gaian consortium 06 - zhore deception

by Pope, Christine

  “My love, I couldn’t stay away a moment longer. I had no right to speak to you that way. I — ”

  And then he paused, his hands tightening on hers. Trinity flinched, worried that somehow he would be able to tell from her very touch what she carried within her. He couldn’t know about that. He just couldn’t. Bad enough that she should leave, but if she took with her the child he’d been longing for….

  It would kill him.

  She wanted to wrench her hands away. Instead, she withdrew her fingers from his grasp as gently as she could, using the pretext that she wanted to reach up and push back her own hood. He let her go, but with obvious reluctance.

  Her hands were shaking. In a nervous gesture, she peeled off her gloves and tossed them onto the sofa. Damn. Maybe it would have been better to keep them on. Trinity knew she couldn’t do anything about that now, so she continued the pretext of wanting to remove the garments that concealed her face and body from him. It was hard to undo the clasp that held the cloak shut, what with the way her fingers were trembling, but somehow she managed it.

  “You upset me,” she said, not quite looking at Zhandar.

  “I could tell that. It is why I came here.” He paused then, keen silver-gray eyes searching her face. “But…there is more, isn’t there?”

  “No,” she replied. Of course it was a lie, but she couldn’t tell him the truth as to why she was truly so upset. But if he went into the dressing area of her restroom, saw the discarded plastic tab on the counter….

  No, he wouldn’t know what that was, most likely. It was Consortium technology, not Zhore. Still, it would look very out of place, and she might have to try explaining it away.

  Zhore couldn’t flush, but something about his expression appeared to darken. “Why are you lying to me?”

  Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Clamp it down, Trinity.

  Walls. High walls of duracrete. Unbreakable. Unassailable.

  But they had shared a bond, the two of them. Trinity tried to push him away, but his emotions — his mind — seemed to hammer at hers, seeking a way in, wanting to know what it was that troubled her so much she would lie to him.

  Zhore didn’t lie.

  His black brows drew together, and he reached out and took her by the wrist. Not roughly, but so she knew she wouldn’t be able to pull away. He was too strong for her. She’d worried all along that might turn out to be the case.

  “Who are you?” he demanded. Then, as she didn’t reply, his grip tightened. Waves of dismay seemed to ripple out from him. “What are you?”

  It was over. Somehow he’d been able to see inside her mind. Somehow he’d gotten past the defenses she’d worked so hard to build. She could have asked why, but she knew the answer.

  Because she loved him. And the more she loved him, the more she hated herself. Eventually, it had to spill out, no matter what she did to hide how she felt.

  “My name is Trinity Knox,” she said sadly. “I’m a Gaian.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  For a long moment, all Zhandar could do was stare at her. Then, slowly, he let go of her wrist. She rubbed it, but absently, as if it didn’t matter much whether or not he’d hurt her.

  At last he found his voice. “But you look — but we — ” He had to stop himself there. They had shared so many intimacies, he and this woman who stood before him. She was sayara. He knew that, knew it as well as he knew the color of the sky, the number of moons that circled Zhoraan. But…how could she be sayara, and Gaian?

  “I know,” she said quietly.

  He couldn’t stop studying her face, attempting to see something in its contours, its shape, that would reveal her as an alien. If the clues were there, however, he couldn’t see them. That made some sense. The Gaians wouldn’t have sent her if she could be that easily detected.

  “Why?” he asked at last.

  For the first time, she glanced away from him. Gaze apparently fixed on a blooming shrub in the planter off to her side, she said, “I’d rather tell you that someplace safer.”

  “Safer?” he asked, looking around her apartment in some confusion. Surely they were private enough here. Or was she saying she’d rather have this conversation in his own home, a place where they’d spent so many happy hours together?

  A sad smile pulled at her mouth, but at the same time, he could sense fear slipping out past her barriers. Not fear of him, though. But who?

