Sweet Starfire (4 page)

His eyes narrowed. “Cidra, let me in. Now.” The soft crack of command in his words jolted her. She was unfamiliar with such an approach to the giving of instructions. Cidra found herself releasing the computerized locks on her door without even thinking. A moment later he was striding into the room, shutting the door behind him. His gaze slid quickly over her form, assessing the apparent lack of physical damage. Then he stared at Scates, who was still out of commission. Swearing softly, Severance knelt beside the other man, feeling for a throat pulse.

“I knew it,” Severance said. The words were full of morose resignation. “I knew he’d come here, and I knew you’d probably let him into your room without a second thought. Naive little fool. What did you do to him?”

Cidra locked her hands in front of her. “When he came to the door, he said he would be willing to take me with him on his mail run. I let him in and we started to discuss the matter. Then he made it clear that he was only offering one of those convenience contracts you mentioned. When I declined and asked him to leave, he… he touched me. Tried to grab me. His eyes were strange, Severance. Almost wild. And his hand was damp. I think he wanted to have sex with me.”

Severance shot her a sidelong glance. “Yeah, I’d say that was one way of putting it. He probably thought you’d be easy game. I guess you surprised him, though.”

“There was no time to think.” Cidra stopped as she heard the apology in her words. Then she went on with grave honesty.

“But even if there had been time to analyze the matter, I believe I would have done the same thing.”

“What, exactly, did you do?”

“It’s called Moonlight and Mirrors. It’s a kind of dance. An exercise, really. But it’s based on a very old self-defense technique. My instructors always said I had a unique style of interpretation,” she added lamely. “I can see what they meant.” .

Cidra watched with a frown as Severance pulled a small object from his loop and held it to Scates’s temple. He pressed the small touch pad on the end of the device, and the other man’s body jerked once. Then Scates went ominously still.

Deeply disturbed by her victim’s new appearance, Cidra touched Severance on the shoulder. “What have you done?”

“Bought us a little time.” He got to his feet, and then saw the horrified expression on her face. “Don’t worry. He’s not dead. I just finished what you started. He’ll be out until morning, and by then we’ll be long gone.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ve changed my mind. I’m taking you with me.” He began moving around the room, opening the door of the closet. “I know I’m going to regret it, but I can’t seem to think of a way around having to take you along. Maybe I can dump you off in Clementia before I head out to Renaissance.”

“I am not going back to Clementia, Otan Severance. I can’t go back. Not yet.”

He swung around, her travel pack in his hands. “We’ll discuss it on the way to Lovelorn.” He thrust the pack toward her. “Here, get your things together and let’s get out of here. As long as Scates stays unconscious in your room, the privacy locks will protect us. Once he gets on his feet and wanders out into the hall, the security monitors will pick him up, and then the questions will start. I vote we leave him alone here to answer them. He’s not likely to file any complaints against you. How could he explain that he got knocked unconscious by a lady from Clementia? His pride will be our best protection. Unfortunately it won’t protect us from his friends, who will be looking for blood. So get packed, now.”

Somehow it seemed easier to obey when he used that cold, hard tone. She was still trembling from the violence she had caused and had no desire to question Severance’s decisiveness. Numbly she began to remove her formal robes from the closet and fold them in the proper manner.

“We haven’t got time for you to practice the fine art of elegant garment folding. Here, I’ll take care of the clothes. You get everything else together.” Severance grabbed the liquid-soft garments from her hand and began stuffing them into the travel pack.

“My books,” she said, trying not to watch as he treated her lovely gowns as if they were dirty ship suits. “I’ll get my books.”

“There’s room in this pack for them,” he told her.

She glanced at him in surprise as she began pulling the beautifully bound volumes from the autostorage unit beside the bed. “Oh, no, there couldn’t possibly be enough room. I have a separate pack for them.”

“I could get a couple hundred data slips in here,” he assured her before glancing over and seeing what she was doing. “Saints in hell! Those aren’t slips. They’re books. Real books.”

“Of course.” She touched one of the handworked covers reverently. “No information storage system ever invented can compare aesthetically with a genuine book. They are such beautiful things.”

