by Speer, Flora
“Is that what you thought?” He caught her hand across the table and held it tightly. “Narisa, I did not want Suria. What was between us ended well before you came aboard the Reliance. Suria wanted to stop space travel and leave the Service so she could have a child. She had applied for permission some time ago, and since her family is highly placed on her home planet, the chances are good she’ll be allowed to reproduce. So you see, she would have left the ship even if you had not been assigned as navigator. And, incidentally, we never discussed Suria having my child.”
“Then why did you treat me so badly?” Narisa asked. She tried to pull her hand out of his, but he would not let it go. He leaned across the table, his face serious, his eyes locked on hers. She held her breath, waiting for his answer.
“Because I wanted you so much,” he said. “I saw that you had nothing to do with any of the men on board. I thought you disliked men. You certainly seemed to dislike me, and I didn’t want to risk being hurt by you if you rejected me. So I made myself treat you with rigid correctness and nothing more. You can’t imagine what you’ve put me through, how often I wanted to touch you when you were so distant, to say something funny so I could hear your laugh. I used to pace my cabin, listening to you cry out in the grip of a nightmare, and wished I could break through the door that separated us to hold you in my arms and comfort you.”
“Tarik, I thought you hated me.” The words came out in a rush as she tried to comprehend what he was saying. How could she have misunderstood him so completely?
“Oh, no.” He caressed the side of her face with a slim yet very strong hand, smoothing a loose wisp of hair away from her cheek, while his other hand still held hers enfolded in his grasp. ``I never hated you, Narisa. And I want you still. You must know that.”
“Tarik ?” Her voice cracked with emotion as she spoke his name. She hardly dared believe what she had just learned. “I thought I did dislike you. You were so critical of me, and so arrogant. But when I saw you after the Cetan attack, injured and likely to die, I knew I couldn’t leave you behind on the Reliance. You make me so angry; you have no respect for Service regulations or Jurisdiction laws; and you make me think about things I would rather not think of at all. But something about you touches the deepest part of me, and when you kiss me, I know that I want you, too. Still, I’m afraid.” It cost her a good deal to admit that, but she had to say it.
He let go of her hand to cup her face between both of his hands, then leaned over and kissed her lightly.
“My sweet Narisa, there is nothing to fear. I won’t hurt you, no more than any other man has. Or is that it? Did someone hurt you once, perhaps the first time? Is that why you’re afraid?”
“No.” She caught at his hands, pulling them away from her face. “Tarik, there hasn’t been any other man. No one at all.”
“No one?” he repeated, his amazement plain to see.
Narisa hurried on nervously, looking anywhere but at his astonished face. “I know most people treat lovemaking very casually, but it seemed too important to me. There was never the right man among my friends, not even on Belta when I was fifteen, which is the usual age there to begin such things, and so I just waited. And kept on waiting.”
“Yet you said you wanted me.”
“I do.” She made herself meet his eyes at last, overwhelmed by emotion and absolutely certain of what she was doing. “I don’t want to wait any longer. Please, Tarik.”
“Narisa, my sweet love.” He meant those words. She had never seen such an expression on a man’s face before, of wonder and surprise, and yes, love. It was not just physical hunger Tarik felt for her. She was wise enough to see that.
He rose from his chair and held out his arms, and she went into them, putting her own arms around him, feeling his strength beneath the thin red robe, and his need of her. She raised her face.
Their mouths met in a warm, lingering kiss that went on and on until Narisa imagined he had drawn her very soul out of her body and made it his own. When the kiss finally ended, she hung in his arms, her eyes closed, while he covered her face and throat with more kisses. He returned finally to her softly parted lips, his tongue searching gently across them, then plunging into the moist sweetness of her mouth. Narisa moaned and leaned against him, overcome with weakness. She felt him lift her off her feet and was glad of it, for her knees would not have held much longer.
Tarik carried her to the grandest of the personal rooms, and laid her down upon one of the beds. He leaned over her, brushing his mouth across her cheek.
