Touch of Danger (Three Worlds)

by Strickland, Carol A.

  “Stoan!” Londo barked. “Enough of this crap. I mean it. Lina is not a controller in any way. She's—”

  Jae interrupted evenly: “What have you told Hal about this, Lon?”

  That stopped Londo. “…I haven't been able to get in touch with him. He's gone off somewhere.”

  Stoan shook his head, obviously thankful of Jae's new tack. “You want to get married, even if Hal isn't there.”

  “I'm sure that Lina could port him in if we could just find him. He could wear a quarantine suit—”

  “You're getting married without Hal,” Jae gently said. “What's he going to think about being left out?”

  Londo's teeth ground against each other. “I… He…”

  Stoan rested his chin on the palm of his hand, the picture of a reasonable man trying to talk sense to the insane. “You're getting married, but Hal won't be there. Or your grandparents. Think, Londo. If you were in a clear state of mind, would you even consider such a thing? The most important people in your life, not witnessing your wedding contract? I don't think so.” He paused. “All of this—what will Hal think?”

  The air whooshed out of Londo's chest. His shoulders slumped and he stared at the floor. Lina started to reach out to him, but Jae caught her hand and pulled her away from Londo. “Let him work this out,” he whispered fiercely to her. “Don't make a mistake here.”

  “A mistake?” she asked helplessly. There was Londo, who had been so adamant about professing his love to her, about them getting married, living and loving together forever. Lon didn't seem so sure now. She sank against Jae.

  God, he was backing out! Her heart began to shrivel at the thought. Could she talk him back into it? If he needed to be talked into marriage, was it right for them to consider it in the first place?

  Londo was impulsive. He believed in fairy tales. Now maybe he was coming back to the real world. No one could really love her, could they? Especially Londo Rand, the most wonderful man alive. How could she have been so stupid to ever think—

  “No,” Londo said softly, and Lina caught her breath in horror. This was when he'd turn to her and tell her that they had to wait. Or that it might be best for them to go their separate ways for a while, maybe a few months, to make sure they were being sensible about all this.

  Possibilities flashed through her mind, scenes of less and less Londo in her life. Finally a picture of him resuming his Valiant role in Montreal, forgetting about the silly girl from North Carolina. Reading his Christmas card from her with an expression of embarrassment at the entire affair.

  No.

  That was wrong. Londo didn't have the right to do that to her. He'd sworn his love and by god she was going to hold him to it. He would not disrespect her. Lina gathered herself to remind him very clearly of that, but before she could he said—

  “No!” Londo straightened to stand at full height. “If I know Hal, he'll welcome Lina with open arms, even if he does miss this. If he gets my messages, he'll call and we'll port him in, but if he doesn't—well, these things happen. He'll understand. We'll have this marriage now, with or without the Legion's official sanction, Stoan. You know I'd much prefer with.” Londo gestured to the air much as Jae had before. “Priority call. Subcommander Nurunori!”

  A second screen scrolled down to add another person to the room. Here was a pink-haired woman sitting on the edge of her partially-seen bed but looking more composed than Stoan. “I've been monitoring, Lon,” she said tiredly.

  “Andri, what's my legal standing here?”

  “Legal? Talk to the lawyers. Give them a few hours to sleep, but—”

  “Internally,” Londo insisted. “How much of this is Stoan's bluff? How much can he impede this?”

  She pulled one hand down her face and looked to her left, as if Stoan were there with her, even though with their screen set-up he was on her right. “Unless the woman is a proven mind controller, I don't see how you can block this, Stoan. It's a little quick—it's a kick quick, Londo—but it's not entirely unheard of. But Lon, a Legion wedding should be careful, correct, planned and—”

  “And a media circus,” Londo growled. “No. Now. Here. We can have the circus later.”

  Wiley cleared his throat at that. “We've had some unusual phenomena associated with all this,” he announced and held up his padd to the two outsiders. Stoan and Andri both looked to the side of their screens as if seeing the readouts there.

  Andri wrinkled her nose. “What is this?” she puzzled.

