Worlds Apart (ThreeCon)

by Carmen Webster Buxton

  Prax capitulated. “All right. I’ll go.”

  Ogilvy and Chio were waiting by the flyter. When they got in, Qualhuan took the controls, and there was the usual discussion of where to go.

  They settled on the Twin Moons again, at Chio’s insistence. Once they got there, the four of them took seats at a corner table and ordered food.

  Ogilvy surveyed the room and shook his head despairingly. “Doesn’t look very promising. What do you think, Chio?”

  When Chio didn’t answer, Prax turned his head to see what had caught his attention. The Subidaran native was watching Qualhuan while the Miloran stood, mouth agape and a faint whistle sounding from his nose as he stared at the bar. Prax followed his glance and saw a Miloran standing next to the bar. Smaller than Qualhuan, he was still larger than any of them, except possibly Prax.

  “Someone you know, Qualhuan?” Prax asked.

  “No,” he said. “But I’d like to. She’s beautiful!”

  The three Terrans exchanged glances. Prax knew quite well that the three of them must look as improbable to Qualhuan as he looked to them. He also knew not one of them would have called the Miloran woman beautiful. He wondered if Ogilvy or Chio had known she was female.

  When Qualhuan excused himself and went over to talk to the woman, Chio said what they were all thinking. “I’m glad he found someone. I just wish I knew whether he’s a Miloran woman’s idea of good-looking or not. I don’t even know if he’s got a shot with her.”

  Ogilvy chuckled. “It doesn’t matter. Charm counts more with women, anyway. A smooth talker can do better than a great-looking guy any day of the week.”

  “It never worked for me,” Chio said sourly.

  “What makes you think you’re a smooth talker?” Ogilvy asked.

  A Terran woman walked up to their table. Chio looked up eagerly but then his face fell. It was Danitra.

  “Hello,” she said. “Like some company?”

  Ogilvy quickly made room for her next to him. Danitra sat down and introduced herself to him. She took their drink orders, punched them into the console, and then smiled at Prax. “I haven’t seen you in here lately.”

  Prax ducked his head. “I haven’t been back.”

  When their food arrived, Qualhuan came back to the table with the Miloran woman beside him. He introduced her as Trifuar hna kuar aja, a teacher who had just moved to Subidar.

  “Qualhuan told us what his name means,” Prax said. ‘What does Trifuar hna kuar aja mean?”

  She didn’t seem offended. Her smile was almost as toothy as Qualhuan’s. “One who is brave enough to laugh at danger.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a woman’s name,” Tinibu said.

  “Milorans don’t assign names to a given gender,” Trifuar said. “We don’t repeat names as often as your people, or name children after relatives. We usually assign names based on qualities we think are important. In fact, we often rename ourselves once we’re grown.”

  “That’s interesting. So what does Rurhahn na bhudan mean?”

  She wrinkled her forehead, reminding Prax of when his mother kneaded dough. “It’s an odd name. One who has made a very difficult choice.”

  Tinibu gave Qualhuan an exasperated look. “Oh, really?”

  Qualhuan roared with laughter and slapped the table, making the glasses bounce. “Now aren’t you glad you never asked him?”

  “So,” Chio said pacifically, “why would you come all the way to Subidar to be a teacher?”

  “I’m a governess now,” Trifuar said. “I was hired because my employer wanted a Miloran teacher for her children. She wants them to grow up speaking the Miloran vernacular as well as they speak Standard, and to know Miloran history and culture. She had to pay me a huge bonus to come here and put up with this inconsequential gravity.”

  Qualhuan nodded, and Prax knew he empathized with that feeling.

  They ate and drank and made conversation for a while. Trifuar and Qualhuan shared his meal and she joined him in ordering Miloran whiskey. As the evening passed, Trifuar matched Qualhuan glass for glass with no visible effect. Prax stuck with Shuratanian ale. He had had three of them and felt fine without feeling the least bit drunk.

