No, she didn’t think she needed to worry about that. Zhandar was capable of anger, true, but his soul didn’t possess the capacity to hate.
“Tell me,” he said quietly. “Why would you allow your own people to mutilate you in such a way?”
“‘Mutilate’?” Trinity repeated, startled. “Why would you call it mutilation, when I was made to look like one of your own kind?”
“Because it was not you. Yes, you were beautiful as Zhanna, but you are far more beautiful as Trinity Knox. Because that is who you truly are.”
She hadn’t allowed herself to think about whether he would find her attractive as a human. What did it matter, when her lies had destroyed any chance of a future with him? Besides, now that she had been caught, she was sure the Zhore government would ship her back to Gaia just as soon as they were done getting any useful information out of her. And no way of knowing how much this incident would set back Consortium/Zhore relations, which had never exactly been what one would call cordial.
For some reason, her throat felt very tight. “Water?” she managed.
If Zhandar had noted her reaction, he showed no sign of it. Giving her a nod, he rose gracefully from his seat and went over to a small table set up against the wall, where a pitcher of bluish plastic and several tumblers sat. He poured some water into one of them, then returned to his chair and handed her the cup.
“Thank you.” She sipped the water, relishing the cool, faintly mineral taste of it on her tongue. Why did even the water taste better here on Zhoraan?
But she knew she couldn’t delay much more, not with Zhandar sitting there and watching her, clearly waiting for her to go on. After taking a few more sips of water, she didn’t hand the tumbler back to him, but rather sat there with her hands cradled around it. As much as she’d loved the touch of his fingers against hers a few moments earlier, she knew she needed to stay focused as she recounted her story.
Funny how she hadn’t even hesitated about doing so. He deserved the truth from her, and Gabriel and Blake and the rest of the people who’d done this to her could all go straight to hell.
“I’m not a spy,” Trinity began. “That is,” she added, when Zhandar’s eyebrows began to lift, “I’m not a professional spy. I was tapped to do this because of my — well, I guess you could call them gifts. Talents.”
“Your psychic abilities.”
“Yes.” She’d never liked to think of them that way, because that had always made her feel like even more of a freak. But all she felt was a gentle pulse of concern from Zhandar, so she went on, “The Consortium government was obviously feeling threatened by these human/Zhore pairings that were occurring, so — ”
“All two of them?” he broke in, sounding amused. “Yes, I can see why that would be quite a threat.”
Put that way, it did seem rather ridiculous. But the Consortium took any threat to its hegemony seriously, especially now, when it was still having to field probing questions about its handling of the situation in China. Having the descendants of the toxic Cloud’s survivors demanding answers was not something the government wanted to waste its time on. And it wasn’t just that isolated group, either. Even the Eridanis, ostensibly allies of Gaia, did not seem overly thrilled by the revelation that the Consortium’s agents had been methodically harvesting the bodies of the dead rather than giving them the respectful burials everyone had thought they were receiving.
“Bad enough in their eyes that there are all those human/Eridani pairings,” she replied. “Even though they’ve been going on for generations, the government doesn’t make it easy on the people involved. In most cases, they end up emigrating to Eridani space. But the Zhore?” She shrugged. “You’re an unknown quantity. The Consortium hates that. So of course you’re a threat.”
“And so they sent you here.” Zhandar’s gaze sharpened, and he inquired, “How is it that they were able to be so exact in their reproduction of Zhore biology? We have never submitted to any kind of study by your people.”
That was something she really didn’t want to explain, but Trinity knew it would be unfair to withhold the truth. At least if she told Zhandar about the corpse of the dead Zhore her government had used for a study specimen, then he could pass the word on to his own government officials, and perhaps then they’d be able to piece together who the dead man had been. His family deserved closure if nothing else.
“There was a — a man of your people killed on Bathsheva. The Bathshevans sold the body to the Consortium.”
A wince, and Zhandar shut his eyes for a second. Trinity could feel the shock and sorrow flood from him before he shut his barriers down once again.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice.
His fists clenched on his knees. “It was none of your doing, so there is no need to apologize. But it seems your government has even more to answer for than I had originally thought.”
You have no idea. She ran her thumb up and down the smooth plastic of the tumbler she held, not wanting to look directly at him.
A heavy silence fell. The chair creaked as Zhandar shifted on it. Then he said, “This still does not adequately explain why you were involved. Yes, you have talents that the Consortium would wish to exploit, but why couldn’t you have said no? Surely a citizen of your government still has certain rights, do they not?”
“Generally, yes, although the Consortium is all too willing to play fast and loose with those rights if it suits them. But I — ” She stopped there, not sure how she should proceed.
“But you?” Zhandar probed.
It seemed so shameful to admit it to him, when he was everything that was good and honorable, and she…wasn’t. However, she’d vowed that she wouldn’t lie to him anymore, and that meant giving him the complete truth. What he chose to do with it after that was up to him.
“I — I don’t have those same rights, because I’m a criminal.”
