Touch of Danger (Three Worlds)

by Strickland, Carol A.

Stoan shook his head. “Have a lesser telepath scan a more powerful one? Or one just as powerful, with more tricks up her sleeve? I'm not willing to do that.”

  Lina raised up on her toes to emerge from the shelter of Lon's shoulder. She couldn't come across as a coward. Londo would reject her sometime in the future, but by god he wasn't going to do so now over something like this! “Well, dammit, what would prove it to you?”

  **Easy, Lina.** Lon raised his hands to increase the barrier between the two. “Let's slow down here, everyone,” he said. “Stoan, I've been thinking. If you can't find any grade-8 or above teeps nearby, then why not just call up the Tishana and ask them to interview Lina? They can use their own controller protocols, use whatever security they want. Surely we can set up an independent link so there'd be no possibility of them getting into Legion communications.”

  “No. I'm not willing to go that far yet.”

  “Then let Wiley put together some likely tests and tape Lina doing whatever. You can submit the tape to the Tishana without endangering Legion security.”

  Stoan rubbed his mouth.

  Lina caught her breath. “All I'm asking,” she said carefully, “is what can I do to prove that I'm not controlling anyone?”

  The Legion commander studied her for a long time, and Londo, too. “I'm not sure. I'll think about it and get back to you. You're still in quarantine. I'll have an answer ready tomorrow morning.”

  “Wonderful,” Lina said without enthusiasm.

  “Stoan, we can go ahead and—” Londo started, but the screen went blank and disappeared.

  Chapter 18

  “Nice guy.” Lina made a face at Lon.

  “Actually, he is. He's just concerned at the circumstances.” Londo took her in his arms again and hoped they wouldn't be interrupted this time. **I'm ready to tear down a few walls around here,** he told her.

  **Does Wiley have any more bomb rooms? Hell, I'd be willing to share the place with that bomb, if it meant we could get a few minutes of real privacy.**

  He laughed suddenly. “Bin-bin, that's it. That's it exactly.” He grinned at her.

  “What? I was kidding about the bomb.”

  “Instead of Earth-to-Earth porting, we do Sarastor-to-Sarastor.”

  “If you recall, love, we are biohazards. Can't go anywhere.”

  “Yes, and we are in Mega-Legion Headquarters.”

  “Huh?”

  “Jae.” The other two Legionnaires had discreetly absented themselves from the general vicinity, but now Jae turned in his chair in front of a workstation to face Lon.

  Londo said, “Emergency systems in Headquarters carry throughout the building. Any chance of there being biocleaning agents in the mix?”

  “Biocleaning. I suppose so.” Jae turned to his terminal to check. “Yeah, emergency biocleaning available in case of biohazard leak or attack. Not just here and in the medical sector, where you'd expect it, but everywhere.”

  “Oui, I thought I remembered it. I know the seals on individual quarters are pretty tight. Are they biohazard tight?”

  Jae gave a grudging conspiratorial grin at Londo's eagerness. “As I recall, they're made to be airlocks. The original HQ designers were a paranoid bunch. You'll have to tell the computer to activate the special lockdown.”

  “Good enough. Wiley?”

  The azure genius was standing at a bank of monitors overlooking the room the bomb was in. He turned at his name.

  “What are the chances of the prisoners making a break for it? Port into quarters, activate emergency airlock procedures, emergency biocleaning system?”

  Both Wilder's eyes narrowed at them. “The environmental factors would work, yes. But I said no sex, Londo, and I meant it.”

  Lina covered her mouth with her hand, trying not to laugh.

  “All we want is a little privacy,” Londo urged.

  “If privacy is all you want, use the break room.”

  “I don't want the break room,” Londo's voice came ever so slightly as a growl.

  Wilder said, “You may think you're healthy, Londo, but you're still healing. I've been thinking about separating you two for the rest of quarantine. No more nanites. Without the link weakening you, you could recover completely by the time we're released.”

  “No,” Lina and Lon said simultaneously.

  Wiley's mouth twisted either in a smile or grimace. “I suppose we could postpone that. For a while.”

