by D. Martin
I stared into Matt’s dark eyes with the now familiar green-and-gold flecks at their center. Then the green sparkle grew more predominant as I watched. A sense of unreality had surrounded me while I’d listened to his quiet words. What he was telling me must be real. He couldn’t make this up and sound so grave. Could he? Perhaps, he’d hallucinated at the time….
“I wanted to pass into death’s oblivion, where my pain and loss would be absorbed into nothingness. Timirshil-ka respected that wish, but it grew aware of another desire within me, that I’d tried hiding from myself…. I still wanted to live. Despite all my inner anguish and despite the physical pain in my dying body, I wanted to live. Timirshil-ka infused a portion of its energies into my body to help it recover, but that energy was always a distinct part of the entity. It warned me the energy wouldn’t last indefinitely and would gradually supplant my body’s own natural life essence. I was warned that my essence and the small portions of the sympathetic entity would coexist peacefully for a while, but later my own essence could dissemble when the other life energy began dissipating.
“To my amazement, I survived. After my recovery, I buried A’lia and our child on that planet. An Alliance scout ship found me several standard weeks later. I didn’t want them to exhume the bodies to seal and ship them home. I requested they leave them undisturbed upon the restricted system’s planet. I knew her family would protest, but I cared not. I returned to my home world and worked in my father’s business for several years, but I kept to myself. Then gradually I became aware of deteriorating changes in myself.
“Timirshil-ka’s essence is dissipating and I’m unraveling also, Kai. It started five standard years ago. That was when I decided to change my name, status, and life. I bought another ship, the Stardancer, became an intersystem merchant trader, and was calmly prepared to die without sampling any of life’s greater emotions, until I met you.”
I couldn’t look at him. The negative emotions that uncoiled and writhed inside caused me shame. I was exhibiting immaturity and insecurity by harboring deep resentment for a dead woman who had claimed Matt’s regard and heart in his youth.
“Do you understand what I have been trying to tell you these past few minutes, Kailiri?”
“Not entirely, Matt,” I whispered. “Are you trying to tell me that you’re not wholly Human—that you are part of another entity?” My scalp tingled as the implication of my words struck me.
“I’m Human. I’m as I’ve always been. There is another life essence incorporated into my being, but it doesn’t control me. It passively cooperates with my own life processes and supplements it. It’s like having a biochemical battery—a life essence booster or regulator would be the closest term to describe it.” Matt still grasped my arm, and his intense gaze burned into me and compelled me to look up.
“Is… is that the source of the green mists in your eyes when you’re troubled?” I dared ask, a bit surprised that they hadn’t appeared yet.
“Yes, people have mentioned them after I returned from the uncharted system, and I’ve noticed them in the mirror at times. They don’t bother me, though, and most of the time, I’m not aware of the other essence. Among some things on the positive side, my strange infusion helped me to function on less sleep and seemed to diminish liquors’ effects on me. I’ve always possessed a high alcohol tolerance, but it increased after Timirshil-ka found me. It’s a bloody, damned nuisance sometimes when I’m trying to drown my sorrows,” he grumbled. He gave me a narrow stare, and I got the feeling I was adding to his sorrows then.
I’d probably heap on more before we left. I needed to know who he was—and where I fit into his life.
“Matt, where’s your home world? What was your name then? And—and why did you choose to marry me?” Something within me was torn and damaged. It hurt to think he might never have told me of his beginnings and his first wife if I hadn’t asked… if I hadn’t followed Harry’s advice. Perhaps, it would have been better never knowing.
Matt smoothed back another unruly, wind-tossed lock from across my cheek. “I was born on Drakis in the Branis System, Kai. My given name and land-hold title is Lord Mattin Sian Rakeda. My father is of Old Terran Human Stock and also a land holder and high lord upon Drakis. All sons of high lords bear the lord title. It’s a social convention there. The name Matt Lorins is an anagram. It combined a few elements from my birth name. I thought it was a catchy name for a lone wolf, far-rim trader.” He smiled wryly at my intense, searching stare and caressed my cheek before he released me. “I married you, Kailiri, because I needed you. You touched a place within me I’d thought walled off and forever closed. You touched my heart, doll. You imprinted yourself upon my awareness, and I found that I couldn’t let you go out of my life.”