“A what?” He sat up straight and stared at her, consternation thrumming in the air between them. Apparently that revelation had shocked him enough that he wasn’t quite able to hold everything back. Then he shook his head. “I refuse to believe that.”
She let out a breath, then said, “Believe what you want, Zhandar. It’s the truth. Oh, a petty criminal. I could justify what I did, say it was a victimless crime, that I did it because I thought it would provide a better future for me and the man I thought loved me, but the truth is, I could have said no. But I didn’t.”
His gaze didn’t waver. She could feel him reaching out to her, and she let her barriers down a little more. Not that she expected him to be able to read her thoughts, but enough so he could feel the truth in her, the desire to leave all her lies behind.
“So…what happened to him, this man you say you were in love with?”
Those words were spoken carefully, calmly, with very little inflection. That didn’t matter; Trinity could still feel the hurt flowing out from him. It was clear that he thought she’d used him.
Well, she had. The thing was, she’d also fallen in love with him somewhere along the way.
But she definitely didn’t want him to think she was pining for some man she’d left behind on Gaia. Lifting her chin, she looked Zhandar directly in the eyes. “He took the money we’d embezzled and headed off-world, but not before pointing the finger at me in an attempt to deflect attention from himself.”
“He did that? A man who had professed to love you?”
She nodded, then added, her tone brittle, “Well, he wasn’t the first man to lie to a woman to get what he wanted, and I doubt he’ll be the last. We Gaians aren’t quite as noble as you Zhore when it comes to that sort of thing. But since the authorities had a bead on where he was headed, I’m sure he’s been caught and locked up by now. Not that that does me much good.”
Zhandar still looked a little shell-shocked. “But if you have the power to read the thoughts of others, why — ”
“Why didn’t I discover what he was planning? There are a few people
I can’t read. I don’t know why. Something different about the way their brains are wired, I suppose. Caleb was one of those people. At the time, I thought that was a good thing, because then I couldn’t see things in his thoughts that I didn’t want to see. But obviously that didn’t work out so well for me in the end.”
Another silence then, as Zhandar appeared to think over what she had just told him. Then he said, “And so, because you had a talent the Consortium wanted to exploit, you were drafted for this mission, rather than….” He paused delicately then, watching her to see how she would respond.
“Rather than being sent to the MaxSec on Titan,” Trinity said matter-of-factly. Noting his look of confusion, she began to explain, “Maximum-security….” But then the sentence trailed off as she paused, realizing that her language conditioning had failed her because there was no true analogue for “prison” in the Zhoraani tongue. “Prison, jail,” she fumbled, lapsing into Galactic Standard and hoping that he spoke it. On Gaia, everyone had to learn GS in addition to Anglic. Some others also learned the semi-dead languages of their native regions, but she’d never much seen the point in that.
“Ah, I see,” Zhandar responded, also switching to Galactic Standard. His brows drew together, and he asked, “Would it be easier for you to converse in this language? I did not think of that earlier.”
Neither had she, because the conditioning made it so simple to speak the Zhore tongue that she really didn’t have to stop and think about it. “No, it’s fine if we stick with Zhoraani,” she said, using that same language in her response.
He looked somewhat relieved by her reply. His GS was good, but she could tell from the way he paused here and there that he had to work to recall the vocabulary. There wasn’t any point in putting him through that when it wasn’t necessary.
“Anyway,” she continued, “yes, basically, I could go to Titan or I could come here. Women don’t fare too well there, as you can imagine.” Or maybe you can’t, she thought. There was no such thing as rape on Zhoraan. “They’re mistreated in a sexual way,” she added in an attempt to clarify her statement.
From the way he frowned, she could tell he didn’t really understand what she was trying to say, and she didn’t want to have to explain herself further. But then he appeared to put that matter aside for the moment. Head tilting slightly to one side, he seemed to study her. The frown remained, however.
At length he said, “And…what happened between the two of us?”
Her hand almost slipped down to her belly, still flat and revealing nothing, but Trinity forced herself not to move. “I — I won’t lie to you, Zhandar. I was sent here partly so that I could be intimate with a Zhore man and conceive his child. They — the people who were managing me — wanted to be able to study one of these hybrid children for themselves.”
Zhandar’s face might have been carved from stone. “I see.”
“No, but you don’t see!” she burst out. He’d retreated from her in that moment, his barriers fully back in place. “That was what they intended, and I did as I was told, but I — I wanted to. I met you, and I felt it, this sayara, or whatever you want to call it. I didn’t go to you coldly, Zhandar. I wanted you. You would have felt it if I hadn’t. Tell me that you wouldn’t.”
His silver-gray eyes glinted into hers. They might as well have been lasers, boring into her, but she didn’t look away. He needed to see that she was telling the truth.
Then his body seemed to relax slightly, and he nodded. “Yes. I would have known if this — this attraction was not shared. But you felt it, and you did conceive a child.”
So he knew. She wasn’t sure whether anyone had told him. For some reason, that realization made her a little sad. She would have liked to have been able to tell him herself.
But then his tone roughened as he went on, “And what would you have done, if I had not discovered you then?”
