He took a moment to consider his words before he spoke. The last thing he needed was for Idara to decide to work around him. If she decided to enlist the help of Alarin’s mother, she could get a visa without his help, and that would probably have the opposite effect Idara was hoping for. “I could, but I don’t think you should do that. It’s pressure. And Alarin’s bound to react badly to that.” He looked at her sympathetically. “You really are in love with him, aren’t you?”
Idara laughed, a short sarcastic burst of sound. “Something like that. Do you think he’s going to find someone on Earth?”
Merran shrugged. “I don’t know, Ida. Look at it this way. There’s nothing you can do about it if he does, so why worry about it? It’s a test. And if you play it cool, you may find it all works out in the end.”
Idara scrubbed at her eyes. “That doesn’t help much.”
“I wish I could tell you that I know what’s going to happen Ida, but I can’t. We just have to wait and see. I can tell you that I think he does care about you, and if you give him space, he’ll realize it.”
Idara sighed. “Well, that’s not what I wanted to hear, but I guess I can live with it.”
Something about her vulnerability was bothering him. He hadn’t pegged himself as a sucker for tears, but he was certainly getting a workout. “As for calling you, he probably will once he gets his phone. If he doesn’t, I’ll send you his phone number myself.” Why did I just say that? The last thing I need is to be accountable to Idara Tenricth for anything, he thought. Merran suppressed an urge to be grumpy and instead, continued to look into the camera calmly.
Idara smiled then. “Thanks, Merran. I—I know I haven’t been the nicest to you. I—I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. Really. You’ll never know how much you’ve helped me.”
Merran waved a hand. “Don’t worry about the past, Ida. Just concentrate on the here and now and the future will work out.” He hung up the phone and stared at it for a moment. Never, in all his years, would he have expected Idara, of all people, to thaw enough toward him to ask for help, then to thank him for it. They’d always sniped at each other, if they talked at all, and most of the time she outwardly snubbed him, despite the fact she was dating one of his best friends and was the sister of one of his other best friends. If Idara Tenricth could change that much, what else was possible? He shook his head and returned to his work.
On campus, Alarin leaned against Greg’s room wall. “Merran wants us to meet him tonight so we can all go out? Do you know where?”
“He’s going to meet us here on campus and we’ll probably walk to one of the hangouts downtown. There are quite a few, I understand.” Greg bent over his bed, tucking the sheets in more tightly. Trim rows of books sorted by size and content filled the bookshelves, and all of his clothes were hung neatly behind closet doors. Alarin couldn’t see them, but he knew Greg. Greg worked on remaking the bed as Alarin watched.
“When exactly?”
Greg glanced up at the clock on the desk. “In about two hours.”
“Damn, I have to call Ida. I’m sure she’s rather freaked out … I haven’t called her since we got here. It would be easier if our abilities were strong enough to reach Azelle.”
“Across light years? It’s possible, but it would be a feat worthy of the aarya. Even you Raderths don’t have that much raw power without some boosting.” Greg gave the cover a final tug and sat on the bed. “She’d appreciate the call, I’m sure. Especially as it’s been five or six days.”
Alarin straightened and walked to the door. “Let me know when Merran gets here.”
As he walked back to his room, he prepped himself carefully for the guilt trip he was certain Idara was going to lay on him. His relationship with Idara Tenricth was not one he could explain to himself, much less anyone else. He cared about her— they’d known each other for years—but there were far too many strings and baggage for him to want to declare her as his mate for the rest of his life.
As he unlocked and pushed open his room door, he braced himself for a scene. Walking to the desk and pulling out his new cell phone, he dialed the central call center on Azelle. “You have reached the central computer on Azelle. Please state the name of the person you wish to contact.” Technology …one nice thing about Earth, Alarin thought to himself as he obeyed. Azellian technophobia made simple use of technology a pain in the ass. Not all households accepted video phones, which were unnecessary on Azelle, since everyone could communicate mentally. Only those houses that had to call interplanetarily or who liked technology had a video phone. Idara’s family had one. Thank the aarya, Alarin thought as the connections were made. Otherwise, contacting her would be a major undertaking.
The phone was not answered until the seventh ring, and he thought he wasn’t going to get through.
“Hello?” It was Idara, looking disheveled and sleepy.
Alarin did a few quick mental calculations. “I’m sorry, Ida. I woke you up.”
Her face relaxed into a smile. “No, no. I just went to bed. It’s all right, Alari. It’s good to hear from you. How’s your trip so far?”
“Interesting,” Alarin replied, rather surprised at the warmth of her welcome, but still wary. “We’ve been here a week and already we have a human who might be going through something like our Awakening. We’ve also learned that their universities are not the fastest at getting anything set up, and we’ve been kept busy from sun up to sun up again while discovering that the wonders of Earth are quite overrated.”
Idara laughed, surprising him again. “I’m sure it will improve, Alari-alis. It should be interesting for the future, though. A human with psi? I didn’t think humans had psi.”
Alarin shrugged, ignoring the affectionate ending she put on his name. “I didn’t think so either. They’re certainly frightened enough about the possibility that we might be able to read their minds. But this one is certainly going through something.”
