She rubbed her neck, realizing she was exhausted. “I want you to run the data I collected and determine what should be grown based on your findings.”
“The test area was to have been a one hundred mile radius of the lab. The data is not sufficient for a high percentage of accuracy.”
Dionne shook her head. “Calculate it anyway. I want to get started. We can abort later if additional data contradicts. I’m going to have to locate the other bio-pods anyway to see how many--or if any--of the others survived. I can collect more data along the way.”
“Affirmative.”
Dionne sighed tiredly. Now all she had to do was to figure out how to elude Khan and do what needed to be done. She couldn’t delude herself any longer that he would help. If he knew what she had in mind he was far more likely to try to stop her.
Chapter Eleven
Khan settled his back against the cold stone, and drew his knees up. Below him, he could see the bots still tirelessly moving sand. They had cleared the area around the lab, but the sand continued to shift and they’d begun pushing it further and further from the building until they now had a small mountain of sand built up near the northern rim of the stone ridge.
The cool air and solitude cooled his temper after a while and reason reasserted itself.
She hadn’t been deliberately insulting. In her mind her assessment was an impartial evaluation of the situation and he supposed it was reasonably accurate, whether he liked to admit it or not. He was fairly certain she hadn’t realized that he’d followed her. She’d been too furious after their last argument to be aware of much of anything beyond her anger.
Which meant he couldn’t even comfort himself with the thought that she’d insulted him just to get a rise out of him. That would’ve infuriated him, but it would’ve made him feel better if he could’ve believed she’d been trying to provoke him.
It stung nevertheless. True or not, intentional or not, her opinion made him wonder if he wouldn’t be better off just beating his head on the wall of the lab.
He would’ve liked to think she was the only one being unreasonable, but he hadn’t been thinking very rationally, or behaving very rationally, since she’d come into his life and turned it upside down.
He’d never considered that he had a jealous or particularly possessive nature, but there was no other way to account for his anger and frustration at her single minded, unwavering devotion to her cause. It surrounded her like a solid stone wall, unbreachable. Nothing he could say or do penetrated that absorption or diverted her one inch from the ‘plan’.
There had been a couple of times that he’d actually seemed to pierce that barrier--not by much--but enough to keep him ever hopeful that the next time he’d actually reach her.
He was bone weary, afraid to close his eyes most nights for fear she’d take it into her head to wander off in the middle of the night to collect specimens and happen upon an animal that didn’t appreciate the intrusion, or fall into the hands of his enemies--or any randy young warrior for that matter. His grip on his own self-control in that respect was wearing dangerously thin. He’d begun to fear that the beast inside him was going to escape and he was going to do something he would regret if she didn’t stop behaving as if he was a stone, impervious to the fact that she constantly waved it in front of him, just out of reach.
He scrubbed his hands over his face and palmed his chin thoughtfully, contemplating the sickening roiling motion of his gut.
It dawned on him finally that he was just plain scared, in a way he had never known fear before.
It was his powerlessness in the situation that made it nearly unbearable. He’d faced the axes, spears, and arrows of his enemies. He’d faced animals with twice his strength, or more, but each time, no matter how afraid he was, he’d never really doubted that he would win in the end. He’d trusted his skill, his strength, his speed, and his wit and known he would triumph over his foe.
This time was different. This time his foe was himself. And the worst of it was that the more desperate and anxious he became, the worse he behaved. He’d pushed and prodded and lost his temper and behaved like a complete idiot one time too many.
She was going back into that damned coffin. He knew it in his gut, and he would be dead and long forgotten before she walked the Earth again.
Nothing he could do or say was going to divert her. If he’d learned nothing else about his goddess, he knew she was absolutely as immovable as a mountain and as predictable as sunrise.
Her gift was for everyone and she meant to find the way to bestow it.
Reluctantly, he admitted it was a gift in more ways than a curse--although he’d spent a good deal of time considering it more a curse than a gift. He’d been too wrapped up in his misery to consider it anything else for a long time. The knowledge had made him take an uncomfortable look at himself and he’d been so certain she must hold him in contempt that it had taken him a very long time to realize that she didn’t, never had. She had treated him like a clever child, which he’d found insulting, but she had never looked at him with anything other than pleasure and hopefulness.
Now, when he looked at the world around him, he saw promise--just as she did, not progress, but a vast potential for it.
If she left him--if he couldn’t find a way to stop her--the light of promise would go with her.
She’d seen, though, that the people had no real interest in the gift she’d offered. They hadn’t understood--or they’d been afraid, or distrustful.
He frowned at that.
Maybe it had been more than that.
He had been insulted that Dionne had treated him like a child, but it occurred to him that his people weren’t insulted in the least. They willing gave up all responsibility to him. They didn’t want to make decisions for themselves. They didn’t want to shoulder responsibility for their own welfare.
For generations now, they had done nothing more than the tasks assigned to them, trusting that he, or his father who was Chief before him, would handle the difficult problems.
