Sweet Starfire (33 page)

This time the food stayed down. It took an effort of will, and there were a few seconds when Cidra wasn’t sure she was going to win the contest with her stomach, but in the end she did. Slowly and methodically she ate the entire hindquarter. Then she roasted the second hindquarter and carried it over to Severance.

“Try to eat,” she coaxed, letting him have a whiff of the meat. He didn’t respond. When she tried to insert a bite between his lips, he spit it out. With a sigh Cidra sat back on her heels and wondered what to do next.

An hour later she happened to glance across the circle and saw that the remains of the hopper were gone. Another Renaissance meal was concluded, bones and all. Nothing went to waste on this planet.

The day progressed with painful slowness. Twice Cidra dozed, snapping uneasily awake each time. Perhaps it would be better if she slept during the daylight. If she didn’t, she was bound to drift off to sleep tonight. The circle seemed so safe. The third time her eyes closed, Cidra allowed herself to drift into sleep.

A faint cracking sound woke her some time later. She opened her eyes slowly and realized that dusk was settling on the jungle. She and Severance had spent another whole day here. The thought of her companion made her glance automatically in his direction. He was still sleeping soundly, curled around the stone.

She heard the cracking noise again and roused herself fully, reaching for the pulser in her lap. She climbed to her feet and peered around the circle. Nothing stirred near the edge as far as she could see. When the sound came a third time, she suddenly realized where it was coming from and whirled around toward Severance. She saw the rock he was holding shiver in his grasp.

“Sweet Harmony!” Cidra edged closer, trying to see what was happening. Severance was still huddled around his possession, but the stone seemed to be quivering in his arms. Even as she watched, a distinct crack appeared in the black surface. Unaware of what she was doing, Cidra brought up the nose of the pulser and stepped forward. This time she would take the stone away from Severance by force. Surely, after all these hours of fever, he was no longer strong enough to stop her.

There was a sharp splintering sound from the rock just as Cidra reached for it. Severance groaned and hugged it closer. She succeeded in pushing one of his hands out of the way and had just gotten a grip on the sphere when it cracked completely open.

She heard the savage hissing before she saw the damp reptilian head emerge from the broken stone. Frantically Cidra struggled to pull the rock away from Severance before whatever was inside escaped. Fragments of the shell came free in her hand. The head whipped out, snapping at her hand with a mouthful of tiny sharp teeth.

Cidra yelped and yanked her fingers out of the way. The creature turned immediately toward Severance’s midsection, its blue, leathery body uncurling from the remains on the shell. With a sudden shock of logic Cidra realized what was going to happen. Severance was intended as the hatchling’s first meal.

She didn’t dare fire the pulser at this range. She would surely kill Severance as well as whatever was trying to eat him. Furiously she banged the nose of her weapon against the creature’s snout. The blow managed to get its attention away from Severance. The creature hissed again and struck at the offending pulser. Its teeth closed around the metal and then released it as it apparently realized that the pulser couldn’t be eaten.

Frantically Cidra slammed the weapon against the leathery blue head once more. Again she got the creature to snap at the muzzle of the pulser. This time she jerked upward and out. With its mouth still locked around the metal mouth of the pulser, the blue reptile was carried with it. The creature released its hold in midair and fell to the ground in a hissing coil. It struck at Cidra as if realizing that she was the source of the problem.

Cidra raised the pulser and fired with the same unthinking sureness she had used to bring down the hopper. The reptile jerked twice. It writhed horribly on the ground, attempting even in its death throes to get back to its intended meal. Cidra fired again, and at last it went still.

Behind Cidra Severance groaned sharply, still not waking. He moved restlessly and spoke in a slurred, hot tone. “Cidra. Cidra.”

She ignored him, her attention still on the dead stone creature. She wanted it out of the circle. It was wrong here. Dead or alive, it had no business in this place. She kicked at the body with the toe of her boot. It flipped over, revealing four appendages on the iridescent light blue belly. The front pair terminated in projections that looked too much like human fingers for Cidra’s peace of mind. She kicked at the dead body again, intent on getting it out of the circle. The sense of wrong-ness was almost overpowering now. She knew for certain that she didn’t want to touch it with her hands.

