by Diana Palmer
But he didn’t seem to be offended. If anything, her retort seemed to amuse him. “You have been attempting to research our mating rituals, I gather.”
Her cheeks were fire-red by now. “It was part of my graduate work,” she lied.
“It was not,” he shot back. “We do not speak of our intimate customs, and nothing has been written about them which is sanctioned by our government. Whatever you learned, it was only an approximation of the truth.”
“Yes, well, I bought these black market vids that turned out to be bogus. But I do hear gossip in the course of my professional duties. A lot of races contend that Cehn-Tahr have barbaric mating rituals. It isn’t just speculation by exobiology professors in our own military academy,” she said defensively.
He cocked his head and studied her with open curiosity. His eyes narrowed as they searched hers. “Perhaps the rituals might seem barbaric, to an outworlder,” he said finally. He moved toward her.
Instinctively, she moved back a step, still standing at parade rest.
He smiled at the telltale movement. “Yes. Like us, you are unused to a close approach without combat.”
She drew in a breath. “Yes, sir.” It was a lie. It was his nearness that made her nervous.
“A Cehn-Tahr warrior marks his woman during their first mating. His teeth inflict a wound, there.” He indicated a spot just below her collarbone without actually touching her. “It leaves a faint scar that is worn proudly by the female. It denotes the ceremonial tie of bonding, much as other races exchange rings or bracelets. The female marks the male in the same fashion.” He pursed his lips and his eyes went green. “I understand that in some of the Rigellian colonies, a male is required to exchange nose hair with his intended. Hardly emotionally stimulating, one would think.”
She laughed in spite of herself. “Hardly.” She was remembering what Hahnson had told her about the mark. This was fascinating. She couldn’t contain her curiosity. “Do your people mate for life?”
“Yes,” he replied quietly. “The object of bonding is always children, and for that reason alone, we sanction relationships which offer stability.”
Her heart jumped. “But what if one of the couple is infertile...?”
“Our religious people have retreats, like the one here,” he explained. “There is a certain prejudice toward members of our society who are unable to breed. They usually volunteer for deep space patrols or enter a religious order.”
“But there are surgical means...” she began.
He shook his head. “Our culture will tolerate no artificial means of either conception or prevention of pregnancy. This is what you might call hardwired behavior, like the scar of mating, and other—unsavory—aspects of our culture that we have tried in vain to modify. It was not possible.”
It was taboo for him to say such things to her, or for her to listen to them. But she was fascinated. She was learning things that she would never know in the ordinary course of her profession.
“The mating...they say the process is violent.” She hated her own stammering query. She was a seasoned warrior, and a good doctor. But she had no knowledge of men or intimacy.
He couldn’t afford to explain it to her. The conversation was disturbing enough already. His fingers moved to her long, soft red-gold hair and tested its silky softness. “Passion is always violent,” he replied very quietly.
She was aware of so many things at once; of the cool, clean scent of his body, of its strength, of its warmth so near her own. She felt uncomfortable, yet she also felt safe, as if nothing could harm her when he was near. She wanted to touch him. She wanted him to touch her. Forbidden thoughts. Dangerous thoughts.
He let go of her hair, but his eyes still held hers. “Your curiosity will be your undoing one day,” he said enigmatically, his voice unusually harsh. “Our species are far more different than you realize.”
He turned away from her to the fireplace. As he paused in front of it, he reached up, covertly, and turned the animated images of a woman so that they faced the wall.
“It still amazes me,” he murmured absently.
“What does, sir?” she asked.
He chuckled. “The sight of the kehmatemer gathered around you like boys around a veteran warrior, listening to battle sagas. The old one told me exactly what you did on Ondar.” He glanced at her. “I did not reveal to him that I already knew.”
She relaxed. “Thank you for understanding, sir. He didn’t say that nobody was to know, but I felt uncomfortable letting you see it in my mind.” She glanced at him. “I wouldn’t have kept the secret if there had been any danger to you. Or to the Holconcom.”
“I know that,” he replied.
“Could you tell me exactly what they do?” she asked suddenly. “The kehmatemer?”
He hesitated, his eyes on the painting above the fireplace. She thought he was going to ignore the question. But then he spoke, slowly, as if choosing his words carefully. “They are an elite unit of my government, attached to the imperial Dectat itself,” he said slowly. “The old fellow, as you call him, is the most prejudiced member of the high council. He has hated humans most of his life.”
She was shocked. “He was very kind to me on Ondar,” she pointed out.
He turned, his eyes turbulent, a mixing of colors that she couldn’t decipher. “Surprising. Because he has the power to ask for your execution,” he said bluntly. “When I attached you to the Holconcom, he did just that. I had to use every atom of influence I possessed to keep the Council from turning you over to the Dectat. The Tri-Galaxy Council is afraid of the old fellow, you see, and like the cowards who staff it, they would rather give in than risk his displeasure. The old one made other threats as well, but Admiral Jeffrye Lawson and I defended you, and prevailed. And you led his men into battle, at his own request,” he said, shaking his head. “It is almost inconceivable to me.”