She smiled, but seemed a bit distracted. He could see her rub the edge of the phone. She changed the subject. “I’m really sorry, Alari, about the way I behaved when you left. I was pressuring you and that was the last thing you needed. I know how your family is and I was very closed to you, closed to understanding your desires. I—I just want to let you know that if you want to study chemical engineering, I will support you, whatever you want.”
Alarin could feel his eyebrows shoot up high. “That’s quite a change of heart.”
Idara half-laughed and half-choked. “I’ve had a lot of time to think and I spent the afternoon with your mother yesterday.”
That startled a snort out of him. “That must have been pleasant.”
“About as much as pulling my toenails out one by one.” Idara made a face. “I realized how similar I’ve sounded to her. After spending an afternoon with your mother, I was more than ready to cheerfully strangle her. How have you put up with me?” She sounded rueful.
Alarin reached out and touched the screen, although he knew she couldn’t feel it. “You are not always like my mother, Ida. Do you understand that my coming here had nothing to do with us?”
Idara smiled, although he could see tears hovering in her eyes. “I don’t think that’s entirely true, Alari. But I am willing to accept that you’re there.” She blinked away the tears and put a cheerful expression on her face. “And I want you to know that I’ve realized something else. You asked me if it ever bothered me that we were matched a long time ago, as children. It’s never bothered me the way it bothered you, because I love you.” She smiled again. “If you do decide to find someone else, even on Earth, I can accept it.”
Alarin had his doubts about that, but he recognized her intent behind the words and the real effort she was making. “That means a lot to me, Ida. More than you’ll ever understand.”
She shook her head. “I know my own shortcomings, Alari. And I promise, on the aarya’s charter with us, that next time you call I won’t be nearly so depressing.”
> That made him laugh. “You did spend the day with Mother yesterday. It’s enough to make a sunny day in the High Desert depressing.”
A mischievous grin—an unusual expression for her—tugged at her mouth. “Yeah, I think she could depress the aarya.”
“How did you manage to escape? Mother doesn’t let a sympathetic ear go very often.”
“Kyla rescued me.”
“That must have been interesting.” Alarin’s eyebrows went up again. His sister Kyla was not all that fond of Idara, mainly because of Idara’s tendencies to be rather too much like their mother.
“We had a nice talk. It helped me straighten a few things out.” A thoughtful expression flitted across Idara’s face. “It was less weird than calling Merran.”
“You called Merran?” Alarin’s jaw dropped and he stared at the phone. “Did he have a cardiac arrest?”
Idara rubbed her forehead sheepishly and looked down. “No, he was actually very nice to me, considering some of the things I’ve said to him in the past. Very helpful.”
“Why, by the grace of the aarya, did you call Merran?” He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
“Just trying to see if you’d arrived safely. He ended up giving me some advice. Nothing really all that important.”
Just then, Alarin could feel Greg touch his mental shields and alert him to the fact that Merran was on his way. “Ida, I have to go. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”
Idara touched the screen. “Thanks for calling, Alarin. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Bye, Ida.” They signed off, surprising him considerably. No pressure to call her, no guilt trips, just honesty. He wondered if she could really change so much so quickly. Well, two years would definitely test them, and maybe, just maybe, a grownup Idara would be someone he could deal with on a long-term basis. Greg’s touch came again, and this time Alarin acknowledged it, heading out of his room and toward the student hall.
In the student lounge where they sat alone, Tamara frowned at Greg. “Are you sure you want me included in this? This is you hanging out with your friends. I’m not sure I’m feeling up to it anyway. My mother …” She choked up and fought off the tears that threatened to burst forth. She’d called Greg as soon as her mother told her to go back to campus earlier in the day. Her parents needed some time alone to deal with the aftermath of her mother’s cancer diagnosis. Tamara and Greg had been able to talk only briefly during his break from class. After he got out for the day, he’d called her back and asked her to meet him in the student lounge. She’d agreed, not expecting this.
Greg gently wrapped his warm fingers around her wrist. Warmth spread up her arm and spilled down into her torso, chasing away the block of ice that gripped her heart. For the first time since her mother sat in front of her that morning and told her that, yes, the tests came back positive for cancer, she felt like she could breathe without sobbing. Her eyes burned with the aftermath of her previous crying fits, but she felt calmer. “Yes, I’m sure we want you with us. It will help get your mind off everything, Tamara. There’s nothing you can do about your mother’s diagnosis. You spent the morning with her and you know there’s not much you can do, except continue to live your life. She wouldn’t want you to bury yourself in worry about her. It’s not honoring you or her to do that.”
Tamara sighed and rubbed her fingers together. “She told me to go out and not stop my life, but yet I feel like I should do something. I have a hard time believing this can be happening to her. Why, Greg? Why do people get sick? We have all this wonderful technology. How is it that people still get cancer?”
Greg paused for a long moment. “There’s a large psychological component to any illness, Tamara.”
“Can’t you do something?” Tamara asked, fighting off the urge to cry. Greg was soothing her again—she could recognize the waves of warmth now—but the urge was still strong.