Three more kicks brought the stone creature’s body to the edge of the circle. Cidra swung the toe of her boot one more time and pitched the remains into the thick greenery on the other side of the magic perimeter. There was a stir of activity almost at once. She got a glimpse of a furred tail as something pounced and then heard the crunch of jaws on a blue, leathery body. Renaissance would take care of the problem. Cidra hurried back to Severance.

He was more restless than ever. The front of his shirt was ripped where the creature had taken a bite out of it, but there were no marks on his skin. Cidra breathed a sigh of relief and knelt beside him. His stirred under her hand.

“So hot. It’s so reeling hot. I can’t stand it.” He tore at his shirt with his hands.

“Stop it, Severance.” Firmly she pulled his fingers free of the shirt. “I’ll cool you down. I promise.” She reached for the bag and poured water over his head, throat, and chest, dampening the shirt. He shivered and quieted. Lapsing back into an unintelligible mumble, he curled up again and appeared to be about to go back to sleep. Cidra wetted him again and waited. The delirious mumbling halted finally, and Cidra decided that he was asleep. She sat back and tried to think.

The first thing that came to mind was the memory of the four black stones that were piled in the safehold. She had to destroy them. There was no telling when Severance might decide to make another trip inside and carry one out. Furthermore, there was no telling when one of those awful eggs might hatch of its own accord. The thought of four of the dark blue reptiles wandering out of the safehold seeking food was more than Cidra wanted to contemplate.

Wearily she got to her feet again and went to stand at the entrance of the safehold. From the walls came a faint glow, illuminating the interior now. At the far end of the room the four stones rested in shadow. Cidra tried to decide what she would do if she went into the room and accidentally triggered the illusions. She would need the Screamer. She went back to Severance and removed it from his loop. Then she tightened her grip around the pulser and stepped inside the chamber.

Nothing happened, just as nothing had happened the first time she had entered. Staying close to the wall in case she needed to use its surface as a point of reference, she walked slowly around the room. She reached the small group of eggs at the back without having touched off either the Ghost history or the horrific illusions. Facing the eggs, Cidra took aim and systematically shot each.

At first nothing happened. The tough stone casing around the creatures seemed to absorb the energy of the pulser. She stepped closer and fired again. This time one of the shells cracked. When it fell apart, Cidra could see that the reptile inside was dead. She used the pulser to break open the rest of the shells so that she could assure herself that all the creatures were destroyed.

A part of her wanted to clear the remains out of the safehold, but she didn’t feel up to the task. She would have to content herself with knowing that the eggs were no longer a menace. Cidra turned back toward the entrance, one palm still flattened on the curving wall, and trotted quickly toward the sunshine.

Expecting a wave of illusions to block her path, she didn’t realize she was holding her breath until she stepped outside without incident. It occurred to her that perhaps the illusions were somehow tied to the eggs. Perhaps a protective device. With the eggs destroyed the trap might not work any longer. As for the Ghosts’ history projection, perhaps it was simply so old that it had faded into oblivion after one last showing.

There was no point speculating on either possibility. She had her hands full, tending Severance. For the next two hours she kept up the cooling baths. He slipped in and out of a troubled sleep, muttering occasionally and once in a while knocking her hands away in restless irritation.

At the end of the two hours of bathing his fevered body, Cidra thought she detected some improvement. He seemed to be cooling down at last. She peeled off the bandage and examined the wounds. They were red and swollen but not alarmingly so. She sprayed more antiseptic on them and then covered them again with the plastic adhesive. Severance opened his eyes just as she was finishing the task. His gaze was clearer than it had been for hours.

“Did I hurt you?” Cidra smiled, relieved to see something besides fever in his eyes. He still looked dazed and uncomprehending, but she could see him struggling to identify her.

“How could you hurt me? You’re from Clementia.”

Cidra shook her head at his logic and touched his temple. “You’re on the mend, Severance. Your fever is breaking.”

“I didn’t take care of you. I almost got you killed.”

“No, Severance. You saved my life. More than once.”