She was beginning to feel very good about herself, although there was a minor skirl of sadness at what the kindly old Cehn-Tahr had tried to do to her before they met. She recalled his antagonism at their first meeting, before they got to know anything about each other, and felt chilled. “Is he really such a terrible person that he could order me, a woman, to be killed?”
“Oh, yes,” he told her. His great eyes grew sad with memory. “When I was young, the finest military academy in the three galaxies was located on Dacerius. I was sent there to study.”
Which, she thought silently, explained his affection for the Dacerian people. Somewhere in the back of her mind she recalled that, before the wars, Rojoks had also sent their finest command candidates to that military academy on Dacerius.
“I became attracted to a girl from one of the desert tribes,” Dtimun continued. “We were intimate. I bonded with her, and she became pregnant with my child.”
Madeline felt an odd emotion, a flash of jealousy that she was barely able to hide from him. She recalled seeing the woman in his mind, in the Dibella system.
“Your ‘old fellow’ found out about it, and with the Dectat’s approval, he and his men came to Dacerius, kidnapped the girl and brought her to me. He killed her in front of my eyes, brutally, while I raged at him.” His tall body stiffened with the memory. “I would have killed him, but his bodyguard kept me at bay. I had breached the interspecies edict. No child of mixed species has ever been created in my culture. It is our greatest taboo, and it still carries the death penalty.”
She grimaced. It was hard to think that the kindly old man who’d taught her to call Meg-Ravens had been capable of such blatant cruelty. It must have hurt the commander in a way he’d never been hurt in his life. The scars were still there, in his emotions, as if all the years in between had done nothing to erase them. She recalled that flash of memory that she’d seen in Dtimun’s mind on their away mission, and realized that it was this one. He was
sharing it with her. Odd, for such a private person. But flattering.
“It must have been very painful.”
“Painful.” He sighed. “Yes. It was painful. I remained on Dacerius until I graduated from the military academy and accepted my commission,” he said finally. “Although I retained my estates here, on Memcache, I have spent little time here in recent memory. The old soldier and I never spoke again face-to-face until the Holconcom was attached to the Tri-Galaxy Fleet, and duties of command required it.” He turned toward her. “I studied on Dacerius sixty-five of your years ago,” he told her, his tone wistful. “Long before you were born, warwoman,” he added gently.
“It still hurts you,” she said quietly.
His eyes narrowed on her face. “Of course. I loved her. I wanted the child very much. But she was Dacerian, you see—still Cularian, but different from the Cehn-Tahr. There has never been a child born of a Cehn-Tahr mating with a woman of another species.” He smiled sadly. “It is said that the act of carrying a Cehn-Tahr child would kill an alien female. So if the old one had not intervened, perhaps she would have died in childbirth, or before, naturally and without terror.”
She nodded slowly. “Some intervention would be necessary,” she said. “And DNA modification would also be required. Though you and the Dacerians are both Cularian species, your physiology is just different enough from Dacerian to complicate what would be a natural process between genuine members of the same species. From what little we know of your obstetrical theory, and it isn’t much, the ordinary birth weight of Cehn-Tahr children is far and away larger than that of a normal Dacerian fetus. Merely carrying the child would likely have killed her in a matter of weeks without close medical supervision. It would have been a very dangerous pregnancy.” She tried very hard not to show the jealousy she felt.
He was watching her closely. “As dangerous as a Cehn-Tahr-human hybrid?”
Surely, he meant that hypothetically, she assured herself, but she recited multiplication tables in her head, just in case. “That would be far more dangerous,” she said. “It would require intervention at the outset. If your women are like Rojok females, they have a gestation one-third the period of ours, and your babies weigh about two times as much. It would require constant monitoring.”
His eyes, so sad, suddenly took on a faint green shimmer. “Indeed. We have genetic ties to Rojoks, as other members of the Cularian species. A Cehn-Tahr child, born of a human, is not even a remote possibility.” He sighed. He smiled. “However, if it were possible, the monitoring would have to be done in the brig while you and I awaited summary execution.”
She burst out laughing. It wasn’t really funny. But it was. “Yes. There would be many problems.”
He studied her quietly. “Many more than you know,” he said, his voice very quiet.
He realized that he’d never shared these things with another living being, not even members of his own Clan. She invited confidences. And not just because of her professional integrity. “In between the instances when I am tempted to throw you in the brig for carrying weapons into battle and tearing up bars,” he mused, “I find you very good company.”
“Thank you, sir.”
He looked around the great hall. “I love this fortress. I am bound to it by blood and tradition,” he said. “But the memories are still too painful to allow me to live in it.”
“At least you have some tender memories,” she said wistfully. “Mine are colorless. I live in a gray world, without emotion.”
He pursed his lips as he studied her. “During our confinement at Ahkmau in the Rojok concentration camp, you would have died for Stern, for Hahnson, for Komak—even for me. Self-sacrifice springs from emotion.”
“Yes, well, sometimes the neutering doesn’t quite take.”
