B00CH3ARG0 EBOK

by Christie Meierz

Laura bit her lower lip. “I see,” she said, her voice tight.

  “It was a freak accident,” Marianne added with a shudder. “She was there when her father died.”

  “So were you,” Laura commented in a sympathetic tone. The Sural raised an eyebrow. Marianne just nodded.

  “Remarkable,” he said. “Tell me, Mrs. Howard, can you find the nearest guard?”

  Laura stiffened and stared down at her food. “I don’t know,” she answered.

  “Do try.”

  Marianne glanced at the Sural, wondering what he was trying to do. He had to know Laura didn’t want to talk to him.

  Laura bit her lip again.

  Marianne put a hand on Laura’s forearm. “You don’t have to, Laura,” she said.

  “It’s all right. I’ll try.” She rose from her chair and stood for a moment with her eyes closed. Then she turned slightly to the right.

  “Remarkable,” the Sural murmured.

  Marianne gave him a look. He raised his hand slightly, urging patience.

  After a moment, Laura opened her eyes and took a few hesitant steps toward the wall, hand reaching out in front of her. Just before she could touch the guard, he dropped his camouflage. She started backward with a sharp breath. The guard spread his hands in apology and winked back out of sight. Laura returned to her place at the table, looking a little shaken.

  The Sural studied her without speaking.

  “Are you quite sure you’re human?” Marianne asked, half joking.

  “The last time I checked,” Laura replied, her brows knitting together with confusion. “I don’t know how I did that, but when I close my eyes, it feels like there are more people in the room than I can see with my eyes open.”

  “It would seem our empathic abilities could have some roots in our human origins after all,” the Sural said. “We have always believed it a side-effect of our adaptation to this world. You have a remarkably well-developed empathy for a human.”

  “What would the Jorann’s blessing do to it?” Marianne muttered softly in Suralian.

  “I cannot say,” he answered, his eyes still on Laura.

  She turned back to her friend. “Laura – come with me when I go to the apothecary tomorrow morning. I’d like you to let her examine you.”

  “Huh? Why?” Laura asked. “I’m fine. Central Command didn’t hurt me at all when they kidnapped me. Well, except for a few bruises, but they’re not deep.”

  “Just humor me, please.”

  Laura peered at Marianne with a doubtful expression. “As long as they don’t stick the Tolari equivalent of leeches on me, I suppose it can’t do any harm.”

  * * *

  “Explain this to me, Major Russell,” demanded the voice. Angry.

  Adeline stared at the blank monitor and swallowed, reminding herself that he could see her. He does this to be intimidating, she thought. Be calm. “We sent two long-range scouts to Beta Hydri,” she said aloud, keeping her voice business-like and even. “One carried Laura Howard—”

  “The widow of the admiral who got us kicked out of Tolari space?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There was a mollified grunt. “Good choice. Go on.”

  “As I was saying, sir, we had Citizen Howard and one of our pilots on one ship, and Michael Gould and his crew on the other. It looked like all was going according to plan, until Gould’s ship lost power to the engines as well as to its phase platform. At the same time, they lost contact with Howard’s ship.” She paused, letting that sink in, before continuing.

  “Gould had to accept a tow from the Kekrax – they’re the only race the Sural will allow to operate in his system, and they’ve got a station just a few light years away. We picked up Gould, his crew, and his ship there.

  “Before the Kekrax towed them out, they had a chance to scan the planet. There was no sign of Howard’s ship. There should have been traceable debris, but there was nothing. Literally nothing. There’s not a single piece of high-tech material on the planet.” She stopped and took a breath, pushing down a sudden upwelling of apprehension. “Laura Howard and the pilot are missing and presumed dead.”

  “This has turned into an expensive bungle, Russell. You agreed to recover Marianne Woolsey without attracting the attention of the Trade Alliance, and now you’ve done just that.”

  “Sir, the Tolari are primitive – and I’ve seen for myself just how primitive they are. They still use chamber pots, for God’s sake! But whoever is protecting them can disable a Kline-Thompson-Nishida engine from a distance.”

