by Smith, Glenn
* * *
“This is my favorite spot,” Beth told him, stopping just as they emerged from the tree line. They’d walked for nearly an hour, much longer than it should have taken them to reach the lake’s nearest bank, so Dylan suspected they’d gone at least partway around to the other side. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
Dylan let go of her hand and walked a few steps farther ahead to look around. As he’d suspected, Beth had led him partway around the lake, to a large but secluded clearing at the base of a fifty- or sixty-foot waterfall that sparkled like a shower of diamonds in the moonlight as it thundered into the natural pool before of him. The roughly oval-shaped pool itself measured anywhere from nine to twelve meters in width and at least thirty across the center of its length. Glints of moonlight glistened off perpetual ripples as they raced across the water’s black surface, under-lighting the leaves of the trees near the banks and adding an almost ghost-like quality to the area’s soft illumination. It reminded Dylan of another forest clearing he’d visited not so long ago, but where that one had seemed haunted by death, this one seemed somehow magical, like something out of a young adult’s fantasy novel, so pushing thoughts of the former from his mind proved less than difficult.
“You’re right. It is beautiful,” he agreed.
Except for the rocky cliffs to his right, from which the waterfall flowed, the pool’s banks were low and rounded, covered with thick moss. Whether that moss was blue or green, or black, or purple, or even dull orange for that matter, Dylan couldn’t tell in the absence of daylight. There was a large V-shaped cut through the soil near the center of the far left bank, which Beth explained allowed the overflow to escape from the pool and trickle down the hill to the lake below. Several odd formations of rocks and boulders—some of them didn’t look quite natural—were scattered here and there throughout the clearing, the largest ones nearest the cliffs. Various species of plants and wildflowers that Dylan didn’t recognize grew in abundance among them, their bouquet of fragrances pleasingly sweet like roses and honeysuckle, mild citrus and clover, sprinkled with a dash of peppermint.
“What are all those plants and flowers growing between the rocks?” he asked.
“I don’t know what they’re called,” she replied, “but I do know this clearing is the only place on the entire planet where those particular species are known to grow.”
“Why’s that? What’s so special about this place?”
“From a scientific point of view, we don’t know because we’ve never studied it. I know. I checked. But culturally... The Cirrans call this the Pool of Satah’ra.”
He looked at her. “This is where that story you told me is supposed to have taken place?”
“That’s right. This is a sacred religious site—not a place the natives like to talk about with off-worlders.”
“How did you find it?”
“By accident one night on one of my walks.”
He returned to her side. While this particular forest was known to be free of dangerous wild animals, there were several areas within it where the terrain could get pretty tricky. “You walk this forest at night?” he asked. “Alone?”
“Sometimes,” she answered. “I’m careful enough.”
He looked around once more and then gazed at the small body of water again. “A sacred religious sight, huh. Why isn’t it guarded? Should we even be here?”
“Not really, but no one will ever find out as long as we’re gone by morning. The Cirrans come here to pray sometimes during the day or on overcast nights after dinner, but on clear nights like this they stay away.”
“Why?”
“They believe that on clear nights Satah’ra comes down from Caldanra-Shelar—basically their equivalent of Heaven combined with a sort of Mount Olympus-type place. They say she descends on a giant bird of prey and comes here to bathe. She’s supposed to be the most beautiful goddess of all with a womb so fertile that it glows. She never wears any clothing and to look upon her, even accidentally, means to be rendered barren. If you’re a woman, that is.”
“What if you’re a man?”
“Then you become so enchanted by her beauty that it enslaves your soul. You can never love or even make love to a mortal woman again.”
“Ouch,” Dylan commented as his eyebrows rose.
“Exactly. That’s why the natives stay away and don’t guard it, and why I come down here almost every clear night for a swim.”
She laid her jacket down on the largest of the rocks beside her, then sat on a smaller one and pulled off her boots and socks. “A famous writer once said that all the world’s a stage. If that’s true I guess you could say I’ve been playing the role of the goddess Satah’ra on every warm, clear night for about two years now.”
Dylan sat down beside her and pulled his shoes off as well. The moss felt spongy soft and surprisingly warm beneath his feet, unlike anything else he could remember ever having walked on. Satah’ra never wore any clothing, Beth had just explained. Had her comment about playing the role of the goddess been a clue as to what she had in mind for their swim? Not surprisingly, he found himself hoping that it had been.
Beth stood up, turned and faced him, and started to unfasten her blouse. Following her lead, and being careful not to get too far ahead of her since he still wasn’t sure just how much of her clothing she intended to shed, Dylan grabbed hold of his jersey, lifted it up over his head, and pulled it off. She opened her blouse—she was wearing a bra, but no undershirt—slipped it off, and tossed it on top of her jacket. Then she unfastened her trousers and pulled them down from her hips. Dylan set his jersey aside, stood up, and very slowly unfastened his jeans, still unsure as to whether or not he should take them off.
Beth stepped out of her trousers, folded them neatly and laid them on the pile, then reached up behind her back and unfastened her bra. She crossed her arms in front of her and smiled, made a show of slowly slipping the straps from her shoulders, then lowered her arms and let it fall to the ground. Finally, after only a moment’s hesitation, she grasped her panties and pulled them off as well.
