No Other Love

by Speer, Flora

  “I did,” Herne admitted. “Twice. She appeared as a beautiful young woman.”

  “Where was that?” asked Dulan. When Herne and Merin said nothing, as they had earlier agreed, Dulan spoke again. “I need to know in order to determine how strong the Saray-Ananka alliance has become. If the effects they create can be extended beyond this immediate area, then our problem is more serious than I have believed.”

  “When the malfunctions in our shuttlecraft began we were directly above Tathan,” Herne said, avoiding an answer on the subject of where he had first met Ananka. “We thought the solar storms were affecting the instruments.”

  “The term ‘shuttlecraft’ implies a larger ship somewhere near,” said Dulan. “And, to my certain knowledge, the sun is in its quiescent period just now. There are no solar storms.”

  “We can’t tell you,” Merin began.

  “You must,” Dulan interrupted her. “If my theories about Ananka and Saray are correct, the lives of everyone in Tathan may depend upon your answer.”

  “All right.” Herne leapt to his feet, almost knocking over the table where the food sat. “Merin, we have to tell Dulan everything. There is no one else who can help us leave here.”

  “Herne,” Merin protested,” we agreed to keep silent.”

  “Why?” asked Dulan. “Is there something I dare not know?”

  Merin bit her lip, thinking about the coming Cetan attack. Herne spoke again to Dulan, expressing an attitude he had voiced before, to Merin.

  “Look, could you remove that hood? It covers your face, and I hate talking to someone I can’t see.”

  “I could, but you would wish I had not.” Dulan paused for the duration of a sigh. “Long ago, when I lived in the Jurisdiction, I was tortured in an attempt to make me reveal the names of other telepaths. My face was badly scarred, my voice permanently altered. I was fortunate to escape with my life.”

  “I’m sorry.” Herne sat down again, looking hard at the blue fabric covering Dulan. “I’m a physician and surgeon. Perhaps I could help.”

  “I thank you, but it is too late for that.” One of Dulan’s hands moved in a beseeching gesture. “Please tell me everything you know about Ananka. It is vitally important. I swear not to reveal your secrets to the other telepaths.”

  Merin sat watching Herne as he produced a carefully edited version of what had happened to him while exploring the ruins of Tathan. He did not mention Tarik or the other colonists, instead giving the impression that he and Merin had been exploring by themselves. He also made the Kalina sound like a much smaller ship than it was. He did not mention the coming Cetan attack.

  “So, Tathan will end in ruins,” said Dulan when Herne was finished.

  “As all cities end, in time,” Merin said.

  “Time is precisely the dimension we must consider,” Dulan told her. “With Ananka’s help, Saray was able to change the position in time of a small animal, and later to move you. You will note that the second transference included your ship as well as your persons. We must conclude from this that the power produced by the union of the two is growing stronger.”

  “Dulan, can you help us?” Merin asked.

  “It is possible.” Dulan rose. “I want to consult with my friend, Tula.”

  “You swore you wouldn’t tell anyone what we said.” Herne was on his feet again, looking angry.

  “If you walked to the center of Tathan from the outskirts of the city, then everyone knows you have arrived,” Dulan said.

  “Everyone we passed acted as it we didn’t exist.” Herne still sounded angry.

  “It is rude to stare at strangers,” Dulan explained. “They noticed you, but would not speak until you were properly introduced.”

  “Huh,” said Herne, frowning.

  “There is no breaking of my promise in inviting Tula to join us for the evening meal,” Dulan told him. “After you have met him, you may decide for yourselves how much you want to tell him. In the meantime, you will not be disturbed while I am gone. The guest accommodations are in the rooms to your right. Perhaps you would like to bathe, or to sleep for a while. So long as you are my guests, my home and all I possess are at your disposal.”

  “I’d like to take another look at your Gathering Hall and at the garden, too,” Herne said.

  “As you wish.” With a polite bow, Dulan left them. The moment they were alone, Herne turned to Merin.

  “This isn’t real,” he said. “It’s all a trick of some kind. Did you notice there’s no entrance to the grotto from that garden?”

  “So you are convinced the appearance of an entire city is Ananka’s doing, perhaps with the conniving of this Saray whom Dulan knows?”

