“I’m not complaining,” he said hurriedly, pushing himself up into a sitting position.
“We’re going to have to meet like this every few days,” she said. “The pool’s useful, if we can’t manage anywhere else.”
“I don’t like situations like that day in the office,” he said with a low rumble. “I’ve a suggestion. Can we hide in plain sight?”
“Excuse me?”
“Take the pressure off by meeting socially with some of your friends? The other females like to touch me, so amongst them, you’d be unremarkable. I’ve begun to socialize with Zhalmo.”
“I see what you’re saying,” she nodded. “We could try. Just remember, Zhalmo is interested in you.” She bit back what she was going to say next.
“What?”
She looked away from him. “You are, of course, free to sleep with Zhalmo or any of the other females if you wish. I have no right to ask you not to.”
“I think I’ll pass on that,” he said, flattered. “Life’s complicated enough.”
“I should shower and leave,” she said awkwardly, getting off the bed. “I’ll leave the water on for you. Having one long shower will cause less suspicion from the room on the other side of you than having it on twice.”
“There’re towels in the closet in there,” he said.
She stopped to pick up her coveralls and underwear.
He lay back on the bed, waiting for her to finish, grateful that she seemed not to have noticed their minds meeting briefly. He tried to figure out how he felt about her now. Nothing much had changed, except he knew she’d been used as much as he had. In a way, it was a relief not to have to hate her, knowing that she’d saved his life at least twice. He’d never really felt comfortable with blaming her, if he was being honest.
He woke with a jerk to her shaking his foot.
“You were asleep,” she said, a slight smile on her face.
“Sorry,” he said, rubbing his eyes as he got up. “Look, I need to apologize for treating you the way I did the other day . . .”
“It’s forgotten,” she interrupted, turning toward the door. “I would have felt the same had it been me.”
“No, I should have trusted you, you were right,” he said, keeping his voice low as he accompanied her into the darkened lounge. The glow of the wall clock caught his eye. He couldn’t believe three hours had passed!
She turned round by the door. “It’s not your fault,” she said. “You came out to meet us just over two months ago and were suddenly presented with a group of hybrid children, me and my compelling scent, then Shaidan, a son you didn’t know existed. You weren’t to know how it had all happened—hell, I still don’t know most of it,” she said candidly.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said. “I need to keep working in the library, but not to stay away from you.” He smiled wryly. “Come in any time.”
“All right,” she said.
He leaned forward and touched his lips gently to hers. “Good night. I think it’s safe for you to leave now.” He opened the door for her, making sure he was well out of sight.
She smiled then slipped out into the dimly lit corridor and disappeared.
Giyarishis surfaced slowly from his trance, satisfied with the effect his talk to the female had had. Matters between her and the Hunter were now proceeding as they ought. All he had to do for now was make sure the sand-dweller male remained compliant. The dreams he’d had the night before should help.
Taking off the dressing on his arm, he found what he expected—the wound was now fully healed, the tiny scars only slightly pink amid the new growth of his pelt.
He showered swiftly, rubbing some antiseptic cream into the shallow bite Zayshul had given him, then returned to his bedroom and surveyed the wrecked bed with a sigh. He’d left his pelt slightly damp knowing that nothing could smell as pungent as a damp Sholan left to dry naturally overnight. It was not something he liked doing.
Pulling the top cover off, he took it into the bathing room and sloshed it round in the shower for a minute or two before wringing it out and spreading it over the cubicle to dry.
Back in the bedroom, he switched off the air conditioner, sniffing the air cautiously. It smelled neutral now, with no trace of the heavy sexual scents that had been present before. Sighing, he crawled into bed and put the light out. There was still a trace of her scent, but strangely, it didn’t bother him. He realized that by letting go with her, and accepting what he couldn’t change, he’d taken some small measure of control back over his life on board Kij’ik.
Curling up, he felt himself begin to drift into sleep almost instantly.
Zhal-L’Shoh 4th day (January)
At breakfast the next morning, Kezule seemed restless.
“I didn’t sleep well,” he admitted, getting up to help himself to another drink as M’kou took the children off to the nursery.
“Oh?” She looked at him meaningfully.
He had the grace to color in embarrassment as he sat down again. “Not what you think,” he said. “I rarely stay with Shishu or Nisho overnight. I usually sleep alone in my room here. I’ve been having dreams. Or memories, call them what you want, but they’ve been troubling me.”
“What sort of dreams?” she asked, interested.
“They’re too fragmented at the moment to make much sense,” he said, taking a sip of his kheffa. “I know Kusac is working on an old text he found in the data banks and was wondering how far he’d gotten with it. Perhaps they have some areas in common, maybe fill in the blank spots for me.”
“He’s working in the library these days, so I don’t know how far he’s actually got. I do know it has him fascinated,” she said.
“I’ll have to talk to him about it today.”
“You know, if you’re not remembering all the details of your dream, perhaps doing a scan would help. We can set it to pick up anything related from your subconscious.”
“That’s a possibility. How long would it take?”
