Breath of Life

by Christine Pope

  After a moment he said, “You are currently enrolled in university coursework, are you not?”

  “Yes.” Why should he care?

  “You will continue with that. I will have a desktop unit installed in your room. Is there anything else you require?”

  My freedom, I thought, but I only shook my head. “All my books are already on my tablet. But—you really want me to keep going to school?”

  “Of course,” he replied, as if surprised that I should have even asked the question. “I wish your life to be disrupted as little as possible.”

  Funny sentiment for someone who had basically blackmailed me into being here in the first place. I just murmured, “Thanks,” and went back to eating. That seemed to be the safest thing to do.

  He seemed to guess my mood, and went on with his own breakfast. The rest of the meal passed in silence. The mech came in to clear away our empty plates, and Sarzhin rose from his seat.

  “Come,” he said. “Let me show you something of where you’ll be living.”

  The mansion seemed almost bigger on the inside than it appeared from the outside, if that were possible. Why one person needed all that space, I couldn’t imagine, although I had to admit to myself there was something quite decadent about having room after room, each devoted to its own purpose—the library, which had real books on the shelves, in languages both human and alien; the Zhore’s study, with banks of gleaming screens and yet more books; a gallery filled with art from a dozen worlds, some of it quite hideous to my untrained eyes; the kitchen and the ranks of bedrooms and bathrooms. He did not show me his chambers, however.

  “And the greenhouse,” he said finally, after he had taken me all over the house and I had begun to feel as if I could do with another plate of those marvelous crepes and mushrooms.

  The space was huge, easily the size of my parents’ entire homestead. Far above us was a many-paned ceiling of clear polymer. Grow lights in various spectrums hung from metal bars separating the polymer panes, and all around us were plants in so many shapes and sizes and colors that I didn’t quite know where to look first.

  “Azar lilies,” he told me, pointing out a row of elegant blooms in shades of deep blood red to almost black. “Highly prized.”

  “They are?” I asked stupidly, then blushed. I probably should have known that, but besides helping my father with his hydroponics, botany wasn’t very high on my list of priorities.

  The dark hood tilted down toward me. “I just sold a particularly fine specimen to the chairman of your Gaian Relocation Corporation for ten thousand units.”

  “Ten thousand?” I gasped. “For a flower?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Well, that explained where he got some of his money, I supposed. The source of the Zhore’s wealth had been the subject of some idle speculation between Libba and myself, back in the days when we still discussed such things, but I’d never imagined he was selling flowers for more apiece than it had cost my sister to go to college.

  He did seem quite proud of the greenhouse, and I was forced to admit it was pretty spectacular, with its careful sections of rare flowers and exotic vegetables. The fungi sprouted from a variety of wooden stumps or trays of mossy-looking substances, back in a far corner where none of the grow lights had been hung. Some of the mushrooms looked a little frightening in their natural state; I was glad they had come out of the kitchen already prepared so I didn’t have a chance to be scared off from eating them.

  At length we returned to the dining room, where the mech fed us another amazing meal—this one a very fine casserole with vegetables that had to have come from the greenhouse, as well as tender meat cutlets whose origin I didn’t recognize. No huge surprise, as my family couldn’t afford real meat. Most people on Lathvin IV couldn’t, except executives with the GRC. We mostly ate soy substitutes and used protein capsules as supplements.

  Sarzhin told me the cutlets were more mushrooms. Not that I was an expert, since I’d had meat only twice in my life, both times when my family still lived on the moon, but the texture and taste reminded me of my last birthday meal there, when I’d had something called a tenderloin.

  I must have made a surprised sound.

  He said quietly, “The Zhore are what your people would call vegetarians.”

  “Oh,” I responded, since I didn’t know what else to say. You could have said the same thing about most of the people I knew, although they didn’t really keep to that sort of diet by choice.

