He dove inside, just as an opaque cloud of sand and stinking dust slapped him. The cloud followed him into the tiny space, stealing his breath, grating in his eyes.
Eland grabbed for the door, trying to shut it again, but he could barely budge it. He shoved one foot sideways to find better purchase on the sandy floor…and found himself falling into empty space.
At least, Eland thought as he fell and fell, I can breathe again.
Chapter Four
“What’s up with you?” Tara, Jeanne’s closest friend at work asked as lunchtime neared. “You’ve been quiet all day, never even laughed at Krina’s jokes.”
“I’m busy,” Jeanne said, trying not to snap, though she’d been impatient all day. Jeanne had covered her hair with a colorful scarf tied at the top of her head—she liked a little color to go with her tan-drab work coveralls. But even that touch hadn’t cheered her today. “This is what we do at work. Work.”
She lifted the last of the small cargo boxes from the belly of the two-pilot transporter and tapped the controls that would send them to the right destination.
“Yeah, so the sandstorm backed us up a little,” Tara said. “Chill, Jeanne. These off-world fly-boys aren’t going to be in a rush.”
“I just want to get it done.”
And not think about where Eland was and if he’d survived the sandstorm. Why hadn’t he stayed with her?
Jeanne remembered the haunted look in his eyes. Likely he wouldn’t trust her—wouldn’t trust anyone.
“Let’s get some lunch, anyway,” Tara said. “I’m starving. Choking on sand gives me an appetite.”
“Coming,” Jeanne said. She tapped one final control and the cart obediently went to its place in the line of pallets waiting to be picked up by local distributors. Jeanne needed to eat, needed to lose herself in comradeship with her friends, and forget all about the gorgeous man called Eland.
Halfway through the mountain of food Tara insisted Jeanne load her plate with in the cafeteria, Jeanne was reminded again of Eland—this time, through a news vid blaring out of monitors above them.
The DNAmo genetics facility, which specialized in making perfect servants and factory workers, had been shut down, a reporter was saying. Authorities had raided the factory after the government had outlawed its experimental program that created beings called Shareem. The scientists who’d made the genetically engineered men had been arrested or fled the planet, and the Shareem themselves had disappeared.
Jeanne only half paid attention, not much interested in genetic engineering, until the reporter’s next words jerked her gaze to the screen.
“The Shareem are strong, smart, and resourceful,” the reporter said, her face softly outlined by the gauzy veil looped around her head. “They are taller than normal males and can be identified by a black chain worn on the upper arm. If you see one of these beings, do not try to engage—call a patroller. The Shareem are dangerous and unpredictable, and they have been sentenced by the Bor Nargan government to termination.”
A holopic showed a man with a perfect face, a black chain on his arm and blue eyes exactly like Eland’s. The man wasn’t Eland—his hair was dark and his face was different—but the two were very alike.
The Shareem, the reporter continued, had been illegally made, barbaric throwbacks to Bor Nargan’s distant past, too dangerous to be allowed to live.
She said more, but Jeanne sat back, her fork falling to her plate from nerveless fingers.
No wonder Eland had laughed when she’d asked if he were Bor Nargan. More Bor Nargan than anyone here will ever be, he’d said. He’d been created from the DNA of many Bor Nargans, he’d meant, bred rather than born.
Eland must have been fleeing patrollers when he’d stumbled into her house, dirty and dying of thirst. Jeanne had succored him, and he’d fled again. Strong, smart, resourceful.
The Shareem were to be rounded up and terminated. Her heart tore. No.
“Jeanne?” Tara asked, concern on her face. “You all right?”
“Yes,” Jeanne growled, then, “No. Sorry. No, I feel pretty crappy.”
“Tell the shift leader, and go the hell home.” Tara peered at her, clearly not liking what she saw. “Don’t worry, sweetie, we’re not that far behind. I’ll make sure everything gets done.”
Tara would. She and Jeanne covered for each other all the time. It was nice to have a friend who had your back.
