* * *
“Tomorrow you can catch your own,” Isthia told them as she served them a dinner of fish, tiny vegetables, and a salad of mixed greens, “and scavenge your greens from my garden. I ask only that you eat everything you catch and pick. You know the drill on Deneb, Damia.”
“Waste not, want not,” Damia dutifully chanted as the delectable odor of the panfried fish made her mouth water. “Fish is brain food, Afra,” she added pedantically. “High protein, low fat. Is there a limit on a day’s catch?”
Isthia snorted. “Of course not. I stocked the lake myself, so it’s not part of the official resources.”
Damia leaned across the table to Afra, her eyes dancing with mischief. “That means that Isthia reserves the right to fish the lake to herself. Deneb can’t use it in time of famine.”
“Deneb hasn’t endured a famine, has it?” Afra was astonished enough to stop eating.
“Of course not,” Damia said.
“Famine and planetary emergency.”
“Such as the Beetles?” Afra asked.
“Exactly,” and Isthia looked slightly grim. “First they filled our lakes with contaminants, then they blasted them dry. Took years to get our reservoirs rebuilt and full. So a fish-stocked lake can be considered a natural resource and could be added to planetary food reserves. Fortunately, I made sure I had a few perks.”
“This isolated site is one?” Afra asked.
“Took me nearly a year to find exactly the right land when the grant was bestowed,” Isthia said, “but it’s worth every bit of the fuss it caused.”
“Fuss? With all you’ve done for Deneb?” Damia said, indignant.
“That’s why there was so much fuss,” Isthia replied, and related to them the struggles she had had with local and central administration, builders, naturalists, as well as medical boards that did not want her so far from population centers. “I was blocked on minor points for nearly another two years. But I got the place I wanted, where I wanted it, and no one can revoke my title to it, nor my heirs.”
“What do we fish for?” Afra asked.
“Rainbow sparklers,” Isthia replied. “Bait your hooks and throw ’em in. The fish eventually get interested.”
“It’s a novel idea to catch one’s dinner, too,” Afra added.
“You can, though, can’t you? It’s not something Capellans are against?” Damia asked, realizing how little she really knew about Afra Lyon.
“No,” he assured her with a grin, “nothing in my upbringing prevents me from fishing for food.”
“I’ll show you the lake after we eat. There’ll be light enough,” Isthia said. “In fact, watching the sunset there can be rather spectacular.”
And that evening Deneb put on quite a display for them. The lake was reached by a narrow track that threaded its way through a thick stand of Denebian softwoods: single-trunk spires with short, full-leaved branches. The lake, dewdrop in shape, was deceptively large, for Isthia led them out at its narrow end where the tributary stream flowed down from the hills to their right.
“I’ve constructed a perch,” Isthia said, directing them along the bank to their left, where several large flat black rocks formed an irregular bench.
Some sort of spidery, multi-legged insects skimmed across the lake and occasionally an aquatic denizen broke the surface into ripples, snagging the water runner. Sleepy avian and nocturnal bug noises punctuated the evening air as they seated themselves.
Afra threw a jacket across Damia’s shoulders, for the air at the lakeside was chillier than at the protected cabin. She leaned into his touch, avid for physical contact. He settled his arm about her shoulders and drew her against him as if this casual sort of contact was long established. Afra was having no trouble, she thought, with their new relationship. His fingers pressed against her arm and she glanced at him, suspicious that he was disobeying Isthia. He bent his head toward her.
“A touch is just a touch, Damia love,” he said quietly, “so don’t get fussed. More than you, I can’t afford to risk the healing process.”
Damia shot a quick look at her grandmother who was sitting, with the discretion of a duenna, at the opposite end of the rock couch. Isthia gave every evidence of ignoring them. Which, Damia realized, was probably genuine. Isthia would hate having to leave this place with its insured solitude. She must remember to thank her for that sacrifice.
“Sacrifice,” Damia thought, her heart heavy. So many little things reminded her of Larak. Once again Afra’s fingers took a new hold on her arm and she shook her head of such wounding reflections.
“See!” Isthia pointed at the cloud formation now tinged with a delicate shade of peach as the sun began its final descent behind the hills.
So they watched, awed by the beauty, by the silence of the wood and lake about them, a reverence for the display and for the tranquillity of the night to come. When the last color faded from cloud and sky, Isthia sighed, a sound of intense satisfaction, and rose.
“Don’t stay too long. There’s a chill in the night air,” she said, and thrusting one handlight at them, she departed, playing hers on the track as she made her way back to the cabin.
