Touch of Danger (Three Worlds)
Page 35
“Is that a good sign?” Jae asked hopefully.
“Seems like it to me.” Wilder was cheered. “Maybe not interfering with whatever she's been doing has paid off.”
“But still you don't like doing nothing.”
Wiley shook his head. “Sunfire take it!”
“There's that book to be written from this.”
“At least one. Maybe a whole section of the medical library if I can get it de-classified. Too bad it's just a Terran technique.”
“Yes.” The way Jae said it, with a slightly mocking tone, made Wiley look twice at him.
“Your people could do this,” Wiley surmised, but Jae didn't reply.
Lina returned drying her head with the very damp towel. “My hair's never going to be the same after this,” she complained. “Oh, and I think the tank needs more salt. It's not absorbing as much energy.” She shivered.
Jae reassured her, “I'll handle it. And I'll warm up the water again.”
“Thank you. Thanks a lot.” She straightened her shoulders and shook her head as she turned back to Lon. “This side shouldn't take nearly as long. I went kind of deep on the front. I usually do.”
“He was stirring a moment ago.”
Lina's lower lip began to tremble violently. Her entire jaw worked to hold back cries she could not spare the time for. Instead she gulped four times and clamped her hands into hard fists, pounding them against her hips to snap herself back into focus on her goal. She swallowed her tears with a clatter of teeth that she knew Jae must have heard.
Her voice sounded almost steady as she said, “Let's finish this up. Remember, if he starts to talk, quiet him down. It's okay to talk a little, but not too much.”
“Right.” They stood back while she started the process again. It did seem to go faster. By the time she got to his mid-back he stirred again.
“Um… Hum… Lina?” Lon turned his head in her direction but didn't open his eyes.
“Hi, guy.” She paused but kept her hands perfectly in position. “Don't let what I'm doing stop you from going out and moving a mountain or whatever.”
He tried to smile and didn't make it. “May—Maybe not t-today.”
“Okay. I'm finishing up right now. Should be about ten, fifteen minutes. Until then I want you to be quiet. You're on Sarastor in Wiley's lab, and you're much better now.”
“D'accord.” He quieted; perhaps he slept. Lina returned to her work with a lighter heart. She reached the top of his head and paused.
“I remembered, I remembered,” she muttered under her breath. She walked to midway up his body and stood over him, one foot in front of the other, arms stretched to the ceiling. In her imagination, a ball of pink light as long as Londo appeared overhead and the light flowed down to engulf him. He sighed contentedly on the table.
“Ah, oui.”
Lina concentrated on funneling the energy. Finally it stopped and she shook her arms out, wincing when she shook the left one.
“Uh oh,” she said.
“What's wrong?” Jae had been the first to pick up on it.
“I’m finished, but I can't ground myself. Just a second.” She struggled for control. The world was now a series of overlapping auras, no solids to be felt, no gravity. Wait: she could bring earth energy—make that Sarastor energy—up through her root chakra, counter the lightheadedness…
“It's not working,” she said, trying not to let panic into her voice, much less her mind. Not grounded—she couldn't get fully back into her body. She'd wanted to finish Lon's back, but she should have stopped for a dunk somewhere during the last part. Too eager to finish. Now she had too much energy coursing through herself.
“Is there anything we can do?”
Her mind raced. She could do what she did for her clients.
“Do you have some kind of dark stones around here? Obsidian, lead, garnet, even turquoise. Something that I could hold.”
Jae's voice: “Give me a minute.”
Lina clutched at Lon's bed in case she lost her balance. Where was up or down? She must have swayed badly because something steadied her from behind. Even so she still shrank away from the touch.
She searched and found Jae's aura. The brightest part would be where his body was. He seemed to be talking to something, but she couldn't hear.
“Hold this.” His voice came from surprisingly near, and she knew he had put something in her hands. Immediately she was falling, falling, until with a jerk that hit her all over, she fit fully in her own body.
