I became aware of a throbbing pain in my arm and looked down. The right sleeve of my jacket had been cut away too. The outside of my arm, just below the shoulder, bore an angry red furrow. The track of Vekesh’s second bullet, I guessed. The skin around the wound had been cleaned. A small tray next to the bed bore a small green canvas heap which I recognized as my discarded jacket sleeve. The fabric was dark with blood. A metal bowl next to it on the tray contained a pile of gauze pads, also soaked with blood.
“I administered a dose of anesthetic when you came in,” Daskar said, “but you’re due for another one.” She held up a hypodermic needle in mute inquiry. I nodded.
“What happened?” I asked as she inserted the needle with a steady hand. “I remember him shooting Saresh, but after that . . .”
“The first bullet found its mark,” Daskar said. “He was trying to remove Saresh from the line of fire. The second bullet was meant for you. Thanks to Zey, it went wide.” She clicked her tongue in distaste. “Not wide enough, obviously. After it grazed your arm, it went through two bulkheads and lodged in the inner hull. A surprising amount of firepower for such a primitive weapon.”
I said, “Zey was there?” I didn’t remember seeing him in the residential corridor.
“He used the secondary tunnels to flank Vekesh while Hathan was talking to him. He tackled him from the side. If he’d been a moment sooner, neither of those bullets would have found a target.”
If he’d been a moment later, I thought, the second one would have killed me. “Is he okay?”
“He’s fine. He and Hathan both took a couple of blows—Vekesh put up quite a fight before they were able to subdue him. Nothing worse than bruises, though. For any of them.”
I turned my face away as Daskar continued the meticulous work of cleaning the singed fragments of sleeve out of the wound. Wave after wave of nausea and shock and sadness rolled over me, all tangled hopelessly together. When I left Earth, I had carried with me brilliant images of the year ahead as I imagined it: the slow unfolding of trust and friendship between me and my Vardeshi crewmates, the patient yet rewarding work of building cross-cultural understanding. Instead I lay here in the bright clinical quiet of an alien medical ward while shreds of jacket sleeve were extracted from a bullet wound in my arm. Beside me slept one of my most trusted companions, injured in an effort to protect me, an act of courage I could hardly take in.
The words Vekesh had spoken in the hallway came back to me in snatches. The Vardeshi people have better things to do with their time and resources and technology than waste them on this race of animals. This alliance can’t be allowed to happen. There are Houses that will pay very, very well to see it crushed. So it had been about me, or, more accurately, about humanity. Now that I knew Vekesh was the saboteur, now that I understood his motives, I saw how everything he had done had been part of a single overarching effort. The early work had been patient and psychological: keeping me continually off-balance, distancing me from the rest of the crew, prompting them to question my motives. Later on, as he grew desperate, his attempts to sow discord had become physical and violent: disabling the comm network, setting a bomb in the cargo hold. His plan had never been to destroy the Pinion; it had been to make it look like I had tried and failed to do so. After the blast, he had gone to my quarters with a gun. He must have been planning to kill me and simulate a suicide. Maybe he would have left a note explaining my racial pride and concomitant hatred for the Vardeshi. Maybe not; an ineptly executed detonation and a dead human saboteur together told their own tale. It would hardly have mattered that an in-depth forensic examination would prove I wasn’t actually guilty of anything. The Vardeshi wouldn’t have hung around waiting for the fingerprint analysis. They would have ferried their surviving human passengers home as quickly as possible, turned their ships around, and left us alone in the dark.
I thought back to Dr. Sawyer’s office in California and the first words the Vardeshi had spoken to us in twenty-five years. Earth, or the potential of Earth, divides us as nothing ever has before. Why hadn’t we paid closer attention to that sentence? And why hadn’t they? If I had given it any thought at all, I had assumed that the anti-alliance factions would be won over in time by the obvious cultural benefits of an association with another sentient people. I had never imagined that their dissent could turn violent. The Vardeshi abhorred violence. They prided themselves on having excised it as completely as possible from their lives. How passionate must Vekesh’s handlers have been to resort to attempted assassination to achieve their end? And had I, or we, somehow driven them to it? In our eagerness to draw closer to the Vardeshi, had my fellow humans and I forced ourselves on them, ignoring the legitimate reluctance of many among their number? I remembered my flippant rejoinder to Kylie’s observation that the Vardeshi had not yet risen beyond conflict, that they still had factions with incompatible aims. Maybe that’s just what humanity does to people. Was it?