  Trifuar and Qualhuan were getting along quite well. When he brushed his arm against hers for a second, she seemed not to mind in the least. After four Miloran whiskeys, Trifuar leaned over and smiled at Qualhuan, showing teeth as sharp and gleaming as his. “Do you know that as a condition of my employment, my boss had to provide me with a room that has gravitational controls.”

  “Really?” Qualhuan sounded intrigued. “That means you can set the gravity anywhere you want it.”

  She nodded. “Naturally, I like it best at full Miloran gravity. Some things…” she looked at him over her glass, “…are much better at real gravity.”

  “I know.” Qualhuan returned her glance.

  “It has an outside entrance, too,” she added. “Lots of privacy.”

  “Ground floor?” Qualhuan asked.

  She nodded. “Would you care to see it?”

  “I’d love to. Don’t worry about me,” Qualhuan said to Chio. “I’ll get home on my own.”

  They left together without a backward glance.

  Chio assumed his morose look. “This is really bad. Even Qualhuan found someone.”

  “Why did he ask if it was on the ground floor?” Ogilvy asked suddenly.

  Chio chuckled, as if the question had cheered him up. “He told me one time he was with a girlfriend on the second floor of a house that was built for Terrans. They got a little too energetic, and they fell through the floor. He’s been paranoid about that ever since.”

  Ogilvy let out a crack of laughter and even Prax couldn’t hold back a smile at the thought. Shortly after Qualhuan left, the three of them decided to go home. Danitra made a tentative suggestion to Prax that he might like to stay around long enough to take her home, but he shook his head.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “We have to get back.”

  When they were out in the street, Ogilvy and Chio took turns bemoaning how badly the evening had ended.

  “Great,” Ogilvy said, “here we go looking for action and we don’t find it, while Qualhuan has it fall into his lap.”

  Prax ventured a joke of his own. “Maybe it helps if you have a bigger lap.”

  QUALHUAN arrived late for breakfast the next morning. He sat down, oblivious to the hoots and catcalls sounding around him, and quickly filled his plate with food.

  “You worked up quite an appetite,” Chio said.

  Qualhuan nodded. “I’m always that way the first time I have sex after a long dry spell. What about Prax? Did that little hostess take him home with her again?”

  Prax stared resolutely down at his plate. He knew better than to be offended, but he would never get used to it.

  “No,” Chio said. “She asked him, but he didn’t take her up on it.”

  Qualhuan exchanged glances with Tinibu. Prax was grateful for that much restraint.

  After breakfast, Prax reported for work.

  “You need a workout,” Rurhahn said. “Really bad. You’re spending the whole morning in the gym.”

  Prax was surprised at how much his ability was affected by a lack of practice. It took him all morning to get to where he could throw anyone, even Nakamura, whom he had finally learned to throw. She was pretty good at fighting hand-to-hand, but his size usually gave him something of an advantage with her. That morning she put him on the mat easily. It was only at the end of his workout that he had the satisfaction of seeing her hit the floor, too.

  “All right,” Rurhahn said. “Get cleaned up. After lunch you’re on perimeter detail.”

  Rishi wasn’t there when Prax came into the dining room. She came in just a few seconds after he did.

  “Hello,”
she said. “I’m a little rushed today because I have a conference this afternoon and I had to finish some things first.”

  “What kind of a conference?” Prax wondered if she would want him to attend.

  “It’s a teleconference, really.” Rishi brushed her hair back from her face. “A four-way, real-time transmission between me and three other people. One of them is on a starship, one is on Terra, and the last one is on Shuratan.”

  She didn’t need him, then. His talent was useless unless he was near the person who was speaking. “It sounds very complicated.”

  “It is.” She helped herself to a salad of Subidaran vegetables drizzled with a creamy dressing. “Time is the critical factor. This afternoon is the only time in the near future when it’s business hours for all four of us at once. It may run late, so I’ll have dinner in the office.”

  “I can wait for you, lady. It’s no trouble.”

