by Clay Gilbert
“You do not have to be afraid to touch me,” Annah said after a moment. Holder was startled at the simplicity of the statement, but he knew that was her way. It’s a lot better than trying to hide things all the time, he thought. He put his arms around her, barely touching her at first, and then she slid back against him, and he felt the strange waves of heat that always emanated from her body. The sensation was calming-as it always was.
“I am not afraid of you, Holder. Do not be afraid of me. So many people have been. Do not be like them. Please.”
“I’m not.” She shifted in his arms, turning so that she was facing him. She remembered how his skin had felt beneath her fingers at first, when he was still healing; thought of a question she had had, and reached up to touch his head, caressing it, feeling its shape and size with her fingers. There was astrangeness-about it that she had wondered about before; something that did not seem to be the way she remembered from what she had learned from his ship’s computer.
“No, it’s not the way it’s supposed to be. It’s a condition I have. I was born with it. Hydrocephalus, they call it. Means the fluid from my brain wouldn’t drain off like it’s supposed to, without the tube-the shunt-that’s there.”
“Oh.” Annah stared harder at the place where he’d said the tube was; felt it with her fingers. She thought she could feel it, but she was not sure. “Do your people-do they think you are strange because of this? Are they-afraid of you because of it?”
Holder thought about it. “When I was little, they were. Even when I was a-seed-youth. They just didn’t understand it. When I tried to get into the Homesec Space Academy, they wouldn’t pass me on the physical. Those goons knew that shunts are built for g’s these days; they just don’t give a shit. So I went into Recon, because they don’t have a physical to fail. It’s dirty work, hardly anyone wants it-and I wanted to see the Sea of Stars.” He looked at the shape of Annah’s own head; reached out and stroked it.
She made a sudden sound, like the surprised purr of a cat more used to being kicked than comforted, and pressed against his hand.
“What about you?” he asked. “You said you look odd, too.” Annah rubbed her face against his. “I do. My head is different, too, from those of my kind, but there is no fluid in it that is not meant to be there. As I said, I am different in a number of ways. I was born the way I am, too, though, and unlike you, no one can tell me why. My parents never knew, either.”
“And your people—they’re scared of you?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Well, I’m not,” Holder said. “I am glad, Holder.” She rubbed her face against his again and pressed close to him. And then, without really thinking about it, she kissed him. A quick kiss, but a kiss nonetheless.
His eyes widened in surprise. There was the same sensation of humming energy to her lips as there was to the touch of her fingers. He returned the kiss, seeing the same wonder and surprise mirrored in Annah’s strange blue eyes that he knew she had seen in his own.
“Holder, please do not go back to your ship tonight. Sleep here with me.”
“All right.” * * * The embers of their fire had died several hours before, and Holder was sleeping soundly, but Annah found she still could not rest. My people would not understand this. They understand only our ways as they have always been. She picked up a branch from the ground and poked at the fire with it until the sparks scattered, like the showers of stars she and Holder watched every night.
She made her way away from the camp, and had traveled almost a full measure when she heard the rustle of footsteps in the woods around her. A pair of dark-gold eyes shimmered at her from the shadows, and in a moment, Jonan stepped into the clearing, melting out of the night as if he’d been part of the darkness itself.
Annah stumbled backward a few steps, steadied herself, and looked at him. “Jonan. What are you doing here? This is-not appropriate.”
“I do not think it is you who should advise me on what is appropriate, seed-maiden.” He took a step toward her.
She stood her ground. “I do not know what you mean, seed-youth.” She gave the last word a pointed emphasis. “I speak of your foreigner,” Jonan retorted. “I saw you lying with him tonight. I have seen you together before. And I heard you sing for him. Does he even know what that means, for one of our kind? Can he even understand the gifts you give him?”
Annah’s eyes flashed blue fire at him. “More than you could.”
“More than even Ardan could?” Jonan gave a cold, calm smile, watching Annah wince as if he’d struck her. Ardan was another male of the Grove that Annah shared with Jonan. He was her age exactly; younger than Jonan by an entire cycle. Ardan was very different than Jonan; much like Annah herself, he was quiet, calm and good-hearted. She’d met him a half-cycle before Holder’s ship had arrived. They’d been friends almost immediately, and they’d spent long hours walking in the woods, listening to the sounds of every living creature of the green. Ardan shared Annah’s love of music; not only her desire to learn her own song, as all their kind did sooner or later, but also her desire to hear the songs of all life on their world.
There had come a day when Ardan came to find her, down by the stream that ran below the hill of the great Grove. It was said the First Ones had put the stream there to sing to the Old Ones as they slept. He had found her there, bathing. Often, Annah lost herself in the feeling of the water on her body, its coolness, and the nourishment she took from it through her snowy skin. Sometimes, as on that day, she sang to herself as she bathed. Had Jonan come upon her that way, she would have shouted at him to leave her in peace. But with Ardan, there was no awkwardness.
“A fair day to you, Annah,” Ardan said. He was always very courteous. “To you as well, Ardan. What brings you here?” she asked, although she had some idea.
“I wanted to speak with you. I have for some time had certain thoughts, certain wishes-certain feelings toward one of the seed-maidens in our Grove.”