She stood before him like a nude model waiting to pose for an art class, inviting his silent stare. She wasn’t as tall or as voluptuously endowed as the blonde from across the courtyard, but she was certainly no less beautiful. Long, lustrous black hair, as he had already seen. Firm, full breasts, a slender waistline and flat stomach, sensuous curves, and a great pair of legs with a small triangle of fine black hair crowning the cleft between them. She smiled invitingly, then stepped up to him and rested her hands on his shoulders.
Dylan took her by the waist and pulled her close, then slid his hands down over her smooth hips and gently squeezed her bottom as he softly kissed her.
“Are you going to be my Eul’tiran?” she whispered. She pressed her lips to his, and as the passion between them grew she dragged her fingernails lightly down his back, then freed him from his jeans. She pressed her body to his and moaned with desire as he responded to her touch.
Then, suddenly, she drew back and said, “Come and get it,” and then ran off and dove into the pool and started swimming toward the opposite bank.
Dylan pulled off his jeans but then held onto them as he was suddenly able to look on the situation with a clearer mind. “You really are out of your mind,” he muttered. The ink on his divorce was barely dry, and as he’d reminded himself earlier when he was spying on the blond, he didn’t need to fall into another relationship this soon.
Then again, maybe she wasn’t looking for a relationship? Maybe she just wanted to have some fun. Maybe she just wanted to go swimming and have sex with no strings attached. God knew that after thinking about Marissa, after thinking about making love to Carolyn, and after watching the girl across the courtyard, he needed a release. What harm could there be in that?
Having sufficiently rationalized his actions, at least to his own satisfaction, he tossed his jeans onto the pile of clothes and ran in after her, once again brushing asid
e that brief small spark of morality that tried to stop him. He caught up to her near the center of the pool where a narrow column of stone rose up out of the unknown depths to fall barely an inch short of breaking the surface.
Beth boosted herself up and stood atop the small platform, faced Dylan, and struck an enchanting pose much like that of one of the garden statues. “The goddess Satah’ra has appeared once again,” she proclaimed to the night. Then she looked down at Dylan and added, “And you, mortal man, have looked upon her.”
The model in the art class again, Dylan mused, looking up at her. He almost responded with ‘My heart is enslaved forever,’ but thought better of it. A statement like that might give her the wrong idea. Instead, he said only, “And she’s even more beautiful than the legend says.”
Beth smiled but held her pose. “This stone pedestal is exactly where she is said to appear when she comes down from Caldanra-Shelar,” she told him.
“She couldn’t possibly be as beautiful as you are,” he declared, turning on the infamous ‘Graves charm’ so heavily that Beth could have cut it with a knife if she’d had one. She looked up into the trees, still smiling, then suddenly whirled away and dove back into the water.
Dylan swam after her and just caught her by the ankle as she reached the far bank. He closed the space between them, then reached around her on both sides and grabbed hold of the moss, trapping her between his arms and pressing himself against her as he kissed the nape of her neck. She turned to him and rested her hands on his shoulders, then wrapped her legs around his waist and invited him with a passionate kiss to consummate their newfound relationship.
She moaned with pleasure as he penetrated her, rose upward as he pushed deeper inside her until her breasts emerged from the water and her nipples stiffened in the cool breeze. Then, suddenly, pushing off against the slight underwater slope of the bank for leverage, she lifted herself halfway out of the water and dunked him.
He broke the surface quickly, intending to return the favor, but Beth had already climbed out of the tepid water and taken a seat on the bank near its edge. He climbed out onto his hands and knees, and as he crawled over her she lay back on the warm, soft moss and wrapped her legs around him once again. He lay down gently on top of her, and as they kissed, all those weeks’ worth of tension and desire quickly resurfaced within him.
Their passion burned, and without any further playful prelude, they made love.
Chapter 44
A shadow drifted silently across the moonlit curtains and was gone in an instant. Dylan awoke but didn’t move except to open his eyes and look over at the window. He stared at the curtains and listened intently for several seconds, but all he heard was Beth breathing quietly at his side.
So what had awakened him?
His skin felt sticky with dried sweat, but that was only from their lovemaking. He hadn’t been having the nightmares again. He knew that because if he had been having them he would have remembered it. He always did. So the question remained, what had awakened him?
Maybe it was nothing. Maybe sleeping with someone for the first time in so many weeks had just... No. It wasn’t nothing. Something definitely was not right. Something had tripped his mind’s alarm and awakened him, and after so many years of military conditioning he knew that to not heed that alarm’s warning could well be a fatal mistake—both for him and for Beth.
He lifted Beth’s arm from across his chest and gently rolled her onto her back. Then, being careful not to disturb her any further, he slid his arm out from under her shoulders and climbed out of bed. He crept over to the window and peeked out past the edge of the curtain. He had reverted to Ranger mode again. He felt no ache in his head, no soreness in his shoulder or ribs, no stiffness in his leg.
