Broken Vision

by J. A. Clarke

"Have you heard of the Match Key?"

  "Is this an interrogation? Because if so, by law, there needs to be an arbitrator--"

  "If you feel a need to confess, we can open up a vid screen."

  She definitely was in no shape to deal with him. But she took comfort from the fact that the muscle in his cheek was going crazy again and his eyes had narrowed to thin, gleaming slits.

  "My conscience is as clear as a mapfly's wing," she said blithely.

  "We'll deal with your conscience in good time. Answer the question."

  She couldn't remember what he'd asked. "Is that a threat? Because, if so, an arbit--"

  For such a large man, he moved fast, invading her personal space. He planted large fists on either side of her shoulders and, Sortor save her, there was that hypnotic blue gaze again boring into her. Her stomach came alive with lots of little bedring creatures flipping and jumping and spinning.

  "When you were younger," he said softly, as his gaze bored ever deeper, "I admired your spirit, your courage to challenge. What others saw as rebelliousness and anti-establishment, I saw--sometimes, not always--as the epitome of a necessary and healthy evolution for a nation struggling to integrate with others in a unified galaxy. Did you know that the academy is using your thesis, the one on education, to experiment with mixed classes at the very youngest levels? That's a huge departure from conventional thinking."

  Her stupid brain couldn't focus on anything but the word "admired". Alerik Mariltar admired her? He'd noticed her enough to admire her?

  He shoved his face even closer. The faint scent of tiug leaf again teased her nostrils. "That doesn't mean I didn't think you'd benefit from a good old-fashioned discipline session." He leaned back. "Several, in fact."

  "You are threatening me," she croaked. It was all she could think of to say. "I demand an arbitrator."

  "You haven't answered the question."

  "I don't remember the question."

  "Do you know what the Match Key is?"

  She did. She wasn't about to admit it. "What happens when I answer you? Do you leave me alone?"

  Alerik narrowed his eyes, and propped himself on one fist. He flexed his other hand above her face. "Discipline. Can take so many forms. Wonder what would be the most effect--"

  "I don't feel well." It was a cowardly move, but the heat under the thin cover was unbearable.

  He replaced his hand at her shoulder, which brought him a hand's breadth away from her face again. He ignored her lie.

  "You don't know, do you? But true to nature, you won't admit it. The Match Key," he said with too much relish, "is one of those ancient Mariltar institutions you really despise."

  His eyes were wide open, sucking her into their hypnotic depths. His mouth curved in a smile she instantly mistrusted.

  "From time to time, under certain circumstances, the Match Key is used to select a lifemate. Your name came up."

  "For what?" The bedring creatures were going crazy in her stomach. She really was beginning to feel nauseous. Maybe this was just a bad dream and she'd wake up soon in her own bed safe and sound without even a memory of this madness.

  "For whom, would be the correct question."

  Blazing starpits, he couldn't be serious and she had had enough. "Listen and listen carefully, Governor. When I take a life partner, it will be by my choice. No one or no thing, hallowed ancient custom or not, is going to dictate my mate. Now do be a good boy and run along. Please. I have an ache in my head." Not to mention other parts. Her whole body was beginning to feel like someone had taken her and whacked her against the wall.

  "Don't you have any curiosity about with whom you've been matched?"

  "No, not at all." She squinted, trying to block out the hypnotic call of his eyes. She truly was developing a bad headache. "Because it doesn't mean a thing. Anyway, it's probably some stuffy bureaucrat in the gov--"

  Heat exploded in her body followed by chills that chased from her scalp to her toes and raised goose bumps as they went. Even her eyebrows felt like they stood straight up.

  "Blazing starpits!" she whispered.

  "Language," he chided and shook his head. "So much work to do. So many misconceptions to overcome--stuffy bureaucrat, drug push--"

  "Don't you think," she said through her teeth, "for a nan, not even a nanonan that I'm going to become your life partner. My parents will stand by me. There's no law in the galaxy that can enforce such a ludicrous custom."

