by Speer, Flora
“By all the stars.” Herne drew a shaky breath. “I’ve been spending too much time with Osiyar. His telepathic abilities must be rubbing off on me.”
“I know you well enough by now to be certain that you are not a telepath,” said Tarik with a chuckle.
“It’s not funny,” Herne declared, insulted by Tarik’s humor. “This was not just an erotic dream. I was with a woman last night, or with something that looked and acted like a woman.”
“I believe you. We sometimes forget,” Tarik said, laying a friendly hand on Herne’s rigid shoulder, “that this planet is in the Empty Sector. The reason space travel is forbidden through this part of the galaxy is because the laws of physics don’t always apply here, because legends tell of dreams more real than waking life, and of strange life forms flourishing.”
“Like telepaths.” Herne frowned, trying to make sense of his experience.
“Like telepaths,” Tarik agreed. “This planet’s isolation and the laws against travel in the Empty Sector made this a safe place for the telepaths to found their colony of Tathan, so long ago. For the same reason we came here, to build a listening post to monitor the Cetans, to make certain they keep their recently signed treaty with the Jurisdiction.
“You were right to inform me of this incident, Herne. Be sure to tell me if anything else happens to you that seems strange. Do you feel well enough to work today?”
“Absolutely.” Herne nodded. “Thanks to Merin’s hot qahf, my brain is starting to function again. Look, Tarik, I know you said we would start our excavations with the building you found yesterday, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to study the area where I first saw that woman. Perhaps I can find some evidence of what really happened.”
“That’s a good idea. Just be careful,” Tarik advised. “How much will you tell Merin?”
“She will need to know what I saw,” Herne decided, “but I don’t intend to reveal every intimate detail.”
“Merin is an intelligent woman.” Tarik surveyed the physician, taking in his bedraggled appearance, and Herne knew his leader was trying not to show any further sign of amusement. Still, Tarik could not resist a last, teasing comment. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she is able to guess what you’ve been doing all night.”
Chapter 3
Merin could tell that Herne was not feeling well. When she re-entered the shuttlecraft she found him drinking a second cup of qahf, swallowing the hot liquid as though it was an unpleasant but necessary medicine; which, from his appearance, it probably was. His face was a pasty-white color, there were dark circles under his eyes, and his step was none too steady. This she learned by quick glances while he was occupied in gathering together his kit and strapping it on his back. She did not allow their eyes to meet. It would not be right. But then, nothing would ever be right again, not until she died.
It had not taken her long to understand that she should not have come to Dulan’s Planet. But she hadn’t belonged in the archivists’ carrels at Capital, either. There was no place in the Jurisdiction where she could possibly fit in and feel comfortable now that her home planet was forever closed to her. All she had left in her exile was her need to make herself useful in order to justify her continued existence.
When she had heard two other Capital archivists discussing in sneering terms the rumors about a group of misfits whom Commander Tarik was gathering to take on some mysterious expedition into the unknown, she had realized that he would need someone to keep his records. She had once helped Tarik’s older brother, Admiral Halvo, with some difficult and confidential research that he had wanted done immediately. He had been so pleased with her work that he offered to use his influence in her behalf if she ever needed it. Merin went to Halvo, to ask him to recommend her to Tarik. Within a day she was signed on as a member of the colony. Seven days later she was on her way to Dulan’s Planet where, she hoped, no one would ever learn what she really was.
She found Tarik’s colonists a disparate lot. There was even a Cetan among them, although Gaidar seemed a mild enough character and had mated with a Jurisdiction woman, Suria. Both had tried to be kind to Merin. So had Tarik and his wife, Narisa. Still, Merin felt ill at ease with them, because she could not tell them the truth about herself.
On Oressia, it was accepted, a necessary thing, but it was an aspect of Oressian life that could never be revealed to outsiders. The few who left Oressia to live elsewhere were sworn to eternal secrecy by the most solemn oaths. At the time of her own leaving, it had not seemed a great thing to ask of her because it was clear that those who lived on other Jurisdiction worlds would be incapable of understanding the very good reasons for the Oressian way of life.
“I’m ready. Let’s go.” Herne had pulled himself and his gear together at last. For the second time that morning, Merin left the shuttlecraft, but when she started walking toward the area of the ruins where Tarik and the others were working, Herne stopped her. “Not there. This way.”
She saw where he was going. With a lifting of interest, she followed him.
“Are we going to search for evidence of the woman you thought you saw?” asked.
“The woman I did see,” he corrected her. He pointed toward a pile of stones. “As a historian, what is your opinion of that pillar?”
“By Jurisdiction time, it is six to seven hundred years old,” Merin replied, glad to forget her personal troubles in work. Quickly, she pushed the buttons on her hand-held recorder that communicated with the shuttlecraft computer, entering information on the dimensions, composition, and exact location of the pillar.
“Six to seven hundred years would be about right,” Herne mused, looking at the ground near the pillar. “Isn’t that when the telepaths settled here? They must have built this.”