Gravity. Objects. The lab. “Wuff.” She shook her head to clear it, and it didn't take much. “I'm back, thanks. What is it?” She held up a black coffee cup. Funny, she'd thought the ones they had been using had been some kind of white material. “Obsidian.” She sighed her wonder. “Usually I can't handle obsidian or turquoise. They are too much of a grounding energy for me. Thanks. I really needed that.”
Jae noticed the way she clutched the cup to her, as if she desperately depended on it. “Any time.”
“Okay. I've finished the Kolaimni.” She turned to her patient. “You can wake up now, Londo. How do you feel?”
He stirred and stretched; tried to roll over, tried again and failed.
“Here,” Jae said and helped him. “I'm here now.”
“Jae. God,” Lon groaned. “I f-feel like I've been run over…by a s-starcruiser.” He tried to laugh. Instead he grimaced. He could barely hold his eyes open.
Lina wanted to touch him, wanted to hug him, but didn't know how to act in front of these two strange men. Instead she just put her hand on Lon's hand, feeling happiness return to her life.
She silently told him how much she loved him, delighted to feel the feedback from his mind. “I've got to go dunk myself,” she said aloud. “I'll be right back.”
Wiley motioned to her. “Before you go…” He waved a hypo meaningfully at her.
“Where?” she asked.
Lon opened his dark-ringed eyes curiously as Wiley pointed to a spot on his arm and Lina put her hand there. Wiley lowered the injector to the arm. “Wiley, w-what…? Hey! Ouch! How— Ow,” he said, trying out the sound. He looked at Lina and tried to focus. “How the—?”
“That's right, you were unconscious when Terry demonstrated that the first time. It seems to be a side effect from, you know. It's what the whole setup was for, apparently. Maybe.”
“W-what…” It was difficult for him to speak yet. Lina could see how his hands trembled with weakness. **What'd they get out of it?**
“They took a lot of blood from you. A whole lot.”
She heard him say, **I remember they wanted to cut you open.**
**I'm okay, Lon. Getting better all the time now that you're back.**
His eyebrows knit together as he tried to puzzle it out. Why? Why?
Lina sighed in frustration. She was fading out again, even with this huge hunk of obsidian in her hand. “Sorry. I've really got to dunk. I'll be right back.”
Jae and Wiley both noted that she hugged the mug with both hands as she ran for the tank. The two Legionnaires turned back to Lon.
Jae grinned. “Okay, Lon.” He felt like dancing now, but who would understand? Lon was awake. Lon was getting well! “We want to hear all about what happened. But first you've got to tell us: where in the worlds did you find her?”
“Be-believe it or n-not, Jae,” Lon grimaced weakly in what was supposed to be a smile, “she was a g-gift from an old…an old en-enemy.” Then he proceeded so slowly to tell them of Terry Rhodes and her latest scheme.
They patiently listened as he stumbled through the short-version overview, his eyes mostly closed. He delicately skirted the issue of sex and actually dozed off at one point.
“Too dopey,” Jae murmured to Wiley.
“Was not asleep,” Londo mumbled as he woke.
“So,” Jae said, “the two of you were surrounded by soldiers…” He looked up to see Lina returning, hair neat from a comb she had found in the bathroom.
There in the pool at the remote end of the lab, she'd sloughed off the excess energies from the healing. She'd dried herself, tucked her underwear into a pocket in the robe, folded Lon's burned shirt neatly, placed the obsidian mug on the top of the pile, and then broken down in tears. Lon was okay. He was alive! And he was getting better. Thank you, God!
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I don't know how I'm going to repay you for this but I will. You can ask anything of me. Anything!
After that came mere mindless sobbing.
Londo's table had been reconfigured so he could sit up a little. Now she crossed over to him and took his hand, which returned the squeeze weakly. How exhilarating to gaze at Lon's wonderful face! He continued his story.
Backtracking to the part where they first had been attacked, he switched from that other language to English. He worked himself up, trying to get his commanding voice back, but it didn't go with the watery eyes. “And n-next time, next time, Lina, when I tell you to port, you port.”
