Star Trek - NF - 10 - Excalibur 2 - Renaissance

by Renaissance(Lit)

  "Ah. I thought you were going to 'go again.' "

  "I think I am, indeed," Burgoyne said, "but not with you." And s/he smiled invitingly at Slon, the alcohol giving hir a distant but nevertheless distinct and pleasant buzzing sensation.

  ROBIN

  SHE'D FALLEN ABOUT TWO FEET when suddenly a rope was dangling right in front of her.

  Robin reacted purely from instinct as she snagged the cord that had miraculously dropped in her face. Her grip wasn't immediately solid, and as a result she skidded a few feet down it, the rope tearing up her palms something fierce. She yelped, but also redoubled her efforts and managed to slow and then stop her descent. She dangled there, swinging back and forth, uncertain just how far above the gelatinous mass she was and afraid to find out.

  And then, from above her, a voice called down, "Do you have a grip on it?" It was a strong voice, a masculine one. Of course, at that point, Robin would not have cared if the owner of the voice sounded as if he had been inhaling helium.

  As long as he was stopping her from falling, that was all that mattered to her.

  "Yes!" she called up to him.

  There was a pause. "Ah. You're a woman," came the thoughtful response.

  Dangling as she was, Robin didn't exactly like the sound of that. "Do you have a problem with that?" she shouted. It would be just her luck that her potential savior was a homicidal maniac with a lousy social life who felt that all women deserved whatever happened to them.

  "No, not at all," came back the reasonable reply. "Women tend to be lighter than men. I was just figuring that it was going to be easier pulling you up. Are you slim?"

  "Yes, I'm slim."

  "How much do you weigh?"

  "108," said Robin.

  There was a pause. "Really?" came the voice.

  "Yes, really!" Robin said, starting to get irritated.

  "You sound heavier."

  "Oh, thanks a lot!"

  "No offense. I just want to make sure I can do this. And I don't want any surprises. And some women tend to-not to be indelicate-lie about such things."

  "I don't believe this," muttered Robin.

  "So are you sure you're-"

  "Yes! I'm 108! And in case it matters, I'm 5' 6", brunette, a Virgo, and I like reading children's poetry and taking long walks on beaches in light rain, okay?"

  There was another pause. "What color are your eyes?'

  "What?!"

  "Just kidding. Hold on."

  The rope lurched slightly, and then started to pull up steadily. She held on tightly, wrapping the rope between her feet for extra assurance. She could have sworn, in the fever of her imagination, that the creature below was making some sort of vaguely disappointed slurping noises.

  And then, the next thing she knew, she had been pulled up and out into the sunlight. She bunked against it as she hauled herself the rest of the way to safety, getting herself clear of the crumbled ground so that more of it wouldn't open up beneath her. Standing several feet away, holding the far end of the rope, was her savior.

  He extended a hand. "Here. Let me help you up."

  She didn't react immediately. She was too busy staring at him. Damn, but he was one of the most handsome men Robin had ever laid eyes on. He had strong, chiseled features, and his eyes were ocean blue. His nose was slightly large, but the imperfection only seemed to add to his features rather than detract from them. He had thick eyebrows, and a mouth that seemed made for smiling, which he was doing at the moment and doing extremely well.

  The hand remained extended, and she remembered only belatedly to take it. She winced as the firm grip ached against her still-injured palms, and he helped her to her feet. She was impressed by his strength: He had lifted her up as if she weighed next to nothing. Which, she reminded herself, she had told him she had.

  No use mentioning those extra pounds she had picked up since coming to the resort.

  "Are you going to be okay?" he asked.

  "Sure, sure... now."

  "I take it you weren't exactly expecting to explore the subterranean aspects of

  Risa in that way," he commented, pointing at the hole.

  "Definitely not," she said.

  "Sorry that you hit a hot hole."

  "A what?"

  "A leftover from Risa's more unstable days," he said. "It used to be more geologically unstable than it is right now. There are a few areas where the ground just sort of separated, became unsafe, and created what would best be described as camouflaged crevices. Pretty hazardous."

  "I should say so," said Robin. "They should put up signs to warn people off."

  "You mean like that one there?" he said, and pointed. Sure enough, Robin had walked right past a sign informing anyone wandering into that area that they were about to enter treacherous ground, and would do so at their own risk. But

  Robin had been so busy looking toward the skies that she had been paying no attention at all.

  "Wonderful," she muttered.

  Her unexpected rescuer looked down at her boots and his brow furrowed. "What is that stuff on your feet?"

  "What?" She looked down and saw traces of the gelatinous mass on the soles of her boots... and, more alarming than that, the bits of the mass were starring to move around on their own. She could swear that she was beginning to see traces of eyes developing on them.