“It seems likely.” Merin watched him scraping at the ground with one foot. “For what are you searching?”
“For the other side of the arch.”
“I see only a broken pillar, with no evidence of an arch,” she told him.
“It was here. It was part of a one-story white building that had a garden behind it.”
“You think this was the arch?” Merin stood where Ananka had stood the night before. She waved the hand holding the recorder. “And on this side was the interior of the building?”
“Yes. The garden was that way,” Herne insisted, noting that, measured against the masonry of the pillar, Merin was almost exactly as tall as Ananka had been.
“Show me.” Still Merin’s eyes were on the recorder. Her fingers flew over the buttons, adding more data. “Count the steps, or if you cannot remember how many steps you took, then just approximate the distance.”
“You believe me?” He sounded surprised.
“What is important is that you believe in whatever you think you saw,” said Merin. “Describe it to me as we go along. I will record it all. Even if we can make no sense of it, perhaps the larger computer at Home can. Or perhaps your information will fit with any discoveries made by Tarik and the others.”
“Here,” Herne said, stopping by a slight elevation in the overgrown debris. “At this spot was a huge, golden statue of a Chon.”
“If it was valuable metal, the Cetans probably hacked it to pieces and carried it off when they destroyed the city,” Merin told him. She made notes on the recorder while Herne attempted to clear the dirt away from the ground. Stooping, he picked up an oblong chunk of solid material that had fallen away as he worked.
“Look at this. It was down here near the bottom, as if had fallen off the pedestal. Perhaps it’s a piece of the stone the statue sat on.” He scraped at what he held in one hand, using his fingernails until a spot of dark metal was revealed. “What the -? This isn’t stone.”
“If it is an artifact and not just a piece of dirt, you ought to use the proper tools,” Merin said, handing over a brush and a small pick from her own supply of instruments. When Herne took them, she went back to her recorder. “I need to note exactly where and how you fo
und it.”
Surprised and pleased that she had not claimed a historian’s right by insisting on taking over his discovery to clean and examine it herself, Herne worked at the chunk of dirt and metal for a while. Because he was so intent on what he was doing, it took him a few minutes before he realized that she had finished recording the initial data on his finding and was watching every motion of his hands.
“Do you want to do it?” he asked, irrationally irritated by her quiet patience.
“Why, when you are doing an excellent job? It appears that the hands of a physician are every bit as gentle and precise as those of a trained archeologist. Which,” she reminded him, “I am not. I am only a historian, not a discoverer. Please, continue. I will make the notes.” She bowed her head so he could not see her face, but only the crisp white coil with its neat chinstrap.
“Thank you for your confidence in me.” Had she been anyone else, he would have touched her arm or her shoulder in grateful acknowledgement of the compliment she had just paid him, but he knew that Merin did not like to be touched. He had seen her shy away when someone came too close and, in the manner of all observant physicians, he had stored that fact in his memory for future use. He went back to work on the object in his hands. He had only uncovered a portion of if before he knew what it was. Merin knew it, too. He could tell by the sound of her indrawn breath.
“It’s impossible,” she said. “It cannot be. Not buried by six centuries of dirt.”
“Luckily, this special metal doesn’t corrode.” Herne chipped away a piece of solidified earth, revealing part of the upper surface. “You can read the serial number right here. This is a Service recorder, current issue, just like the ones we are using.”
“Herne.” Merin’s hands were shaking. “That is the number on my recorder. There cannot be two recorders with the same serial number. The final five digits are always different, and they are checked often enough at the factory to avoid duplication.” She held her own instrument out for him to see.
“The same object cannot be in two places at the same time,” Herne insisted, looking at the one in his hand.
“Tarik has often enough warned us about distortions of time and space in the Empty Sector,” Merin said. “Perhaps here, under certain conditions, the impossible is possible. Tarik should see this at once.”
“Not yet. I want to look around a bit more before we go to him. Come on, we’re going to do some exploring.”
“By the Jurisdiction’s Rule of Archeology,” Merin said, “you are required to leave that recorder exactly where you found it until your commanding officer verifies the finding. Under these peculiar circumstances, I suggest you take it with you instead. It might not be here when we return.”
“It’s good to know you do have an imagination.” She missed Herne’s brief smile because her eyes were fixed on the clean recorder in her hand. He wrapped the dirt-encrusted one in an artifact bag and put it into his kit.
“Shall we go on?” Merin asked in her soft, unemotional voice.
“Be careful,” Herne warned. “There are steps here, or there should be. We are entering the garden now. Just over there is the stairway to the grotto.”
“You haven’t mentioned the grotto before. How do you know it is here? I see nothing to indicate steps.”
“Perhaps you would be able to see something if you would occasionally take your eyes off the ground or that recorder,” Herne snapped, suddenly irritated by the way she had put aside her distress over the duplicate recorder to resume her usual calm demeanor. He glared at her, but of course she could not see his expression. That annoyed him even more. Believing she would soon begin asking questions about the previous night that he would rather not answer, he attacked with a question of his own. “Why don’t you ever look at anyone when you speak? I detest people who don’t look me straight in the eye.”