He frowned, considering it, realizing at last that they had given him permission to make decisions for them and that it could not be wrong to do so now. The gift was in their best interests. They might not like it. They might not appreciate it, but it would be better for them in the long run, no matter how unhappy it made them to begin with.
A great weight seemed to lift from his shoulders at that moment. A tentative smile curled his lips.
Dionne would not feel she had to go if she could carry out her assignment now. She had to know that it wouldn’t accomplish as much as it would have if they’d been more advanced, but she hadn’t seen that as an impediment as long as she could bring them forward with the gifts she’d brought.
Doubts immediately swarmed his mind, but he dismissed them. Whatever his motives--and he knew they weren’t entirely pure--there was nothing wrong with his reasoning.
He would order them to present themselves and take the gift of knowledge, and when he was done, he would bring the other tribes that were his allies to her. And if that was not enough, he would take his warriors and round up his enemies and drag them to her.
And when she had discharged her burden, she would be able to focus on her own life.
Feeling better than he’d felt in many weeks, he rose at last and stretched. As eager as he was to start at once, he could not start until morning.
It occurred to him as he made his way back into the lab that Dionne would be happier if she believed that the people had listened to her and come willingly to accept the gift she was so joyful about giving them. He would wait until he was certain that she was fully occupied with her latest project and then he could be easy about leaving her. He knew from hard experience that once she’d made up her mind to do something there was no distracting her from it.
She was curled up in a tight ball on the platform she slept on when he reached her living quarters. He studied her for several minutes, fighting the temptation
to join her.
It was a bad idea, a very bad idea. As long as he kept a good distance between himself and her he didn’t have nearly as much difficulty controlling himself. When he got too close, his body went up in flames and his mind followed, leaving him so mindless with need he was a danger to his own future.
When he’d settled on his pallet, though, he could do nothing but stare at the ceiling and think about climbing in beside her.
She was asleep. Chances were she wouldn’t even wake up.
If she did, she’d give him a tongue lashing if nothing else.
He got up anyway, grabbed the fur he used for cover and stalked across the room. She mumbled in her sleep when he crept onto the bed beside her. He froze, holding his breath. When she quieted again, he stretched out beside her, spread the fur out over both of them and let out a sigh of pure pleasure as her warmth and scent washed over him.
He’d just begun to relax and feel drowsy in spite of the heat of arousal simmering just beneath the surface of his calm when she rolled over and burrowed up against him, kneeing him in the groin.
It knocked the breath right out of his lungs. He gritted his teeth against the pain and nausea that washed through him and very slowly and carefully pushed her knee away from his groin, which was now throbbing with pain instead of hopefulness. By the time the pain had completely subsided, his tension had, as well, soothed by the softness of her body pressed so trustingly against him and her warmth.
Chapter Twelve
It was with great reluctance that Dionne roused. Despite the heavy weight lying across her, she hadn’t felt so warm and comfortable in so long she couldn’t remember the last time. An annoying tickle finally got the best of her, however, and she cracked an eye for a bleary look to see what it was.
It wasn’t a lock of her own hair. The hair lying across her nose and cheek was as black as a night sky. The pleasant aroma tickling at her senses was Khan’s scent, as easily identifiable as her own, and impossible to ignore since she had her nose plastered to his chest.
Confused, she eased away from him slowly and opened her eyes.
The warmth was his body and the fur covering them.
Her heart skipped a beat. Had she climbed into his pallet with him?
She’d thought about it, more than once. She hadn’t acted on it because she’d known he would think it was an invitation for more, but maybe her subconscious mind had led her from her own bed to his pallet? Sleepwalking?
She moved a little further away and stole a peek up at his face.
He was staring straight at her, his expression carefully neutral.
Still groggy and disoriented from sleep, Dionne pushed herself up on one elbow and looked around.
She was still in her own bed, she discovered, so either Khan had been the one sleep walking, or more likely, he’d simply decided to climb in with her.
His motive for doing so eluded her, but she found she was reluctant to ask. It was all she could do to get out of bed when she first woke. She wasn’t up to verbal sword play.
She almost rolled off the bed when she turned over. She’d forgotten how narrow the platform was and Khan was taking up more than half the space. He caught her, holding her until she’d managed to get her legs under her and her feet squarely on the floor. When he released her, she pushed herself upright and wove a slightly drunken path into the bathroom to perform her morning ritual.
By the time she emerged, Khan had disappeared.
Plunking her hands on her hips, she glanced around the room, a slight frown pulling her brows together. No answer to the puzzling question of why she’d woken up with him wrapped around her magically appeared and finally she dismissed it.
Lois was ready with the report Dionne had asked her to compile. As the computer read it off, she took notes with her tablet. When she’d finished, she returned to her quarters to study it while she nibbled at a breakfast meal.