It was Severance’s turn to look shocked. “They must weigh as much as an exploroprobe. What do you think Severance Pay is, a cargo freighter? Leave ‘em here. I just arranged for a crate of Rose ale to be put on board. There isn’t room for your damn books.”

Cidra clutched the volume she was holding to her breast. “If the books stay behind, then I stay too.”

Severance lifted his eyes beseechingly. “I knew I was going to regret this. The Renaissance sinkswamps will freeze before I make a mistake like this again. All right, all right, bring the damn books. But move, will you? I’ve got a hot run, and it’s
COD
.”

“What’s that mean?” Cidra asked, hastily placing the books in a travel pack.

“It means,” Severance said as he locked the pack he had just finished stuffing with delicate clothing, “that I don’t get paid unless the shipment gets delivered on time. Credit on Delivery. I don’t intend to make the run to Renaissance for free, so let’s get going. Here, you take the robes. They’re a lot lighter. Let me have those damn books. Anything else?”

“No, that’s everything.” She edged around Scates’s prone body. “You’re sure he’ll be all right?”

“Unfortunately yes. Now just act normal out in the hall, understand? Pretend you’ve changed your mind about staying here and have agreed to spend the night with me. You’ve paid for the room?”

Cidra nodded and then asked, “It’s true, isn’t it?”

“What’s true?” Severance closed the door and set the locks. Then he shouldered the travel pack and started down the hall, Cidra following close behind.

“Wolves think constantly about sex. It’s what that man Scales wanted from me, and it is the excuse you think the hotel security system will accept for our unexpected departure.”

“By now you ought to have learned for yourself that Wolves aren’t nearly as elevated in their thinking as your friends back home in Clementia.”

“It’s not a question of refined or elevated thinking,” she responded seriously as he herded her out of the hotel lobby and onto the glowing sidewalk. “It’s a matter of the relative importance of the subject to an individual. Sex is obviously a great deal more important to Wolves than to Harmonics.”

Severance opened the panel of a waiting runner and stuffed Cidra and her packs inside. Then he slid in beside her and punched in their destination. When he was finished, he leaned back in his characteristic lounging fashion and folded his arms across his chest. “Maybe if sex were a little more important to Harmonics, they would be able to increase their birthrate. Everyone knows they don’t produce enough children to keep up their population. If it weren’t for the random occurrence of natural Harmonics among the Wolves, there probably wouldn’t be enough Saints to keep Clementia running.”

“The system works fine the way it is,” Cidra told him firmly. “It’s good to have the new blood constantly being introduced into the Harmonic society.”

“If everything is so great in Clementia, what are you doing here?”

She looked out the runner’s diazite window, staring at the passing town, which had been founded according to a careful plan but had since grown into an eclectic and sprawling mix of architectural styles on meandering streets. The glow from the sidewalks illuminated everything from old,-squat buildings fashioned by the early colonists of enduring anthrastone to the newer, gleaming structures built of obsidianite. Both materials had proven plentiful and cheap once the colonists had discovered how to pull them from the heart of the eastern mountains. One adventurous designer had done an entire hotel in the ubiquitous fluoroquartz. It was quite garish and tacky to Cidra’s eyes. But, then, much of the town was. The jumble of styles and materials was visually unsettling when Cidra mentally compared it to the beautiful proportions and harmonies that dominated Clementia’s graceful, simple architecture.

All this passed before Cidra’s eyes fleetingly, as she gathered her spirits to answer Severance’s question, since he was helping her, she felt she owed him the truth.

“You don’t understand, Severance,” she finally said quietly. “I can’t go back to Clementia. Not as I am. I don’t belong.”

Raising a skeptical eyebrow, he turned to her. “A person either is or is not a natural Harmonic,” he pointed out gently. “If you aren’t one, there’s no use fighting it, is there?”

Her head snapped around, and all the years of grim determination blazed for a moment in her vivid green eyes. “I will find a way to be one of them, Teague Severance, if it takes me to the end of the Stanza Nine star system and beyond. I will find the answer. It’s out there. I know it is. I have traced the legend since childhood, and now, at last, I’m actually going after it.”