  After that we ate in silence for awhile until the mech showed up to clear the table, although Sarzhin seemed in no hurry to rise from his seat. I remained in my place and fought back a yawn. We’d had wine with dinner, just one glass apiece, but I wasn’t used to even that much. I’d drunk champagne on my eighteenth birthday and had tasted something called retsina once and thought it quite nasty, but that was about it for my experiences with alcohol.

  Sarzhin’s hooded head turned toward me. “You asked me last night what my purpose was in bringing you here.” He paused, then went on, “Anika, I must ask you something.”

  I sat up a little straighter in my chair, the after-dinner lassitude abruptly disappearing at the intensity I heard in his voice. Throughout the day he had been unfailingly polite, so much so that for quite large spans—well, at least five or ten minutes at a stretch—I had almost forgotten to be afraid of him. But now my heart began to beat a little more quickly, and I knotted my fingers into the napkin in my lap.

  Silent, I stared back at him, at the concealing hood, at the gloved fingers that lay black against black on the shining tabletop. He had six fingers on each hand, I realized.

  “Anika, will you marry me?”

  The words were simple enough, but at first I couldn’t quite comprehend their meaning. Surely this person—this alien—hadn’t just asked me to be his wife!

  It seemed, though, that he had. I gaped at him, the dinner I had just eaten beginning to churn in my stomach.

  “You may answer without fear,” he said, his deep voice quiet and calm. “No harm will ever come to you in this house, or by my hand.”

  Fine words. Then again, he had said or done nothing throughout the day that could possibly be construed as threatening. Which didn’t mean much, of course, as I knew nothing of him or his race. He could be lying about not hurting me. Somehow that didn’t matter. I knew I couldn’t possibly accept his preposterous proposal—even if he hadn’t blackmailed me into being here, surely he couldn’t expect a human woman to readily agree to be his wife?

  “I can’t marry you,” I said at once. This had to be a bad dream. Visions from horror vids past rose up in my mind, which seemed all too eager to present a series of gruesome possibilities as to what might be hiding under that hooded cloak. Was marriage the same for the Zhore as it was for humans? Would he expect me to—to—

  His fingers clenched against the tabletop. I swallowed against the sour bile in my throat before I added, “I don’t even know you. And besides, you’re a—a—”

  “A Zhore?” he interjected. “True enough. I will not dispute you on that point.” He pushed his chair back; metal screeched against the polished stone floor, and I winced. “It is late. We will end our day now, I think.”

  That sounded like a wonderful idea. Too bad he hadn’t decided to end the discussion about five minutes earlier. I got up as well. “I’ll just go to my room now.”

  “You know the way?”

  “Oh, yes,” I said quickly. The last thing I wanted was for him to follow me upstairs. “Thank you. That is, thank you for dinner and for the tour of your home.”

  “It is your home now as well.”

  Yes, I supposed it was. My home…or my prison. I only nodded and threw a tentative little smile in his direction that probably would have fooled no one, even an alien. And I fled to my room.

  Not that I felt particularly safe there, either. He made no move to follow me, though, and that was something. I locked the door, stumbled over to the bed, and sank d
own on it, then hugged my trembling hands against myself.

  This was the reason Sarzhin had demanded that my father send me to him? Because he wanted a wife?

  I couldn’t begin to fathom it. He was an alien. If he wanted a spouse, a companion in this huge house, why didn’t he get one among his own kind? Or, if that were somehow impossible, why couldn’t he have just bought himself a wife from one of those dubious sectors whose business it was to handle such transactions?

  Good questions. I didn’t think I had the courage to ask them of Sarzhin, however.

  Instead, I got up and checked the door. It was locked. Not that that meant much; I guessed the Zhore could get in if he really wanted to. Could come in and—

  No, I was not going to think of such things. True, he had bent my brain about fifty different ways with his shocking request, but he had made no move to touch me, done nothing to prevent me from all but running away from him. That had to mean something.