I looked at Saresh again. Asleep, he looked utterly peaceful. If Daskar’s appraisal was accurate, both of us would eventually recover from our wounds. But could the nascent alliance between our peoples sustain such a blow without collapsing? Vekesh had failed in his attempt to take my life, but was it possible that he had achieved his goal anyway?
At last the analgesic began to take hold. With the reduction of the pain, my thoughts settled a little. I studied Daskar’s face as she finished cleaning the wound. I had never seen her look so grave. I reflected that, as tragic as Saresh’s injury was, in the eyes of my crewmates mine was almost certainly worse. I had been harmed by a Vardeshi hand. I knew enough of their collective pride to know how mortifying that must be. The words on which the exchange was founded—their words—pledged to ensure the safety of the humans in their care. If you consent to send your citizens to us, we promise to shelter and protect them as if they were our own. The events of the last few hours represented a spectacular failure to do that. While I lay unconscious, all of the senior officers, but particularly Daskar as the ship’s physician, must have been under enormous strain. I cast around for a joke, a quip, any lighthearted comment that would prove that I was beginning to recover. As she approached with the bandages, I said weakly, “I knew you guys just wanted me for medical experiments.” No one would have counted it among my wittiest remarks, but it was worth the effort to see the tension ease in her face.
“You should sleep for the next few hours,” she said. “I’d like to administer a sedative. Would you rather stay here or rest in your quarters?”
“In my quarters.”
She nodded. “I’ll get someone to carry you.”
“No! I can walk.” Daskar looked skeptical, and I amended, “I can try to walk. Please.”
“All right. But don’t do anything quickly.” She helped me into a sitting position. The world rushed away from me for a moment as I came upright, but it rushed back again almost at once. Before I slid off the bed onto the floor, I had a sudden thought. “Who carried me here?”
“Hathan.”
With any luck Daskar attributed my wince to the movement of my right arm as she settled the left one over her shoulders. We made our way slowly to the door. As we stepped out into the corridor I saw with a flood of gratitude that it was empty. After helping me inside my room, Daskar assisted me in undressing. I was too tired to be embarrassed by the intimacy of the contact. I stretched out on my bed, obediently swallowed the sleeping pill she handed me with a cup of water, and was asleep before she had left the room.
When I woke I saw immediately that she, or someone else, had visited while I slept. Conspicuously placed on my bedside shelf was one of the tiny saucers used for the senek ritual. It held two ibuprofen tablets. Beside the saucer was something I prized much more: my flexscreen. I reached for it eagerly. A first-priority message from Daskar read, Contact me when you wake up. Clearly the communications network had been restored, or at least the part of it that controlled intra-ship transmissions. I sat up slowly, gauging the extent
of my discomfort. My head ached, my throat felt dry, and there was a dull rhythmic throbbing in my right arm. I got up and made my way into the sanitation room. I felt better when I’d cleaned up a little and put on civilian clothes. I went back out into the main room, picked up my flexscreen, and hesitated. I knew I should contact Daskar immediately. I didn’t. I put the flexscreen back on the shelf where I’d found it. Then I switched off my overhead light and sat down cross-legged on my little tilted bunk, my back pressed against the wall, with its deep soothing vibration from the ship’s engines. The faint radiance of the stars beyond my viewport was the only illumination in the room. I drew the darkness over myself like a blanket and turned inward, focusing on a solitary thought.
Hathan.