“In ancient days on Old Earth,” he whispered, “a woman preserved her virginity until her marriage night, then gave it in love and trust to her husband.”
“Marriage?” Narisa’s eyelids fluttered open. Like her parents? Did he really care for her that much? His next words answered her unspoken question.
“I love you, Narisa. I have since I first saw you. And because I love you, I respect and trust you, as I hope you do me. Most of all, I treasure what you freely give me now.”
“Oh, Tarik.” She could not meet his eyes. She had already violated his trust by sending out the rescue call. Wishing she had never touched the computer-communicator, she buried her face in his neck, hiding her guilt.
“If you don’t love me now, perhaps you will in time. But whether you do or not, I love you and always will.” He began to demonstrate that love with his hands and mouth and with murmured words. Golden lines of beautiful ancient poetry caressed her ears as he removed her gown and slippers, and told her how beautiful she was, how priceless, how dear to him.
She saw his naked body, slim and taut and full with need of her, and her own body responded to the sight with a moist, aching emptiness that cried out to be filled by him. She was consumed by a deep longing that sprang into life wherever he touched her. Her fear vanished along with her lingering sense of guilt over the message she had sent. She would worry later about what she had done. For now there was only Tarik.
He was gentle with her, touching her tenderly, urging her to touch him in return, stirring all her senses until she opened to him as naturally as a flower in springtime. Her discomfort at this first joining with a man was brief, only an instant of pain, and a small price to pay for the sweetness of complete union with him, or the unbelievable ecstasy that followed. Narisa lay drenched in pleasure while he loved her, and told her he loved her, until he could speak no more but cried out his joy with gasping sounds that spoke more of love than words could ever do. And when they were both replete with love, he cradled her in his arms and whispered words again until she slept with her head over his heart.
She woke to love again later, with no apprehension this time, his body more familiar to her now, as hers was to him, and it was more beautiful, more exciting and fulfilling than the first time.
“How strange,” Tarik mused as they lay close together afterward, “that we who are not afraid to risk our lives in space travel should be so fearful for our hearts. How self-protective we have both been, and would have gone on being, had we not crashed on this blessed planet.”
“I trained myself not to feel anything at all,” she told him.
“And now?” He ran his hand over her with loving freedom.
“Now I feel too much, and my only fear is that it won’t last.”
“It will,” he assured her. “To my life’s end and beyond.”
Would it last, Narisa wondered, past her telling him of the rescue call she had sent? She would have to do that soon. But not yet. Not until he had loved her once more and made her cry out in wild passion as he taught her yet new ways of delight.
She postponed telling him all the next day while they explored the island, and swam naked in the lake and made love on the beach under the hot orange-gold sun until they were both covered with sand. They fell apart laughing, lying side by side with his fingers woven between hers.
“I’m happy,” Tarik said. “I have never been happy before.”
“Not even when yo
u were a little boy?” She envisioned a small, wiry child with dark hair falling into his eyes, who questioned everything.
“I was an odd child.” He squinted into the deep blue sky, his eyes on a pair of circling birds. He seemed to be speaking more to them than to Narisa at his side. “I did not fit into my family very well. I made my parents uneasy, especially my father. My mother and my brother could always manage my father, but I only made him angry.”
“Why?” Narisa asked, amused. “Too many questions?”
“Yes, and as I grew older, most of them about the intentions of the Assembly. Since my father is one of its foremost Members, my questions did not please him.” Tarik sighed. “Then my older brother and I quarreled. We parted on bad terms. I’m sorry for that, because we had agreed the Assembly needs reforming and some of its most repressive laws must be repealed or there will be a great revolution in a few decades, which could destroy the Jurisdiction. Together, with our mother to back us, we might have convinced our father to take the first steps toward change.”