  She said, voice too calm, “On second thought, it’s probably better if you call the authorities and have me arrested.”

  * * *

  He hadn’t really known what to do. The Zhore had no need of a police force the way some worlds did. There were probably agents in his government who would be of help, men and women more accustomed to Gaians and their unscrupulous practices, but he knew no one like that.

  So, unable to think of a better alternative, he had contacted Jalzhin, from the Ministry of Health Services. In a very short time, a large transport vehicle showed up outside Zhanna’s — Trinity’s, he corrected himself — apartment building, and she was whisked away.

  Now Zhandar stood with Jalzhin and a man from the government who had only identified himself as Nalzhir. That in itself was not strange; unlike the Gaians and the Eridanis, his people did not use surnames. In general, though, when introduced, they would state something of where they came from, or the current position they held, simply to provide some context. But this Nalzhir had omitted that particular detail, which told Zhandar that his was the sort of occupation the government didn’t want discussed openly.

  The three of them were standing in a sort of observation room that overlooked the chamber where Trinity now sat opposite the woman who had been assigned to interrogate her. While the interrogator was still cloaked and hooded, Trinity had not been allowed any such concessions to propriety. She wore a slim-fitting tunic and pants, but her face and head were uncovered, her black hair spilling over her shoulders.

  No, not her black hair. Nalzhir had shown him, based on her DNA readings, what Trinity truly looked like. Hair a warm brown with deep gold streaks in it, skin fair, almost delicately pink and white, like the blossoms of the charazh. Only her eyes were the same, the brilliant blue-green, like the changing waters of the sea.

  Alien, and yet…still beautiful. The contours of the features he’d come to love were still there, only with a different wrapper, so to speak. And then he’d hated himself for thinking that, because she had lied to him. She’d been sent here by her government to use him and steal what secrets she could.

  His jaw hardened. “What has she told you?”

  “Not much,” Nalzhir allowed. “Unlike the Gaians, we do not engage in forcible interrogations. All she’s said so far is that she never meant to hurt anyone.”

  “Too late for that,” Zhandar muttered.

  “Lirzhair — our questioner — pointed that out to Ms. Knox. But that didn’t seem to do much to persuade her to be more forthcoming. She keeps saying that she wants to talk to you before she says anything to us.”

  “Then I will talk to her.”

  Nalzhir’s hooded head shook. “I’m afraid that’s not possible. At least, not yet.” He paused then, and although of course Zhandar could not see the other man’s face, he sensed a ripple of unease coming from him, quickly masked. “There is something else, though.”

  How there could possibly be anything beyond the betrayal he’d already suffered, Zhandar didn’t know. His gloved hands, hidden within the folds of his robes, clenched. “Tell me.”

  “We performed a nonintrusive physical examination, just to make sure she had not brought any Gaian illnesses or microbes with her.”

  “Did she?” Zhandar asked in alarm, thinking back to the many times he had been intimate with the Gaian woman. But no, surely if she had been ill in any way, he would have shown his own symptoms long before now.

  “No,” Nalzhir replied. “She is free from disease, as far as we are able to ascertain. Only….”

  The government agent
— or whatever he was — had very good control, but Zhandar was still able to detect the faintest tinge of unease slipping past his barrier. “Only what?”

  “Only it appears that she is with child.”

  The world tilted, but then Zhandar told himself that there must have been some mistake. Either that, or…. He said, tone dripping with disdain, “The Gaians stooped to sending a pregnant woman on an underhanded mission such as this one?”

  “I fear you misunderstand me. She is in the very early stages of pregnancy. It had to have occurred after she arrived her. The child is yours, Zhandar.”

  There was nothing to hold on to, not a chair, not a frame around the window that looked down on the interrogation room where Trinity sat. Zhandar could only keep himself as still as he could while those impossible words beat inside his brain.

  The child is yours, Zhandar.