  A fist hit a desk.

  “With respect, sir, I think we need to wait out the interdict and then see what information we can coax out of her. If she doesn’t have the information we need, she’ll still be in a position to find out. If we pull her out, she’s out, and it will be the devil’s own job trying to get a replacement in there.”

  Chapter Ten

  Cena held her scanner over Laura, lingering at her head. Marianne, still half-naked from her morning exam, lay on a nearby bed with Cena’s tablet, absorbed in watching the display of her baby.

  “Well, Doctor, do I pass?” Laura asked as Cena studied the readouts from a console.

  “You are in excellent health,” she answered in a preoccupied tone of voice.

  “What’s wrong, then?”

  Cena looked up, flashing a reassuring smile. “Nothing is wrong,” she said. “I am seeking a physical reason for your empathy. For us, it is the nerve bundles in our foreheads. I wondered if you had vestigial traces of them.”

  “Do I?”

  “No, none.”

  Marianne propped herself up on her elbows. “We need to talk about your locater chip.”

  “Everyone in Earth Fleet gets one,” Laura said. “I’ve had one since they started using phase tech to implant them. But they’re harmless unless someone tries to tamper with them.”

  “We have to get it out of your head.”

  Laura made an unhappy noise and leaned back on the examination bed.

  “Laura, if a Central Command ship picks up your signal, they’ll know you’re still alive, and they won’t stop trying to get to you, just like they haven’t stopped trying to kidnap me. You’ll be safer if they think you’re dead.”

  “Can’t the Sural just keep them from getting close enough?”

  “We don’t even know how close that is.”

  “Three AU.”

  Marianne stared at her.

  Laura looked guilty. “My husband was an admiral,” she explained, shrugging. “I heard things. Sometimes I remember them.”

  “Be that as it may,” Marianne said, “they’ll figure it out sooner or later. Right now, Central Command doesn’t even know what happened to that ship.”

  “What did happen to it?”

  “The Sural had it destroyed.”

  “Wasn’t there anything he wanted out of it? It was state of the art.”

  Marianne laughed. “The Tolari aren’t as primitive as Central Command thinks they are.”

  Laura glanced at Cena’s medical scanner for a moment. “So it seems.” Her eyes went back to Marianne.

  “Let us get that chip out of your head, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” Marianne added.

  Laura growled. Then she heaved a sigh. “Doctor, are you sure you really can get it out without killing me?”

  “I am certain of it,” Cena replied.

  “Well – if they catch me they’ll kill me, so I’m dead anyway,” Laura said. “I guess it wouldn’t be any worse to die on the operating table instead.”

  Marianne laughed. “That’s one way to look at it. But you won’t die. You’ll just wake up with a headache that’ll make you wish you had.”

  “The voice of experience?”

  “Oh yes. But I had other things to keep me from thinking about the pain.”

  “Really? Is it anything I can try?”

  Marianne sputtered a laugh. “Not exactly,” she said. “That was – um – whe
n the Sural and I were bonding. He distracted me.”

  “I was not pleased with them for initiating their bond before the surgery,” Cena added. “But it was an effective method of pain control afterward.”

  Marianne laughed again, and then pretended innocence when Cena glanced her way. She cleared her throat. “No, she really wasn’t pleased,” she agreed, stifling her mirth.

  “Take a walk in the gardens,” Cena said. “When you return, I will have my team assembled and prepared.”

  * * *

  In the garden, Marianne angled toward a gazebo and sat in its shade.

  Laura sat next to her. “I don’t know where to go.”

  “You can stay on Tolar,” Marianne said. “You’ll be safe here, and I could use the company.”

  Laura looked toward the huge stone fortress. “I don’t know that I want to live with the Sural. It’s going to take me a while to forgive him for killing John.”

  Marianne said nothing.

  “Even though—” She heaved a sigh. “When I looked at Kyza, I knew I would have done the same thing to protect her if she were mine.”