  “I think there isn’t any Saray, just as there isn’t any Dulan. I am going to find Ananka and force her to free us from this illusion so we can go home.” Herne took a step toward the door to the alley.

  “I’m going with you.” Merin was right behind him.

  “She may not appear to me if you are present,” Herne objected. “Stay here, Merin. Investigate this house and look into those guest quarters. If Dulan returns before I do, try to glean whatever information you can that might help to end this illusion. You’ve done better than I so far. I’m too impatient and I try for direct answers. You are more subtle, so you may ultimately be more successful with our mysterious host. And you may find it necessary to disguise my absence.”

  “From a telepath?” She almost laughed at that idea.

  “Osiyar claims that all telepaths observe the rule of not entering anyone’s mind without permission,” Herne reminded her. “But it doesn’t matter because this Dulan isn’t real. Do as I ask, Merin. I’ll be back as soon as I can. I promise.” Before she could draw away, his lips brushed her cheek. Then he was gone, pulling the door shut after him, barring her exit.

  Merin considered following him, until she realized he was probably right about Ananka only appearing if he was alone. She began to examine the sitting room and after it the kitchen, both inch by inch. She could find nothing unusual about either room, nor any sign of advanced technology. They were just simple, comfortable places in which to eat or sit and talk with friends. If Dulan’s house was an illusion, it was a remarkable one. Whatever she saw or touched seemed completely real to her.

  Having finished with the main rooms, she decided to investigate the guest quarters as Herne had suggested. There she found another plain white room with a large bed topped by a brightly striped coverlet. There was only one window. Leaning out of it, Merin could see on her right the curving shore of the harbor. The house was set on a slight rise in the land. Directly before her, a garden of blue and white flowers sloped down to the wide salt marsh, which had as its farther boundary a row of sand dunes. She watched a herd of long-legged antelope-like animals browsing among the waving marsh grasses that shone green and gold in the setting sun.

  Turning from the peaceful scene, Merin discovered a door that led to a bathing room. A white stone tub was set into the floor and next to it a bench with a red and blue striped cushion. At one side of the bathing room was a tiny, high-walled courtyard filled with green plants. There was no sign of any other person, and only the faintest sounds penetrated from outside the house.

  She looked at the tub with yearning. Oressians were a meticulously clean people, trained to bathe at least once a day, and she had just spend four days aboard the Kalina, where water was rationed and the crew had to use automatic cleansing chambers that cleaned by sound waves. Dulan had said to refresh herself….

  Nearly overcome by another wave of the curious lightheadedness she had periodically felt since leaving the shuttlecraft, Merin sat down on the bench near the tub and put her head between her knees. When she felt better she lifted her head again, her eyes slowly focusing on the tub.

  The longer she looked, the more enticing became the prospect of a bath. She knew perfectly well that the strangeness of her situation was affecting her judgment. Normally she would not even consider ta
king a bath in an unfamiliar place. For an instant she felt giddy again, just as she decided that whether her surroundings were real or an illusion, she was going to have the bath she needed and wanted so badly. She turned the handles that opened the pipes.

  While water poured into the tub, she hastened back to the main room. Dulan had not returned and there was no sign of Herne. She made certain the door to the guest chamber was closed before she went into the bathing room once more.

  She had been taught to remove her clothing, lather herself with cleansing liquid, then to rinse, dry herself, and replace her clothing as quickly as possible. Shampooing was to be done with equal dispatch. Under no circumstances was this process to be enjoyed. Bathing was a hygienic necessity, no more. But today, whether because of the unusual circumstances in which she found herself and her doubts about the reality of everything she saw, or because she was still unnerved and a bit giddy after piloting a powerless shuttlecraft into a safe landing, Merin found herself sinking into the warm water with a sigh of relief. Her tense muscles relaxed and the headache that had begun to pound at her temples blurred and faded away.

  There was no efficient cleansing liquid, just a bar of flower-scented soap that burst into bubbles when the water touched it. The water itself was silky-smooth on her skin. A tiny wisp of steam curled upward into the cool air of the bathing room. Merin dipped her shoulders beneath the water, splashing soapsuds, and then began to wash her hair.

