We will never find the men we are supposed to mimic in this madness! Dax said grimly, gasping for breath as they slowed their steps.
I had not counted on creating the disorder that we did, Ronan responded a little sheepishly.
They are terrified, Jarek agreed, then added a little indignantly. The humans on the space station did not react like that when they saw us. I would not have thought that they would behave that way either! I knew that the guards would give chase, but ….
I do not understand it either, but there is no hope for it now. They are coming. We must make tracks for them to follow away from this place and then lose them and circle around.
I am tired of running and my shoulder hurts. I am more in favor of mimicking something here, waiting for them to pass, and then going back the same way, Jarek argued.
Ronan considered that suggestion, briefly, and nodded. No animals. They are as likely to shoot them, I think. The trees.
They studied the trees around them as they moved a further from the oncoming guards and finally halted, reaching out to examine the texture. They did not need more to mimic them since they only needed the outward appearance, but none of them had considered how difficult it would be to mimic a living thing that did not breathe with lungs until the guards were virtually upon them and they were all somewhat winded from their race.
For himself, Ronan was very sorry that he had not tried to absorb the tree closely enough to breathe as it did.
The gods bedamned guards moved slowly and quietly through the wooded area, their weapons held ready to fire. It took all he could do to remain completely motionless until they had passed. If he had not had to focus so completely on remaining still, he would have spent that time berating Jarek for his brilliant idea! He was near to passing out from the little air he dared allow himself while they waited for the guards to pass.
I will beat you to a pulp later for this stupid idea! Dax growled as soon as the guards had passed.
You may try! Jarek growled back at him.
I will help him, Ronan snarled.
Jarek sent him a resentful look.
When they were certain the guards had moved far enough that they could transform without detection, they resumed human form, except this time they mimicked the men that they were to replace.
Let us return to the building and find the men, Ronan said. We will not have much time to find a place to hide them.
They discovered they had no time. They had gotten no further than the edge of the garden when they encountered another group of guards.
"Hey! That's three of the draftees!" one the guards shouted. "I was just about to put them in the hold when all hell broke loose and they ran. Grab them!"
Satisfaction flickered through Ronan. Before he could decide whether he ought to offer token resistance or not, the guards surrounded them and placed cold metal around their wrists, binding their arms behind their backs. Ronan tested the strength of the metal around his wrists and then forced himself to relax.
We are captured, Kate.
Oh my god!
We are captured as those we were to replace.
Oh! OH! Well that's good, then, I guess.
She did not sound as if she thought it was good and uneasiness flickered through Ronan. Is this not what you had said we must do?
Yes. It's exactly what you needed to do. What happened to the men … uh … the ones you replaced?
I do not know. The guard said that they ran.
Well, thank god for that! They're probably halfway back to where ever they came from!
* * * *
Kate wasn't just feeling vaguely unwell by the time she was finally processed and allowed to board and find her quarters. She was exhausted and her head was pounding with the worst headache she recall ever having. A good deal of that, she was sure, was due to the fact that she'd been battered by the hysterical mob that had rioted inside the space center and pretty well destroyed it-well, the mob and the militia. She hadn't been able to see much after Ronan, Dax, and Jarek burst from the men's room as the beasts she remembered. She'd been too busy trying to escape being trampled in the stampede of panicked people trying to avoid being mowed down by the militia in their enthusiasm to shoot the Sirians, but it seemed pretty obvious what had happened. She'd certainly heard the militia firing and seen the laser impacts!
She was pretty sure the Sirians hadn't had any idea that the 'distraction' they planned would turn out as it had. She wouldn't have expected anything like the panic that had ensued if she'd known what they meant to do!
To say it had been a disaster was an understatement. She'd heard there were at least three people killed in the riot, but there was no telling how they'd been killed-whether they'd been trampled or killed by a stray shot from the militia. The Sirians certainly hadn't hurt anyone, but hundreds had hurt themselves trying to escape.
She'd been trying very hard since the incident not to think about what that reaction meant in terms of relations between the Sirians and the colonists.
If all they had to do, though, was appear to send everybody in a blind panic ….!
She would've liked to think that everyone had already been on edge to the point that it needed only a spark to set them off, but she didn't think that could explain the melee. Her nerves had already been near the breaking point, but she had far more reason to be in such a high state of anxiety than anyone else.
She decided once she'd reached her cabin that she just wasn't up to trying to figure it all out, though. A hot shower might have helped ease some of the soreness and relax her, but she knew better than to think there was any possibility of that. The ship wouldn't be equipped with anything but particle showers. Water would have to be carefully rationed for the voyage, because once they left Earth they wouldn't be able to get supplies of any kind.