  Alerik straightened, relieving her of his immediate proximity and his hypnotic gaze. His face settled back into its stern lines. "The Match Key, when consulted, has chosen the mate of countless Mariltar heirs back through the old times."

  "Then unconsult it," she snapped. "That's just pathetic. It's time to break with tradition."

  His dimples showed briefly, but there was no humor in his expression. "Unfortunately, Green Eyes, the Match Key cannot be challenged. There is nothing you, nor I, nor your parents, nor mine can do about it. It's done. Now get some rest, because the next time we talk I intend to find out why and where you were attacked by a batriel, and where it is you're hiding a star vessel. Wife."

  Chapter 5

  Margaine Confluence:/First Rising

  Pallas Five

  Alerik strolled into the command center on Pallas Five feeling unaccountably pleased with himself. Nothing about that conversation with Maegan had gone the way he'd planned. She had managed to aggravate nerves he thought had long been desensitized under the rigorous demands of leadership. But the exhilarating rush he had come to expect from encounters with her was still bubbling through his veins.

  He had intended today to interrogate her about the mysterious star vessel, which had appeared twice in the air space over Pallas Four. They were positive it had launched from and landed on Pallas Four, but something had interfered with their trackers and they still hadn't located it.

  Curious too that Maegan had been found unconscious in her habitat unit by Coryon at some point after the star vessel incident. He didn't believe in coincidence.

  He had not intended to bring up the Match Key. It was a discussion meant for a private, intimate setting, not a healing room, and it was certainly far too early in the plan he had devised, which now was completely blasted to asteroid dust. So he'd listened to his own words with a sense of disbelief that he'd been driven to act so completely out of character.

  How did she do that him? And do it so quickly?

  Sharm intercepted him. "How is she?"

  "Completely unaware how lucky she is to be alive, and too full of feistiness for her own good."

  Sharm snorted. "Didn't get anything out of her, did you?"

  Alerik stuck his hands in the pockets of his breeches, and eyed his friend. Time to confess and face the swift, merciless blade of Sharm's judgment. No one else had guts enough to tell him like it was.

  "No, but I will. Right now she's busy digesting the concept of the Match Key."

  "Balls of Sortor!" Sharm's too-pretty features became a rigid mask. "What have you--? Would you like to step into my office and explain that one?"

  "Not really, but it's better than having you grind my bones in front of a room full of subordinates."

  Levity was wasted. Grim-faced, Sharm stepped to one side and gestured politely. Feeling, not for the first time, as if their positions were reversed, Alerik sauntered across the room, greeting members of the security team on duty as he went. "Where are Drakal and Corenna?"

  "Out sweeping the jungle of Pallas Four for signs of the slieking star vessel."

  No doubt about it, Sharm was working himself up. He rarely cursed. "Didn't you tell them it won't do any good?"

  "It's keeping them busy and will quite probably do more good than your visit with Maegan Shale apparently did."

  "I'm not done with her yet," Alerik said mildly. In Sharm's office he dropped onto a hard chair.

  "Privacy!" Sharm commanded as he followed Alerik in. The clear plexiwalls of the office space turned an opaque blue. H
e didn't wait for the door to completely close before he launched his attack. "You actually went and did it, didn't you? All those reasons not to, and yet you still consulted the slieking Match Key. Are you out of your tiny trill brain."

  Alerik leaned back and stretched out his legs. Hard to tell how long this would take and Sharm had yet to address the worst of it. "My father used it to find the love of his life," he pointed out.

  "Your father was under Coalition orders to find a mate from another race. The Great Conflict was over, and a united galaxy was being born. He had little choice. You, on the other hand, do. Or you had. Balls of Sortor, Alerik, what were you thinking?"

  "That it was time to take a mate?" he said, straight-faced. It was nothing less than the truth. And like everything else that influenced his life, the Match Key was a time-honored and time-tested ancient institution. No one would question the results. Trained to high office as he was, his life partner had to be an impeccable choice.