But even Tara might not understand if Jeanne told her she’d not only helped out a fugitive Shareem, but she wasn’t ashamed of it and wasn’t about to go blabbing to the patrollers either.
Also, if Jeanne told Tara, Tara might get pulled in by the patrollers if Jeanne’s part in Eland’s escape was discovered. Her friend, who supported several members of her family with this dockland job, couldn’t afford that.
“Yeah, you’re right. I’ll go talk to the shift leader.” Jeanne abandoned her lunch tray, worried by how shaky she was. Her stomach roiled. Maybe she shouldn’t have eaten so much.
“I’ll check on you later, all right?” Tara said.
“Sure.” Jeanne couldn’t say anything more. She noticed, as she left the canteen, that her fellow dockworkers pounced on her untouched food and divided it between them. She didn’t blame them. None of them were rich enough to let food go to waste.
Jeanne checked out with her shift leader, who was sympathetic and understanding. The woman was good to work for—actually took care of her workers instead of exploiting them for the company’s benefit.
Jeanne left the dockyards and hurried through the scorching streets of Pas City. She didn’t go home. She started searching for Eland, wanting to warn him, to help him sneak to a transport if she could, to get him the hell out of here.
But though she prowled the streets until well after dark, she found no sign of him.
***
Eland had no clue where he was. He’d landed in a dark, damp place without actually breaking anything, and he couldn’t see worth shit.
It was cooler down here, which was a good thing. Out of the wind and the sun. A tiny trickle of water sloshed under his thin shoes, but Eland wasn’t about to scoop it into his mouth. It smelled metallic, which was better than human waste, but it was still stinky and likely poisonous.
He walked for about an hour, one hand on the wall next to him. As far as he went, Eland found no openings, no way out of this tunnel.
At first he’d thought he was in the kind of tunnel trains ran though—not something he wanted to meet right now. After a time, though, he realized that there was no rail or hum of electricity, nothing for a train to run on.
But if this were a maintenance tunnel, it had been abandoned a while ago. He saw no lights, heard no sound, came upon no sign of anyone hurrying down here to fix something.
The air moved, which meant fans or shafts somewhere. He wouldn’t suffocate. Starve to death or die of thirst, but not suffocate. Wonderful.
Eland kept walking. The tunnels had to go somewhere, he reasoned, if only to another maintenance hatch. Eland couldn’t imagine that workers, even long ago, would want to walk for miles to find an electric problem under the city. They’d have had doors or hatches every so often so they could descend relatively close to the breakage.
Nice theory. Eland kept looking for hatches, but nothing so far. Oh well, if he didn’t find any walking this direction, he’d turn and walk back, feeling his way along the opposite wall. Of course, he’d fallen from above, so all the hatches might be fifty feet up. Maybe lift shafts had brought the workers down, and the lifts didn’t work anymore, which was why Eland had fallen.
He sure knew how to comfort himself.
Was this his end? To escape the confinement and constant experiments of DNAmo, to wander until he starved under the streets of Pas City? Alone, thirsty, and horny? If he’d had Jeanne with him, at least they could have mindless sex before they died.
No, he had the feeling that pretty Jeanne wouldn’t give up. She’d find a way out. She�
�d take his hand and she’d—
“Oop!” Eland’s nose met a metal wall. The rest of him met it too, including his toes. “Shit. Fuck. Damn it ...”
His sudden anger vanished as his hands felt the difference in the wall. “A door. The gods are looking out for me. Thank you, gods, whichever ones you are.”
Eland had to pry this one open too. Good thing level-three Shareem were made to be strong.
The door creaked and groaned, but eventually, Eland rolled it back. A downdraft of air brought with it heat, and far above, noise. People. Talking, shouting, calling out to others to come and buy what they were selling. There was a market street up there.
Hot damn. He could … maybe … get out. Then he only needed to worry about being caught by patrollers and terminated before finding Rees and getting off the planet.
