by Speer, Flora
She looked down at the man beside her. He lay sleeping peacefully, his straight dark hair tousled, his pale features untouched by any feverish flush. He looked completely healthy. His uniform jacket was open and her regulation undershirt was draped across his abdomen just above his loosened trousers.
She glanced anxiously around the little clearing. It was empty. Her eyes fell on an uneaten compressed food wafer and a smooth, yellow-green fruit.
“Narisa?” Tarik was awake.
“Are you - how do you feel?” she asked in a trembling voice.
“Quite well. Why do you ask?”
“You were sick. You had a terrible fever. I thought you would die.”
“I don’t remember.” He stretched, then rubbed his left side. “My ribs ache a little. I do remember you wrapping them, but that was back at the pod. Why are you undressed?” He was gazing at her in open admiration, his dark eyes lingering over her creamy shoulders and softly swelling breasts.
Narisa, who had never felt shame at her own nakedness before, began to blush. It started somewhere down in her belly, and she could feel it sweeping upward in a crimson flood infusing her face and her scalp. Under that surging tide of hot blood she was powerless to move or speak or even to think clearly. She could only let him look his fill.
Tarik lifted his right hand and placed it upon her left breast, cupping it gently, his thumb flicking across the sensitive nipple. Narisa drew in her breath, still immobilized.
“How lovely,” Tarik murmured, pressing his hand a little more firmly against her flesh.
Narisa felt a sweet warmth curling inside her. She wanted to remain there, sitting beside him, with his hand on her breast, stroking it. She saw his left hand begin to move and knew he was going to catch her head and pull her down to him and kiss her. Her bare breasts would be crushed against his chest, his mouth would be on hers. The thought frightened her, and with that fear came release from the inertia that had held her in one spot while he caressed her.
With an inarticulate cry she leapt to her feet, snatched up her crumpled undershirt from his abdomen, her jacket from the base of a nearby tree, and fled the clearing. Taking long, deep breaths to quiet her pounding heart, she made her way through the forest to the pool she had found the day before.
It really had been the day before. She remembered all of it now. Every detail of that day came rushing back as she threw cold water onto her face and tried to scrub the touch of Tarik’s hand off her skin. She was certain the juice from the mysterious fruit had caused her memory loss. It had apparently had the same effect on Tarik. Fortunately, the loss was only temporary, and it seemed the fruit had cured his injuries as well as his fever.
Having finished her washing, she dressed hastily, combing her hair with her fingers, tucking her damp undershirt into her trousers with a determined tug, pulling on and fastening her jacket with practiced efficiency. Back at the pod she had pulled off the top clasp at the neckline of the jacket and used it to fasten the wrapping about Tarik’s ribs, nevertheless she knew she presented a professional appearance when at last she stepped into the clearing.
She found Tarik sitting indolently against a tree trunk, investigating the contents of the food packet. His jacket was still opened down the front, but she noticed that he had pulled up and fastened his trousers, and he had obviously washed his face, for his hair showed wet around the edges.
“Commander Tarik, I must tell you what happened yesterday,” Narisa announced, standing at rigid attention.
“Sit down and eat,” he invited, gesturing at the golden moss beside him.
“I prefer to stand while making a report,” she stated stiffly.
“If I frightened you before, Lieutenant, I apologize,” he said gravely. “I do not usually ravish the officers under my command.”
“I quite understand, sir,” Narisa responded. “You are still a sick man.”
“Undoubtedly that explains it.” His face was serious, but there was an odd twinkle in the purplish depths of his eyes. “Well, then, Lieutenant, make your report so you can eat.”
Narisa watched him, disturbed. He was so relaxed and comfortable, munching on a wafer, leaning his head back against the tree trunk. He wasn’t even looking at her. His eyes were on a pale blue winged thing that came fluttering across the stream and began flying around in circles between them. When it got too close to her, Narisa sidestepped it. Tarik put out one finger, and the thing perched on it a moment, before flying off into the bushes behind the tree.
“What is that?” Narisa asked. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
“It’s a butterfly,” Tarik said, bemused. “There are none on Belta, nor would you have seen any at the Capital, or on any of the other developed planets. Lovely, isn’t it? And remarkable, too. It begins life as an insignificant worm, only later growing into the magnificent creature you just saw.”
“A worm? I’m not sure that’s possible.” Narisa sounded as confused as she felt. It wasn’t just the butterfly, it was Tarik, too. He was not behaving like his usual self, and certainly not like an officer of the Service.
“If I explained it, you wouldn’t believe me.” Tarik dismissed the butterfly with a shrug. “Let me hear your report, Lieutenant.”
Standing at attention, using the clipped, brief phrases she had been taught were the correct form for official reports, Narisa recited the events of the previous day.
“Have you finished?” Tarik asked when she stopped. She had given him the fruit when she talked about it, and he sat holding it, turning it over and over in his long fingers.
“Yes, sir.”
“First, I want to thank you for saving my life a second time. I have no doubt I’d be dead by now if you hadn’t tended me so well. But do be careful, Lieutenant Narisa. Save me a third time, and according to Demarian custom, you will own me. Have you ever been to Demaria? No? It’s an interesting place.