Instead, she found something for pain in her baggage and took it, undressed, and climbed into her bunk to try to relax and wait for the painkiller to kick in and ease some of her aches. She didn't allow her mind to drift so much as she focused on avoiding her thoughts to settle on any of the things bothering her. As the tension and pain began to ease, though, her thoughts began to coalesce despite her efforts to avoid facing what she knew she had to.
The Sirians communicated telepathically.
If she was honest, she had suspected something of the kind-except it was deeply in the realms of the unknown and paranormal and as hard to accept as the fact that they could change their entire appearance at will. It had seemed too fantastical to seriously consider it.
She had to accept it now, though, or consider the possibility that she'd completely lost her mind and she didn't think she'd gone off the deep end.
Accepting that they could and did communicate telepathically opened up a whole new world, though. She had conceded that they were an important, intelligent species. She'd had to! They'd shown a remarkable ability to adapt and understand the alien world they'd been introduced to.
The ability to communicate complex concepts took them beyond that, though. It meant that they had been communicating the entire time. It meant that their species was a lot more advanced than even she had realized they were.
The disturbing part, to her, was that she had no idea how that worked. The brain wasn't her field of expertise. She had a vague idea that the brain, or at least the human brain, had separate spheres that dealt with different functions. Deep inside the brain was the part that dealt with instincts and habits. It was preprogrammed in a sense. It dealt with unconscious thoughts and urges, making decisions that the conscious mind wasn't even aware of most of the time.
Then there was the cogent part of the brain, the conscious mind where all accumulated data was sorted and conscious decisions made.
Speech, of course, was connected to that-at least part of the time!-but controlled by another part of the brain.
She realized that what she really wanted to know-needed to know-was whether their ability allowed them to probe parts of her min
d that she expected to be private.
She thought she could safely assume that they had a way to separate the private from the public since they'd developed telepathy as a way of communicating. She didn't know that, but she thought it could be assumed. They didn't work together, as far as she could see, collectively, as a 'hive' type species that seemed to share one mind. They were individuals, with very different personalities.
She was human, though, and they didn't have that ability in general. There had been cases of a few individuals that had latent telepathic abilities, very underdeveloped, but those were extremely rare. Her brain wasn't 'wired' for it, which she supposed explained why it made her head hurt when she tried it.
Could she find comfort in that, though? Since her brain wasn't wired for it and it had given her a headache trying to do it, could she assume that her private thoughts were her own?
That thought reminded her of several times when she'd experienced a strange disorientation, almost felt like she could feel something moving inside her brain-a tingly, tickling sort of sensation. She realized abruptly that that must have been the Sirians either trying to probe her thoughts or communicate with her.
A little thought produced the unwelcome suspicion that they'd been more interested in her private thoughts than communication, however.
That both angered her and frightened her. She didn't know how successful they might have been in reading her thoughts and she'd been worried and frightened that they might realize what she was up to.
It was some comfort to think they must not have been able to read her mind or they would've known what she was up to. Unfortunately, that still didn't mean that they hadn't picked up some things she didn't want them to know.
Was there a range, she wondered? If she was a certain distance from them would they limited in how much they could 'hear'?
She needed to find out, she realized. She felt violated in an indescribable way that they could invade her privacy and might already have done so.
Chapter Ten
You've been snooping inside my head! Kate thought angrily.
It had taken a good deal of consideration to come to the decision to try to communicate with the Sirians telepathically. Partly, she'd decided she needed to see if she actually could. She didn't know if she would've been able to before in the space center if Ronan hadn't been reaching out to her and she wanted to know if she could do it herself, reach him, or if it could only be done when he entered her mind.
But mostly it was because the more she thought about the intrusion without her consent, the angrier it made her.
In any case, there couldn't be a safer time to discover what she could about the situation. It had been a week since they had left Earth and the Sirians were still locked in the hold with the other draftees who'd refused to present themselves and had had to be picked up by the military.
She certainly didn't want to wait until the authorities decided to release them to confront them about it!
Ronan? She thought for some moments that all she'd managed to do was either prove that she wasn't capable of 'talking' to the Sirians at all or that she'd imagined the entire thing.
I did not! Ronan responded finally.
Kate considered his vehement denunciation with some skepticism. She knew, somehow, that it was Ronan, but did she really? Could she actually tell the difference between them? It wasn't an actual voice, after all, and individual voices were as recognizable as faces.
Then it was Dax? Or Jarek?
Pain shot through her head when both Dax and Jarek instantly responded with denials. It was almost like someone had bellowed in her ear. She clutched her head with both hands, countering the pressure inside. Don't yell at me! I know it was one of you! I didn't know what it was then, but I do now!
I could not, Ronan responded, his mental voice laced with a mixture of indignation and wariness. Because it was most definitely a voice. It made you dizzy and ill when I tried.
That's your idea of an apology? An excuse for … peeping inside my head like a damned peeping Tom? Kate shot back at him in outrage. You tried but it didn't work?