“You’ve never fully explained what that was—imprinting. You promised to explain more down here. On Rikin.” I crossed my arm and waited.
“It’s a term we use on Drakis. When someone’s imprinted by another, it goes beyond physical or emotional desire. It’s a spiritual hunger, an emptiness in the soul that only one special person could ever fill within another. A soul mate…. A proton finding its electron, Kai. You complete me.”
Evidently, so did his A’lia. I closed my eyes and bit hard on my tongue to not say that. Instead, I said, “Most people enter marriage contracts several times in their life spans. You’re my first and I’m your second. People get imprinted with each other all the time.” I shrugged, my flippant statement helping to ease some of my inner hurt.
“No, not like the way we need each other, Kai. I sense your thoughts—your essence. I couldn’t do this with A’lia. I—I never felt the soul binding drawing me like I do with you.”
I snorted, finding that hard to believe. I turned away, disappointed and angry with my self and my ungracious acceptance of all he’d revealed. I tromped farther out into the open meadow and Rikin’s sunlight, which had at last banished the cloud cover. Matt made no attempt to call me back or stop me. I wandered disconsolately through knee-high grasses and flowers without seeing them. I was recalling the things he had told me and wishing I hadn’t asked.
Maybe I should have stayed in love with a mystery. I did know that he would always be Matt to me, and not Mattin. But how long will I have him? My disjointed, sad thoughts continued on, tumbling over each other. I could never compete with his beloved A’lia. Whenever he looked upon me or I spoke, I would now think he was unconsciously comparing me with her. I had nothing to offer Matt. My memories taunted me about his wry comment in the Marnu Port about providing me escape from Harnaru. It still rankled and made me feel like an opportunist, using him only as means of obtaining my own desires.
I paused in my wanderings and frowned at the gnarled, bare branches on a small shrub blocking my path.
I knew what I had to do.
I turned, searching for Matt, and found him in the distance, watching. I marched with new purpose back across the meadow. As I approached, my steps slowed a bit when my brain registered his expressionless face and entirely dark, unreadable eyes. Not a good sign.
“Do we go next to Sanbourne?” I made my tone casual.
“It is so logged into the Stardancer,” he answered.
I nodded and turned away, afraid I might betray anything else. He can feel my thoughts.
“Have you no other questions for me, Kailiri?”
“You have answered them all.”
He grasped my arm with cruel strength and forced me around to face him. Green and golden fires smoldered within his dark pupil. “I would always find you wherever you went. You cannot run from me,” he snarled between clenched teeth.
I glanced away with startled guilt and tried wrenching my arm from his grip. “You’re hurting me.” I gasped, for his fingers cut into my arm with viselike strength.
He immediately released the arm, but only to draw my body in an embrace that held me imprisoned. “You cannot run from me,” he repeated with confident intensity. “There exists a bond be
tween us that would draw me to you, despite any distance you tried putting between us. The pain from losing you would kill me sooner if I couldn’t find you again.” His voice dropped low with deep emotion.
I pushed against his chest. It ripped my heart to do so, for the inexplicable longing for him rebelled against the course I’d chosen. Matt wouldn’t release me and I glared. “Would you please have the kindness to release me?” I demanded.
“No, Kai, not now. Not until I make you understand that my heart doesn’t lie in a grave with a dead woman, but that my love is alive and here within my arms now. I love you. Don’t fight me.”
He loves me. Part of me wanted desperately to believe him and part didn’t. I hate him!
Animosity rose against him for ensnarling me into an intensity of feelings and the knowledge that he’d belonged to another—and that he wouldn’t be mine for long. He was dying from an unnatural alien conjunction at odds now inside him.