  What that might be, I wasn’t quite sure of at the moment. I did know that pacing around the room and compulsively checking the lock every five minutes wasn’t going to do me much good. Somehow I made myself go into the bathroom and wash my face and clean my teeth with the ultrasonic device he’d provided for me. I got out of my dingy gray coveralls and into my equally utilitarian sleep shirt and slid into that seductively soft bed.

  It must have been the bed, because at length I did manage to fall asleep. A fitful sleep, though, broken by the passing brush of nightmares. More than once my eyes opened and strained against the darkness, looking for the deeper black of Sarzhin’s robes.

  I never saw him, of course.

  The next morning, Sarzhin acted as if nothing odd had passed between us the night before, so I followed his lead and attempted to do the same. It actually wasn’t as difficult as I had feared, because he spoke of my computer and my schoolwork, and I responded in kind. In fact, the computer appeared later that morning, brought by a too obviously curious delivery man I vaguely recognized as one of the odd-jobbers who hung around the Port Natchez commissary. He didn’t get much more than a quick peek inside, though, before the mech briskly took the white plastic box from him and shut the door in his face. A second or two later I heard the airlock cycle and knew the man must have left.

  Getting the computer configured and my coursework loaded onto it took a good deal of the remainder of the day. To be sure, I took longer at the task than I really needed to. Anything to avoid being alone in the Zhore’s company.

  Luckily, Sarzhin made himself scarce. Maybe he was off tending his lilies, hoping he’d earn back what he’d spent on the computer. No, that was silly. The computer was top of the line, or at least top of the limited line the Port Natchez commissary carried, but you still could have bought ten of them for what that crazy executive had paid for his one plant.

  Late in the afternoon, though, a diffident knock came at my door. I opened it to see Sarzhin standing there.

  “You have gotten the setup working?”

  “Yes,” I replied. I hated to invite him into my room, but I thought it would be rude not to let him see that I had everything up and running. So I pointed at the table where I’d had the mech deposit the computer. “It went pretty flawlessly. I just finished downloading yesterday’s lectures. I’m a little bit behind, but I’ll get caught up tomorrow.”

  “I apologize for the disruption.”

  I almost said that it was no problem, but the truth was, I wouldn’t have gotten behind if I hadn’t come here. So I shrugged. “I work fast. I told my instructors I’d just moved. They understood.”

  He nodded, then seemed to hesitate as he gazed down at me. “Dinner will be served soon.” Another one of those odd little pauses, and he said, “You did not bring many belongings with you.”

  At first I didn’t quite understand what he meant, but then I looked down at myself, at the baggy coveralls I wore, and realized he was saying, in the most oblique way possible, that my wardrobe was not quite up to snuff, either in variety or design. True, these coveralls were more a dark khaki rather than the gray I’d worn the day before, but that was really splitting hairs.

  “I brought what I had,” I said honestly. “I’m sorry I don’t match your fancy house.”

  He drew himself up, and somehow I sensed he had tensed beneath the enveloping robes. “I did not mean to offend you.”

  “No offense. As my father always says, there’s no shame in being poor, but it can be damned inconvenient.”

  A laugh drifted out of the hood. Funny that an alien could make such a human sound. Actually, his voice sounded very human as well. If I listened hard, I could hear just the faintest hint of some sort of accent around the edges of his pronunciation, but really, most of the time he sounded as polished as a commentator on a ’net program. He lifted one gloved hand and extended it, a thin piece of metallic-coated plastic held between his thumb and forefinger. “Take this, then.”

  “What is it?”

  “You’ve never seen a credit voucher?”

  I shook my head. My parents handled all the money matters in the household. The local currency of Port Natchez was largely barter. I’d earned spare components for our atmospheric generator by trading a few hours in someone’s hydroponic garden or babysitting a couple of the settlers’ kids, but that was about it.

  “You will purchase yourself an adequate wardrobe.”