“I’m sorry you and your brother quarreled,” Narisa said softly. She did not want to talk about the Assembly or the Jurisdiction. Her mind was on more romantic subjects. She turned on her side and ran her hand across his chest. Tarik smiled suddenly, catching Narisa’s exploring fingers and bringing them to his lips. The change in his mood from solemn to loving was startling.
“You are my peace,” he whispered, “and my joy. ‘True love is a durable fire, in the mind ever burning.’ I burn for you, my love.”
“More poetry,” she teased. “I’m beginning to like it.”
“And me?”
“And you.” She had not yet said she loved him. She was still afraid to put her feelings into words, but she thought he must know how she felt by the way she accepted him so gladly when he began to caress her and then bent to nibble at one bare breast.
She could not tell him what she had done then, not while passion was rising so deliciously in both of them once more and he was pulling her on top of him to make her embrace him in rapturous frenzy.
After a while, she rose to plunge into the lake again, leaving him dozing on the sand. She scrubbed herself with both hands until the sand was washed away from her face and hair and body. Then she swam far out into the lake, slicing the water with long, sure Beltan strokes, glorying in the element in which, like all Beltans, she felt most at home.
When she finally turned back toward shore, she saw that Tarik had entered the water, too. He stood naked and knee-deep, watching her. She waved a leisurely arm and started toward him. After a few strokes she decided to show off a little, to amuse him. She took the necessary three deep breaths and dove deep into the crystalline water.
She could not find the bottom at first. The water was a perfectly clear blue-green, pierced by long shafts of golden sunlight. There was no bottom to the lake, or at least none that Narisa could see. For just a moment she was lost, disoriented as she had never been when swimming on Belta, until she noticed the faint outline of a gray ledge. It rose precipitously, and she followed it upward. It must be, she decided, a continuation of the cliffs that edged the side of the lake nearest the island. Soon she saw pale sand and knew she had judged her distance well.
She stood up suddenly, coming out of the water in a surge of bubbles and laughter, flinging her hair back to get it out of her eyes, holding out her arms to Tarik, who stood close to her. His concerned, searching expression lightened at once.
“’Thus,’“ he declaimed, laughing back at her, “‘did Venus rise from out the sea.’“
“Poetry again! I recognize it now.” She threw her arms around his neck and bore him down into the water, her sudden assault unbalancing him. But not completely. The next thing she knew, she was lifted high into his arms and he was carrying her ashore.
“Who was Venus?” she asked, nibbling at his ear lobe.
“An ancient goddess of love,” he answered, holding her so that her body slid down his wet frame until they stood pressed tightly together from toe to forehead. “She was born of the sea. She was beautiful beyond all imagining. Like you.”
“Did she have a lover?” Narisa murmured, her lips touching his.
“Many lovers.”
“Then I am not like her, for I shall have only one. Only you.”
The look in his eyes when she said that was so deep, so glowing and warm and tender, that she knew she could not tell him yet about the message she had sent. Instead, she told him about the depths of the lake and her theory that it must be of volcanic origin. She talked on and on until he stopped her very reasonable scientific speculations with a shower of kisses that left her knees weak and her head spinning, and made her postpone the telling until later still.
But she did not tell him later when, bathed and clothed again, they worked together at the computer-communicator, learning as much as they could of the planet’s history and of the knowledge of Dulan and Tula and their friends. They walked along the shore at sunset, hand in hand, watching the birds fishing, and Tarik’s love for her was so open and so precious to her that she could not spoil the moment. She would tell him the next day, she promised herself, after another rapturous night spent in his arms, learning more of the ways of love.
She put it off again while they ate in the morning. The day was gray and misty, with a steady rain, and Tarik decreed they would spend all of it at the computer-communicator.