Eland took a stride forward and barked his ankle on a step. Growling more swear words, Eland looked up. There was a light above—daylight, which showed he was at the foot of a metal staircase that rose a hell of a long way. He counted landing after landing above him.
His heart beat faster. If Eland could climb out of here and reach the street, not be seen, and steal enough food and water to sustain him, he now had a good hideout in which to evade patrollers and figure out what to do.
If, if, if. But what the hell. He could either stay down here and cry, or try to find a way out and keep going. Shareem were nothing if not resilient.
That’s what the researchers at DNAmo hadn’t understood. They hadn’t bred a bunch of sex-gods who only lived to pleasure women. They’d created beings that were resourceful, could think on their feet, and had learned to hide things they didn’t want their DNAmo masters to know about. Like their emotions, their smarts, their cunning.
The Shareem would have made a break for it eventually, even if DNAmo hadn’t been shut down. It was inevitable. Now the Shareem needed the same strengths to pool together and get the hell off this rock.
First things first. Eland let out a breath, and started to climb.
***
Jeanne continued her search for Eland until very late, ending up exhausted and parched. Disgruntled and worried, she headed home.
She made it to her front door only to have a patroller, a woman with stern eyes and a firm mouth approach her. “Jeanne Narren?”
Jeanne’s heart thumped as she halted. The Shareem are dangerous and unpredictable, and they have been sentenced by the Bor Nargan government to termination. So the reporter had said.
“Yes?” Jeanne managed to answer without stammering.
“Need to talk to you,” the patroller said. “About a man seen prowling around here last night. Might have been one of these Shareem we’re looking for. Can I come in?”
Jeanne’s first instinct was to ask the patroller why the hell she had to come inside, or whether she had a warrant to do so. Patrollers couldn’t enter houses of Bor Nargan citizens without permission.
She stilled her words. If Jeanne went on the defensive, she’d be indicating that she had something to be defensive about.
“Shareem?” Jeanne asked with the right tremor in her voice. “I heard about them on the news vid today. They’re dangerous, aren’t they?”
“They are. Extremely.” The patroller’s eyes narrowed. “So can we talk inside?”
“Sure,” Jeanne said, and thumb-printed her door open. “Whatever I can do to help.”
Chapter Five
The staircase Eland climbed opened out in another tiny back alley at the end of a market street. It was similar to the alley Eland had been in before, but not the same. He could have walked from one side of Pas City to the other, for all he knew.
He ducked back inside the door when he caught sight of patrollers passing the other end of the alley. What would they do if they caught him? Stun him and drag him to a holding cell to await termination? Or simply shoot him dead?
Eland had no intention of finding out. He needed to snag himself a breath mask somewhere, and food, and not get caught.
He wrapped himself up in the robes again, arranging a fold over his eyes to hide their unusual color, and strolled down the alley.
The patrollers were gone by the time he turned into the market street, where he found himself next to a shop that sold leather goods. Hmm.
His level-three thoughts went to the accoutrements he’d used at DNAmo. A fine leather strap. A flogger. Simple leather cords with which to tie a lady’s wrists.
Eland’s fantasies added Jeanne. She’d be naked, her wrists bound, while she watched him bring himself off. She’d beg for him to come to her, to let her touch him, for him to touch her. Eland would hold off, tormenting her until she came just wanting him.
Eland found himself standing still, his mouth dry. He jerked himself back to the present with effort. If he froze like this every time he thought of Jeanne, he’d get himself snagged. Or burn up from both the Bor Nargan sun and his Shareem blood.
Strange, Eland had never given much thought to the females who’d been given to him in the experiments—guinea pigs, the Shareem had called them—with whom he’d had sex in every way imaginable. They’d been willing, eager even, and enjoyed every minute of it. Eland had made sure they did. But once they were gone, they were gone, experiment over. Another guinea pig would sign up, and the researchers would begin another set of tests on Eland.
Eland couldn’t get Jeanne out of his mind. Because she was the first “real” woman he’d ever met? Or something more? He kept thinking of the small smile she’d given him when she’d watched him take a shower, the taste of her mouth, the way she’d come so easily when he’d touched her ...
