The Dark Places

by D. Martin

  Then I, Kailiri Summers, made up my mind to sample a little indulgence. Life had been pretty grim, desolate, and unkind as of late—and he seemed to be the strong, steady-going type. The man didn’t seem to be a sadistic psychotic. I continued studying his relaxed expression and peering into his fireworks eyes.

  I nodded slow acceptance. “A Sauran restaurant it is.”

  He smiled and indicated his empty glasses needed refilling.

  Chapter Two

  I sat in the back of the taxi flitter next to my Real Quiet One, trying not to feel or look tense. After handing over the bar to burly, no-nonsense Tank for the late-night shift, I’d managed to unobtrusively tell Bilk and Harry about my after-work invitation so they would alert the justice force if my companion proved to be a psychopath and I didn’t turn up at the Lilith the following night. Which took care of tomorrow, but it didn’t cover the present, nor the near future.

  When Harry had asked for my new friend’s name—just in case he needed to send out a rescue party—I’d dodged the inquiry but wanted to smack my head. I don’t know! I’m an idiot. Apprehension and misgivings swirled in my stomach.

  I fixed my attention on the city lights’ bright, colorful kaleidoscope as they rushed past the windows. On my slim budget, I didn’t often get a chance to enjoy a flitter ride uptown. I walked everywhere. If I couldn’t walk there, I didn’t go. Simple.

  A warm hand touched my neck, and I forced myself not to jump. My Real Quiet One had draped an arm across the seat cushion inches from my shoulders. He swept back some of my fiercely independent, shoulder-cut dark curls from where they’d gotten caught under the high collar on my black coveralls. His fingers slipped beneath my curls and ran light, sensuous strokes along my increasingly warm neck.

  Breathing became a bit difficult, and my entire midsection tingled and yearned. Part of me wanted to relax into the gentle massage from the strong, knowledgeable fingers caressing my skin. Part of me wanted to pull away. I opted to stay very still.

  I’m letting this man touch me and I don’t even know his name. My brain didn’t seem to be working properly. He had strange effects upon me.

  I’d wanted to ask his name several times these past few minutes, which had blurred by in mental muzziness after we’d left the Lilith and he’d hailed the flitter. I wanted to know it now, but I had no wish to ask within the driver’s earshot. The man would think I was some kind of loose screw to get in a taxi with a guy whose name I didn’t know, which was exactly the situation. But I cared. I didn’t operate like that, and I didn’t want anyone else thinking I did.

  “You look tired, doll,” my companion said softly. “Would you rather be dropped off at your home and take me up on my dinner offer another time?” His appellation for me reminded me that he didn’t know my name either.

  What would his mother think of him, offering to buy dinner for a nameless broad?

  My muscle-stiffened body relaxed and I also managed a teasing grin. “When would be another time?”

  “That’s difficult to estimate, doll,” he said with a wry smile. “Might be several months, might be several weeks. It all depends on my ship’s navilog scheduling and other factors. I’m leaving Harnaru tomorrow morning—weather, conditions, and the Fates willing, of course.”

  He had spoken reluctantly, but I appreciated his honesty. There had been several times in my past when “some other time” had become never. My admiration increased for this Real Quiet One, who could toss down so many liquid brain depressants and still make courteous, intelligent conversation without becoming obnoxious.

  “I’ll take tonight,” I said softly, trying not to sound coy or cute.

  “I hope that you will enjoy Marantha’s Palace. It’s owned and operated by a local Sauran temple. The atmosphere is ostentatious and touristy, but the food is authentic Sauran, and good.”

  I turned to him and stared. I got the feeling there was more to him than just a spacer with ship-cabin fever out on the town. Something deeper lay beneath his casual speech and leisurely manner. I sincerely prayed the Great Creator hadn’t sent a government probe, a detective—or predator maniac—my way this night. I doubted my family was searching for me. And I had no involvement with subversives or criminal elements—and neither did Harry. As far as I knew, he kept his establishment and business-dealings legal and clean.