“With appropriate pauses,” he teased, kissing her nose. “Aren’t you glad we haven’t tried to call the Capital? We can explore the planet ourselves, without interference, now that we have all the information in here.” He gave the console a little pat and moved to turn the machinery on. “Afterward we’ll decide what we want to do, whether to attempt to communicate with the Capital or not. This machine is so old, the rescue signal from it might not reach that far. It might be more dangerous to use it than for the two of us to just live here. I have an idea about modifications, if we decide we do want to call, though I confess I wouldn’t mind at all spending the rest of my life alone with you.”
The time to tell him had come, and Narisa knew it. Her mind did not register all he was saying; she recognized only that she could wait no longer. He was making plans for their future, and a rescue ship might appear at any moment.
“I have already sent a message,” she said, and waited for the explosion she was certain would come.
He did not react at once. He went on working at the console a little longer, as though he hadn’t heard her. She watched as his hands went perfectly still over the buttons. He turned slowly, drawing himself up stiffly to his full height and facing her with a curiously blank expression.
“You did what?” His voice was almost a whisper, yet hard, a travesty of his gentle tones when making love to her.
“The first night we were here,” she told him, the words tumbling over each other.
Now that she had started her confession, she wanted to have it all out and be done with it. “While you were bathing, I sent out a rescue call. You had left the machine on.”
“I trusted you.” He took a step toward her, clenching his hands. He balled them into fists and held them at his sides as if he were trying to keep himself from using them on her. The pain on his face, the cold fury in his eyes, tore at her heart. “How could you do such a stupid thing? And how could you not tell me about it?”
“I thought it was best,” she said, trying to placate him. “You know the regulations, Tarik. I know you are angry now, but in time you will see it was the right thing to do.”
“Regulations? Very well, if you want regulations, Lieutenant Navigator Narisa, I’ll give them to you. You deliberately disobeyed your superior officer’s expressed washes. You are a candidate for court-martial.”
“Tarik, my dear, don’t you see why -”
“Commander Tarik!” he thundered. “Listen to me, lieutenant. Not only have you disobeyed me on a vital matter, but you may have killed us both. Weren’t you paying
attention to what Dulan told us? The Cetans found this planet once. They may find it again. And didn’t you hear what I said just now? One reason I haven’t sent out a rescue call was because I wasn’t certain this communicator could send a signal strong enough to reach the Capital, or even a Service spaceship. I wanted to explore this planet to find the original settlement, where the other computer-communicator is located. I had thought if it is still in existence, it’s just possible we might use parts from that machine and couple them with this one to produce the strong signal we need. That is the modification I was talking about.”
“I didn’t know that,” Narisa faltered. “You hadn’t told me. I didn’t think.”
“No, you didn’t think, lieutenant.”
“Please don’t call me that. Please call me Narisa.”
He ignored her plea and went on, showing his hurt now, and growing more and more angry as he spoke.
“While I made love to you, and poured out my heart and soul to you in complete trust, you lay there, knowing you had betrayed me, and you never had the decency to tell me what you had done.”
“I haven’t betrayed you. I was trying to help us both. Tarik, I love you.”
“How glad I would have been,” he said, “to hear you say that last night, or even an hour ago. Now I don’t know whether to believe you or not. How can I trust anything you say when you have been lying to me for days?”
“I’m sorry.” She was utterly miserable. She ought to have known he would have some good reason for wanting to delay the rescue signal. She ought to have trusted him, as he had trusted her. She was afraid she had, by her own act, killed his love for her. She could see in his cold face nothing of tenderness, only contempt and dislike. At that moment Narisa would have given her soul, her life, anything, to have back those moments when she had sent the rescue signal. And she would gladly spend the rest of her life on this lost planet, if only Tarik would love her again.
* * * * *
For Narisa, the next day and a half were absolutely wretched. Rain poured down, confining them to the building. Tarik treated her with cold, silent disdain, and she was not certain which was worse, her own heartbreak or the misery she saw in his eyes and in his face when he did not know she was watching him. They slept apart, Narisa in the room where she had taken a nap their first day on the island and Tarik in the room most distant from it. By unspoken consent they both avoided the chamber where they had lain together in love.