He looked at her blankly. “Going after what? What legend?”

Cidra bit her lip and sank back into her corner of the seat. “It’s out there, Severance. The tool with which I can become a Harmonic. The instrument that can fit my mind into the natural patterns and rhythms of everything I see or touch, Maybe it won’t quite duplicate the way a Harmonic’s mind vibrates in tune with whatever it chooses to focus on, but I think it can imitate the telepathic element. I think it can help me bridge the gap that my lack of natural ability has always put between me and the world I was meant to join.” Her hands tightened in her lap. “I have almost all of it, Severance. I have me training, the rituals, the education. I have studied the Klinian Laws and the Rules of Serenity as the most devout of students. All I lack is the ability to achieve communion with the others and that intuitive element that makes the Harmonic mind so unique. But I’ll get it. Or something almost as good. I swear I will.”

The silence in the runner seemed frozen as Severance regarded her taut features. Finally he said, “That’s why you want to ship out with me? You’re searching for a legend?”

She nodded once, sharply, wishing she had kept her mouth shut. “A Ghost legend.”

“Ah, Cidra. There are a million Ghost legends. All of them created by humans after they reached Stanza Nine and found all that junk lying around on Lovelady and Renaissance.”

“It’s not junk! We’re talking about the artifacts of a vanished civilization. And this legend is based on one of those artifacts. I found too many hints of it in the Archives. The tool is out there somewhere, and I’m going to find it.” She shook her head wonderingly. “How can you call the artifacts junk?”

Severance’s mouth curved wryly. “I’m sure that when they originally encountered the Ghost ruins, the First Families were suitably startled. But that was a couple hundred years ago, and when everyone realized how common the leftover Ghost garbage was, the novelty wore off. Even the Harmonics who are archaeologists are interested in only the most unusual finds. They don’t want to be bothered anymore with every little shard or carving that turns up. If Stanza Nine ever attracts any tourists, we’ll all make a fortune selling Ghost junk, but until then, it’s practically worthless. The legends are even more worthless. We invented them. Every company explorer who ever had a bad dream while camped out on Renaissance has a new so-called legend. And the miners on
QED
are just as bad. Hell, for that matter there is still enough unexplored territory right here on Lovelady to breed tales. If you’re chasing a legend, Cidra, you’re chasing moonlight.”

“Moonlight,” she said, thinking of the dance patterns that had recently subdued Scates, “is something I have been taught how to chase.”

Severance groaned. “I should have had the ship off the ground the minute I had the mail on board. I knew this was going to be a mistake.”

“Then why did you change your mind and come after me?”

“When I think of a sufficiently sound answer, you’ll be the first to know.” And with that, the runner that had been slowing as it neared the port terminal slid to a stop.

A few minutes later, her pack of clothing in hand, Cidra followed Severance toward the small, streamlined mail ship. She watched as he punched codes into both a computer remote and the gadget he’d used on Scates. Then he led her aboard. The interior lights came on as they stepped over the threshold. Cidra stood looking around at the compact, painfully limited cabin space and wondered for the first time if she had really given due consideration to the problems of living in such confined quarters with another human being, and a Wolf at that. She was still worrying the question when the scruffy rug beneath her feet moved abruptly. Startled, Cidra glanced down in time to see the motley piece of rug silently display three rows of tiny needle teeth.

“Watch out for Fred,” Severance said as she backed hastily. “He hates being mistaken for a rug.”

“Fred?” She watched the creature move in an undulating motion toward the seat in front of the command console.

“Fredalius is his full name. But I just call him Fred.”

“Who named him?” she asked.

“My brother,” Severance answered, his back to Cidra as he stowed away his pack.

“Does your brother fly with you occasionally?”

“Not anymore,” he answered in a clipped tone. “He’s dead.”

“Oh.” It didn’t take a Harmonic’s empathic abilities to realize that she had blundered onto a painfully raw topic. Automatically Cidra sought to soothe the discomfort she had caused. “I’m sorry, Severance. I had no idea. It was thoughtless of me to ask after him. I seem to be causing a great deal of unpleasantness tonight.”