Annah thought Ardan could have been more subtle. That particular list was a short one. “Oh?” she asked. “That one is lucky indeed.” It wasn’t a lie; she held Ardan in very high regard. “Surely, I know her; there are so few of us.”
“It is you, Annah,” Ardan said, and she could see how hard it was for him to say. His eyes remained on hers, though, while he spoke, although his fingers trembled. “If you would have me,” he said, “I would share life and love with you, and perhaps, one day, the gift of bud and stem.”
Annah looked away for a moment; ducked her head under the water, as if the immersion might cleanse her ears of what he had said, and her heart of what she had to do. “Oh, Ardan, my friend. I wish you had not said this to me, and yet I am glad to know that I could be worthy of such feelings within you.”
Ardan’s eyes stung. Annah stood in the water, glistening drops shining in her hair and on her skin; her bright, shining skin that reflected every color of the First Ones’ light in a way that he knew his own could never do. Not, at least, like that. She tossed her head back, scattering droplets of water; brushed gold-fire curls from her face. The sight of her made Ardan ache, and it was an ache he was realizing he would never be able to soothe.
“I cannot do what you ask of me, Ardan. I tell you truly, I am sorry.”
“But why, Annah?” “Ardan, I care for you. You are my dear friend. You have never before asked me for anything I could not give you. But when I look into Vision to glimpse my future, although I cannot see far, I do see a life with someone, and a homeground and hearth-fire of our own. And his face is not yours. In a way, I wish it was, for he is still a stranger to me, and you are my friend.”
* * * “Yes,” Annah said to Jonan. “Even more than Ardan could.” Truthfully, Annah did not think Ardan would have understood her desire to see the Sea of Stars at all, although he would have tried-and although she believed he loved her, as best as he would ever be able to.
Jonan laughed, a sound that might have been beautiful, were there not so
much brokenness in it. “You have sung for him. Have you given yourself to him, as well?”
Annah gave him a cold stare. “If I had, it would be no concern of yours. But it would concern my mother and father, and that I will not do, not even in their sleep. She lowered her voice, hardened it, so that it was a whisper that bit like a winter wind. “But you should not think that it is because I do not want to.” She watched how the words stung him, and did not care, as she had with Ardan.
“Annah, you would be wise to reconsider my offer to you,” Jonan said. “Ardan cannot give you what I can, and your foreigner certainly cannot.”
“You have no idea what he gives me, Jonan. You could never begin to understand.”
“Think about what I’ve said, Annah. It may go badly for you, and for your foreigner, if you do not.” Annah felt a knot of fear and anger tighten in her belly. She forced herself to breathe, found her still point within. She usually did this by meditating on thoughts of the First Ones. Today, somewhat to her surprise, she thought of Holder, and all of her tension fell away. “I am not afraid of you, Jonan. And your threats have no power over us.”
“We will see,” Jonan said. Annah ran back to the camp as if Jonan were right behind her. She found Holder waiting by the fire, eating a breakfast of sweetglobes and something Annah had told him was called ‘meatbark’, as close as she could approximate in his language.
“I was worried about you,” he told her, and she pressed herself against him, wrapping her arms around him.
“I am worried about him,” she said, “and about you.”
Holder frowned. “Who?”
“I will explain,” Annah said. * * *
“I could kill him,” Holder said, when Annah had stopped speaking. Annah’s hands were trembling, he saw, and he had to force back the image of that animal threatening her.
“That would not make things better.”
“Says you,” Holder said with a grin. Annah shot Holder a look of reproach. “This is serious. He means what he says. He could find a way to wake them. And I do not know what they might do to you. They might even have a way to sense that I took you into the heartplace. I am sorry, Holder.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for. So, what? He says if you agree to this, he’ll leave us alone. Well, he’ll leave me alone. You won’t be so lucky.”
“Maybe I should tell him I will do it,” Annah said. “Jonan respects the laws of our people. Even if we are Promised, he knows I cannot join with him until I have reached the Age of Choosing.”
“No,” Holder said, his voice a grim whisper. “I won’t let you throw yourself away like that.” “He will not have me,” Annah said, looking into Holder’s eyes, and reaching up to stroke his face. “He would think he does, but there would be time to change things.”
“How much time?” Holder asked. “One cycle from now,” Annah said. “About a year, in your time.”
A year, Holder thought. That was a good bit of time. He imagined himself in this Jonan’s shoes, waiting until tradition said she was old enough to choose and be chosen. He would be miserable.
“I can’t do it, Annah. I can’t just let him have you.”
“He would never have me. Not even if he thinks he does.”
“That’s easy to say, Annah.”
“Do you doubt me, Gary Holder?”
Uh-oh. “No, of course I don’t. I just-don’t want to let you go.” “You will not be letting me go. And I will not be letting you go. We will find a way. And if we cannot, we will take your ship, and we will leave.”
“I know that’s not what you want to do. Not that way, at least.”
“No, it is not. I feel I must at least try to remind my people of themselves. I know you understand that.”
Holder nodded, moving closer to her.
“I will not give you up, Holder. Not even for the sake of peace. Tell me another way, and I will do it.”