It didn’t make sense. Saresh would have made sense. In my mind’s eye, I placed them side by side again at that interview table in the Villiger Center, elder brother and younger, neatly excising Vekesh from the image. My first glimpse of them had been incomplete, impressionistic, but now I refined the picture, adding in details gleaned from hours of observation. If anything, Saresh had grown more attractive in the intervening months. His silver-white hair, long and loose, was caught back at the sides by a braid above each ear. His eyes were arrestingly dark by contrast, a blue so rich it looked black in some lights. His profile was classically handsome, almost Roman, with none of the flatness of feature that marked some of the other Vardeshi faces I was now familiar with. Mentally I catalogued his personal qualities as I had come to know them. He was an attentive listener, quick to laughter, quicker to make an unlooked-for gesture of kindness. In his role as hadazi he had spent more time with me than anyone except Zey. He had been my confidant and my defender. My champion, even.
Hathan, at his side, waited quietly for my scrutiny. There was nothing remarkable about his appearance, certainly not in comparison to his brother. He was precisely my own height and very slim; I thought I probably outweighed him. In the interview room I had thought his eyes were actually white, but now I knew them to be pale blue-gray, with a deep gray ring around the iris. His hair was dark gray too and cut in a vaguely Japanese shag that would have prompted me to reject any other man on sight. It should have been ridiculous. Somehow on him it wasn’t.
As I had done for Saresh, I assessed his personality, or tried to. This wasn’t as straightforward a process as it had been with the elder Takheri. Hathan was, at all times, alert, thoughtful, and coolly self-contained. He didn’t get irritated or flustered. I had never seen his composure crack. With everyone except his brothers he was remote but not cold. Even with Saresh and Zey, he maintained a certain level of reserve. But there was a lightness in him too, and a sense of humor that I knew was there but couldn’t fathom. I had seen the others laugh when he spoke, although I almost never followed the jokes. Over the last three months I had overheard a lot of people asking him for advice. He seemed to inspire confidences. I didn’t think he reciprocated them. That faint distance, that slight sense of withholding, was there all the time. Unless I was wrong, and it was only there with me.
In the darkness of my room I sat contemplating that portrait of them, waiting for enlightenment. In the end I was left with nothing more illuminating than the fact that, faced with the two of them, my gaze drifted as inevitably as a compass needle toward the smaller figure on the right. Something about Hathan drew me. I didn’t know what it was. Maybe that was all right. Maybe it didn’t matter.
But how could I have been blindsided by something so fundamental? I had fallen in love before. I knew how it felt: the electrifying awareness of the other’s nearness, the thrill of incidental eye contact, the obsessive reliving of every interaction. There, I thought, was my answer. I had felt all those things with Hathan, especially the last. But I had misconstrued them. I had dismissed the nearly constant discomfiture I felt in his presence as the inevitable unease of a not-quite-adequate subordinate. I had thought he made me nervous in the same way that Vekesh or Saresh or Ziral did, only perhaps a little more so because he was more difficult to read. I was wrong. When had I ever blushed hotly in the shower at the memory of a rebuke from Ziral? When had a gentle correction to my tone progression from Saresh ever made me flinch? It wasn’t the same thing at all. Abruptly I remembered the ranshai session and the lighthearted sparring match that had followed it. I should have known then. I should have known when I saw him laugh.
I sighed. The whole thing was ridiculous. The idea of my being infatuated with a Vardeshi—any Vardeshi, let alone one who had despised me virtually from the first instant of the mission—was clichéd. It was inappropriate. It was unprofessional. Above all else, it was completely unrequited. And I was going to have to find a way to hide it from Hathan. Unless, of course, it was too late, and he already knew.
I’d been alone with my thoughts long enough. I reached for my flexscreen and texted Daskar. She arrived a few minutes later to walk me to the clinic. The bed Saresh had occupied yesterday was neat and empty. “He’s fine,” Daskar said, seeing my stricken look. “He’s returned to duty. He’ll be walking with a crutch until we reach the starhaven, but their facilities are better equipped than ours, and he’ll be as good as new by the time we launch again. If I knew our medical tech was safe to use on humans, I could have you almost completely healed by the time we reach Arkhati.”
“We’re only a day or two away, aren’t we?” I said.
