of several people who reported an alteration." He reminded them about
their chair and some of the others. "We have it all recorded, and my
team has been working on an explanation, but now it seems that the
individuals who noted the changes don't fully remember them. For
instance, tell me what pattern is on the new chair by your fireplace."

 

Aster
looked at it and said, "Stripes."

 

"Was it always striped?"

 

"Well,
of course—" Abruptly she had a mental picture of the exact chair with a
floral print, and Rom sent her a thought that it seemed vaguely
familiar to him as well. "Now I'm not sure."

 

The chief sighed.
"That's the same thing I've heard several times. Apparently there were
a number of things that changed around the same time, but now people's
memories seem to be adjusting to the changes as if they had always been
that way. However, the records we made after the alterations have
remained intact as far as we can tell.

 

"Based on what has
happened
so far, we are assuming the ship alteration will not be the only one
reported in the next few hours when people start waking
up, but some time afterward, they may not remember it being any other
way. It's as if history is being changed in very subtle ways and it
takes a while longer for the memory to catch up."

 

Aster's eyes
widened at the word history, and Rom's fears mirrored hers. If Shara
had truly traveled back into the past, she could be doing small things
that were affecting present time.

 

Rom cleared his throat
nervously.
"There's something you need to know about, Gerald. Call a meeting of
your team immediately. Aster and I will meet you in your office."

 

They
disconnected and quickly got dressed to go. Aster wrote a brief note to
inform Mack where they were going, and went into his room to set it on
his nightstand. The moment she entered the room, the blood rushed from
her head as panic stabbed her chest.

 

The room was decorated
entirely
differently—the way it had been before Mack was born. None of Mack's
favorite pictures were on the walls. None of his belongings were on the
furniture, or the floor, or in the closet.

 

But worse than
that, there was no Mack, as if all traces of him had been completely
erased!

 

 

Shara
was momentarily frozen with fear as she stared at the woman she had
awakened. The last thing in the world she wanted was to be caught in
Zeus's private cubicle. Just as Shara was certain the woman was going
to alert her lover to their unexpected visitors, the woman's gaze
focused on Gabriel, and she smiled her willingness to have him join
their group.

 

As she held out her hand and her mouth opened to
speak,
Shara threw a mental suggestion at her. Instantly the woman's hand
dropped, her eyes closed, and she fell back to sleep.

 

As
quickly as
possible, she had Beauty confirm the two women's identities and
collected hair from all three of the sleepers. Hurrying out of the cell
to run her tests, she noticed the way Gabriel was glaring at her and
guessed the reason. However, she couldn't risk defending the misuse of
her ability while they might be overheard.

 

By the time they'd
visited every cell in the loft, ninety-two names were checked off the
list without a match turning up. They eliminated a dozen more on the
ground floor before their luck ran out. Gabriel saw Hestia climbing
down the ladder and motioned for Shara to hide the microputer. She
barely managed to get it into her bag before Hestia walked
up to her.

 

"Good day," Hestia whispered. "You're up very
early."

 

Palming
her miniature scissors, Shara smiled and kept her voice hushed as well.
"We thought you might need help in the cookhouse extra early, with the
Summit set for dawn."

 

Hestia beamed her gratitude and waved
for them
to follow her. On the way out, she nudged several people who must have
been assigned to help with breakfast. That started a chain reaction,
and before long, everyone was coming awake despite the early hour.

 

Shara
and Gabriel were given the chore of scrambling eggs and cooking them in
an enormous frying pan over one of the fires. As he began cracking
shells, she hurried back to her bag for a quantity of static paper and
a pencil and tucked those items and the scissors inside her tunic.
Though she wouldn't be able to refer to the list or run the test, she
could still collect samples if she was careful and quick enough.

 

As
soon as she returned to the cookhouse, she told Gabriel she'd be moving
around all morning trying to get to people they'd missed, and that he
shouldn't be concerned about her. When he did no more than nod and look
away, she knew he was still upset with her. "I know you don't approve
of what I did, but I didn't think I had any other choice under the
circumstances."

 

Out of the side of his mouth, he murmured, "I
could have put her back to sleep with my paralyzer."

 

"My way
was faster and ensured that she wouldn't remember seeing us." He was
only partly convinced.

 

"All
right. I panicked. I never use that ability ... well, hardly ever. And
you know I can't use it against you as long as you're wearing the
jammer. There was no harm done. Why are you so angry about it?"

 

"Because
my sister had the same skill, and she wasn't the least bit
discriminating about how she manipulated other people with it. I was
one of her favorite targets, since I had no way of sensing what she was
up to. Of course, you wouldn't have had to use it at all if you'd been
paying attention to what you were doing instead of fantasizing."

 

His
change of attack made no sense to her. "I beg your pardon?"

 

Rather
than answer, he transferred the cooked eggs into a large bowl and
carried it into the lodge.

 

She had another batch started
before he came back. "Explain your last comment about my fantasizing,"
she demanded.

 

"If
you didn't limit your relations with men so drastically, Zeus's
overendowment may not have distracted you. I'm sure if you're curious
about just how big it could get, he'd be more than willing to give you
a private demonstration."

 

"Gabriel Drumayne! You're being a
dolt. I
was stunned, not fantasizing." She remembered what he'd said earlier
about feeling jealous. After what she'd put him through last night, he
probably had reason to be a little insecure if he thought she was
aroused by a man with greater proportions than his formidable self.
However, it was still surprising that his ego could be shaken so easily.