Across the courtyard a dark, indistinct object sat unmoving on the blond girl’s deck. But the larger moon hung high and full above its rooftop, reflecting the long departed sun’s nuclear brilliance off its enormous face and casting deep shadows over most of the deck, so he couldn’t make out what the object was. One thing he did know, though. Whatever that object was, it was something that hadn’t been there earlier in the evening.
Beth stirred behind him. “What’s wrong?” she asked drowsily.
“I’m not sure,” he answered. “It may be nothing.”
“Then come on back to bed.”
“In a minute.”
Rather than wait for him to come back to her, she climbed out of bed and joined him by the window, wrapped her arms around his waist and cuddled up to his side. “What are you looking at?” she asked.
He draped an arm around her shoulders and answered, “One of the apartments across the courtyard. I think something’s wrong.” He let the curtain fall back into place and looked at her. “Better get dressed.”
“I don’t want to get dressed,” she told him with a yawn. “I want to go back to bed and I want you to come back to bed with me.”
Dylan kissed her on the forehead and said, “I really think we’d better get dressed.” Then he gently loosed himself from her embrace, and as he started to pull on his clothes he noticed that instead of getting dressed herself, Beth had taken a seat at his desk and was watching him. But he would not change his mind. He couldn’t. He had to be sure that everything was all right over at the blond girl’s apartment. He had to know that she was safe. Exactly why he had to know, he couldn’t really say, but he felt somehow obligated nonetheless.
He went into the living room and opened the curtains a few inches, then picked up his binocs, switched them to night-vision mode, and zoomed in for a closer look at that dark object. It didn’t do any good. Her deck was so deep in the shadows that although he could see the object more clearly, he still couldn’t make out what it was.
A sudden brilliant flash blinded him before he instinctively pulled back from the lenses—for one fleeting moment he found himself back in that island jungle, hiding in the underbrush while the enemy lit up the area with his spotlight—and cursed their filters for reacting so slowly. But as soon as his sight returned and his binocs reset themselves, he looked again and discovered that the object had split into two black-clad men. One of them moved to the right, to the sliding door that led into her bedroom, then crouched and waited while the other forced open the door to her living room, threw the curtains aside, and rushed inside. Gunfire erupted and the intruder stumbled back out through the open door, tearing the curtains down around him as the writhing remains of the girl’s mysterious guest glowed bright orange and disintegrated on the couch.
“They’ve got disruptors!” Dylan exclaimed.
“Who’s got disruptors?” Beth asked as she ran into the living room in her underclothes, carrying her trousers and fumbling to pull on her blouse. “What’s going on?”
Dylan set his binocs aside and coaxed her toward the comm-panel. “Hurry. Call the Civil Guard.” Then he rushed into the bedroom.
“And tell them what?” she asked, calling after him.
“Two heavily armed intruders have broken into the upstairs apartment directly across the courtyard from here,” he hollered. “There’s been disrupter fire and at least two people are dead.”
“Dead!”
“Do it, Beth!”
“Oh my God!” she exclaimed as she tapped the emergency call button. Then, having gotten over the initial shock of the situation, she asked, “What if they’re not intruders? What if they are the Civil Guard pulling some kind of raid or something?”
“The Civil Guard wouldn’t be using disruptors!” he answered as he hurried back into the living room, clutching an older style Solfleet-issue pulse pistol in his right hand. “They’ve been banned by every member world and protectorate in the Coalition!”
Beth gasped when she saw his pistol. “Dylan!” she shouted. “What are you doing with a gun in your home?”
“Nothing yet,” he answered as he picked up his binocs.
“You can’t have guns off the base! It’s against Cirran law!”
“So is murder! Make the damn call!”
“I am making the damn call!”
The girl’s lights came up just as Dylan lifted his binocs to his eyes again. He switched them back to their normal setting and saw that aside from being dressed in black, the intruders weren’t wearing any particular kind of uniform. Burglars? A local street gang? No. Burglars and street gangs wouldn’t have been able to get their hands on disruptors. Someone much more dangerous then.
He set the binocs on the floor beside him and threw open the sliding door by hand—the auto mechanism was too damn slow—then dropped to one knee and took careful aim across the courtyard at the one remaining intruder, who was still crouching on the deck and was touching his hand to something on his left shoulder. He hesitated just long enough to savor the long absent rush of adrenalin that surged through his veins, then slowly squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened.
“What the...” He stared at his weapon in disbelief, then aimed and squeezed the trigger again, and again nothing happened. “Damn it!” he cried.
“What’s wrong?” Beth asked, pulling on her trousers. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened!” Dylan angrily replied. Then, being careful not to shout too loudly, he exclaimed “That stupid bitch!” He turned and threw his weapon at the couch so hard that it bounced off the back cushion and landed with a clatter on the coffee table.
“What!”
“Carolyn drained the power pack!”
“Why would she do that?”
He picked up his binocs again. “She always hated having a weapon in the house. Damn it! Damn her! I should have known she’d do something like that!” He looked back outside just as another weapon whined and a glowing beam of crimson flashed across the courtyard from somewhere directly above and struck the girl’s bedroom window, engulfing it in a brilliant flare of superheated energy.