Damn it, more patrollers. Eland ducked back down the alley to his shelter.
When he dared to sneak another peek, he saw a very large man covered in robes slide into the alley. The man moved fast, almost unnaturally so, like a predator, but right now this man was the prey.
He knew how to flatten himself in shadow, remaining motionless as yet another set of patrollers walked by. He was so still Eland barely saw him, and yet he’d watched the man hide.
When the patrollers moved on, the man darted out again, then let out a muffled curse as two more patrollers stopped at the mouth of the alley. Not because they’d seen him—they’d simply halted to talk.
The sun was going down, the long desert day finally over. The streets were coming alive as they darkened, Bor Narga’s population having wisely avoided the mid-afternoon sun.
The alley was a dead-end, Eland knew, and the man was trapped there. He couldn’t make himself completely invisible. Sooner or later, one of the patrollers would decide to come down there, just to be thorough.
“Hey,” Eland whispered. He carefully lifted his hand and gestured to the door that half hid him.
If it were possible for the other guy to go any more still, he did. Then he slowly turned his head, and Eland saw the gleam of Shareem-blue eyes.
The two stared at each other for a moment, neither saying a word. Then the other Shareem unfroze and moved down the alley toward Eland. Though the Shareem was easily as big as Eland, he had a way of walking, deliberately hunched over, that made him look smaller and weaker than he was.
Eland thought he had met all the Shareem at least once, but he’d never seen this one. He knew in his gut, though, who the man was.
Eland moved aside as the Shareem caught the door and slid inside in one smooth motion. He closed the door just as smoothly.
The next thing Eland saw was a small square of light held in the Shareem’s hand. It illuminated the stone walls and metal staircase, and the Shareem, who pushed back his hood to reveal pale hair woven into a tight tail.
“Rees?” Eland asked.
“That’s me,” Rees said in a voice that was both nonchalant and amazingly confident. “Who are you, and where the hell are we?”
***
“Reports are that last night a male matching the description of a Shareem was spotted in this area,” the patroller
said to Jeanne. “You see anything?”
Jeanne shook her head. “I sleep hard. I work at the docks, and we start early. I’m pretty much dead to the world in the middle of the night.”
The patroller gave her a sharp look. She’d refused to sit down, and stood in the center of Jeanne’s small front room, giving the place a once-over. “I never said what time he was seen.”
Jeanne shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Nights I’m not out with my friends I come home, eat, watch a vid or two, and go to bed. I didn’t hear or see anything before I went to bed, so I assume it was after.”
The patroller listened while her gaze took in every space in Jeanne’s living room and the kitchen in its alcove. She focused on the bedroom door.
“Mind if I search the rest of the apartment?”
Jeanne did mind, but again, if she argued, the patroller might come back with a large search team and take the place apart. Jeanne had found no sign herself that Eland had been there, but she hadn’t done a thorough scan, like patrollers would.
Jeanne waved her hand toward the bedroom. “Go ahead. If anyone is hiding here, I want to know about it.”
The patroller gave her a look and headed for the door, which opened to her touch. She stepped inside the bedroom, Jeanne behind her, and pulled out a handheld.
“What does that do?” Jeanne asked, hiding her nervousness.
“Looks for DNA. If someone other than you has been here, we’ll know.”
Terrific. Jeanne’s heart beat faster, and she resisted gnawing on her lip. Eland’s clothes had been gone when she’d woken. Her clothes washer had gone through two cycles, leaving her with a bunch of clean, dry towels, which she’d put away before she went to work. Eland must have used the cycle before that to wash his own clothes, all while Jeanne had been sound asleep.
In the shower, though, in the bathroom, Eland had stroked his hard, dark cock under Jeanne’s gaze until he’d come. She remembered his seed falling to the floor, sliding down the drain. Would there be evidence of that?
Eland and Jeanne (Tales of the Shareem) Page 3