  Which made the Match Key's selection so shocking, so spectacularly inappropriate for a Mariltar heir. And so very exhilarating.

  The bonds that had tethered him to compliance all his life unraveled in the blink of an eye. In the relative quiet of Sharm's office, with his friend looking on in stern disapproval, he experienced a too-brief moment of heady, unfettered freedom. A realization had begun to slowly surface that a new, completely unexpected course for his life lay wide open to him.

  "A mate? Since when? Have you been sniffing shlil dust? One day you have your choice of prime female companionship, without any pressure for commitment, I might add, and the next you decide you have to be bonded for life?"

  "I think I felt an urge to create miniature Aleriks."

  He watched with interest as Sharm's eyes popped, his face turned bright red, and his mouth worked soundlessly.

  "And the Match Key is how you do it?" he finally spluttered. "If you had to have such a demented disconnect in your slieking synapses, you could at least have made your own decision. You could have had your choice. Any woman. Any unmated woman in the slieking galaxy."

  "That's an exaggeration. There's at least one exception."

  Still red-faced, Sharm screwed his pretty-boy features into what, for him, was a ferocious scowl. "Sagar's sacred crystals! I don't believe it. Did you rig the Match Key? Why would you do that?"

  "Of course I didn't rig the Match Key. It's not possible." But looking back on it, he had probably quite unintentionally given a fair description of Maegan. Her face and behavior stuck in his mind more than any other. Not that it would have made any difference to the Match Key.

  Sharm began to pace in a wide circle. He made one full rotation before he shot Alerik a grim look. "I don't even want to ask what Maegan Shale has to do with any of this, but this lasersting tearing at my gut tells me I already know."

  Alerik relaxed and clamped his lips together to stop himself from grinning. A fool Sharm wasn't. He crossed one booted ankle over the other. "Interesting choice, isn't she?"

  "Interesting is not the word I would use. Unsuitable? Yes," Sharm snapped. "She's not the right lifemate for you, Alerik. She's too...unpredictable, too slieking unruly."

  Cold, hard reason had no argument. With the exception, interestingly, of the Match Key, Maegan Shale was not anyone's definition of a perfect choice of a lifemate for a Mariltar heir. And maybe that was part of the attraction. From many, many rotations ago, he held a clear memory of a young Maegan, barely into puberty, jumping into an adult conversation to vociferously denounce the exploitation of bonded entertainment house workers. Not that he'd agreed with her position at the time. He'd just admired her conviction and envied her the freedom to express an uncommon point of view.

  Sharm stopped pacing and leaned against the side of his workstation. He folded his arms and glowered. "Alerik, she's involved in something. You know she is."

  "No doubt."

  "So find a way to refute the Match Key results."

  The thought had crossed his mind numerous times. Curious that he had never acted upon it. Shocking that Sharm would suggest it.

  "I'm a little confused. Are you upset because I used the Match Key or are you upset about the results?"

  "What difference does it make? The decision was asinine, the result disastrous. And this isn't about me. Start taking this seriously. When you make a mistake, it's volcanic."

  Alerik raised his brows. The more Sharm objected, the more unshakable his conviction became. "Tell me what you really think. Neither set of parents had any objections whatsoever."

  "They don't know what we know."

  "Which is what exactly? They do know Maegan. And they know me. I'm gathering a quorum, Sharm, to legitimize the partnership. This is going to happen."

  He knew that now as surely as he'd recognized it the moment he'd seen the results of the Match Key--that one shining moment of pure, absolute rightness, far more intoxicating than the best fine Mariltar blue ale. The doubts had come afterward.

  But the gods of the Mariltar nation had sent a powerful message that day, and the memory of that moment had charted the first change of course in his life. It was the reason he had chosen the Grogon governor's assignment with all its problems over the more prestigious seat on the Coalition Council. It was a choice he hadn't had to make. He could have accepted the council seat and demanded Maegan join him.

  It would not have been conducive to a successful partnership.