“Not long. Maybe an hour. If M’kou can cover for you, come into the sick bay and we’ll do it now.”
“Is it possible to turn it into a form that I can view, on a screen? Like the vid that I used as a punishment tape?”
“Theoretically, but that will take longer. I can take the scan, but interpreting it into another medium is not one of my skills. For that you’d need Lazaik.”
“M’kou’s young female?”
“Yes. I don’t know how long it would take her, though. Probably several days.”
He nodded. “That part isn’t so urgent. I will be able to play the scan like a learning tape and know anything that I have forgotten in my sleep, won’t I?”
“Yes, that you can do almost immediately,” she said.
“In that case, shall we go?” he asked, draining his cup.
“Yes,” she said, getting up.
“Zayshul,” he said as she turned to leave.
“What, Kezule?”
“I just wanted to say I appreciate you not complaining over me spending nights away from here,” he said awkwardly. “Sometimes I just need space.”
“So long as you give me the same privileges, Kezule, I don’t mind,” she said. “You were honest, and made no secret of the fact our marriage was one of heritage, not love.”
“You make me sound so . . . cold,” he said, wincing. “I have great affection for you, and value you as a companion, I’ve told you that.”
“True, but your affection doesn’t keep me as warm as your Court ladies do you when I need company at night.”
His face hardened slightly. “Not him. Anyone else, but not your Sholan. All I ask is that, and that you be discreet.”
“I made no rules for you.”
“No. There’s too much past between us. You will not take him as a lover.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to,” she said, turning away. “You can’t keep holding the fact he brought you forward in time against him, Kezule. Even you have to adm
it that living now is preferable to the past you’d have faced on Shola. Had he left you there, as I understand it, you’d have been killed when the asteroid hit.”
He was at her side in an instant. “That’s irrelevant,” he snapped, taking her by the arm. “You will not disobey me on this!”
“I didn’t say I wanted him,” she repeated, staring him down until he let her go. “We should get started on your scan,” she said, walking toward the doorway.
Half an hour later, Kezule sedated in the scanner chair in one of the sick bay cubicles, Zayshul and Ghidd’ah sat talking at the central nurses’ station.
“I need your help with something,” she said. “I want one of the Sholans seduced.”
Ghidd’ah’s eyes widened. “You want what?”
Zayshul laughed. “Dzaou,” she said. “He’s so obnoxious, and so xenophobic, it’s time he got taught a lesson.”
“You aren’t suggesting I do it, I hope! He is obnoxious!”
“No, not just you. I need a group of you to start making him feel popular at the rec, and at the pool if he goes there. Especially the pool, because there, if the chance arises, several of you can . . . seduce him.”
“Hmm. I don’t think even curiosity about the Sholans will get anyone to actually want to couple with him.”
“You never know. Finding himself apparently liked may well change his disposition,” said Zayshul. “Even if it goes no further than flirting outrageously with him, it could help.”
“Help whom?” asked Ghidd’ah shrewdly. “The Captain? Everyone knows Dzaou is a troublemaker. All he does is stalk around after the Captain, looking for opportunities to cause trouble.”
“If he’s being kept busy by some of you, all the less chance for him to do it,” said Zayshul. “Will you help?”
Ghidd’ah sighed. “Maybe. If I can find another couple of willing people to help, but I’m not promising,” she warned as Zayshul grinned and patted her on the shoulder.
“Thank you, Ghidd’ah.”
The result of the scan had worried Kezule, making it impossible for him to concentrate on monitoring traffic in and out of the landing bay. Leaving one of his sons in charge of flight control, he headed up to his office on the Command level. A cup of kheffa at his side and his feet propped up on the low table in front of him, he lit one of his smokes and tried to think through what the scan had shown him.
Many of his unanswered questions now had answers, and he wasn’t sure he liked them. Foremost was why he’d instinctively chosen Zayshul as his mate. She carried the same anomalous small internal organs that he, as a Warrior caste male, did and the only reason they appeared vestigial and unused was because she didn’t know how to use them. She was his natural mate, a female Warrior. Not just of that caste, but capable of being a fully active Warrior with all the extra speed and healing abilities he possessed. And there were more like her here on Kij’ik with him.
The dim memories and half-remembered dreams had coalesced into something concrete under the scan, something he didn’t want to contemplate and which filled him with dread. But what he’d relived when he’d viewed the scan would not be quieted any longer. He had to face it, and now.
His memories of a past when they’d all been one people were accurate, up to a point. And it hadn’t been as long ago as he’d thought, only five hundred years before his time. Yes, they had been one people, ruled by the females of that time, by a Queen with ambition and cruelty in her nature. Only the females had possessed the traits of the Warriors, which they’d evolved to help them survive and breed on a hostile world. The males possessed none of these abilities. More, some of the females had also been telepathic.
He drew deep on his cheroot, letting the smoke fill his lungs, welcoming the calmative effect it had on him.