  “Lights?” Stoan scowled. “Voices? How did you manage this, Londo?”

  “I didn't.”

  “Then you,” Stoan accused Lina and turned back to his poor deluded comrade. “Londo, think. Think!” he pleaded. “I want to come in there and pound some sense into that invulnerable head of yours!”

  “It's dangerous, Lina,” Jae said from between gritted teeth. He still held her by her upper arms. “Has he told you, really? Have you had a chance to think about it? We're talking Valiant. How many enemies does he have who'd love to get back at him? Grigach, how many enemies does Maximus have, too? You'd be the weak link in the family. Anyone can see that.”

  Jae scowled horribly at Londo. “Anyone with half a mind. And here Stoan is practically giving orders for you to be arrested for mind control as soon as quarantine is over. You can't get married under the shadow of that suspicion. Lon's crazy, Lina—has he told you that? Have you suspected? He is not entirely sane.”

  Lina's lower lip trembled. “I know a lot more about Londo than you think I do. I'm a reasonably intelligent person. I can guess that things might be a little dangerous, but I'm a nobody. No one would want to hurt me.”

  “Tell that to Terry Rhodes, to Doctor Menlo. How many dozens, hundreds of others are out there, Lina? Do you know? Did he tell you? You'll have to spend the rest of your life locked up behind impervion to stay safe.”

  “She's a teleporter.” Londo's voice was dead calm as he stared evenly at Jae. “She can port out of trouble.”

  “She didn't do it before.”

  “I'm sorry.” Lina pulled at her hands. “I'm new at all this. I'll get better at my porting. I'll practice, I promise. And my guides will help protect me, right?”

  “Guides!” Stoan exploded. “Guides and Terrans and witchdoctors! Wiley, how much time is left on this skurny quarantine?”

  Wiley checked his padd and did a double-take. “That can't be right,” he muttered as he reset. He huffed at the padd again and said, “Puter, scan the laboratory for extra-Sarastoran contamination.”

  “No contamination present,” the impersonal voice replied.

  Wiley's mouth opened and closed before he burst out, “What the skurny kick of sunfire is going on here?!”

  Lina tried to do a psychic scan of the room but didn't get anything. She was too upset. “Are we out of quarantine?” she asked and it came out ever so slightly as a whine. Londo pointedly removed Jae's hands from her, then took her into his arms even as Wiley held his scanning padd toward them.

  Jae looked at them oddly. He openly stared at Lina as if he'd never seen her before, first at her face, then her shoulder. Tentatively she touched her cheek. No bumps, no crust. No map of Australia?

  “Report, Mem-Bazer!” Stoan snapped. He'd jumped up out of bed and was walking rapidly as his screens kept pace with him.

  “Look at you,” Londo said to her in wonder. “I didn't even notice.”

  But Wiley could only make an unintelligible sound before he managed, “Lina is healed, even her arm. Completely, and it never registered with me either. No scars, no bruises, no burns… Hard to tell with Londo, but prelim scans indicate him at 100%. There is no more reason for quarantine. This entire area is clean. And then you two appear here in a blinding light— I practically expected a…a band of Terran angels to shout 'hallelujah!' What-is-going-on?”

  Jae shook off his shock. “You have to listen to them, Lon,” he hissed. “Listen!”

  “Could we get some privacy, please?
” Lina asked. She didn't like the waves of anger and fear coming off Jae, the utter block that Londo had thrown up unconsciously to stop those waves from hitting him. Jae was Lon's best friend!

  “Are you trying to cover up something?” Stoan asked harshly.

  Andri cut in. “Stoan, maybe a few minutes of privacy—”

  “Giving a mind controller a few minutes alone with her victim is like—”

  Lina didn't hear the rest. She pulled Jae away from the screens while Londo followed her. Somewhere in the back of her mind the ability to touch someone besides Lon startled her, but this was no time to worry about that.

  It was just the two of them and Jae as the others argued. “Jae, all I know is that I love Londo so much that I don't want to live without him. If something happens to me—or to him—at least we'll have this much to take with us.”