  Immediately Robin dropped to the ground and yanked the boots off her feet. Then she tossed them both into the hole. The young man watched hi mute surprise as he saw what appeared to be otherwise perfectly good footwear disappear into darkness. "What did you do that for?" he asked. He didn't sound particularly upset or even mystified. Just interested.

  'Trust me," she said flatly, "you don't want to know." She stretched her toes in her stocking feet.

  "You're going to continue to explore like that?" he asked.

  "Noooo... I've had it with exploring, if it's all the same to you," she said with alarming heartiness. "Didn't occur to me to bring a spare set of boots, so I'm going to troop back to the hotel, where gelatinous masses are safely contained in dessert cups. Because frankly, if it weren't for you..." She looked at him curiously. "Say, where did you come from, anyway?"

  "Same as you. Exploring," he said. "As I was passing by, I heard you grunting and moaning as you were climbing up from the hole. So I figured maybe you could use some help."

  "Well, you figured correctly." They stood there, facing one another, nothing else immediately being said. She found herself drifting in his eyes. And suddenly, realizing that something fairly basic and fundamental had not yet been said, she announced, "My name's Robin. Robin Lefler. And, uh... thank you for saving my life."

  "Oh, I don't know about saving your life. Saved you some inconvenience maybe-"

  "No... you don't understand. There was something down there, it was..." She waved it off, not wanting to dwell on it. "Believe me, just... take my word for it. You don't want to know. You just-well, you just don't." She cleared her throat. "And you are... ?"

  "Hmm? Oh!" He seemed moderately embarrassed, apparently realizing that he, too, had forgotten some basic social graces. "Viola. Nikolas Viola. Please call me

  Nik. My father and I, we're staying at the El Dorado."

  "So are my mother and I."

  "Ah." He nodded. "Let me guess: The two of you decided that it would be nice to have some time together. Get reacquainted, get to know each other, et cetera, so forth..."

  "Ditto, ditto," said Robin with a laugh. "You got the same speech, too?"

  "Oh, definitely," he said. "And then you'll never believe what happened."

  "He found a woman."

  Nik's eyes widened. "How'd you guess?"

  "Believe it or not, I'm in exactly the same boat."

  "I do find it hard to believe," Nik replied. "I mean, how could anyone not want to spend every available moment with you?"

  She put her hand to her heart and fluttered her fingers as if she were seized with palpitations. "Oh. Oh, what a smooth
talker you are, Mr. Viola. I think I'm going to have to be careful with you."

  "No, you don't," he said cheerfully. "You could always give me enough rope and then watch me hang myself." And he held up the rope to demonstrate the possibilities.

  "So..." She folded her arms resolutely. "I owe you my life, but you do owe me an apology."

  "What for?"

  "The weight thing. And keeping me dangling... literally."

  "I suppose I do," he said. "How about if I give it to you over dinner? I have to warn you, my father will probably be there, along with his lady friend."

  "That's okay," she told him. "I might as well get to spend some time with somebody's parent."

  When Robin got back to the hotel room, there was no sign of her mother, which didn't surprise her. What did surprise her was that her bed did not appear to have been slept in. The thing was, she couldn't tell whether it was because one of the room 'bots had already attended to making it, or because she simply hadn't slept in it all night. Which meant, of course, that she had been some- where else. Robin realized that she didn't even want to think about where that somewhere else was.

  "Oh, ease up," she heard herself say scoldingly. "If she's out having a good time, who are you to criticize? The bottom line is, she was right and you were wrong. This place isn't bad at all... and that Nik..."

  She caught her reflection in the mirror and couldn't quite believe it; she'd never seen herself grinning quite so stupidly as she was now. Good lord, was he having that much of an effect on her, so quickly? The truth was, it had been a long time since any man had paid any kind of attention to her. Granted, they had met in an exceedingly bizarre manner, but that was okay. "After all," she said,

  "when you meet someone while you're falling, there's nowhere to go but up." She then laughed merrily at her own joke, and congratulated herself on being able to joke about something that-only a short time before-had appeared to be her last moments on the planet.

  She spent the rest of the day relaxing herself: Swimming, sunning, taking it easy. For a time she kept an eye out for Morgan, but after a while she stopped worrying about it. Instead she dwelt on dinner that evening. Nik was... quite a handsome man. There was no use denying that And he was most attractive. And, well...

  "Jamaharon?" asked a Risan who served drinks on the beach.

  Robin looked up at him, squinting against the sun. "I'm sorry?"

  "Well, you do not display a Horga'hn," said the rather attractive-looking young man, "but you have that look about you... that glow... that seems to indicate you are interested in jamaharon."

  "Is that a drink or something?" she asked in confusion.

  He smiled. "In a sense. It is the act that provides the sweet nectar of life itself."

  "Oh," she said, not understanding, and then "Oh!" as she suddenly realized.

  "Oh... you mean... uh... no. No, I'm not interested." She remembered now that a

  Horga'hn was a statuette that was displayed by anyone who wanted to have... well...jamaharon. "I'm not," she said.