The list was longer than she’d anticipated. She wondered if that was why so little progress had been made, if resources had just been too unavailable to promote building.
She could remedy that much at least.
Rising, she disposed of the container, crossed the main lab and took the lift down to the lower level. It was divided into a garden area and a hatchery/incubation area. Ignoring the plants for the moment, she consulted her list and started with the animals that had the longest gestation period.
Khan wandered down in the middle of the afternoon and propped against the wall to watch her. She found it distracting. It kept popping into her mind to ask him why he’d decided to sleep with her the night before, but each time it did, she dismissed it. She wasn’t certain of what his answer might be but she was pretty sure it wasn’t something she wanted to deal with at the moment.
He’d been watching her for nearly an hour when he finally pushed away from the wall and approached her, offering to help.
She’d just managed to dismiss him from her mind and focus on her task and it took her several minutes to shift gears again. After staring at him blankly while the question slowly sank in, distrust surfaced. “Thanks, but no.”
He frowned. “You have a long list. It would be quicker if you had help.”
“Hmm. Probably, but you aren’t trained and these embryos are delicate--besides being borderline critical from being frozen so long. I’ve already lost more than I could really afford to lose.”
He studied her for several moments. Out of the corner of her eye, she glanced at him a few times but she couldn’t see any sign that he was angry about her distrust. On the contrary, he looked pleased for some reason she couldn’t quite fathom--probably, she thought with more than a little irritation, because she’d admitted she’d already lost a lot of the stock.
Why it was he seemed so hopeful that she would fail, she couldn’t entirely grasp, but it had begun to seem like an indisputable fact to her.
“It could take months without help,” he said tentatively.
“Hmm.”
He left when he saw he wasn’t going to get a more definitive answer, but he kept popping in from time to time to check her progress.
It was almost as annoying as it was comforting. After their last argument she’d expected him to disappear for good. She’d flat out told him to go, after all. Considering his nature, she was surprised he hadn’t left, but she supposed his pride was at war with his absolute certainty that the world was his responsibility.
And more specifically her.
His determination to guard her whether she wanted to be watched or not was beginning to get annoying.
She didn’t know why he persisted in making her life so difficult!
Shrugging her impatience off with an effort, she focused on her task until she’d successfully implanted the first batch and watched the cells begin to divide. Satisfied, she sat down with her tablet and began to calculate the length of time it would take her to reach the bio-pods and return. Assuming she could locate them without too much difficulty, she decided she should be able to make it back to the bio-lab in plenty of time to start the next batch--the median range gestations.
She was going to have to hike the distance, not that she minded walking, but it would’ve been faster if she had had some sort of transportation.
She dismissed it. There was no sense in whining over things that couldn’t be changed. She had no experience with horses even if asking for one wouldn’t be a dead giveaway that she intended to travel, and there weren’t any other options. She could take one of the bots with her to carry what she would need to take with her.
She didn’t feel nearly as lighthearted, or excited, once she’d settled her plans as she felt she should have. Partly, she supposed it was because the prospect of going off alone was almost as scary as it was exciting. Partly, she knew it was because she was afraid of what she would find at the end of her travels--that her fellow time travelers had not made trip with her. Mostly, though, it as because one thing had been nagging at her since she had dec
ided that she would have to rethink the renewal project.
Khan.
On a purely scientific level, she knew her decision was a sound one, and the computer’s projection of one hundred to two hundred years also seemed reasonable. That would allow a number of generations to pass and, hopefully, a good bit of progress for the human race. There was a better chance the people would be more receptive and not as superstitious or distrustful.
Khan wouldn’t be there, though, and she couldn’t take him with her even if he wanted to go.
She couldn’t bear thinking about it. Ever since it had dawned upon her that he would not be there to try to foil her plans, to annoy her, to protect her, she’d been working frantically, as if she could outrun the thoughts if she worked feverishly enough.
When she had started, she’d hoped that she could fully launch the project and her responsibility would be ended. Once she had done all that was humanly possible to ensure success, she would have to let go and hope for the best. Even if it transpired that the ‘mothers’ hadn’t made it and she was obligated to contribute her eggs to the cause, there might have been some chance for them to have a future afterwards, a life together.
She supposed she hadn’t really believed there would be, but some chance was better than none. Some hope was better than no hope.
It didn’t really matter now and it was best just not to think about it. It seemed to her that the entire project had been doomed from the start. The members of the project had done everything they could to encapsulate a brilliant future for mankind, but they hadn’t spent enough time considering the most important factor in the equation, man himself and his unpredictability.
That didn’t bear thinking on either, though.
She would just do what she could and try not to worry about what she couldn’t do.
She could and would reintroduce key species of plants, insects, and animals. There were obstacles to be overcome even there, but the insects and animals would be the easiest. The incubators were designed to ‘program’ specific behavior during development. Without parents to teach them, they would need the programming in order to survive in the wild. But the programming would also see to dispersement of the various species.
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