“I overheard you speaking to Hahnson about it, on the Morcai,” he replied, surprising her. “None of you are what your military intended. Even the clones who replaced Stern and Hahnson have emotional ties to you.”
“I noticed,” she said with a sigh. “As soldiers, we’re flawed.”
“I would call it a benefit,” he told her. “Emotion is not evil.”
“It distracts, they tell us.”
He gave her a wry look. “I have not found that it distracts you from tearing holes in soldiers from the First Fleet during R&R,” he replied.
She grimaced. “They insulted my commanding officer,” she stated again.
He moved toward her, with his hands clasped behind his back, and looked down at her solemnly, frowning. “Have you never wanted a child?”
It was a benefit of her training that she didn’t faint at his feet. The word produced a blinding wave of tangled emotions. She had never considered the possibility of it. She had only known children as a doctor knows a patient.
Her confusion seemed to make him less rigid. Aboard ship or on missions, he was tolerant and even amused by his human crewmen. But alone, with her, there was a distance that he kept between them. Now, it was slowly being closed.
He studied her face in its frame of long, waving red-gold hair quietly. “You have the courage of a galot,” he said. “Your compassion equals it. You are loyal to your crewmates, and overly indulgent of Komak, who tests even my own patience to the limit. You are frequently the subject of praise from members of my government who would have gleefully attended your spacing when you first joined the unit. Yet, with all your attributes as a soldier and a doctor, it is your beauty which makes you stand out—a beauty of which you seem to be totally unaware.”
She felt her cheeks burning. She wasn’t used to comments on her appearance. Never having had them from any other source, she was ignorant of what her response should be.
“Your eyes always laugh,” he said softly, searching them.
They were green. But unlike his, they didn’t change shade to denote emotion. She was glad, at the moment.
The tension was suddenly explosive, full of promise, full of danger. He looked at her in a way he never had before, and her body seemed to recognize something in his expression that made it come alive with sensation.
He became aware of the sudden change as soon as she did, and the danger it presented. He clamped down on his emotions visibly and turned away from her. “We must go,” he said. “We have tempted fate too often today already.”
She didn’t pretend to be unaware of what he meant. She felt odd. She followed behind him, silent, as he walked down the great hall to the front door.
He glanced back at her. “It is a greater irony than you know,” he said.
“What is, sir?”
“The identity of the old fellow whose life you saved,” he replied, with a faint glint of green in his elegant, elongated eyes.
“He must be a heck of a soldier,” she remarked. “He was wearing more medals than Lawson.”
He laughed aloud. “I assure you that he earned every one of them. One was awarded to him for thwarting a party of assassins who attempted to slit his throat while he was deploying his unit in the Great Galaxy War.”
“Could I ask how he thwarted them?”
His eyes twinkled as he looked down at her. “He called a flock of Meg-Ravens to assist him. The assassins had to be led to their executions. Meg-Ravens always attack...”
“...the eyes,” she finished for him, nodding. “Yes, I know.”
“It was he who taught you how to communicate with them,” he added, surprising her.
She chuckled. “Yes. We had very little time, which is why I only learned a few phrases. It was while we were in a stolen Rojok transport making our way back to our own lines. He managed to outmaneuver the skimmer chasing us and blew it up. He’s a very good pilot.”
“Yes,” he agreed.
He opened the door for her.
She frowned, surprised.
“Another clash of cultures, Ruszel?” he mused, watching her expression.
“Well, I think it is,” she replied slowly. “Nobody ever opened a door for me before. Since our military service renders us unisex, women don’t think of themselves as women.”
“Really?” He lifted an eyebrow and pursed his lips. His eyes went green. “If you have no feminine instincts, why are you so curious about Cehn-Tahr mating rituals?”
She rushed through the door without even looking at him. That slow, sensuous laugh made her walk faster.
* * *
BUT ONCE OUTSIDE, he made no move toward the skimmer. “Have you ever seen canolithe in bloom?” he asked abruptly.
Her eyes lit up. “No! They’re legendary—the only species of plant known to any civilization which reacts visibly to emotion!”
He laughed. “Would you like to see them?”
“Oh, yes!”
“Come along.”
He led the way down a small hill, through a stretch of forest with towering trees that reminded Madeline of a bamboo forest she’d seen once on Terravega during a rare visit to the human homeworld. The woods were cool and pleasant, their floor carpeted with lichens and thick green grass, with occasional growths of oddly shaped flowers in every sort of color.
The commander stopped in a clearing, and nodded toward a tiny mound of flowers that reminded Madeline forcefully of the neon lights that hallmarked the Silken Strip in Benaski Port.
They were on tall stalks. They were shaped like tapering glasses, milky-white and glowing and then burnished with one vibrant color after another. A silvery murmur came from them as they moved gracefully in a light breeze that smelled of perfume.
“May I go closer?” Madeline asked him, so excited that her face was flushed with it.
He nodded.
She approached the beautiful flowers slowly, and with reverence. She didn’t know a single soul, alien or human, who’d ever seen the plants, which were truly legendary.