  “Don’t be silly.” She brushed the air with one hand as if brushing away his offer. “I’ll see you at lunch tomorrow, anyway.”

  “Yes, lady.”

  She waited until they were through eating to ask him about his day off.

  “Where did you go yesterday?” she asked. “I knew you were off work, so I wasn’t too surprised when I got your message.”

  “Qualhuan and Chio and I took Ogilvy into town. We went to a bar.”

  Rishi lifted one eyebrow, which somehow made her look annoyed. “Which bar?”

  “The Twin Moons.” Prax wondered if she would remember the name.

  She seemed to remember it. In fact, she frowned just a little. “Did you see your friend again? I think you said her name was Danitra?”

  “Yes, lady. She works there.”

  “I see. So if you went there, you were bound to see her again, weren’t you?”

  Prax didn’t know quite how to answer her. She seemed angry, and he didn’t know why. “I didn’t choose the bar, lady. It was Chio’s idea.”

  “Of course.” Rishi pushed back her chair. “I have to run along now. Thank you for joining me. Please be sure to tell me if it becomes an inconvenience for you to eat with me.”

  Prax stood perplexed while she walked out of the room. He couldn’t identify exactly what he had said that made her so angry, but it was obvious that she was furious.

  RISHI stalked into her office with her hands clenched into fists.

  Hari got up from the sofa. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Rishi gritted her teeth. “Nothing’s wrong with me! Why would you think anything was wrong?”

  Hari gave her a measuring glance. “Because I know you. You came in here with a full head of steam, and you’re just looking for somewhere to blow it off. Maybe I’d better go warn Merschachh?”

  “No,” Rishi said, calming down a little. “I’m fine. I have no right to be angry. No reason to be angry, I mean. Besides, I have an important teleconference this afternoon. Did you need to see me about something?”

  He shook his head. “It can wait. I know better than to push my luck.”

  Hari left, and for the rest of the afternoon, in spite of her best efforts to maintain her composure, Rishi was restless and inclined to snap at Merschachh for the least little thing that went wrong. When her teleconference came through, she made herself put everything except the business at hand out of her mind and concentrate on what she had to do.

  The teleconference proceeded with no technical difficulties, for once. The discussion revealed a potential problem in meeting a supply deadline, but they had time to worry about it later. Rishi had learned that worry could be a tool. If you could pick it up and put it down when you wanted to, it could help you to solve problems.

  She ate a quick dinner in the office, right after her conference, and then she stayed late and took care of the remaining details of the day’s business. When she had finished, she put her head down on her desk and thought about what she should do.

  Praxiteles had made no emotional commitment to her. He had promised her loyalty, it was true, but she had never asked him to be faithful in a sexual way. Except for that first night, she had never asked him for sex at all. And he was loyal. He had attacked Beecher only for saying bad things about her. And it wasn’t as if she herself had been celibate since she met him.

  So why did she feel betrayed?

  She needed to get out of the house. It was probably just her own physical needs that were making her so possessive. She knew how to take care of that problem.

  She took a deep breath, stood up, and went to her room to shower and change.

  Once she was ready, she studied herself in the holographic mirror. The strapless dress fell to her ankles, but the skirt was slit up both sides almost all the way to her waist. The neckline dipped down to her navel with some interesting detours along the way. The bodice fitted so snugly it might have been painted on, and the fabric had a sheen that caught the light in interesting ways. She switched the holographic mirror to show her smooth, completely bare back. She was ready.

  She moved to the com set and punched Hari’s key.

  “What’s up?” Hari looked sleepy.

  “I’m going out,” Rishi said abruptly. “If you want to come with me, you’d better be ready now.”

  There was a long pause. Hari kept his face expressionless. “I’ll have the flyter ready in ten minutes.”

  Rishi smiled to herself.

  RISHI made it to the flyter pad before Hari did but had to wait to get in.

  “You are impatient,” Hari said when he approached. “Feeling romantic?”