  Londo scowled his famous scowl at him, but Wiley wasn't impressed.

  “Because any introduction of foreign substances will create a new quarantine condition,” Wiley began.

  “When they return,” Jae put in, “we'll turn the biocleaning system in Lon's quarters up to full. That'll get rid of any life forms, foreign or domestic, within a half hour,” he added for Lina's benefit.

  She nodded warily. The bland mask Jae had made of his face seemed a trifle friendlier for some reason, but still reserved.

  “So let's go,” Londo said. Gingerly he put his arm around Lina's waist. “Puter, put bio-tight force fields around all plants in my room.”

  Wiley held up his hand. “Just a moment. I need to change Lina's dressings. And give you both some injections.”

  “Oh, good,” Lina said.

  “Are you sure you need to give me a shot?” Lon asked. “Or are you just getting a kick out of finally being able to?”

  Wiley gave him a rueful smirk. “Maybe a little of both.”

  “Oh, stop egging him on, Lon.” Lina pushed Londo and he wobbled away from her.

  “Whoa!” Jae cried.

  “Do that again,” Wilder ordered.

  What were they so upset about, Lina wondered? “Do what?”

  “Push him.”

  Lina looked at Londo and he shrugged. She pushed him, and he wavered from the force of it. “So?”

  “You forget, Lina,” Lon said with a smile and an innocent hand to his heart. “Valiant ici.”

  “Hm?” Then she remembered trying to push him when he'd first gotten his powers back. It had been like pushing against the Rock of Gibraltar.

  Wilder got his handheld sensor out and ran it up and down, inches away from Lina.

  “What does it say?” she asked curiously.

  “It said that you seem to be a normal, if injured, human being. The last time I looked, normal human beings couldn't budge Valiant. Invulnerability is one thing, but getting past his strength is quite another.”

  Now Wiley ran his tricorder around Londo. “Hm. Valiant is still Valiant-like. Do you feel back up to full power, Lon?”

  “I'm getting there. I'm not mega yet, but I'm enough.”

  “So how does this happen?”

  “Well,” Lina began. What to say?

  “It happened when you gave me that back massage,” Londo nudged her. “That was some massage.”

  “When you had no powers,” Jae said.

  “No, when I had full powers. Lina said I needed to relax, so she decided on a massage.”

  They were all looking at her. She stamped her foot. “Well, he wouldn't relax, so I told his cells to recognize me.”

  “Recognize you?” Wiley was taking his notes again.

  “You know, not be afraid, not put up any defenses. Cells have a rudimentary intelligence. Oh, is that how the shot thing works? All I was trying to do was to get him to relax enough to let me give him a massage.”

  “Apparently you got him to do a little more than that,” Wiley said and cocked an eyebrow at Lon.

  “Oh that,” he said, laughing. “That's a double-feedback telepathic loop.”

  “We'll talk while I change Lina's dressing,” Wiley said, moving to chairs near what had become his medical section.

  “You aren't going to write a paper about this, are you?” Londo asked cautiously.

  “The question is how much I'll publish.” Wilder gave a faraway smile while his left eye focused on his invisible screen. “I might be persuaded to keep some aspects private. I always appreciate bl
ackmail material. As if I don't have enough on you already. Lina, sit here.”

  Lina dutifully sat, and was about to take off Lon's shirt when she realized Jae still stood next to Londo.

  “Privacy?” she asked.

  “Here,” Lon said, and swooped his fingers in the air between them. A shimmer cocooned her. “Good?” Lon’s voice came to her as if from a distance.

  Not that good, but what else was she going to do? Apparently Jae couldn't take a hint, and Londo truly thought this was enough.

  Men.

  With a sigh she divested herself of her robe and shirt, leaving just the leotard with its off-kilter bodice. She still wore it without the one arm on, to avoid most of the bandages.

  Wiley'd want to get to all her major injuries, so she dropped the leotard to her waist and then tied the arms of Lon's shirt around her neck, letting the body of the garment cover up her front. The weight of the robe wrapped around her waist secured it—for the most part—and hung down to warm her legs. Back and arms were now bare.