“I can try, but first your mother must be willing to accept that she can be helped. Most of the recovery from cancer is in the mind and the body of the person suffering from it.”
Tamara shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. “But the treatments. They’ll make her sicker than the cancer!”
“It’s the way you treat cancer.” He did not add anything further, although Tamara thought he might. There was the faintest hint of emphasis on the “you,” as if the Azellians might do something else.
She frowned at him. “Do you have another process? A different way?” She knew from the endless conversations this past week with Greg about psi and how it worked that Azellians had very sophisticated medical knowledge and an almost mystical understanding of disease. She didn’t necessarily understand it, but she’d seen him Heal his fellow Azellians and even a small cut on her arm within seconds. “Azellians manipulate cells, or something like that, don’t they? Couldn’t you …” She waved a hand in the air. “I don’t know, Heal her?”
Greg let his breath out in an explosive puff from behind his lips. “Your mother would have to completely accept me and what I can do, Tamara. Is she even willing to let an Azellian work on her?”
Tamara frowned, thinking she might not. Her mother was not as rabid as her grandmother about being anti-Azellian, but she was not exactly open about it either. “But she could be dying! Why wouldn’t she accept anything that could help her?”
“It’s subconscious, to be sure, but we all choose whether to recover or to succumb. I am willing to work on her, but it must be up to her.” Greg’s soothing touch increased. “All you can do is support her, either way. There is nothing you can do to influence her decision … she may not even realize she has made one.”
Tamara could feel the tears slip the bounds of her control and even Greg’s soothing. She wanted nothing more than to run away—to hide and pretend nothing had changed in her little world. She felt so alone. She was barely aware through her tears that Greg had moved closer to her on the couch. His arms slipped around her shoulders. Tamara turned to him and wrapped her arms around his waist, letting the quiet sobbing go. Resting her head on his shoulder, she allowed the warmth generated by his mind and her tears to cleanse away the fear and worry. He was a safety she had never felt before, completely without sexual tension, without worry about illness. Greg offered her pure support—more mothering than her mother could provide under the circumstances. “What about the others?” she managed to gasp after a few moments, remembering that Greg had told her they were on their way.
Greg smiled and brushed her hair back from her face. “They’ll wait. Let go and you can start the process of healing yourself.”
She obeyed.
Outside the student center, Merran sat on the steps waiting for the others. Alarin was the first to join him. “What are we doing outside?” Alarin asked in Azellian. “Greg called me to say you were on the way and then told me to wait. What’s up?”
“Tamara got some bad news this morning and is having trouble maintaining her composure. Greg’s getting her calmed down.” He closed his eyes wearily.
“Long day?”
Merran opened his eyes. “You could say that. I’m ready for a good stiff drink. Not that it will do much, but it’s the idea that matters.”
Alarin laughed. “You can read my mind. Regular classes haven’t even started yet, but I’m ready for a month-long vacation.”
“Did you have any trouble getting settled in this week?”
Alarin shook his head. “No. The bureaucracy is as bad as on Azelle, though.”
“I think that’s something we all suffer, human and umanaarya.” Merran chose the Azellian name for themselves rather than the human identification of them.
Alarin grinned, appreciating the comment. Just then, Mellis and Justern came up.
“So what’s the delay?” Justern drawled. “We’re cutting into our fun time here.”
Merran looked up at him. “Tamara’s having a bad moment, Justy. We’re waiting for the all-clear from Greg.”
A very strange expr
ession flitted across Justern’s face, although he remained pretty tightly shielded, so Merran couldn’t catch what it meant. “Well then,” was all he said. With his arms crossed, he leaned against the side of the building and stared out over the campus.
Merran and Alarin exchanged glances. Alarin’s shoulders moved in the slightest up-and-down movement. Merran sighed heavily and dropped his head into his palms, rubbing his eyes. Mellis slid down beside him and touched his shielding with her mind—a suggestive slithering. “Tough day, Mer?” she asked, not touching him physically but continuing the mental caress. “Did you need some help relaxing?”
Merran looked up at her sideways. “Maybe later, Mel. Right now, I want a drink.”
She took the gentle rebuff and withdrew her touch. They all sat quietly on the front steps of the student center, watching across the greenway where several students struggled with a large trunk, manhandling it toward one of the student halls. The four of them watched with a mixture of amusement and curiosity as two male students wrestled and sweated, a young woman following along behind. Merran finally gave them a small boost with his mind, almost laughing as their words floated toward them.
“Is it me, or is this thing suddenly lighter?”
“I think it’s you. What the hell did you put in here, Cammy?” one asked, sounding irritated and petulant. “This is the last time I lift your crap into the dorms.”
“I’m sorry, Ken,” the girl said, hastily catching up. “I didn’t put anything in there but books.”
Both young men groaned loudly, although Merran knew it was an act. He was supporting enough of the weight himself now that neither young man could possibly be having that much trouble lifting it. He could feel Mellis, then Alarin and Justern, slide their minds in to help. “What floor do you live on?” the one named Ken asked.
“The first,” the girl said, wringing her hands.
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