  “Shut up and open the flyter,” Rishi said. “You must have changed the code. It wouldn’t open for me.”

  Hari tapped the code and the doors slid open. “I change it frequently,” he said as he got in. “I’m serious about you never going without me. It’s not a safe thing to do, Rishi.”

  Rishi climbed into the seat beside him. “I called you, didn’t I?”

  “Damn right.” He studied her dress covertly and sighed.

  Once they were seated, Hari started the engine and put his hands on the destination controls. “Where to?”

  “The Watering Hole.” Rishi named a bar that was notorious as a meeting place for people interested in liaisons—not always in couples. It had the added convenience of having rooms available by the hour right upstairs.

  “Hmmph,” Hari said. Rishi could see the muscles of his jaw twitch. He punched in the address.

  Once they were airborne and their destination set, Hari took out the transponder fob. It was small and round and had a loop on one side so that it could be fastened onto something larger. “Let’s see your bracelet.”

  Rishi held out her left wrist and Hari attached the fob securely to the slim gold chain she always wore.

  “You remember how to use it?” he asked.

  She sighed. “Yes, Hari. We go through this every time. It’s not complicated. I push the button and you come running.”

  “Test it anyway.”

  Rishi held the tiny bauble between her thumb and index finger and squeezed. Immediately, a high-pitched squeal sounded from Hari’s shirt pocket.

  “It’s working,” Hari said, and he reset the transponder to off.

  When they got a short distance from the Watering Hole, Hari set Rishi down first. “You wait until I get there to start anything.”

  Rishi nodded and walked off. The Watering Hole affected a modern look; only a lighted floor and some luminescent plants illuminated the entrance. If Rishi hadn’t known the way, she would have been put off by the lack of light.

  Instead she went straight into the slightly more brightly lit main room and ordered a drink at the bar. The bartender was a Terran woman with black hair and a sympathetic expression. Rishi turned away while the woman fixed her drink, surveying the room for prospects. It wasn’t especiall
y crowded. Quite a number of people had clustered into a knot in one corner of the room, but they seemed to be working out some fairly intricate plans among themselves, and Rishi had no interest in that kind of group activity.

  When the bartender handed her a drink, Rishi took a seat at an empty table in the far corner, away from the self-absorbed group, and studied the rest of the room. She reviewed each of the men lined up at the bar and rejected them all. Next, she considered the tables. There were two good-looking men at one table, but they were obviously more interested in each other than they would ever be in her.

  Hari came in and ordered a drink. He took a seat at the bar where he could keep an eye on her table, but didn’t speak or otherwise acknowledge her.

  A servoid rolled up with a note. Rishi picked it up and read it. She glanced around to find the man who had written it. He was standing near Hari at the bar. He smiled and lifted his glass. He wasn’t bad looking—slender, a little taller than she was, with black hair and pleasant features. Rishi shook her head and put the note back.

  She sipped her drink and kept looking. Another servoid rolled up. This one had a note, a drink, and a cardkey. Rishi pressed the button to return it to its source without even looking at the note. She wasn’t interested in anyone with that much ego.

  She had started on her third drink when a tall man came into the bar. He had wavy light brown hair, and he walked with a confident stride. He ordered a drink and took a chair at a table across the room. Rishi studied him closely and decided he was a possibility. She pressed a button on the table to summon a servoid and wrote out her own note. When the servoid rolled up, she put a credit chit into the slot, slipped her note onto the tray on top, punched in the tall man’s table number, and sent it on its way.

  She saw him pick up the note and look around. She didn’t wave, but she smiled at him when he looked her way. He took a long look back at her and then stood up and carried his drink over to her table.

  “Hello,” he said, looking down at her. “Mind if I sit down?”

  Rishi saw that she had been right; he had blue eyes. “Go right ahead. That’s why I sent you the note.”

  He took a seat and leaned back in the chair. “I haven’t seen you here before. I’d remember if I had.”