“Did he give you any time? Or does he want an answer, say, tomorrow?”
“I believe we will have a day or two, at least. He will not wait forever though, Holder.”
“Well, that’s the difference between Jonan and me.” Annah smiled, and ran her fingers through his hair. “There are many differences. And that is why you should not worry. “
Holder pulled Annah into his arms, smiling as she pressed herself against him. She always felt cool against him at first, but she warmed quickly, as if she drank in his heat through her skin. Which, he thought to himself, she probably does.
She was kissing his neck, her fingers stroking his chest; the same fingers that had helped to heal him, nearly a year ago now. She drew her lips away from him and looked at him, the way she’d looked at him in those early days: as if she were studying him. “Annah?” he asked, turning his head to whisper the question into her ear.
“Yes?”
“Would it change things if-would he still want you if you had-if we had-” Annah kissed him, her lips as soft and warm against his as a summer breeze. “It would change things. It would disgrace me, which is nothing, in itself, but it would disgrace my mother and father, as well. I want you, Holder,” she said, stroking his lower belly with her fingertips, and sending a shock of pleasure through him. “But we must keep our honor, if we can.”
Holder sighed. “So what can we do, short of handing you over to Jonan in the morning?”
“There is something else that can be done, before that. But do not think of anything now, but me.”
Another day, another obsession , Goodman thought. All in a day’s work. Maybe, though, it was healthier to call it a focus. For the past two weeks, work had been slow, and he’d had more time than he wanted to think about the whole Evohe situation.
But there was something new; something just as ugly, perhaps, as planetary genocide. Something actually tied into doing his job.
Goodman wondered if there’d ever been a time when terror hadn’t been a weapon of war. It’d certainly been that way as long as he could remember, and for at least a couple of centuries before that, from the history he’d studied.
Space travel hadn’t made things any easier, and the Portal was another thing. People all over the galaxy had expected it’d make things better. If anything, it might’ve made things worse. Sure, it’d given people more things to dream about. It’d opened Earth up to commerce with a seemingly endless parade of customers. It was getting pretty common. Alien was hardly even in the vocabulary anymore—not for reasonable people, anyway. It’d certainly never been in his. He was a patriot, not some kind of rights activist, but he happened to believe there were places where those two sides of things went hand-in-hand.
One thing about living in a wider world-it gave some people more to hate. And back during the last war, there were records of a group called the HPF-the Human Preservation Front. Respectable sounding name. But in practice, best as Goodman could tell, they hadn’t been any more respectable than Al Qaeda or the KKK. Just more organized hate, weaponized in the human heart. Warfare had its place, Goodman thought. But being a soldier wasn’t about hate. It was about honor. And doing a job.
The HPF was supposed to have been shut down, or at least driven underground, near the end of the war. Those kinds of monsters, thought Goodman, didn’t stay dead when you cut them up. Like the demigods and creatures in the old myths, they tended to find some dark place to sleep until they were strong enough to try again. This morning, the monster had resurfaced.
Homesec had set up an Offworlders’ Embassy, although some smartasses liked to call it the “E.T. U.N.”, just after the fighting in the war cooled down. And this morning, someone had opened a vial of the virus some of those same quip-happy smartasses had dubbed ‘the Jupiter flu’ or the ‘Jupe flu’ because it had first been found in traces on the boots and uniforms of some of the men sent on the first settling mission there.
They’d opened it. In gaseous form. In the building. Of course, every member of species Homo sapiens sapiens who’d been on the scene
was feeling just fine. And nearly all the Offworlders who’d been there, for what would have been an important trade negotiation, were either dead or dying. And negotiations, as anyone could guess, were just as dead. And if something couldn’t be done, there was likely to be another war. A bigger one. What a day, Goodman thought.
* * *
“I never expected to speak with you again, Annah.” Annah could see that the pain in Ardan’s eyes at the sight of her was as fresh as it had been that day by the stream, and she felt a rush of regret. I had no choice, she thought. “I have always been your friend, Ardan. I am still your friend.”
“And against my better judgment, I am yours. What is it you want of me?”
“Against your better judgment?” Annah asked, hurt in her voice. “What do you mean?”
Ardan stepped back from her. “Many things. You do not think I have stopped caring for you, do you?”
“No.”
“There is talk of you in the Grove.” Annah laughed. “Well, that is nothing new. There was ‘talk of me’ in the Grove when I was but a bloomling. I will need more clarity.”
“Very well then. It is said that you have spurned the company of your own kind, and taken into your—heart-a foreigner. An Offworlder. They say that you dishonor your Grove with him. I have heard that Jonan has asked you to be Promised to him and that you have not answered. What do you say to these things?”
She stood up straight; looked at him. “I say that I have found my heart’s love, and that where he was born, or of whom, makes no difference. I say that we have done nothing to dishonor the Grove. It is true that I have let him into my heart-but that is all I have done. As for my answer to Jonan, that is between myself and Jonan, and is none of your concern.”
Ardan was silent for a moment, and then his expression and posture softened. “Please. Let us not be angry with each other.” He stretched his hand toward her, but did not touch her.