  “I couldn’t—”

  “Yes, you will.” Before I could flinch or pull my hand back, he reached out and slid the plastic voucher into my unwilling palm. It felt cool and hard against my skin.

  “But—”

  “Return that to me, when you are done with it,” he said smoothly, overriding my protests as if he hadn’t heard them. “Dinner will be at nineteen hundred. You have approximately one half-hour.”

  I didn’t know him very well, but usually when someone adopts such a firm tone, it means they really don’t want to be argued with. Any further debate would most likely be pointless, so I just nodded. If he wanted to waste his money, that was his problem.

  The hood dipped slightly, as if he had nodded. “One half-hour,” he repeated, and then he turned and left.

  That didn’t give me a huge amount of time, considering the fact that I basically knew nothing about clothes, either where to get them or what was even supposed to be in fashion. All our clothing came from the Port Natchez commissary, which carried a decent supply of coveralls and other work wear, outer and underwear, and sturdy shoes, but would probably be considered somewhat lacking in the style department. Ordering items from out of the system didn’t seem to be a viable option, either, as they would take forever to get here and the shipping costs would most likely be higher than the actual pieces themselves. However, Lathvin did have two moons, one of which had a fairly large spaceport complex of its own. The system was located in a strategic spot for refueling, and so served as something of a shipping and transport hub. A good deal of traffic that had nothing to do with the homesteaders and the development of the planet itself passed in and out of the moon, and I recalled Libba mentioning in one of her messages that there had been a sizable duty-free shopping area in the spaceport.

  So I went to my computer and did a little investigating, and found that some of the shops actually would deliver down to the planet’s surface for what seemed like a reasonable fee. Of course, I had no idea what was fashionable and what wasn’t, but I guessed I probably wouldn’t need fancy dresses or shoes with heels so high I couldn’t imagine ever trying to walk in them. However, combinations of fitted tunics with slim pants seemed very popular, so I ordered a bunch of those in various colors and necklines, as well as some pretty flat shoes that were shown in the images accompanying those outfits.

  Despite my worries over doing significant damage to Sarzhin’s credit voucher, in the end the total wasn’t as bad as I had thought. The clothing would be delivered some time the next day, so he’d just have to live with my dingy coveralls for one more evening.<
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  I did go into the bathroom and brush my hair and apply some of the tinted lip moisturizer I’d found in one of the drawers there. How the Zhore would have even known that human women used such things, I wasn’t really sure, but the ’cycled air could be drying, even as damp as the planet was overall. Lotions and moisturizers were pretty much considered necessities on Lathvin, along with vitamin supplements and rainproof boots. You couldn’t really call the lip tint makeup, especially when contrasted with the professionally painted women I’d just seen in the spaceport shops’ catalogs, but I still shook my head at myself. Would a Zhore even notice the difference between brushed and unbrushed hair, or care if my lips were now a slightly deeper pink?

  Probably his comment about my clothing had bothered me more than I thought it had. I’d never had the time or inclination to think about my appearance and didn’t know why he should care about it, either.

  Well, except for the fact that he apparently wanted to marry me.

  I shivered a little and wondered if he would ask me again tonight. Whether he did or didn’t wouldn’t change the fact that he was expecting me, and that now, judging by the chronometer on the wall above my desk, I was already five minutes late.

  I shut the bathroom door and went downstairs to meet him.

  He asked if I had taken care of my shopping, and I told him that I had, and that the packages should be delivered tomorrow. He nodded, apparently satisfied by my reply.

  “And here’s your voucher,” I said, sliding it across the gleaming tabletop toward him. That way, I didn’t have to hand it to him directly and risk brushing my hand against his.

  Slim black-gloved fingers wrapped around the plastic and lifted it. Without speaking, he took the voucher and slipped it away somewhere within the folds of his robes.

  The silence seemed to stretch, filled with unspoken tension. Maybe I had offended him by so obviously trying to avoid his touch.

  “How are your lilies?” I blurted.

  “They are very well, thank you,” he said.