“Why did you marry me, Matt?” I whispered. All my rebellion drained away, and I leaned against him and let pent-up tears flow.
He held me, staying silent until my tears stopped.
“Kailiri Lorins, I married you because I wanted to. You’re a beautiful woman, and I regret we couldn’t spend more time learning about each other beforehand. I forced this union upon you, true. I’m sorry, but I don’t have much time left… and I didn’t want to take the chance of you changing your heart or mind about me. If you’re still uncertain about my feelings for you, I’ll remarry you upon Sanbourne under my given name. You’ll have the title of Lady Rakeda and become the second mistress of my Rakeda landholdings and property. But as Kailiri Lorins, you’re the first lady and have no shadow of another to precede you in that name.” There was exasperation in his voice. “How many other ways do you wish for me to say and show that I need you?”
I shook my head sadly. Turbulent emotions continued disrupting my fragile heart. It was best to avoid answering that question. Moments passed before I gathered my courage and spoke. “You said that you can feel my thoughts.” A tremor shot through me at my bold curiosity. “Does the other essence inside you enable you to look into other people’s thoughts? Or is it only through our imprinting—as you call it?”
“Does it disturb you?” His eyes narrowed and his jaw line hardened. “That ability doesn’t come from Timirshil-ka’s life essence. It was always inherent within me. My mother was a sensitive. I can decode some thoughts from others, but not to the extent that I can with you through our imprinting, Lady of Pain and Pleasure,” he added in a low, husky voice.
I swallowed and pulled away.
“My bittersweet love,” he said softly and drew me back. “Are you certain all your questions have been answered before we leave Rikin? I’ll answer no more questions about my past when we lift from here. We’re leaving as soon as we board the ship. So think fast.” A wry smile touched his lips.
“Matt, how much time will we have together before the life essence of the… the other leaves you?”
“I don’t know, doll. Not for certain,” he said with a long sigh. “It could be anytime. This past year, I’ve been experiencing more intense pain and weakness with each passing day. It feels like something is tearing and unraveling inside that will extinguish my life when it finally deteriorates or separates from me.”
“Couldn’t we go to the planet—if it’s now charted—where… where it all happened and try to contact your Timirshil-ka to ask for help again?” I stumbled over my words in my anxiety.
“I have lived much longer than I deserved and I’ve been lucky to find you. I’ve no desire to return to that place. It’s an unstable, restricted system on an extreme rim sector, far from any Patrol or trade ship routes. I’m not risking your life with those odds. There are no records in the Alliance planet explorations about any species like the one that I encountered, and there’s no certainty that the entity, or one like it, will be there. The subject is closed, Kai.” Matt gave me one of his shuttered, unreadable gazes and led me silently to the Stardancer.
If he can pick up my thoughts like he claims, I hope he feels my frustrated worry and irritation with him and all his infuriating lofty, self-assured final decisions!
Chapter Eight
After leaving Rikin, we’d journeyed to Sanbourne, where Matt had conducted more trade. And now ten standard days later, I sat alone at the console in Matt’s navicon chair, staring at Sanbourne’s fast-receding green-and-white globe. The Stardancer’s powerful engines hummed loud as it raced toward its next flight point. Our upcoming destination was to have been the Bileth System and a small, obscure planet named Tivat, famous for tranquilizing herbs. And home of Seth Medlock, Matt’s jeweler friend who he’d wanted me to go to if….
My gaze shot to the silver navilog comp unit where it lay embedded in a prominent, central position on the control console. I looked over to the digi-memo screen Matt had inscribed with a single, brief line containing symbols and numbers.
A frown marred my forehead as my searching gaze swept over other small keyboards arrayed there to the one specific keyboard for flight code entries that allowed the Stardancer’s nav comps access to its preprogrammed coordinate bank. I’d made certain to fix that keyboard’s layout in my memory. The consequences of hitting the wrong controls and delivering the ship and ourselves to certain doom continued to haunt me.