  Did my new companion have a clean slate? I hadn’t attempted asking yet what line of work he was in, but he’d come in on a ship somewhere—he’d admitted that much. And before we got to that fancy restaurant, there was one vital thing I needed to know.

  Past experience had taught me it was best to ask beforehand. Dates were often complex rituals, rife with unspoken expectations based upon the couple’s misconceptions. Hope it doesn’t offend him.

  “About dinner—are we splitting the bill?” I bit my lower lip. But recalling his generous bar tips, I didn’t think he was that type.

  “Spoken like an honest business woman.” Warm amusement echoed in his voice. “No, doll. Dinner is my treat.”

  I nodded, trying not to show relief, and dared to breathe again. There wasn’t much in my citizen’s account for extravagances.

  He was right about the Sauran restaurant’s over-the-top atmosphere. The softly illumined, pleasantly cool interior contained low, white marble benches covered with patterned silk cushions and matching white marble tables. Little brook streams inset into the imported wood flooring surrounded the seating areas’ perimeter. Fragrant water-blossom-filled ponds also graced the spacious dining area, along with gushing fountains. The brooks and fountains created lighthearted water babbling sounds throughout the restaurant. Adding to the off-world cultural charm, tinkling bells and achromatic music pervaded the atmosphere, filtering into the head and heart. Lush blue foliage native to Saura occupied the walls, ceiling, and table tops. It was all a bit overpowering.

  I tried not to care that I wore only black utilitarian coveralls and scruffy city boots. This place demanded fancier garb. My Real Quiet One blended in, with his well-tailored gray tunic that nicely molded to his wide, straight shoulders and wiry frame. The other diners appeared to have taken care to dress their swankiest best.

  Even more impressive than the surroundings were the male Sauran waiters themselves, as they strode confidently among the tables and diners arrayed in their stiff, intricately designed cerulean-blue ceremonial robes. They displayed one central upright strip of tall, straight red hair upon their shaved, blue-skinned skulls in a style favored by Saura’s warrior-priests.

  The food was plentiful and delicious, more so after my eight long months of stinted efforts at budget cooking and frequenting cheap diners. My host seemed not to have as keen an appetite as mine, and accordingly I tried to stifle my excited stomach.

  He noticed and smiled as he pushed a plate toward me filled with delectable, tiny meat-stuffed pastry appetizers. “Please, eat, doll. Crynishan Dawns have a tendency to take the edge off my appetite.”

  I stared at him. Finally I’d discovered an effect that killer brew had on him.

  Somewhere in between the main course of exotic vegetables, delicate sauces, grains, poultry, and seafood he’d ordered when I’d hesitated too long over the extensive—and very expensive—menu, I gathered my courage and asked my host’s name. “Um… you’ve been so kind and I don’t know even know your name.” A big bloom of warmth welled beneath my collar. He probably thought I was witless, naïve, and had never dated anyone since the beginning of time.

  The golden-green glitter in his dark eyes held my attention, as did his inviting smile. He dipped his head slightly. “Matt Lorins, at your service, doll.”

  I laid down my small, delicately carved wooden fork. “And I’m Kailiri Summers.”

  “Kailiri…,” he repeated softly, his low voice lingering over each syllable. “I like it… and its bearer.”

  I swallowed the lump of embarrassment sprouting in my throat at the open admiration in the boldly assessing, dark gaze that
scrutinized my face and body.

  “Where are you originally from?” He pushed aside his plate as if he’d eaten his fill of the savory fare.

  “Dearleth,” I said without enthusiasm, thinking if he continued on this track, my own appetite would vanish.

  He didn’t. Matt began talking about Harnaru instead, and I resumed happily disposing of the delicious, steaming nutrition on my ornate, gold-patterned plate.

  Matt was good at making dinner talk. He managed to thaw my reservations enough that somewhere along the way, we revealed our ages. In Standard Alliance Years, Matt was thirty-seven and I was twenty-eight. I hoped he was telling me the truth.

  Then he charmed another truth from my lips. “Are you promised to anyone, doll?”

  That direct question and steady stare caught me off guard. The water-filled, gold-rimmed goblet I’d lifted slipped a fraction in my fingers. I set it down fast on the table. “No… no one.”