“We were,” she said grimly. “Before the damage to the cargo hold. Fortunately, no essential systems were compromised, but a large section of the Pinion’s hull is now open to space. The emergency bulkhead system did its work well, but we’re limited to about twenty percent of our typical flight speed. We won’t reach Arkhati for at least another ten days.”
I sat on one of the cots and slid my right arm out of the sleeve of my sweater. Daskar removed the bandages covering the bullet wound, inspected it critically, and then—to my surprise—took several pictures of it with her flexscreen.
“I need to document the stages of the healing process for your doctors on Earth,” she explained. “We haven’t heard from them yet, but we will soon, and I know they’ll expect a detailed account of everything I’ve done.”
When she’d replaced the bandages, she asked me some questions, first related to my symptoms, then more general. Next she had me perform some simple physical exercises. I recognized a few of them from my admittedly cursory medical training. I didn’t think they had anything to do with my arm.
“Are you looking for neurological damage?” I asked in surprise.
She nodded. “Neurological and cognitive. I haven’t heard the full account yet, but I know Saresh performed a Listening, and that it was successful. He doesn’t seem to think there were any negative effects, but I wanted to see for myself. Fortunately, everything looks fine. I know you haven’t had a chance to process the effects of the experience yet, but if you notice anything that seems at all odd or unusual, don’t hesitate to tell me.” Ruefully she went on, “I wish I could be more specific, but we’re in uncharted territory here—the first cross-species telepathic contact in history. I have absolutely no idea what to look for.”
“Trust me,” I said, “if there had been any other way, I wouldn’t have picked this one.”
“I trust you,” she assured me. I knew she was only echoing my words, but it still felt good to hear them.
As I pulled my sweater on again, Daskar gave me a measuring look. “There are a number of people waiting to talk to you. I can stall them for as long as you need me to, but Saresh and Hathan are both getting restless. Zey is practically climbing the bulkheads. What would you like me to tell them?”
I sighed. “I could use a shower and something to eat. After that, I’ll be ready to talk.”
She sent a couple of quick messages on her flexscreen. “I’ll walk you to the showers.”
In the shower room I reached immediately for the control panel on the wall; the dazzling blue-white lights made my head pound with renewed vigor. Red
ucing the brightness helped a little. I undressed mechanically and dropped my clothes in a pile on the floor. The caress of the water was like a benediction. I closed my eyes, lifted my face, and let it sluice away the last remnants of the headache. For the first time since arriving on the Pinion, I used the full allotment of thirty minutes.
When I emerged, Daskar went with me to the mess hall. Outside the door she said, “I need to go check on Saresh. Will you be all right here on your own?”
“Please don’t—” The words caught in my throat, and I had to start again. “Please don’t make me go in there alone.”
The compassion on her face was so intense I had to look away. She sent another message on her flexscreen. Zey arrived within seconds. At the sight of his familiar face with its spiky silver halo, I felt a relief so intense it brought tears to my eyes. Disregarding cultural mores and the possibility of giving offense, I seized him in an awkward but heartfelt one-armed hug. He went still for a moment, then put his arms cautiously around me.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” I said. “Thanks for saving my life.”
He grinned. “Thanks for giving me an excuse to knock Vekesh down. I’ve been wanting to do that for months.”
I stepped back and examined him. There was a blue-gray bruise on his chin. “Is that the only one?” I asked, pointing to it.
“There are a couple more that don’t show. When I tackled him at the beginning, it knocked the wind out of me. I spent most of the fight lying on the floor trying to get my breath back. Hathan did the actual fighting. He looks worse than I do. But both of us got off easy compared to you and Saresh.”
He followed me into the empty mess hall and helped himself to a bowl of vegetable soup while I prepared a meal of macaroni and cheese. When he had carried both our trays to the lower-ranking table, over my protests that I could carry mine one-handed, we sat in silence for a little while. I couldn’t guess what Zey was thinking. For my part, I was fighting the pull of memory. This room had not been a place of safety for me for a long time. I looked once at the exile table and then resolutely away from it. No one would ever force me to sit there again.
Ascending (The Vardeshi Saga Book 1) Page 29