He moved his head in restless denial. “Just like Jeude. Almost got you killed, just like Jeude.”

“Hush,” she soothed. “You didn’t kill your brother.”

“Should never have let him go to
QED
alone. He was too soft. Too gentle. Followed a distress signal right into the ground. Never realized he’d been tricked.”

Cidra frowned. “Be easy, Severance.”

“Had to kill Racer. Racer set up the signal. Racer tried to take you from me. He would have hurt you, Cidra. He wanted to hurt you to hurt me.”

“I know,” she whispered, wondering about what he had said earlier. “Racer drew your brother to his death with a fake distress signal?”

“Racer murdered Jeude. Said he hadn’t meant to, but he did. And I never even knew until… until—” He broke off, clearly groping for some sense of time.

“It’s all right, Severance. It’s all over. Everything’s over. Racer is dead.”

“All my fault,” he muttered again. “I put you in danger. Just like I put Jeude in danger.”

“Severance, listen to me. It is not your fault. You’ve taken care of everything. Racer is dead.”

But he wasn’t listening. The gray eyes looked up at her with unnatural intensity. “I let Jeude get killed, and I almost let you get killed. You’re like him. I’m supposed to protect you. You and he both belong in Clementia.” His voice faded as his eyes began to close. “You’re like him.”

Cidra stared down at his hard face as he drifted back into sleep. “No, Severance. You’re wrong. I’m not like Jeude.” Her eyes fell on the pulser that lay close at hand on the ground. “I’m not at all like Jeude.”

She bathed him once more, but now she was certain that he had turned the corner. The fever was definitely subsiding. A damp, healing sweat filmed his skin. Cidra concentrated on getting Severance to drink plenty of water. Toward nightfall she stationed herself near the edge of the circle, slipped into the trance that made the pulser a part of her, and waited for another unwary hopper. Now she was amazed that anything as stupid as a hopper survived on Renaissance. The food chain was a complex thing. Right now she was sitting at the top of that chain: a reasonably well-adapted predator.

For someone who had never before eaten meat, doing so was a major change. But, then, everything else in her life was changing, so her eating habits might as well also. A flicker of ears caught her attention. The hopper made a dash through a relatively open area of vegetation, and Cidra killed it in mid-leap.

This time she didn’t throw up when she cleaned the carcass. Cidra wasn’t sure if that was an improvement or not. It seemed to her that part of her should still be fastidious enough to get sick at the thought of killing and butchering food. On the other hand, a steady stomach was proving much more convenient than an unsteady one.

When Severance awoke long enough to eat some of the roasted meat and drink more water, Cidra stopped worrying about her weakening vegetarian ethics. She was too busy being grateful that she had managed to get her patient to eat.

After dinner she settled herself against the wall of the safe-hold and cradled Severance’s head in her lap. Fingers wrapped around the grip of the pulser, she leaned back against the wall and wondered if she would be able to stay awake all night. Probably not. She was exhausted. She could only hope that the ring of safety would protect both herself and Severance during the times she was unable to keep her eyes open.

She slept off and on during the long night. Every time she awoke she could tell by the chronometer on Severance’s loop that she had only been napping for fifteen or twenty minutes, the usual screams and cries of the jungle went on all around the edge of the circle, but nothing encroached.

Severance slept soundly, pillowed in her lap. Cidra could tell that the fever had left his body. With any luck he would be feeling much better in the morning. She still wasn’t sure how long he would need to recover enough to risk the trip back to the campsite, but at least he was on the mend. If need be, they could spend another couple of days here in the circle.

Once or twice Cidra awakened during the night to discover Severance burrowing closer to her, his face turned into her midsection as if he sought comfort from her warmth. She wrinkled her nose as she caught her own unbathed scent. In the morning she would clean herself at the stream. Never in her life had she gone so long without a bath. She fantasized for quite a while about having unlimited access to one of Clementia’s elegant bathing rooms.

The night passed without incident. When dawn filtered once more through the green canopy, Cidra yawned and gently eased Severance’s head out of her lap. She left him sleeping while she undressed and knelt beside the sparkling stream. The water looked clear and pure, and she could no longer resist it.