  Londo squeezed her shoulders.

  “I've been through this before,” Lina added. “My best friend got married and she did it pretty quick, too, though not this quick. She called me up in the middle of the night after just two dates. 'I'm getting married,' she said. She waited a couple months for the actual ceremony so she could have a fancy wedding. Which she borrowed money from me for. That she never paid back.”

  Lon made an offended noise but Lina merely shrugged. “We'd been friends for years and she was always asking me for money. A little here, a little there. A big chunk there at the end, even though Chad was fairly well-off. But I had no idea everything else was going to change as much as it did.

  “After she got married I managed to talk to her twice. Then she called me and told me that my concern for the loan indicated that I was not her true friend so she wasn't going to pay it back. And that her marriage was more important than any friendship. She said not to bother her again.”

  Jae looked away for a moment. “Did you? You let it drop for her?” There was silence in the room.

  “Yes,” Lina said. “I didn't hear from her again until she wanted me to testify against her husband at the divorce. And to help pay for it. She said he'd abused her emotionally and that she'd always been loyal to me. She wanted me to tell the judge that her husband beat her. She wanted me to fake some photos for evidence.”

  “Did you?”

  “Of course not. Look, I learned about friendship from her, about false friendships and true ones and how you don't mess with a true one. Jae, I'm not asking you and Londo to break off your friendship. When we're married he'll owe me time, but he also owes you time as his friend. I won't begrudge you that. We all need all the friends we can get, but he especially needs you. Wiley says you've known each other since you were kids. You must have helped each other through some terrible times.”

  “But Lon never told you about me…before,” Jae said slowly.

  “Heck, I've only known Lon for a few days. He told me about this friend he wanted me to meet. I think that must have been you.”

  “It was,” Londo said quickly.

  “I love him, Jae, and I know I'm going to love him forever. I promise you I'll do everything in my power to make him happy. I will try never to do anything to embarrass or diminish him. If you see me doing something you don't think I should, just tell me and I'll stop. Please give us your blessing.”

  Jae turned away and leaned against the wall on an elbow. His fingers tangled and pulled in his hair.

  “I know it's sudden,” Lon said. “It would mean a lot. Tell you what; we're out of quarantine. This afternoon—no, make that tomorrow—we'll all go out and have lunch together somewhere private and we'll talk about everything you think we need to talk about. Everything.”

  “Someplace where they serve stiff drinks,” Jae muttered.

  “It'll be a long lunch and we will both listen to whatever you have to say. Maybe we'll even take some advice. Will that be acceptable?”

  “I guess I never really believed this day would happen.” Jae swallowed as he turned around slowly. “I know we talked about it. A lot. But—”

  Stoan's voice came from behind them. Lina turned to see the real man entering the lab. He was as tall as Wiley, and had a wine-colored robe wrapped around himself though he wore a black, booted jumpsuit underneath. Even in person his skin held that icy bluish cast.

  “Jae's made some valid points, Londo,” he briskly said as he joined them. “Danger. You're used to having people around you who can take care of themselves.”

  He seemed the picture of arbitration now, although Lina could feel panic radiating from him. He really believed that Londo was the one in danger, Valiant, the man who could be a supremely powerful weapon if he fell into the wrong hands.

  “Publicity, plus your reputation, plus Hal's… Could even Mega-Legion Headquarters be safe enough for someone who—I'm making this assumption—has had no defensive training?”

  “I'll teach her,” Londo offered.

  “And Legion protocol. You must know that you can't do anything spontaneously around here. Not a member of your standing. This needs to be orchestrated, publicized…delayed. I'll get Legion PIC started on this first thing in the morning. I'll call all my contacts and have them flag Hal down, wherever he is. We can get Ruth and Mike here—”

  “And hold up everything,” Londo growled, “while you pile the red tape all around us. We can go almost anywhere to get married and you wouldn't be able to say anything about it. Michi would be a great world to have a wedding, wouldn't it? I know a resort there.” He turned to Lina. “We can be there in three hours, no quarantine.” He gave Stoan a dark look. “No red tape.”