  "Your Ups say no, but your aura says yes. However, I will leave you to your self-realization."

  "That's very kind of you," she said as he wandered away.

  Her aura? Her aura?

  Under other circumstances, she would have assumed that the Risan was coming on to her. But she knew that wasn't the case here. These people were far too straightforward for such games.

  Could it really be that she was giving off some sort of... of "interested" vibrations? And was it Nik that she was interested in? She had trouble believing it of herself. She wasn't accustomed to thinking in purely physical terms about people. She hardly knew Nik Viola, after all. For her, attraction stemmed from getting to know someone on a personal level, and the physical aspect tended to grow from that. It simply wouldn't be like her to become so enamored of someone that her-what was it?-her aura would reflect it.

  Still... he was damned attractive. And he had saved her life.

  "That's got to be it," she told herself. Her feelings for him were accelerated because they had met during a time of great personal jeopardy. She felt indebted to him for saving her life, so, naturally, everything she felt toward him was heightened. She was attracted to what he represented, namely her personal savior.

  She would just take it slowly, that was all. If something did happen, well... this was the place for romance, after all. And if it didn't, well... that was fine, too.

  "But it probably will."

  She was so surprised to hear herself say that, she looked around the beach to see if anyone else had heard her. Not that the words themselves would have meant anything, but still...

  No one had heard her. No one had paid attention. No one seemed to be studying her aura and making assessments on her interest in jamaharon. For that, she could only consider herself grateful. Then she lay back on the sand, worked on drifting to sleep, and only partly succeeded. The rest of the time she felt rather itchy, and the itchiness had nothing to do with sand in her bathing suit.

  It was at that point that she resolved she wasn't going to make a big deal about it. Nik seemed like an interesting man, but he was just that: a man. They were going to go to dinner tonight, and very likely meet his father, but there was absolutely no reason to get worked up about it

  That was when she realized that she had been so disdainful of the entire notion of socializing, and even (God forbid) romance, that-despite her mother's urg-ings-she had not brought a single fancy dress with her. Quickly, she got her things together, so that she could race back to the hotel, change, and head out to the nearest clothing facility to find an appropriate outfit

  Somewhere buried in that train of thought was a substantial helping of irony, but she chose not to dwell on it

  BURGOYNE

  As BURGOYNE AND SLON headed to the latter's home, they talked freely and openly.

  Burgoyne was surprised how quickly and easily s/he was able to relate to, and engage in conversation with, Slon. Hir experience with Vulcans had been so limited, and Slon was so much the opposite of Selar in every way, that s/he was having a bit of trouble making the adjustment. But s/he was reasonably sure s/he was going to be able to handle the transition, given time.

  They stood at the door of Slon's apartment, and he gestured for hir to enter.

  S/he was totally relaxed, very much looking forward to the practice of hir favorite activity, unencumbered by angst or any considerations beyond simple pleasure. And Slon certainly seemed nice enough, and interested enough. Part of that might very well be, as Burgoyne had commented, simple curiosity. But that was fine, too. In fact, it was great. Everything was going to be great.

  "You have been standing at the threshold of my home for nineteen seconds," observed Slon. "Most individuals are able to walk through a door in considerably less time."

  "I know. But my feet don't seem to be moving. I..." S/he took a steady breath, tried to get hirself to proceed, and still was unable to do so.

  "Burgoyne-?"

  "I can't." There was a sort of amazement in Burgoyne's voice as s/he realized that simple truth. "I can't... do this. Damn her."

  "I do not understand."

  Burgoyne sank to the floor of the corridor, running hir fingers through hir short white/blond hair, as if some sort of answer could be forced from hir brain just by massaging hir head. "I can't do this," s/he said again.

  "Have I said something-?"

  "It's not you. It's me... and her..." S/he shook hir head. "You didn't ask me why I was here."

  "I had thought you came here for the same reason I did."

  "Not here here. Here, as hi, on Vulcan. The truth is," and s/he took a deep breath-and then stopped. "Actually, the truth is far too involved to go into.

  Let's just say that there's someone else."

  "You are involved with another person?"

  "I don't think I am. That's the problem. She's rebuffed me repeatedly. She's made it clear to me that she doesn't want a romantic relatio
nship. Because of that, I felt as if I were free to pursue what promised to be a most interesting evening with you. Except it's not turning out that way." There was genuine distress in hir voice. "What the hell am I doing to do about this? I can't go forward, I can't go back. I'm in a sort of romantic limbo."

  "Fascinating."

  "I'm so pleased," s/he said sarcastically, "that I can provide such fascination for you. But you'll excuse me if I'm less than ecstatic, considering where this leaves me."

  "I did not intend to sound disinterested in your 'plight.' It is simply that, from what I knew of you, I did not think that you would pass up an assignation out of loyalty to someone who expressed disinterest in you."