  Impossible not to feel some social failing by admitting this. And never mind that doomed arrangement my parents had planned when it didn’t look like I was eager to wed anyone and leave the nest. I’d never met him beyond a holopicture. Nothing was ever going to induce me to travel halfway across Dearleth’s icy wilderness to marry that crazed-looking, isolated prospector.

  I lifted my chin and straightened. “What about you?” My returned challenge didn’t make him blink or squirm.

  “No one is waiting for me, doll,”

  With that point established, my wariness factor dropped degree by slow degree. The late evening became far-advanced night without my awareness, which meant I was enjoying his company, the food, and the extravagant, tourist-attraction restaurant.

  Our waiter had just taken away the last platter and politely inquired about our interest in sweet confections. Matt requested Sauran fruit cordials instead, and he asked also to have them served on the restaurant’s rooftop balcony. Next he requested our dinner’s tab. It was impossible not to stare at all the gold credit tokens he extracted from a tunic pocket to pay for our meal.

  His hand was warm and reassuring in mine as he guided me up the fragile spiral staircase amidst long trellises entwined with flowering vines hanging from the restaurant’s high ceiling. We stepped out onto a fairly wide and very crowded balcony. He led me past the occupied wrought metal tables and chairs without visible dismay upon his well-defined features.

  Matt demonstrated he was a resourceful, alternative thinker—a vital advantage for a spacer’s survival out there in a hostile environment, I’m sure—by pulling me aside to sit near a tall pedestal cornerstone on the low balcony wall’s flat, wide top. He guided me to the snug spot between the cornerstone and himself. Everyone else seemed reluctant to sit on such a precarious perch, so we had the entire wall to ourselves.

  He anchored me with an arm around my back and his hand firmly clasping my waist. I didn’t protest. It was a long drop to the pavement below.

  I couldn’t suppress a contented sigh as I raised my head to study the black star-decked night skies open to free viewing by all and sundry.

  “Which planet are you headed for next, Matt?” I asked.

  He placed a hand under my chin and gently tilted my head to the left over my shoulder. “Rikin lies in that direction, doll. It’s my next destination. And it’s in the Naris System…. Ruled by a giant blue star and comforted by three pale moon maidens.”

  I turned to study him. The flickering glow from tall, primitive-styled fire torches stuck straight up in brackets set along the balcony’s perimeter at regular intervals clearly delineated the strong bone structure of his tanned face. “Are you a poet, Matt?” I asked, trying not to sound sarcastic.

  “Only when I’ve downed several Crynishan Dawns, doll.” He smiled, and I couldn’t help smiling back.

  I was about to ask him what it was he was going to do on Rikin when a waiter approached with our cordials. I watched with concern as Matt raised his thick-bottomed, silver-embossed glass to his lips. I wondered if my stalwart imbiber was going to experience some adverse effects from mixing this orthodox but potent fruit liqueur with the other strange brews circulating in his system. But he looked unaffected as he reached up to place the small empty glass upon the high corner stone’s flat top.

  I finished the blue, spicy-sweet contents that sizzled, then cooled my throat on the way down and warmed my stomach.

  He took my drained glass and added it next to his. Matt considered the murmuring, shifting crowd around us and then focused on me. “Why are you working as a barmaid, Kailiri?”

  I might have laughed, except he was unsmilingly serious. I turned my head and gazed out over the city’s jumble, stacked with flitter tail lights trailing along streets, towering lurid signs, and sky high illuminated establishments that made up Marnu’s nightscape. “There’s not very many golden opportunities in Marnu for a bohemian-type, Matt.” And even fewer ones for junior assistant librarians. But there was no need for him to know my former occupation on Dearleth.

  “Paint, theater, or words?” he asked in a level, somber tone. I liked him even more for not laughing at my lofty aspirations. What my family had called them back on Dearleth was unrepeatable.

  “Paint… and words,” I absently answered, thinking of the stack of microdisks containing various novels I’d imperfectly imprinted on my battered, cheap protyper back in my hotel studio room. None of the major planet-based publishing houses—or the innovative traveling publishing ships—had wanted to touch any of them. Not enough romance, the publishers’ rejection messages had admonished.