  Growing up on Treaine, she had exasperated his adolescent self by attaching herself to him like a banditol leaf every chance she got. He'd tried to ignore the precocious, too-young girl, but ended up being amused and intrigued with some of her antics. Yes, he'd even been a little in awe sometimes of her frequent blithe disregard for the conventions of their culture and tolerant when he should have firmly corrected her behavior. Her resistance to authority had manifested itself even then.

  "Alerik, for the sake of Sagar and your own sanity, if not everyone else's, reconsider. Find a way out of this mess. Refute the Match Key. Question the results."

  Alerik let out a long breath in a whistle. "Commander Foster, highly decorated hero, a conformist to the end, advocating for rebellion against an institution. Shocking!"

  "Why aren't you taking this more seriously?" Sharm's amber eyes glittered with anger. "She'll destroy everything you've worked for your entire life."

  "No." Suddenly tired of the argument, Alerik surged to his feet. "She won't. She has some radical views but why, in the end, is that so bad? We're a culture mired in tradition and convention. This galaxy is going through one of the greatest transformations it's ever seen. We're nine distinct great nations learning to co-exist and working to craft a common rule of law. Why is Mariltar doctrine so right and eight other nations so wrong? Maybe it's time for us to change."

  Once again, he'd shocked Sharm. He'd shocked himself. Where had that come from? It was something Maegan would say.

  Sharm recovered with a shake of his head. "I wish it were that simple, Alerik."

  They eyed one another carefully.

  Sharm shook his head again and wiped a hand down his face. "It doesn't matter what I say, does it? I can see you've made up your stubborn, arrogant mind. What do you want me to do?"

  Alerik grinned with relief. No matter what, he could count on his second. "Help me tether a jaloswing before she flies free again. Have my quorum at the med clinic in fifty nans."

  The console chirped with an incoming communication. Sharm reached back to activate it. "Yes?"

  "Drakal and Corenna reporting in, sir."

  "Find anything?"

  "No, sir. Covered the entire island."

  "Report back here immediately. You have another assignment." Sharm closed off the communicator, then folded his arms. "All right. We'll be there since nothing's going to change your mind. Just warn me when you plan to tell her the part about the miniature Aleriks so I can be around to pick up the pieces."

  Alerik gave a bark of laughter. "Count on it!"
/>   As he left the command center, he felt freer than he could ever remember feeling. The enormous burdens of his rank seemed to be gone. This was the right step. He was now positive about that. Everything else--the future that had been mapped out so carefully, his career, even what he'd be doing ten rotations from now--had acquired blurred edges. This was the one thing, unplanned and unexpected as it was, that had absolute clarity to it.

  * * * *

  The nightmare had assumed gigantic proportions. Her head was fogged from the pain medication that had been administered earlier when her body had gone into convulsions from, the med technician explained, the lingering residue of poison in her body left by the batriel. All she wanted to do was sleep, yet six--no seven--large men were jammed into the tiny healing room. They loomed over her, stared at her.

  Her arms and legs were still restrained. She was naked under the thin sheet. She had never felt so vulnerable.

  She squinted. Governor Mariltar, of course, she recognized. He had promised to come back and interrogate her. This must be it. Too bad for him the part of her brain that housed her memory wasn't working. Only totally random, disconnected thoughts were making their way through the blanket of medication.

  Don't know, don't know, don't know, she practiced in silent glee. There was that other thing he had told her she knew she should be worried about, but she couldn't quite drag it from the gray, fuzzy recesses.

  Commander Foster she also recognized. He had been one of her favorite instructors at the academy. What was such a nice man doing attached to Alerik Mariltar?

  And there--she couldn't remember their names--but there were Brown-hair and Black-hair pasted together like they'd been that day on the beach. How long ago had that been?

  She lost interest in her visitors as she snatched at elusive memories.

  "Maegan!" Governor Mariltar's face, oddly distorted, far too close, filled her vision. She wanted to poke at the dimple that showed briefly.

  "Try to pay attention. This will be over soon. Then you can sleep."

  He lifted her right hand from under the thin blanket. How could he do that when she couldn't?