“Next, will you please sit down? We have a lot to discuss, and it hurts my neck to keep looking up at you. Besides, it’s bad for discipline to have you looking down upon your superior officer. Here, have some food. It tastes awful, but it’s nourishing.” When Narisa did not move, he added, “Well, what else have you to say? I thought your report was done.”
“If you will forgive the impertinence, sir, I must state that your appearance is slovenly. There is a very sharp knife in the tool kit, surely you could use it to shave yourself. Then you ought to fasten your jacket. Secondly, your attitude is most unprofessional. There are Service regulations for situations like this, when one finds oneself on an unknown world. But you sit lolling against a tree, joking about discipline. You must recall that our first duty is to find some way to communicate with the Capital. Then we must—”
“I liked you better with your jacket off,” he said.
Narisa stared at him, shocked.
Suddenly, inexplicably, he began to laugh. Before this day Narisa had never seen Tarik smile or heard him make a joke, but there he sat, holding his sides and roaring with laughter. The sound echoed around the clearing, while laughter continued to pour out of him and tears ran down his cheeks. It was a long time before he stopped and wiped his eyes.
“Woman,” he said, still chuckling, “you function like the memory banks of a spaceship. Everything is done precisely, correctly, according to regulations, and no deviations are permitted. Ever.”
“Sir.” Narisa’s spine was stiff, her chin high. She kept her expression blank, not letting her rising anger show. She told herself she ought not to be angry with him. He had been sick, and now he was clearly mad, and she would have to cope with that problem as best she could.
“Lieutenant,” Tarik said, his mirth apparently under control, “sit down. Here, next to me. That is an order. Now, take these two wafers and eat them. That is another order.”
He watched as she silently obeyed him.
“In spite of your un-slovenly appearance and highly professional attitude,” he went on, his lips twi
sting into a quickly repressed smile, “I do believe you are human and not the machine you appear to be. If the story you have told me is true, you admit to breaking a few rules yourself.”
“Only because I feared you would die.”
“It’s comforting to know you are willing to bend for my sake. Now, I want you to tell me once more everything you remember about that bird.”
Narisa went over the story again, including every detail she could recall.
“The bird made no effort to communicate with you, no sound at all except for that one cry?”
“That’s right, sir.”
“Yet you knew, it was quite clear to you deep in your mind, that the creature meant us no harm, and later that there was juice in the fruit and it was safe for you to give it to me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“While I, out on the desert, was perfectly certain, deep in my own mind, that the birds would lead us to water. What does all this suggest to you, Lieutenant?”
“That we are very fortunate, sir.”
“You disappoint me. I suppose I should have expected a lack of imagination. You can’t help it; it’s the way you were trained. I have a different theory. I think the birds have telepathic power.” He watched her reaction, a glimmer of humor in his eyes. “Any comment on that, Lieutenant?”
“Are you suggesting those creatures are intelligent?”
“Haven’t they been acting intelligently?”
“I would say it was instinct.” She was determined to resist his idea.
“Indeed?” A cynical glint replaced the humor in his gaze. “Helping an unfamiliar species is instinctive behavior? Not in any Race I’ve ever encountered. Why do you find it necessary to resist my theory, lieutenant?”
The question took her by surprise. She could almost have imagined he had strange powers and had read her mind.
“Because,” she said, “telepathy is illegal.”
“I doubt the birds know that,” he responded dryly. “They have probably never had contact with the Service, or the Assembly, or any of the idiotic laws of the Jurisdiction.”
“It’s not only illegal, it’s immoral,” Narisa insisted. “And for very good reason. Telepathy invades the mind of another being, and that is immoral. All Races practicing telepathy were outlawed centuries ago and their representatives banished from the Assembly.”
“Of course,” Tarik countered mildly, “they had to be banished. Because of their abilities they were too well aware of what those in power were trying to do. Telepaths would be dangerous to those regulations you love so much, and which the Assembly imposes on all of us. And the Service, which was originally formed solely to keep the peace, too often uses certain of its branches to repress dissent. Telepaths would understand that, too, and perhaps protest and insist upon changes. Change is terribly upsetting to the Assembly.”
“Commander Tarik, I believe you are speaking treason.”
“I’m talking about freedom, Narisa. The right to decide the simplest things for yourself. What, when and where to eat. Or read. Or live. Or work, whether in space or on some planet. Have you never been free?”
“On Belta, when I was a child, I did as I pleased.” Narisa was becoming very distressed by this conversation. Tarik was saying things that had occasionally crossed her mind, things she had always thrust away from conscious thought, finding them unworthy of a loyal officer of the Service.
“You were free as a child, yet you left Belta to join the Service. Why?” Tarik demanded, and Narisa, trained to truth, answered honestly.
“For my father. He wanted a son, but he had been assigned to Belta, and on Belta choice of gender for a child is not permitted. So he had two daughters. I chose to join the Service, to become a navigator to please him. To make him proud of me.”
“Was it what you wanted to do? Are you proud of yourself?”