I’d volunteered to enter the flight code to Tivat for Matt. The task was foolproof after he’d earlier initiated the system for me and authorized my access. All that remained was for me to consult the digi-memo screen and exactly copy in the code after the ship reached a designated departure point in normal space, which he’d preset. Then my task would end when the Stardancer’s automatic vortex-leap functions took over.
Nervous apprehension prickled at me. A wild idea had settled in my head, and I couldn’t dislodge it. One long curl spiral springing from my temple was unwound and threaded around my restless fingers.
Matt was resting in our cabin at my urging. He hadn’t been well upon our expedition on Sanbourne. His attention had flagged while he’d spoken with some smaller-scale fragrance oil manufacturers, although he had been able to achieve a favorable price for several thousand grams of rare, beautiful flower essences that sat carefully sealed and packed away below in the ship’s cargo bay.
His inconsistent appetite had continued. And he’d been brusque with me of late. I’d refused his many offers to marry me under his true name on Sanbourne. What made me do that to him? Punishment? Or just a vicious desire not to bear his first wife’s title?
Today was the Tenth Day of the Ninth Standard Month of the New Empire Alliance Year 0192 A.I.C. I’d been mated to Matt for twenty-five days—almost a standard month—and I was afraid he wouldn’t live to be with me another month’s passing. I was distraught where he was concerned. He seemed to weaken more each day. I didn’t want to seek out his friend on Tivat alone, without him.
A green light appeared upon the display panel and pulsed. We’d reached our designated departure point. The ship awaited new flight plan instructions. I delayed keying in the release code, not because I didn’t know what to do, but because that other idea interfered.
I gnawed my bottom lip and debated and hesitated some more. I made a decision and pounced on a control button that, instead, locked the Stardancer into flight stasis. I’d made certain to memorize that important button too. The ship merely coasted without engine power on momentum alone. I now had to keep a sharp eye out for possible collisions with incoming ships in our present noncourse mode, since we were still within range of Sanbourne.
I jumped from the chair and rushed to our sleeping quarters’ door. It parted with a whisper, and my cautious footsteps were soundless as I stepped in. Matt’s eyes were closed. I stood studying him as he lay upon the sleep couch. He was paler. No need to touch him to know his skin was cold. It always felt chilled in the past few days whenever I touched him. His breathing was deep and irregular, as if he labore
d to draw breath. I longed to kneel beside the couch and kiss him, but I didn’t. He would have awakened, and that was the last thing I wanted in this moment. I backed away on silent feet, away from the sleep couch and out of the cabin. The door slid shut, cutting off the sight of my sleeping mate.
My anxious gaze stayed upon the door several seconds before I turned and advanced with grim determination upon the Stardancer’s navilog console.
The ship was voice-activated. Matt had long since coded her to recognize my vocal intonations, but none of the simple tasks I’d performed with his approval at the console had ever required me to use the ship’s voice-recognition function. I kept my voice low—just above a whisper—and urgent as I spoke. “Navilog computer, can you identify me?”
“Yes. You are Kailiri Lorins,” the ship’s navilog comp assured me in its quiet, feminine tone.
“You have been coded by Matt Lorins to receive orders regarding navilog function from me?”
“Confirmed, Mistress Lorins.”
I nodded to myself. This was the initial access pattern Matt had programmed for me in case I needed to retrieve information from the ship’s records. “Navilog computer, do you have any information or flight course directives concerning a previously uncharted planet Matt Lorins visited some standard years ago?” I whispered. I had been frustrated in pinpointing an exact date for the occurrences because Matt wouldn’t tell me.
“A systems search is running, Mistress Lorins,” the comp informed me. Then a moment later, it said, “There is a reference index to an uncharted planet under the code name A’lia.”
My stare probed beyond the observation window at the black star-studded void beyond. Sanbourne was somewhere far behind. My eyes prickled, and a hollow sensation settled in my chest as if someone had curved out my heart. A’lia… I should have thought of that. I pulled my dull, distracted thoughts together to ask another question. “Is it a restricted-access file?”