  The chattering of flutters filled the silence.

  “She looks just like any other little girl.”

  “She is,” Marianne said with a smile.

  “They’re aliens.”

  “Not so much.”

  “What?”

  “The Tolari are more closely related to humans than any of Earth’s great apes,” Marianne answered. Laura leaned back, seeming to digest that. “Think about it. How could a race that evolved on a different planet be closer to us than the apes that evolved on Earth?”

  “I don’t see how they could,” Laura said. “But if they’re human, why doesn’t the food here poison them the way it poisons us? And how do they disappear? Let me tell you, Central Command wants to know how they do that.”

  “They’ve been altered. I don’t know a lot about who did that, but I know it made the Tolari empaths as well.”

  Laura gave her a penetrating look. “You’ve been altered too,” she said.

  Marianne stilled. Slowly, she nodded. As she thought about what to say, she became aware of the Sural approaching. Laura frowned, glancing at the nearby path. He dropped his camouflage and burst into view, taking a seat next to Marianne, on the side away from Laura.

  “Beloved,” he murmured. Then he nodded at Laura. “Mrs. Howard,” he said in English.

  Laura shifted uncomfortably. “I guess you can call me Laura,” she said. “It looks like I’ll be here for a while.”

  “That would be wise,” he agreed in a quiet voice. “I cannot in honor send you away.”

  “I haven’t forgiven you.”

  He nodded. “I would not expect so.”

  “Just so you understand me.”

  “I believe I do.”

  An awkward silence fell, filled with the sounds of flutters calling to each other and insects humming. A breeze rustled the leaves of a nearby cora tree.

  “Can you alter me so I don’t accidentally get poisoned while I’m here?” Laura asked.

  The Sural stared at Marianne with accusation in his eyes, brows climbing up his forehead.

  “I didn’t tell her,” she said.

  He turned to Laura and studied her. Marianne felt frank admiration filter through him.

  “I will consider your request,” he replied.

  “Beloved, if she remains on Tolar as a human, she’ll develop malnutrition eating the few foods not toxic to her,” Marianne pointed out. “I had to have supplements from the ship to stay healthy.”

  “No, it was necessary to allow Central Command to believe that we could not provide for your nutritional needs. In truth, we could have. It will not be difficult to provide Laura with the supplements she requires to be healthy, for as long as she desires to remain human.”

  “Laura,” she added, “it’s irreversible. If you become Tolari, you can never change back, and … and this isn’t a bad thing, but you need to know that you’ll live a long time.”

  “How long a time?”

  Marianne hesitated. “Centuries.”

  Laura blanched. “Even longer to be a widow.” She looked down at her hands. “It’s bad enough I have a good eighty or ninety years left to me.”

  “Beloved,” the Sural said softly to Marianne, “I must return to my work.” He touched her face with his fingertips, sending an empathic pulse of desire, which left her breathless. Then he pulled away and winked out of sight.

  Marianne blushed and fanned herself with a hand, catching her breath.

  Laura gave her a quizzical look. “Something just happened between you two.”

  Marianne coughed. “Tolari have more than one way to express their feelings.”

  “Are all Tolari men like that?” she asked, staring at the space where he’d been.

  “I don’t know. The Sural is the only man I’ve ever had, Tolari or human.”

  “Like a Latin lover, dark and passionate.”

  “Very passionate,” Marianne said, blushing again. “I don’t know why he did that. He used to be so intent on concealing Tolari emotion from humans.”

  “I did just decide to stay.”

  “True.” She cocked her head. “Suralians are known for being more reserved than the rest of the Tolari, but come to think of it, the Sural has been less reserved since we bonded.”

  Laura grinned. “Why do you always call him ‘the Sural’? Doesn’t he have a name?”

  “He used to, but not anymore.”

  “What?” Laura’s mouth was pulled to one side, her forehead wrinkled in consternation.