  Then my thoughts flitted to the stretched fabric canvases I’d covered with representations of Harnaru in the rain season, Harnaru in the dry season, and Harnaru in general. No sane gallery owner wanted to show paintings of the planet when no one living here wanted it hanging on their walls…. Featureless gray-and-beige deserts. Pale green lakes. Bleached-white skies. And dominating over it all, the distant but blistering white sun star of this dreary little mining planet. Not all the planet was covered with deserts—just most of it.

  “You know, I really hate Harnaru,” I said, thinking about the scorned canvasses stacked against a wall in my studio room’s tiny closet. “I never should have tried painting something I hated,” I muttered to myself. I’d half-forgotten Matt’s presence.

  His silence lasted a long minute, as if he was immersed in deep thought. Then he captured my hand in a firm grasp. “Why did you come to Harnaru?”

  I glared. “It was a far as my savings would take me in this system, third class,” I snapped. I resented these questions. On the frontier planets, no one so much as poked into anyone else’s past. Everyone took it for granted that you wouldn’t be crazed enough to stray out here if you weren’t trying to outrun bad memories or grim situations. It was common courtesy not to ask about anyone’s past, like I was trying not to do to Matt Lorins. What demon is he escaping out here on the frontier? Mine? A manipulative family.

  Matt’s strange dark eyes steadily absorbed my mutinous look. “Would you like to leave Harnaru?” he asked, keeping his intense gaze fixed on me.

  “As soon as I save up enough for a ticket somewhere else,” I vowed through clenched teeth.

  “Would you like to leave sooner than that?”

  “What do you mean?” My tone came out brittle, and I was sorry to be acting hostile to Matt, who had just treated me to a wonderful—up to that point—evening.

  Was that green haze clouding over his eyes? Was there something wrong with the torch lights? I blinked, and they’d regained their unusual dark aspect with their central fireworks. Maybe that Sauran cordial deserved more respect. I filed away a mental note not to touch another drop that night.

  “What I mean, Kailiri, is that I have enjoyed this evening with you and I’ve no desire to see it end,” he said quietly. He drew a deep breath and tightened his arm about my waist. “But it’s your decision as to how we shall go on from here.”

  My eyes widened. He was an attra
ctive, intelligent man with beautiful manners—and he hadn’t asked me to split the tab. If he was alluding to spending the rest of the night together, I might be persuaded—if he got me in the mood…. But that other thing he’d mentioned about leaving the planet raised my alarms. The media had inundated the public with stories about off-world abductors and slavers snaring unwary females.

  Conscious of the close-by crowd, I lowered my voice. “What does leaving Harnaru have to do with this evening?” I sounded belligerent to my own ears and winced.

  Matt gave me a lazy, charming smile before he lowered his head and covered my lips with his. My breathing must have stopped, because my head felt giddy. Spontaneous tingling shot through me under the spell of his warm, questing lips.

  He raised his head, and a puzzled frown drew his dark brows together over his compelling eyes. Then he captured my dazed look in his unblinking stare. Gazing into his eyes this close, with his desirable lips poised a mere finger’s length away, felt like drowning in a dark pool lit with green-and-golden fire sparks. An insidious chill crept through my body and surrounded my heart, and I couldn’t suppress the quiver that seized me.

  At first I thought the shiver response sprang from a creeping chill caused by cooled-down desert air borne into Marnu upon a sly night breeze. But when Matt’s arms encircled me and drew me closer, as if the diners didn’t exist on the balcony, I knew the chill’s source sprouted from a deep uneasiness. Would harm befall me with this man?

  I couldn’t think. One kiss had toppled me into turmoil, and the shivering continued. It was like standing unprotected out in a blinding, wind-driven snowstorm on Dearleth.

  Matt rose from the balcony wall, drawing me with him. He guided me from the noisy crowd to a less brightly lit, unoccupied balcony area. He studied me with unsettling intensity before he stepped close and covered my quivering lips with his.