  * * * * *

  Herne returned to Dulan’s house in a state of increasing frustration and with a pounding headache. In the deepening dusk he had been unable to locate the grotto entrance. The garden was surrounded by a smooth white wall, its only openings the door to the alley that led to Dulan’s house and the wide double doors into the hall where the Chon statue was. When he hurried to the main entrance of the hall he had found it locked, so he could not leave the hall to go into the square in front of it. With growing irritation, he had searched the hall from end to end, carefully examining the golden statue and its pedestal before returning to the garden to hunt again for some indication of where the grotto was. Nowhere in garden or building did he see another person or hear any sound but his own footsteps. Convinced that he and Merin were the victims of an elaborate illusion, he retraced his steps, regretting that he had left her alone, hoping he would find her unharmed.

  Dulan’s sitting room was empty, as was the guest bedroom, but he could hear someone moving in the room beyond. Cautiously, he pushed the door open to look within. A faint mist hovered above the sunken tub, a mixture of steam and a delicious perfume. The last traces of bathwater bubbled gently down the drain as a woman stepped away from the tub, her every movement flowing with unaffected grace.

  At first he thought it was Ananka, and he took a purposeful step into the room, intending to accost her, to demand an explanation for what had happened to the shuttlecraft as well as for why she had made an entire city appear where only ruins should be. Then he saw Merin’s orange treksuit and her coif, both neatly folded on a bench beside the tub. Unaware of his presence, Merin was drying herself with a thick, white towel.

  Herne watched, enchanted by the sight of slender arms and legs and a perfectly formed body. Her rounded breasts were tipped with small, rosy nipples, her neck was a smooth column of sculptured ivory, her pale, sharp-boned face, softened by the tender warmth of the bathwater, was lightly flushed with color. And her hair….

  Herne had never seen such hair before. Thick curls the color of the richest, finest-brewed dark brown qahf drifted to below her waist. When she moved, the lamps embedded in the bathing room ceiling struck gleams of gold and deepest red from that hair. How could any woman bear to cover such an asset, to keep it hidden from the eyes of all men?

  He wanted her. All during their days aboard the Kalina, he had been tormented by his growing desire for her and now, with a heavy, imperative need, Herne knew he had to have her. She had admitted that she wanted him. It was possible that it would not take much persuasion to make her his. He watched her rub the towel down the outside of one long, beautifully formed leg, over thigh and knee and calf to ankle, then back up the inward side of her leg, stopping at her thigh. Herne’s fingers itched to follow the same path, to stroke that smooth, soft skin, to touch her and then to place his mouth there, where she was drying now. At the thought of her moist warmth beneath his lips, his common sense deserted him. With that desertion all his sense of danger from their present strange situation evaporated. He could think of one thing only. Merin.

  Stepping back into the bedroom, he stripped off his clothing as quickly as he could, knowing he must hurry before she had time to replace that wretched loose treksuit and her ridiculous coif, to hide her incredible beauty from him or from anyone else who might see her. When he returned to the bathing room she had just finished toweling her hair and was reaching for the treksuit.

  * * * * *

  Still slightly disoriented and feeling a little dizzy, lulled into drowsy relaxation by the unfamiliar sensuous delights of warm water and perfumed soap, Merin thought it was appropriate that Herne should materialize before her while she was thinking of him. He looked just the way he had when she’d dreamed of him the first time.

  Of course, he wasn’t really there. She was only dreaming again. He would take a step or two toward her, as he had done in her earlier dream, and then he would vanish. And since he wasn’t there, and no one but herself could possibly know, she ought to take advantage of the opportunity to study him. He was the only unclothed person she had seen since she was ten years old. She was unlikely ever to see anyone else undressed, real or imagined, because after this lovely dream was finished she would force herself into the most rigorous forms of Oressian discipline, so that she would never dream again. But for the moment, in this strange and unreal place…in this time out of all time….

  He came toward her, as she had known he would, and even though it was only a dream, and she knew she could make herself wake up whenever she wanted, she began to tremble. But then he touched her. His hand brushed along her cheek and reached into her hair. She knew the touch of his hand on her face. She had felt it before. She had felt his kiss, too, so it was not surprising that she should dream of it again now. He gathered her into his arms, his flesh warm against hers, and she shuddered at the contact, half rousing from her dreamlike state, then sinking back into it. She did not want to face reality yet. Not yet, not until after he had kissed her.