“On my homeworld it is considered rude to so challenge another person,” Merin responded with quiet gravity. “In order to avoid provoking conflict, we do not look directly at each other.”
“You aren’t on Oressia now. Look at me.” Herne almost told her to take off that stupid white headdress, too, but stopped himself just in time. It wasn’t Merin’s fault if he was disoriented and in a miserable mood this morning, or if he was blaming himself for what had happened during the night. He did realize how he could have put all of his companions in jeopardy by going off with that accursed woman. If he actually had gone off with her; if there really had been a woman. If he had not dreamed it all. He shook his head, trying to sort out his memories, trying to think rationally.
At least he could be grateful that in spite of the lack of any solid evidence, Tarik had not reprimanded him or scoffed at his story. Nor had Merin laughed at the insane things he’d been saying. She had only asked for more information. He was about to apologize to her, to tell her she need not break her native customs in order to accommodate his irascible demand that she look directly at him when, apparently having wrestled through the problem on her own, she lifted her gaze to his.
Herne was rocked back on his heels. Her eyes were light brown with purple flecks in them, wide and clear and innocent, with thick, darker brown lashes. Her entire face was changed when she looked upward, her sharp features, untouched by any trace of cosmetics, softened into delicate prettiness. Her lips were trembling a little at this breach of Oressian custom, and a faint blush turned her cheeks pink.
But the thing that shook Herne to his bones was the way her features resembled those of Ananka. It could not be, unless it was some trick played on his mind by forces he did not understand. He longed to pull the covering off Merin’s head, to see if her hair was the same light golden brown as Ananka’s had been. What in the name of all the stars was going on here?
She looked right at him with those wonderful eyes and said in all innocence, “I have recorded everything I can from this position. Will you show me the grotto stair, please?”
There was nothing for it but to stop gazing into her eyes like a star-struck boy and begin searching for the steps. Knowing where they ought to be, he found them soon enough, buried beneath six centuries of dirt and leaves and overgrowth. He and Merin started down the slope, all that was left of the ancient masonry.
“Take my hand,” he advised. “You don’t want to fall.”
“I need both hands for the recorder.” That wasn’t true. She could have put the recorder away until she reached the bottom of the slope, but she did not want to touch him. Until just a few minutes ago she had never looked directly at a man who was looking back at her. When she met Herne’s gaze she had felt stripped, ravished, lost forever, and she had understood why she had been trained to keep her gaze always lowered in the presence of others. Appalled by her own response though she was, and horrified to find herself speaking an untruth for the second time in less than a day, still she wanted to raise her eyes to his again. But she dared not; in such uninhibited behavior lay the seeds of disease and disaster, complete social disorder, war and all its terrors….
She kept her eyes fixed on her recorder. Because she wasn’t watching her footing, she tripped over a root. The slope was too steep for her to regain her balance. She bounced against Herne, who was a little ahead of her. He grabbed at her to pull her upright, but he missed and they both went down, rolling and sliding, trying to catch branches and bushes and rocks along the way until they stopped in a heap of bodies and shoulder-kits. Dazed and breathless, Merin felt the heavy strength of a masculine body pressed firmly on top of her. She was so shaken that she scarcely noticed the way her head was hanging over the edge of a large, dark hole.
“That,” said Herne, his mouth pressed close to her ear, “is the entrance to the grotto.”
* * * * *
“Last night there was a stream running along here,” Herne said.
They were using the lamp he carried in his shoulder-kit to light their way down the slippery, earth-clogged steps. Merin looked where he indicated, but saw only a ro
ck channel worn smooth by the passage of water at some time in the past.
“There was a lake here,” he added when they reached the bottom of the steps, “a beautiful, blue lake. And draperies blowing in the wind. And a couch, right there.”
What they saw now was a small black pool. The walls and roof of the underground chamber dripped viscous moisture. There was no sign of billowing draperies, nor of any luxurious couch. Instead, there was a ledge of bare rock and on it the skeleton of a small, bat-like creature. The breeze was gone, too. The air was heavy, and as still as the water in the stagnant pool. All of this Herne and Merin saw in bits and pieces as he moved the lamp about, and where the light did not reach weird shadows loomed. Merin moved closer to him.
“How did you know this chamber was here?” She did not look at him. She concentrated on the recorder. Tarik would expect detailed notes on this discovery. “You cannot have seen everything you are speaking of in the second or two during which the woman appeared to you by the campfire, and what I have seen since we began to explore this site does not match the descriptions you have been providing to me.”
“It was later,” Herne said, speaking slowly and, Merin thought, reluctantly. “In the middle of the night she brought me here. Unless I dreamed it.”
Glancing upward just then, Merin saw his face by the light of the lamp in his hand, saw his mouth compressed and his expression hard as he looked around the grotto.
“I assume from your expression that it was not a pleasant experience,” she said, fingers poised to record his answer.