  “I can have you drummed out of the—”

  “Stoan!” Now it was that pink-haired woman, Andri, who hurried in. She stood Jae's height, tall and slim, wearing ballooning trousers and slippers under her robe. “Don't say something that could get you impeached. There's nothing we can legally do to stop this wedding; certainly nothing morally. But we can have her investigated after the fact, quietly and off the record.”

  “Quietly?” Stoan's face seemed to close in as he considered. Finally he announced, “For that, there must be no mention of this marriage outside this room.”

  “Are you standing as witnesses?” Wiley asked curiously. He kept peering at everyone as if he'd been presented with the most curious data ever. “Just the six of us to keep this secret?”

  “A secret marriage?” Lina couldn't believe what they were asking. “That's crazy! For how long? You expect us to—”

  “Easy, chérie,” Lon told her.

  Acrid fury filled Lina's veins. How dare they? “I mean it, Londo. I want to know how long, and I want it in writing. I don't believe in secrets. And a secret marriage—what, do you want everyone snickering at us until we announce?” She gave Jae a hard glance. She'd heard him on the phones talking about Lon and the Terran witchdoctor. At least he had the grace to look contrite.

  “It's very important for you to announce, isn't it?” Stoan eyed her shrewdly.

  Lina frowned. If their marriage was going to embarrass Londo—she didn't want that!

  “It won't embarrass me,” he told her.

  “I don't want you getting in trouble over this,” she insisted.

  Londo squeezed her shoulder. “Secret marriages are out of the question, Stoan. We go public right away. Call in L-PIC afterwards.”

  “No.”

  Andri spoke softly into Stoan's ear, as if she'd forgotten that Londo could hear her whispering from a mile away. Stoan answered her and she replied, then Stoan nodded. “Secrecy outside of Legion Headquarters,” he declared, “until we get an investigation and a qualified telepath clears her.”

  “Hal?”

  “Hal's cleared. But not Ruth or Mike.”

  “How long does that mean?” Lina asked Londo suspiciously.

  “Say…a week. Two at the most,” Andri offered.

  “Okay. Can he put it in writing?”

  Stoan's eyes were slits. “We are officially recording now. Four or five days should be enough, Londo. Five day
s of secrecy. And if the investigation turns up something, you both disavow all knowledge of this,” he ordered. “The marriage will be annulled and wiped from the record.”

  The wedding was on!

  Chapter 25

  “You sure your record's clean, chérie?” Londo asked her, giving her that crazy lopsided grin of his.

  “There was just that one time I tried to take over the world. That doesn't count, does it?”

  “Mais non. It's only Earzh; no one here will mind.” He glanced back to Stoan. “She was arrested once—once!—for participating in a legal protest. Charges were dropped. And there might be a little mixup in her record as to age.”

  “Age?” Stoan asked. Andri had produced a padd for her own notes.

  “I sort of lied about my age when I was younger,” Lina said uncertainly. “There are things you can do on Earth only if you're old enough. I, ah…fudged a bit.”

  “So she could survive,” Londo told them. “It was nothing even approaching criminal intent. She just needed to be able to get jobs and living space until she was of legal age.”

  “We'll see,” Stoan said, turning on his heel. “I'll find out what kind of telepaths with security clearance are on this planet. I'll have somebody here today.” He strode out of the lab. The double doors swung shut without rebound behind him.

  The tension in the room eased immediately as they all stared after him. Finally Andri spoke. “It has to be today?” she asked Londo.

  “As soon as possible,” he replied. “We're already dressed for it.”

  She shook her head. “You and your 'gotta do it now' mentality. But not in here. Sorry, Wiley, but this place is still a wreck. You know CGI isn't permitted for official records; this will look horrible. Plus there are too many classified experiments going on.”

  Wiley sank down in a chair, overcome by the press of events. “They'd just destroy the areas I've managed to clean anyway,” he said abstractedly.

  She nodded. “Puter, warm up VR Room 2.” Two beeps sounded.

  Lon gave her a grateful smile. “Thanks, An; I owe you.”