  “How is that possible?” he asked then. “For she is not — that is, she is Gaian.” It was just barely comprehensible to him that he could share the sayara bond with a woman who was not of his race. But for two entirely different species to be able to interbreed?

  A long pause. Nalzhir shifted away from him, his gaze fixed on the young woman who sat at the table beyond the glass, who showed no sign of discomfort at having her face and form revealed to near-strangers. But of course she wouldn’t, because a Gaian did not share the customs and strictures of the Zhore.

  At last the agent said, “It is not something we have made public. The first instance was not so long ago. A little more than a year. A colonist’s daughter and a man of our people named Sarzhin. She had a son, a healthy son. It was a miracle on all levels.”

  His thoughts were darting here and there so quickly that Zhandar wasn’t sure which one he should latch onto first. “This Gaian girl and this Sarzhin. They were — they were sayara?”

  “Yes.”

  That a Gaian — a race he had always viewed, when he thought of them at all, as grasping, unscrupulous, and lacking the refinement of mind that was so much a part of his own culture — could be sayara was just barely within the bounds of plausibility. But then, he’d felt it with Trinity, even though at the time he’d thought her one of his own people. So he knew it wasn’t entirely impossible, even if the logical side of his mind kept trying to tell him there must have been some kind of mistake.

  Then he latched on to something else Nalzhir had told him. “You just said ‘the first instance.’ There have been others?”

  “Only one. She is actually here on Zhoraan, with her spouse. Lirzhan, a former ambassador.”

  “So that is how they met? Because he had gone out into the galaxy?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” A brief pause, and Nalzhir continued, “She is a month away from giving birth, but so far the pregnancy has been unremarkable. Well, other than it being a pregnancy that resulted from the joining of a Gaian and a Zhore.”

  It was too much. Zhandar forced in a breath, made himself stare down at Trinity. Of course it was far too soon to see any visible signs of pregnancy in her, but his breath caught at the idea anyway.

  “I want to speak with her,” he said.

  “As I said, that is not possible at the moment.”

  “Why not? She’s asking to talk with me. Perhaps I can have better luck with her.”

  Nalzhir hesitated. Another one of those uneasy pulses. “Later. The doctors have determined that it would be best to restore her to herself first.”

  The words took a few seconds to filter into Zhandar’s brain. As comprehension dawned, he growled, “You would perform that kind of surgery on her when she is with child?”

  “It is for the best. I told you that she is free from disease, but that does not mean she is entirely healthy. From what we can tell, her body is beginning to reject its alien skin. Best to rid her of it, return her to her normal state. It will not be an invasive procedure, so it should not affect the child at all.”

  Zhandar turned back toward the window, then placed his gloved hands on it. Trinity shifted in her seat and looked up toward him, although he assumed the glass was the sort that would not allow her to see through it. But her reaction told him that she knew he was there. He hadn’t thought a Gaian would possess such psychic sensitivity, but clearly Trinity had talents beyond those of a normal human.

  He was still angry with her…but at the same time, he didn’t want to see her come to any harm. And if the barbaric surgery her masters had inflicted on her was now actively causing her to become ill, then better for his own people to heal her.

  And after that…well, he would just have to see.

  * * *

  Once again, Trinity awoke from darkness, but this time she didn’t hurt as much. Or rather, she felt sore and tingly all over, as if she’d stayed out in the sun too long, but it wasn’t the kind of deep muscle ache she’d experienced upon awakening from the surgery that had turned her into a Zhore.

  She glanced down, and saw that the hair falling over one shoulder was warm brown, not black. The gold highlights had even been restored. And when her gaze shifted to her arm, emerging from the short sleeve of the pale blue shift-like gown she wore, she saw that her skin was no longer the mesmerizing shifting black of the Zhore, but her normal pale ivory.

  “You’re back with us.”

  The last thing she’d expected to see was Zhandar sitting at her side, waiting for her to wake up. How could he seem so calm, so controlled, when she’d used him so badly?