She wrinkled her stiff nose at him. “First of all, I sincerely hope there won't be a next time, but if there is, I'll probably be a lot faster at getting things together for a port. I mean, I've only been doing this for, what, two days now? Secondly, I was this close—” she held her blistered fingertips together—”to getting you out of there when they hit me. And thirdly, that Terry bitch had her own set of priorities. If I weren't there, she would have blasted you to kingdom come and not thought twice. Am I right?”
“Euh. M-maybe.”
“So you tell me. What was she doing getting blood from you? Does she want to impress a vampire?”
“Lots of…” Londo licked his lips. He was tired of talking. “Wiley?”
The blue doctor cocked his head. “There are a number of possibilities. It could be anything, really. Cloning experiments. Power experiments. There have been theories that a blood transfusion from Londo could give the recipient parapowers.”
“She wanted to have Lon's baby,” Lina said quietly. “Maybe the blood had something to do with that. Her biological clock is ticking down. She was desperate; I know that much.”
“Blood wouldn't—”
Lon looked at Wilder. “Sh-she also wanted a sperm s-sample. Post mortem.” His gaze went to Lina, and Wilder realized what had been threatened.
“As I said, a number of possibilities, and none of them pleasant. Londo, we're going to…”
Vaguely it occurred to Lina that Wiley's voice sounded more and more distant, and the room was going dark.
Jae was the one to catch her before she fell across Londo.
“Is she okay?” Lon demanded. He blinked and tried hard to focus although his eyes refused to do so. Was Lina's face discolored? Dark rust? It seemed the wrong shape somehow, though he knew it was her by her presence.
“It's all those stimulants we had her on,” Wiley explained quickly to keep his patient calm. “She's just crashed from them. Good. Now that you're stable, Londo, I can work on her.”
“Why? Is sh-she hurt?” Now Lon remembered Terry slapping her and more. “Th-they hit her. Low-grade…energy weapon. Number of t-times. Burned her. And…and I thought…I h-heard her…scream…”
“She was hit hard with lasers. And yes, there are some severe burns on her shoulder and back. I should be able to handle it. There'll be a long recuperation time for her arm, but she'll be all right.” Wiley began to set up another bed like Londo's.
Jae hoisted Lina into his arms. She was like a rag doll and oddly light. He looked down at Londo, meeting his eyes.
“Jae… Jae…”
“Congratulations,” Jae said softly to him so Wiley couldn't hear.
“Ah, Jae… I don't… I don't…” Lon scowled as he tried to talk.
“I'm glad for you, Lon. I really am.” Jae gave him a wan smile and took the girl over to Wiley.
Chapter 8
Lina woke up with a start. Where was she? Oh—the lab. Sarastor, another world. The lights were very dim and tiny creaks and hisses softly leaked from the corners of the place. She was on one of those floating bed-tables. Someone had put a blanket over her.
Her arm throbbed considerably less than it had, though the chicken wire and bubble gum were both missing. She touched the spot and felt a hard, oval bandage under her sleeve. A matching one was on the other side of the arm. A dressing covered her shoulder where the branding burn was, and something thick and sticky had been applied all over her face and throat and elsewhere.
She rotated her jaw experimentally. The skin was tight but not stretched achingly taut as it had been. She could feel some big patch on her back by the way the edges scratched at her when she moved, but her back as a whole was fairly numb, as were her stomach and legs.
Her mind wasn't completely clear, but it would do.
Raising up on her good elbow, she looked around. Lon was sleeping peacefully on his bed about twenty feet from her. Further away were Wiley and Jae, passed out on couches near the double-doored entrance.
Lina secured her robe and tiptoed over to Londo on the too-cool floor. Running a thorough psychic examination of him, she checked in with her guides and the guardian angels who massed around him, healing him in his sleep.
He looked so vulnerable.