This Queen—he searched for her name—Kszafas, Queen Kszafas—hadn’t been born close to the throne, but she had murdered and plotted her way there. Once on it, as in his day, she surrounded herself with those few of her family she trusted, and who feared her power. Ambition and arrogance had led her to expand the relatively peaceful Empire of her predecessor by adding nearly all the male population to her armies. Till then, they’d played a small part in any military action. When it became obvious that the males didn’t survive as well, with the help of scientists from among the Valtegans and their allies, the six-limbed Hrana, the beginnings of the division of their people into the caste system had been initiated.
With their ability to mature early, it hadn’t taken long. Once breeding centers had been set up, it took only three generations, then there had been Workers, Warriors, Intellectuals, and Drones—and the Empress and her chosen females. This accomplished, she turned her armies on her allies, the four species with whom they’d traded, including the Hrana. Why trade for what she had the power to take for nothing? And the Valtegan Empire had been born, and expanded to fill three colony worlds, worlds with more males than females because to Kszafas, only telepathic female Warriors had any value, and why waste them in wars of acquisition when they could use the males and keep her females for controlling them?
It had lasted for three hundred years, during which time the memories of how it had happened had dimmed, extinguished by royal decree for a more palatable past. In some families the memories had remained, hidden deep in the subconscious of the racial memory passed on to them when their mothers had licked their eggs.
He sat up, knocking the ash off his cheroot, and picked up his cup. The kheffa was cold and tasted bitter, but he ignored this, taking a large mouthful anyway. The taste was less bitter than what else he’d discovered about his people’s past.
The system under which he’d grown up had come about two hundred years before, when, under the charismatic leadership of one Warrior, on all four worlds simultaneously, the males had risen against the females, drugging and murdering them till few remained. The tables had then been reversed, with the surviving females drugged and kept in breeding harems, the memories of it this time systematically and efficiently all but obliterated.
This, then, was the true history of his people, the race he wanted to blend back into one caste with males and females living and working as equals.
What mischief could telepathic Warrior females create this time, he wondered darkly? No more than the Warriors of his time had done to them, came the quiet voice of his conscience, forcing him to remember the female given to him as his wife back in his own time.
She’d been feral because of the drugs she’d been constantly fed from the moment of her hatching. There had been no chance for any intelligence to develop or show under those circumstances. He remembered the Emperor’s hatchery, where the eggs had to be taken from the females as soon as they’d hardened lest they eat them. Unbidden came the knowledge that the females were acting instinctively to protect their young from the harshness of the regime under which they existed—a regime that drugged them almost into insensibility for what was no more than legalized rape, that destroyed most of the female eggs, that threw male prisoners to them to kill, and treated them with callous indifference the rest of the time. A regime he’d fought not only to protect, but to expand onto other worlds.
He threw his mug across the room, shattering it against the far wall in anger. Would it be wise to awaken the memories of his people to such a past? At least the Primes were mentally further away from it than he was. Stubbing out his cheroot, he lay back in his chair, sickened at the thought of Zayshul, Zhalmo, or Shezhul in one of the harems of his time. Or worse, his daughter Mayza being killed because no female offspring of anyone in the royal family, save those of the Emperor himself, were allowed to live.
Suddenly he needed to see his daughter. Getting to his feet, he headed for the Officers’ lounge where the children played during the day. The door slid open, and he entered, looking round the room for Mayza.
There were nine of them, some playing board games, others sitting at the table working with Shishu, his favorite from the Court.
> She looked up at the sound of the door.
“Where’s Mayza?” he demanded, still looking for the child among the others.
“Beside me,” said Shishu, a puzzled look on her face as she sat back to let him see his daughter. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said, striding over to her. Reaching down, he picked Mayza up, pleased as she wrapped her arms around his neck. “Nothing’s wrong,” he said, letting his chin rest on her head, smelling her scent to reassure himself she was there and was real. “I’m taking her out for a while. We’ll be back shortly,” he said.
As he turned away, he saw Shaidan looking up at him and reached down briefly to touch the child’s head. “Mayza will be back soon,” he said.
He walked down to the main corridor, then along to the elevator with no real idea of where he was going.
“General,” said M’zynal, as he stopped to wait for the elevator. “Anything wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Just taking Mayza for a walk.”
Once inside, with the doors closed, he pressed the button for the Officers level, knowing he needed to see Zayshul.
He found her in the library, reading a printout with Kusac. They looked up as he entered.
“Is something wrong with Mayza?” she asked, instantly on her feet and coming toward him.
“She’s fine,” he reassured her, taking her by the arm and drawing her out into the corridor. “You’ll excuse me, Captain, but I need to speak to Zayshul.”
“Of course,” said Kusac.
“What is it?” Zayshul asked, looking very worried. “What’s happened?”
“When we’re in your data room,” he said.
As the door closed, she reached for Mayza, needing to make sure she was all right for herself.
“She’s fine,” said Kezule, passing her over and leaning against the edge of her desk. He hesitated. “I reviewed the scan,” he said.
“You did? Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked, setting their daughter on the ground.
Between Darkness and Light Page 40