  With these few moments to herself, just her and her bandages, Lina could focus on the aches and stings that congealed in patches and then ran in definite paths within her body. If not for Wiley she'd have died along with Londo.

  And now Terry the Bitch had tried to bomb her house.

  Would she try again? Were Lina's cats in danger? What would Dr. Menlo do? He'd been implicated for that poison gas massacre in Guatemala, hadn't he? Would he gas her house?

  She couldn't port gas, could she? Hell, think back to how she'd reacted back there on the island. She couldn't do anything, just flailed about in victim mode while people used her to hurt Londo.

  Involuntary images from the news came to her: countless criminals attacking Valiant. More often they threatened innocents since their weapons could do so little harm to him.

  If she were going to follow him, they'd be aiming at her.

  “Yo, Lina?”

  She called all done and the privacy screen disappeared. It was nice to see that Londo had placed himself between her and Jae, blocking most of his view.

  Wiley lifted the dressing on her shoulder. She flinched at his touch though the material slid off easily.

  “This is healing nicely.” The skin was brownish red where there had once been a brand going all the way to the bone. Now it was just a severe case of sunburn.

  A screen showed her the burned patch on her back. It was flaking white with a thin layer of regenerated skin underneath. Wiley told her that tonight he'd program her bed for deep regeneration in that area, with special attention to the nerves.

  “But she'll be all right?” Londo asked.

  “In a few days. Perhaps a week for this area.”

  Wiley reached in a drawer and sorted through a jumble of containers, finally producing a small bottle of what he termed bartol flea. “For the next two days you need to spray this every four hours or so on your back,” he told Lina. “Use it sparingly. Gorgeon can handle it from there. Now let's see how this is doing.” He snapped off the dressing patches on her left arm, revealing the black-crusted, two-inch hole underneath.

  Lina glanced away; it looked worse now than it had before. Londo made a sound of dismay.

  “It's doing well,” Wilder announced, “but I'm surprised that it isn't doing better. I would expect another miracle healing.”

  “I couldn't figure out what kind of technique it needed. Maybe a Kolaimni or magnetic, but I haven't had the time.”

  “Take some time. Ask your guides; that's what they're there for, right? I'll strap a regenerator on it tomorrow and you'll wear it for two weeks, maybe three. I'll let Gorgeon make the final decision. You'll have a scar, but eventually you'll have full use of the arm.”

  As Wiley rigged that hard patch again on either side of the forearm, Lina could see that the inside of it was lined with a spiderweb of multi-colored tubing.

  “I'll take you to Gorgeon first thing when we're out of here,” Londo assured her. Then he turned to Wiley. “No offense.”

  Wiley grunted. It did not sound like a happy grunt.

  “Thank you,” Lina told her doctor. She pulled the robe up around herself and secured it as Wiley scanned her head.

  “Londo said you'd had a head injury,” he prompted.

  “A brick or something caught me,” Lina told him.

  “That's got to be what's causing the porting,” Londo said. “The power will go away when the bump heals, right?”

  Jae peered at her past the top of Lon's ear. Lina pulled up the collar of the robe so that the lower half of her head was covered as well.

  “You're practicing medical theory without a degree again.” Wiley double-checked his findings. “Hm.” He ran the sensor around her again and checked. “I think it may be just the opposite,” he pronounced. “I see some old trauma here that seems to have been corrected by this more recent event. When did you receive the original brain injury?”

  “Brain injury?” Lina jumped off her stool.

  “I take it that means you didn't know you had one,” Wiley said dryly.

  Jae scratched at his scraggly whiskers as Lon wrapped Lina in his arms. “There now,” Lon cooed. “There's no brain injury now?”

  “Scar tissue. What's not healed will in the next few days.”

  Lon rocked her back and forth. “All better now, eh. She was attacked once when she was a kid,” he volunteered. “And there were other times when she was hurt pretty bad.”

  “What did the doctors tell you?” Wiley asked Lina. “How did they treat the brain damage?”

  “They never said anything about brain damage,” Lina replied slowly from where she curled under Lon's chin. She didn't know what to think. “I just got stitches and stuff.”