  “Merin.” His mouth was in her hair, at her throat, against her ear. “It’s you I want, only you.”

  Overwhelmed by unfamiliar sensations, her inhibitions dangerously frayed by the lightheadedness that would not go away, Merin half fainted into Herne’s arms.

  “Let me love you,” he whispered. “I’ve wanted you for so long.”

  Her hands moved around his neck, her head rested on his shoulder. She knew by then that this was no dream, but she could dredge up no feeling of appalled horror, which would have been the appropriate Oressian reaction to what was happening. All she knew was that she wanted Herne to go on holding her.

  “Please,” she whispered into his neck, “please kiss me.”

  Herne lifted her face, holding her so they were almost mouth to mouth.

  “Hold me close.” Her voice was a breath, even lower than a whisper. “Let me feel all of you against me for just a moment. When I’m alone again I want to be able to remember you.”

  She watched the rugged harshness of his face soften into tenderness. He pulled her closer, his arms holding her gently but firmly. Merin trembled under the touch she had ached to know, yet had for so long refused to admit wanting. His body imprinted itself upon her mind with a vividness possible only to one who for all her life had been denied tactile pleasures.

  The heat of his mouth on hers brought with it the memory of the other times when he had kissed her. Under his tutelage she had learned a little of that art. She opened her lips. When he did not respond at once as she wanted she pus
hed her tongue toward him, across his lips and into his mouth. She tightened her arms around his neck, pulling her body upward and harder against him.

  His hands were on her hips, moving them forward. At the same time she felt a stiff, hot part of Herne probing against the place where her thighs joined. She did not understand what he was doing, but she instinctively shifted her position a little, allowing him the access he sought. She stood there for a breathless eternity, pressed so tightly to Herne that she could almost believe they had become one being, with his tongue searing her mouth, her breasts crushed against his chest, their thighs together, and that hot, hard part of him thrust between her legs. Merin tensed, quivering, shaken by previously unknown, yet now absolutely undeniable needs.

  “Help me,” she moaned when he freed her mouth enough for her to be able to breathe again. “What do I want? Why do I feel - ? Herne, Herne, don’t let me go.”

  She was lifted in his arms, swept off her feet. She was unaware that he was carrying her until he laid her on the bed in the guestroom. Half-blinded by uncontrollable sensation, she reached toward him, to pull him back against her. He came willingly, to put his mouth over the tip of one of her breasts while his fingers played with the other. Merin gave a cry that was part scream of alarm, part moan of pleasure. Erotic desire, ruthlessly repressed for all of her life, came fully awake under Herne’s searching hands and mouth. By the time he carefully separated her thighs she was beyond thought or words. With her eyes closed she felt his touch, and recalled vaguely that no one was ever supposed to touch another person in that spot. But his fingers were gentle. Too gentle. She wanted more, wanted pressure and friction and heat. She opened her eyes just in time to see what he was going to do.

  “Yes,” she gasped, lifting her hips to offer herself to him. “Please, touch me there.”

  He moved forward, pushing into her, and she lifted herself again, pushing back as hard as she could, searching for what she so desired. Unexpected joy welled up in her as she felt him begin to stretch her body. Half delirious though she was, she could discern in his face the pleasure her eager response was giving him. It was his openly expressed delight, and the joy that continued to soar and flame in her, that gave her the courage to endure a long, rending pain when Herne continued to push himself into her with a slow and steady determination. She screamed, biting his shoulder in a confused frenzy of longing and discomfort. It was against all her training to accept this kind of pain, but she had no desire to avoid it. Then the pain was gone and Herne was completely inside her, on her, crushing her with his weight and she was dissolving into him. He was making her part of himself and she knew in her deepest heart that she would never be separate from him again. She trusted him, so she let him do whatever he wanted to her, while she gave herself to him freely, reacting with feverish intensity to his every hard thrust, crying out with ever-increasing need, over and over again, until at last she found her trust rewarded with pleasure so vibrant and shattering that she thought she would die of it.