  “Tolari rulers have their names taken away from them when they take power. They believe they become living representations of their provinces, and a name somehow gets between them and identifying completely with their people. In place of their names, they’re called either by a title based on the name of their province, or sometimes by the name of the province itself.

  “That’s how I understand it, anyway,” she went on. “I asked him once what his name was before he became the Sural. You should have seen him. He looked at me as if I were a poisonous snake. The name his father gave him is never spoken. By anyone. Ever. Apparently I was lucky that he was able to fight his instinct to throw me out of Suralia. That’s what he would have done to a Tolari who asked that question.”

  “Huh.”

  “He is Suralia. His life is tied to it. If Suralia were destroyed, he would walk into the dark – stop his heart and his neural activity and die. If he died in dishonor, it would go through his ruling bond and affect every man, woman, and child in Suralia. They would all follow him into the dark.”

  “Including you?”

  Marianne nodded. “I pledged my life to his.”

  Laura shuddered. “Would I have to do that?”

  “No, not if you don’t become Suralian,” Marianne answered. “You’re under his protection, but as long as you don’t belong to another province, you can stay in the stronghold indefinitely. You wouldn’t have rank or status, either, but that’s not really much of a factor at this point.”

  “Would they really do that? Commit mass suicide for him?”

  Marianne shuddered. “I saw it happen to another province after the Alexander left,” she answered softly. “More than three hundred thousand people.”

  “Oh. My.”

  * * *

  “Laura agreed to let Cena take the locater chip out,” Marianne told the Sural at the midday meal, when he asked the whereabouts of his new guest. “She’s still unconscious in the apothecaries’ quarters.”

  “Excellent,” the Sural said. He took a bite of fruit and mused. “It would be preferable now if she learned our language.”

  “Hmm,” Marianne said, her mouth full. She swallowed. “She may have some difficulty with that.”

  “Explain.”

  “She was a ship’s wife for ... I don’t know. A lot of years. Anyway, in spite of that she still spea
ks only English. She should have picked up at least one or two other languages over the years. Some humans are never able to master a second language, and I think she’s one of them.”

  The Sural nodded, his dark eyes thoughtful. “Let us see what Storaas can do for her.”

  A servant winked into sight in front of Marianne. “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Howard will wake soon, high one,” the servant said, and disappeared again.

  Marianne got up to leave. The Sural caught her hand. She smiled, sent him an empathic surge of affection, and pulled away to head for Cena’s quarters.

  Laura was stirring when she arrived. Cena scanned her.

  She opened her eyes and immediately squinted. “Oh my head,” she said. She looked up at Marianne. “You weren’t kidding about the headache.” She groaned.

  Marianne took her hand and gave it a sympathetic squeeze.

  “Do you want something for the pain?” Cena asked.

  She nodded, the movement making her groan again. Cena helped her sit up and handed her a small opaque vial. Marianne rolled her eyes. Laura started to drink and stopped. “PAH!” She spluttered and gagged. “That’s horrible!”

  “Best to knock it back in one gulp,” Marianne said. “I think Cena makes her potions taste bad on purpose.”

  Cena’s mouth twitched.

  Laura took a breath, held it, and swallowed the rest in one go. She spluttered again, gagging and wincing.

  “Good job,” Marianne said, patting her shoulder. Laura’s eyes began to glaze. Cena helped her to lie back again.

  “She will sleep through the afternoon,” Cena told Marianne in a quiet voice. “She should wake before the evening meal.”

  Marianne nodded. “You destroyed the chip?”

  “Yes, high one. It is dust.”

  * * *

  Marianne escorted a subdued but ambulatory Laura to the refectory that evening. While the Sural was absorbed with two of his agricultural advisors, quietly discussing restoration of the destroyed cropland in Terelia, Marianne busied herself with making sure that Laura used the food scanner properly and answering her many questions.

  “So now will you tell me why they keep calling you ‘high one’?” Laura asked.

  Marianne laughed. “Because I’m a member of the ruling caste.”