  At Wiley's blank look she added, “For bad cuts. Other times than that, I was almost never taken to the hospital unless I broke a bone. I fell a lot back then. What, you think I had this power all along? That all I needed was for someone to clunk me on the head with a baseball bat?”

  “That's the cure for amnesia,” Londo solemnly told her. “For this you needed to be clunked with a brick.” He kissed the top of her head, and she emerged to give him a wan smile.

  Wiley mused over his findings. “I can't see where this would prompt such a development,” he muttered. “This part of the brain controls non-linear subconscious processing.”

  Lina piped up hopefully, “So the porting's permanent? Ha,” she added for Lon.

  “Ask me in ten years,” Wiley said, bemused. He wondered if the accident could be duplicated. “You say you fell a lot back then?”

  “Was pushed, I bet,” Londo said darkly.

  “Londo!” Lina's eyes flashed at him. Don't give away family secrets!

  “Some balance centers could have been affected as well. Here's an anesthetic for your arm.” Wiley gave her a couple of those fast-burning shots through the robe and the pain completely vanished, leaving her a little spacey.

  Maybe more than a little. “Ooo. Too much,” she giggled with a snort. Then she giggled at that.

  “What'd you do to her?” Londo demanded. He held her at arm's length to study her. “You okay, kitten?”

  “Juuust fine. Um hmm.”

  “Undo it, Wiley. Now.”

  Wiley clicked his hypo twice as he turned to him. “Londo, she's going to be out of it for some time. You don't want to take advantage of someone who's not in full possession of their faculties, do you?”

  Londo scowled at him as Jae let out a quick bark of a laugh. “That's a dirty trick.”

  Wilder chuckled evilly. “I said no sex for a while more, and I mean it. You're not the only one injured. Now you're next. Lina, I need your hand, please.”

  Lina hardly let him place her hand where he wanted. “I can do it; just point where you want it,” she said. But she kept dropping her hand as she giggled at her inability to keep it steady. Jae started to hold her hand in place at Wiley's direction as he grinned at Londo, but Lina growled, “Do
n't touch me!”

  “Don't take it personally,” Londo told Jae as Lina shook his hand off.

  She tried to hold still while Wiley administered the shots. Lon set his jaw and glowered manfully as if the doctor were performing anesthesia-free surgery. Wiley compared his new readings with those previous, then gave Londo another shot.

  “Ouch.” Lon rubbed the site. “You did that on purpose.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Oh hell, we'll stick around here for a little while longer,” Londo said. “What do you want to know…about us?”

  “How you do it, of course.”

  “The Big Question,” Jae added. He made no move to leave when Londo included him in his dark glare.

  Londo's scowl deepened. “D'accord, you bastards. It's a… telepathic psychic thing.”

  “That tells me a lot,” Wiley muttered. “More information.”

  “Double feedback loop,” Lina said. She discovered that her stool could turn, and she did so now. Londo steadied her.

  He did not feel comfortable discussing this! “One person tries to feel what the other person feels. Tactile, not emotional. And the other person does it too, for resistance and calibration.”

  “Double feedback loop de loop,” Lina repeated.

  Wiley squinted measuringly at the two of them. “And how does the other technique work? The cell recognition?”

  Londo shrugged his shoulders. “I have no idea. All I felt was a massage. A great massage.” His smile returned as he watched Lina's careless abandon of anything except the ride she was getting.

  “All you have to do is talk with the cells,” she said cheerily. “You have very nice cells, Londo. They're just scared, defensive.” She made itsy-bitsy spider finger crawls in Londo's direction. “Putting up their little force fields all over, teeny tiny force fields. Whoo, Tilt-a-Whirl!”

  Londo caught her before she could fall and she cackled with glee. “I never throw up on the Tilt-a-Whirl. My roommate did, all over the midway. Just bwaff, and there went two chili dogs and a whooole lotta nachos and some funnel cake besides. It was really gross. I had to drive us home with her ralfing out the window all the way back, I-40 after dark, and me without a driver's license.” She snickered behind her hand.