“Of course.” She could not tell him the entire truth, that she had not known what she wanted to do and had never had the chance to think about it. She had obeyed always, wanting her father’s approval. She obeyed still, following all regulations to the smallest detail. “I am a good officer,” she insisted.
“You are the best navigator I have ever met,” Tarik agreed. “But you do leave something to be desired when you are faced with totally new circumstances.”
Before Narisa could protest, he raised one hand. “I’ll call back some of what I just said. You handled yesterday’s emergencies remarkably well. Perhaps there is hope for you. Do you know why Belta is called Belta?”
“No, sir.” She wondered where this change of subject would lead.
“It was originally Beltane,” Tarik informed her. `The first settlers there many centuries ago claimed to be descendants of the Druids of Old Earth. The twin volcanoes erupting at each solstice reminded them of the ancient Beltane fires once lit on Earth, and so they named the planet. It was later corrupted to Belta.”
“I’ve never heard that story before,” Narisa said.
“You wouldn’t know of it. It’s not part of the approved’ history that the Races are taught. Change history and you change reality.”
“I’ve never heard of these Druid people, either.” Narisa was becoming angry at what he was suggesting.
“Of course not,” he told her slyly. “Some of them were telepaths. Their descendants were forced to leave Belta after the Act of Banishment, and a new Race settled the planet. A Race with no unfortunate tendency toward telepathy.”
A deep silence followed Tarik’s last words.
“So we come back to the birds.” Narisa finally found her voice again.
“And to the fact that we are in the Empty Sector, on an unknown planet where Jurisdiction laws do not apply.”
“I see. This has all been a lecture, some kind of lesson for me.”
“Make of it what you will. Think about what I’ve said. Keep an open mind and follow your instincts, not the rules you were taught at the Capital.” He caught her chin in one hand, holding her face steady to look directly into her eyes. “How very young you are, Narisa. How innocent.”
“I am twenty-six years old,” she declared.
“And I am thirty-two, and a thousand years older than you in experience.” He released her and stood up. “It’s time to go.”
“Go where?”
“Where duty calls, of course. To find a place where we can communicate with the Capital, if such a place exists here. Fill the water container, Lieutenant. We may need it later. I’ll take the food and the tool kit.”
“Are you well enough to travel?” she asked, watching him rub at his ribs.
“Almost completely well, thanks to your good care and the bird’s medicine. There is just a little pain in my side, and that will disappear soon. Ready? Then follow me.”
Narisa had no quarrel with the direction he had chosen. He headed downstream, and that made good sense. A stream was likely to run into a river eventually, and a river into a lake or sea. If there were intelligent beings on this world, chances were they would inhabit areas near water. So said the Service manual written for those who visited unknown planets. Narisa had memorized it, as she had memorized everything given to her to study during her training. She had an excellent memory, and was proud of her ability to recall the most obscure details. That was one reason why she was such a fine navigator. Even Tarik said she was the best he had ever known.
She frowned, thinking of the other things he had said. She had been aware that there existed a large body of knowledge to which she, along with most other people, had not been given access. It had never bothered her because she had not needed any of it to do her job. Immersed in navigational charts, astrophysical computations, and the latest course-setting instruments, she had convinced herself that what she did not know was unimportant. Now she began to wonder about all the things she had never learned.
She blew an errant lock of hair out of her eyes. While it was not as unbearably hot under the trees as it had been on the desert, it was s
till warm, and much more humid. Delicate red-winged insects darted here and there. She swatted at several, feeling irritable. She did not want to think about uncomfortable subjects. She wanted to get safely back to the Capital and be reassigned to another spaceship, to the life she had prepared for and accepted.
And enjoyed? a small voice in her heart asked relentlessly. No, she told herself, enjoyment had nothing to do with it. She was pledged to duty. The uneasy question was Commander Tarik’s fault. He had a way of shaking her resolution with his artfully insidious suggestions.
Tarik. A walking puzzle. A man from an important family who had attained high rank in the Service, who freely spoke treasonous thoughts. Under normal circumstances she would have continued to avoid him as she had done aboard ship. And yet, thrown together as they were, he became more and more interesting, the disturbing things he said only increasing his peculiar appeal. As for the way he had touched her as though she belonged to him, she could not think of that without beginning to blush again while her blood raced through her veins.
She watched him just ahead of her as he led the way along the stream. He paused, holding back a stocky bush so Narisa could squeeze between it and the edge of the water.
“Have you noticed the odd assortment of growing things?” he asked.
“No, I haven’t.” Squeezing by the bush meant brushing against Tarik. When she slipped a little on a patch of mud, he caught her arm to steady her, drawing her closer. Narisa caught a whiff of his body scent that had so dazzled her while she had wrapped his broken ribs, a fragrance compounded of sunshine and green leaves.
She pulled away from Tarik and stepped onto a flat rock that overhung the stream. He joined her and stood looking into the thick growth surrounding them.
“Look there,” he said, pointing. ‘That kind of tree once grew on Earth, and those, too, I think. Those over there are giant Demarian ferns, and that triangular bluish-green plant is from Ceta. There are others I recognize from other planets.” He named a few, and Narisa followed his pointing finger to look at each in turn. Then he stood watching her expectantly.