  But she wouldn’t think about that now. For one thing, she simply didn’t have the energy. “I suppose I am,” she said, then lifted her right hand and flexed her fingers, watching the light from overhead pick out the faintest traceries of the bluish veins beneath her fair skin. She realized then that they were still speaking the Zhore language, which by now felt like second nature to her. Her alien disguise had been removed, but what about that hideous implant, the one that had spied on everything she said and did?

  Her fingers reached up toward the back of her neck. The tiny bump there was gone, and the flesh left behind tender to the touch. So they’d found it, thank God. Trinity would have loved to see Gabriel Brant’s expression when he discovered that not only did he have no way of retrieving her, not with her in the hands of the authorities on this alien world, but that he’d also just lost his only means of seeing what was happening to her.

  Did Zhandar know about that implant? Or had the doctors who’d removed it decided that it was better not to tell him that his every interaction with her over the past few months had been recorded?

  She decided she’d leave that aside for later. That was some very dangerous ground. Instead, she asked, “How…?” And then she let the question break off, because she knew that what she really wanted to ask was why.

  He seemed to understand. “You were in the early stages of rejection.”

  Well, that would explain the tiredness, the vague sensations of nausea and the low-grade headaches. The borrowed Zhore skin had probably been poisoning her from the outside in. Not sure what she should say, she picked up a strand of her hair and held it between her thumb and forefinger, inspecting it as if it was the most important thing in the world right then. “They did a great job with the color.”

  “I’ll pass that on.” She caught an unlikely twinge of amusement from him, one that faded abruptly. “How do you feel otherwise?”

  “All right. A little tired.” His question made her pause and take more detailed inventory. Yes, she did feel somewhat taut and sensitive, but she assumed that sensation would pass as she continued to heal. But her head didn’t ache, and she could already tell that if she just rested a bit more, she should be back to her old self fairly quickly.

  Her old self. There was a joke.

  “Do you feel well enough to talk?”

  Physically, yes. But emotionally…? She didn’t know. Zhandar deserved the truth from her now, though, since all she’d handed him before were lies. Anyway, she’d told the interrogator the day before that sh
e wouldn’t say anything to anyone until she talked to Zhandar first.

  Well, here he was.

  Trinity shifted in her bed, reflecting it was more comfortable than the one provided for her back on the Consortium base. The room itself here was also vastly more comfortable; there were no water features, but plants hung from sconces on the walls, and everything had been painted a soft, dreamy blue. And Zhandar himself….

  He had his barriers up. She supposed she could have expected nothing less. What she hated was that hood, the way it drooped low to hide his face. She needed to see him, to see his expression as she tried to explain to him why she’d done what she’d done. Why she’d been forced into it.

  The hood didn’t surprise her, though. They were in a hospital room, but it could still be considered a public place. And for all she knew, even though the Zhore were not ordinarily a surveillance-happy race, they had cameras hidden around the room, recording everything she and Zhandar did and said. She couldn’t blame them for that. The Zhore might have given her a very comfortable place where she could recuperate, but she was still a prisoner of sorts. She’d been caught spying.

  Even with all that, she had to ask. “Zhandar….”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ll tell you everything you need to know. I swear it. But I need to see you. Please.”

  No response at first. Then he moved in his chair, shifting so he faced her directly. His hands went up to push back his hood. “Better?”

  She loved the bones of his face, the sculpted curve of his lips. It didn’t matter that he was an alien. He was still so very beautiful. Inside and out. “Yes, much better.”

  “You don’t care that I am…not like you.”

  A bitter laugh forced its way past her lips. “Zhandar, I am very glad that you’re nothing like me.”

  He shook his head, then deliberately peeled off one glove, followed by the other. Fingers now bare, he rested his hand on top of hers. The shields were still up, but she could feel something more now — a hint of sadness, and then worry for her. Well, that was a start. At least she wasn’t sensing deep pulsing waves of hatred and anger.