“My — my handlers would have known I was pregnant because of the test I took. So they would have sent someone to extract me, and then I would have been gone.”
“Just like that?”
No, not just like that, she thought. I would have died inside at the thought of leaving you. But I couldn’t have stopped them.
“And do you understand what your leaving like that would have done to me?” he asked then, jaw tight, eyes glittering.
His anger was to be expected, but it still frightened her. She didn’t know how she should respond. And just a minute or two earlier, he had seemed on the verge of forgiving her.
Afraid to speak, she only shook her head.
“Because you are human,” he said, giving the word an unpleasant emphasis, “you may not understand the ramifications of such an abandonment. When two people bond in sayara, they are meant to be joined until death. If one of them leaves the other, except for short periods that are agreed upon in advance, the one left behind dies. It is not merely the simple matter of a broken heart.”
Her eyes widened, and her entire body seemed to go cold as she digested what he had just told her. There might have been something she could have said in response to that horrible revelation, some sort of plea protesting her ignorance, letting him know that she had no idea what such an abandonment would mean for one of his people, but she could only sit there, mute, the words strangling in her throat.
Somehow she was able to force out a single syllable. “No.” He had to know that she had no idea such a thing was possible.
As she was fighting to find the words to convince him of that, he pushed himself to his feet and stood there for a moment, gazing down at her.
“Think on what I have just told you, and on what your loyalty to your Gaian masters might have cost my family.”
After that, he swept out, slapping the controls to the door as he left. Trinity stared at it as it shut, her heart slamming against her ribcage.
And then at last the tears came.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“She couldn’t have known that,” Nalzhir said reasonably.
The two of them sat in a conference room in the medical center where Trinity was being monitored for any signs of post-operative distress. Zhandar had wanted to go directly home so he could attempt to put together the shattered pieces of his heart and mind, but the government agent had said he wanted to discuss Trinity’s revelations first.
For of course the entire conversation they had shared in her hospital room had been recorded. Zhandar wasn’t sure why he should be surprised by that, but the realization still irritated him. It smacked just a bit too much of what the men who were manipulating Trinity might have done.
“So I am supposed to be content with that?” he snapped.
“I would not go so far as to say that. I will say that she seemed genuinely contrite. And quite forthcoming.”
Yes, she hadn’t hesitated before unburdening himself. Through it all, he’d done his best to listen, to understand. On some level, perhaps he did, even though the machinations of the Consortium’s agents made his stomach twist. To do that to one of your own, to expect her to coldly give herself to someone she considered an alien….
Not that she appeared to have actually thought of him that way. It was true; her desire hadn’t been false. She’d wanted him in the same way he wanted her. Because, as much as he hated to admit it, they were sayara, just as the unknown Sarzhin was with his colonist’s daughter, or Ambassador Lirzhan was with his own Gaian bride.
And because of that bond, Zhandar knew he couldn’t thrust Trinity out of his life. In a way, it would have been so much better if he could have turned his back on her and let his government do what it willed with its captured spy.
That is, it would have been better if he hadn’t known there was no way he could cut her out of his life in that manner.
It had been jarring at first, seeing her sleeping there with her human appearance fully restored. Unlike the other two Zhore men who had entered into the sayara bond with a Gaian, he had never even been around a human before. He
’d seen no reason to go off-world; Zhoraan’s beauties were enough for him. But there was something about Trinity, about the smooth paleness of her skin, the lustrousness of her hair, that held his eye despite its alien nature.
Or perhaps it had been because of it.
And when he’d looked closer, he realized he still could see echoes of “Zhanna” in her — the high, wide cheekbones, the full pout of her mouth. A different shell, perhaps, but the same person underneath.
“So she is being cooperative,” Zhandar said heavily. “But what will become of her after you have gotten every piece of useful information out of her?”
A ripple of displeasure emanated from the other man before he suppressed it. “We are certainly not forcibly interrogating her, Zhandar, which is more than I can say for the Consortium’s government, had the situation been reversed. She is freely telling us what she knows, and after that, we will ask her what she wants to do next. We are not in the habit of keeping prisoners. Besides, there is the matter of the child.”
The matter of the child. Yes, that was not something they could simply dismiss. Not the child he’d so desperately wanted, even if the way the universe had seen fit to give it to him was nothing he could have possibly imagined.
“These children,” he said, not bothering to hide the anxious rasp of his voice. “Can they even be considered Zhore?” After all, who knew what the result of mixing the two species would even be….
A tablet had been lying on the tabletop near Nalzhir’s elbow. He retrieved it, then made a few quick movements with his finger across its surface before handing the tablet over to Zhandar. “See for yourself.”
He took it, scanning the flat image on the screen. It showed a smiling young woman with a hooded Zhore standing beside her. She was pretty in a fresh, young sort of way, if not as beautiful as he thought Trinity. In her arms was a bundle of white blankets, and in that bundle, his shimmering black skin contrasting with the white fabric, was a baby boy, probably no more than three or four standard months old.
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