A gray blanket left his shoulders uncovered. The brawniness of those muscles was a sharp contrast to Lon's face. His skin was sunken beneath his eyes, leaving dark circles. Whitish patches blotched around his mouth.
His hair was tousled and boyish—oh, how he wouldn't like that! Automatically she reached to smooth it back, but as soon as she touched him the lines on the monitors went haywire. She snatched her hand away. Those squiggly lines went back to the way they'd been.
She couldn't touch him when she longed to reassure herself that he still lived and still loved her.
All his life he'd been unable to give a human touch to anyone else. How selfish of her to feel as if she were being punished with this short time away from him! Maybe the universe thought that she'd overstepped her place for daring to love Valiant.
So now she had her hands slapped. Now she couldn't even touch him. But tomorrow he'd be better, the next day even better. Maybe she would be able to touch him then. She could live for two days like that. But she missed his strong arms around her, the warmth of those brown eyes as he smiled at her. He had the world's most bewitching smile.
The charts bleeped and she hastily withdrew her fingers from his lips. Oh dear, oh dear!
As Lina stamped her foot, a blond head across the room raised, then lay back down to feign sleep again.
All right. If she couldn't be a lover, she could be a professional. She corrected a few minor energy points on Lon, blew out some fetid energy, and then checked in with his femurs. They were happily churning away at producing blood cells.
The monitors were a mystery and thus no help. All she could tell was that Londo's body was in a balancing mode, taking the healing she had given him and in effect digesting it. It wouldn't be wise to give him anything more for a number of hours yet.
But there was another kind of healing that people said worked anytime. She offered up a prayer to the universe. Please watch over him.
She begged whatever God there might be and all His angels to heal this man—if it wasn't too presumptuous of her. They'd been saved by a miracle back there on Tiawa, and again after Londo had died. One miracle more, she pleaded. He's such a good man. The universe needs him.
I need him, too, Lord. He was the only person in the entire universe who had ever loved her.
Lina knew the signs of her own body: she was up for a while. What to do until then? She tried to stretch, but her body rebelled with twinges and worse. She blew out the worst of it and wished for an asp
irin. Maybe a half bottle or so.
As she turned, she noticed the room's details for the first time. It was dark from the dim light, but also darkly furnished. It was also entirely too messy to be used as a set in a science fiction movie. Hurricane Lina had visited. Overturned glass-covered table cabinets lay everywhere. Smaller chunks of debris filled the spaces between them.
Jae and Wiley had sat at a dining room-sized table with a frameless windshield. Various paths to the table had been kicked out of the piles of detritus that surrounded it.
At least one tiny section of the vast, open lab revealed some order. Over there were terrariums and what seemed to be chemical setups and heat sources aimed at various materials and steaming pots of whatever, all separated onto their own display tables. They provided quiet blips and bloops of background noise.
A scurrying sound like a mouse the cats had dragged in attracted her attention. Lina wove her way through the mess toward the few neat lines of tables and gave Wiley credit for cleaning some things up as well as he had so quic— Oh! A turtle-dome scuttled into view. Well, it looked like a turtle was there somewhere under the five-foot round, undercooked, translucent crystalline pancake someone had thrown over it.
The turtle thing scooted toward an up-ended table-high cabinet. The pancake part oozed forward, formed a short bulldozer wall, and pushed. Slowly the cabinet righted itself. Next the turtle-pancake crept up the sides and overflowed it, leaving a clean surface in its wake. It slithered back down to the floor.
Pincers formed from the pancake to set various bottles and containers on top of the cabinet. Some blobs left the pancake to dribble across the floor beyond downed machinery. Other blobs returned from the same direction to merge seamlessly back into the pancake.
From deep within the crystalline structure, two tiny Christmas lights blinked twice, to echo twice from lights in the cabinet's baseboard. The cabinet began to move on its own. Lina was so intrigued watching the turtle-pancake spread itself over the newly-uncovered expanse of floor and the tan and blue powders spilled there that she didn't realize that the cabinet had come to her and stopped.