What is apology?
The question irritated the hell out Kate for a second before it hit her that she was talking to them as if they were humans just like she was-and they weren't. It's what we're required to do to get along with other people when we do something that's wrong. We're expected to apologize to the person we wronged. She thought that over. And we're supposed to feel regret, remorse, guilt about wronging them to start with so it isn't just saying you're sorry. It's regretting the action or words.
I regretted that it made you feel ill. I did not intend to hurt you.
Kate considered letting it go at that. That's only half an apology, she said finally, slightly mollified. You aren't supposed to go inside a person's mind like that-even if you can! Some things are private! If I wanted you to know, I would've told you!
He didn't respond for so long that she decided he wouldn't. We did not know if we could trust you. Your people want to kill us.
That was really hard to argue with, Kate decided with some pique. I didn't know if I could trust you, she responded after a moment. Wouldn't it have bothered you if I'd tried to get inside your head?
You cannot.
Her irritation mounted. But you have thoughts you don't share with Jarek and Dax, right? And you wouldn't like it if they could hear them, would you?
It is not hearing.
I know that! And you're being deliberately dense! You know what I mean!
You are angry.
Kate rolled her eyes. I thought I'd already established that! We are not going to be friends if you intrude again.
We are mates.
Kate was pretty sure that was Jarek. The statement was threaded with doubt and she didn't think either Ronan or Dax would have left any room for debate. Ronan was the clear alpha of the three and Dax was nearly as dominate and forceful as Ronan. Only Jarek seemed more inclined to coax rather than insist.
The doubt and confusion in his voice gave her pause when a flat statement of possession daring her to object might have set her back up-probably would have. It appealed to her nurturing instincts, reminding her of the young, frightened creature he had been when she'd found him. She wanted to soothe his anxieties, but she realized she'd allowed the misconception far too long as it was. They were on their way to Sirius now. The Sirians would be returning to their own world and their own kind. It would be far kinder, she decided, to help them to realize that it was inevitable.
I'm human. You aren't even though you're able to make yourself appear to be. I'd like for us to be friends, but we aren't physiologically compatible. Even if we were compatible on other levels, we could never be mates in the sense you mean. We're going to your home world. You'll find a female of your own kind there. It's my fault you were taken to begin with and I'm sorry, but I'm trying to make it right by helping you to get home.
We are the same and we are mated, Ronan responded.
It was just as she'd feared! They were identifying with humans and it was all her fault that they were so messed up! The realization didn't just distress her, however. It was unnerving and she couldn't think how best to handle it. She didn't think that she could just trust that they would be able to adjust once they reached their home world. She had to do something to help them adjust.
She just couldn't think what that something might be.
They were intelligent, though. Maybe, if they could remain friendly, they would trust her enough to actually listen?
It was important to remain on friendly terms with them for more than just personal reasons or even because she saw it as a moral obligation to try to help them since she was primarily responsible for the situation. The colonists needed to make friends and allies of the natives or they could be looking at disaster.
She struggled with how to respond when he seemed ready to argue the matter with her if she disagreed and finally decided that it was worth a try to
see if the male ego of the Sirian was similar to the human male. Yes, we mated. And it was … wonderful! I've never felt like that with any human male-not that I've been with that many, she added hurriedly. And all of you are so handsome as humans! It's a shame, really, that you just look human … for me. Because I really do like the three of you! But I know you really need to be with your own kind and that you're going to feel that way once we get to Sirius. It's alright. Really! I understand that you belong with your own kind and that, even though you look human, genetically we aren't the same.
I know you guys don't understand about genetics …. How could you? Trust me, even a lot of humans don't really understand it! Only our scientists that have studied it really understand it.
But that's why we could never truly be mates. We aren't the same inside even though you can make yourselves look the same on the outside.
None of the Sirians responded right away and Kate found herself struggling to read their thoughts since she couldn't see their expressions. Naturally, she couldn't, and she realized that she was still at a disadvantage even if she could communicate with the Sirians better telepathically than she could verbally. She didn't think she'd ever properly appreciated how important visual clues were to conversation. And it went beyond the way a person spoke, the emphasis they put on certain words that could radically change what they said to a different meaning entirely. The expressions that flickered across a person's face or that were reflected in their eyes were just important to understanding their meaning, or the thoughts behind what they said-even their body language played a part.
You are wrong-on all counts. We do understand-completely. Long ago, in the distant memory of the oldest fathers and mothers, we could only change ourselves a little and that was to make it easier to protect ourselves by hiding from predators. But that was not enough. We saw other creatures that could do things we could not and we knew that if we could do those things it would protect us more from the whims of the gods-Mother Ra, our world, her sister, Ne, who brings the storms, and Father Sheva, our star.
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