For Damia, who had always been physically restless, this sort of inactivity was novel, yet she would not have broken the quiet mood for anything on any world she had ever trod. What was even more amazing was that she was sharing—truly sharing—this magical serenity with Afra. From the corner of her eye she snuck a peek at him and saw, in the crepuscular twilight, that he reflected her own tranquillity. Why had she never noticed what a strong profile he had: a high, straight forehead, a straight nose jutting at a fine angle, the generous gap between nose and upper lip, and the strong, well-modeled, wide mouth, the firm chin and jawline. He had nice ears, too. But there were undeniable flecks of white in his blondy hair. Not much but noticeable.
Self-consciously, she fingered back the white-flecked lock that always fell across her face
“I’ve got more white hair than you,” she remarked.
“But not in the same number of years, love,” he replied equably.
“Is that going to matter?” she asked anxiously.
He looked down at her, smiling at her concern. “It oughtn’t but it’s bound to come up. Does my seniority bother you?”
“You’re always ‘Afra’ to me,” she said, surprised at how she identified him within herself.
He chuckled. “As you have always been inimitably ‘Damia’ to me. D’you know? I heard you protest your birth.”
“That’s not fair!” She did not like him to remind her of moments like that.
“When does ‘fair’ enter into any relationship? Suffice it to say, that I have known you since the first breath you drew and strangely enough, it makes you dearer to me.”
The look in his yellowy eyes, the tenderness in his mouth, the appeal in even the way his shoulders inclined toward her, and Damia had to admit that she could have no objection to what lay behind that soft declaration.
“Oh, Afra! Why did you wait so long?”
His lips turned up and his eyes danced. “I had to. Until you were ready to look at Afra.” With such laughter in his eyes and mouth, he had a careless boyishness about him that canceled further discussion of age.
Larak had been little more than a boy at his death. Unbidden, the comparison had crossed her mind.
Afra’s hand covered hers instantly. “I can see that you’re thinking sad thoughts again, love. What this time? Tell me!”
Damia smiled ruefully up at him. “As I told you all my small troubles?”
“I’m able for the big ones now.”
“I keep thinking of . . .” She faltered.
“Larak,” and his fingers caressed her gently. “I think of him a lot myself.”
Damia burrowed her head into his shoulder, hooking one hand about his neck as she had done so often as a child. But it was not as a child that she clung to him now.
“I’m told such pain eases with ti
me,” he said quietly, “and there has not been enough of that between us and his death.”
Damia sat upright. “Who is taking care of Jenna right now?” Her tone was stricken, for she had been thinking more in terms of her own grief and loss from this wretched Sodan affair.
“Isthia can tell us . . . no, don’t reach,” he said, and Damia let out an exasperated sigh. “We’ll go and ask.”
“It takes getting used to, this limitation,” she replied caustically.
“In a good cause, love,” he said and, smoothly rising from the warm rock, pulled her to her feet.
* * *
“Jenna?” Isthia said, surprised at the question when they returned to the cabin. “Jeran sent Ezro to her, but she has a big family and they’re Talented enough to give her comfort and sufficient solace to ease her heart.” Isthia’s expression altered to one of amusement. “After all, she has not only her son but also another child on the way.”
Damia stared at her grandmother. “Oh!” she exclaimed indignantly. “Larak didn’t? Why, he’s . . .” She stopped short. “Under the circumstances, I guess I’m glad. Lord, but we Gwyn-Ravens are prolific.”
“Tell me about it,” and Isthia threw her head back and howled with laughter. “Remember, separate rooms tonight. I’m not going to explain that to your parents, Damia!”
When Isthia entered Deneb Tower, her grandson Jeran had just finished with the incoming traffic.
“How are they?” he asked urgently, rising from his conformable chair and embracing her. She rather liked his strong young arms about her: made her remember Jerry.
“They will both recover completely,” she said, and then gave him a warning glare, “if they are allowed to recover at their own rate. No unexpected visits, no shafts of inquiry, no exercise of ’path or ’port whatever!”
“How’s Damia taking that kind of a prohibition?” Jeran asked, raising his eyebrows.
Isthia considered, careful not to let any of her more recent conclusions be accessed by her clever Prime grandson. “Better than you’d expect,” she replied, with just a slight emphasis on the pronoun. “Of course, once she regains her health . . .”
“What?” Jeran’s exclamation of alarm was genuine.
“Oh, she’s battered physically as well as psychically, Jeran. And genuinely distraught about Larak. It’ll all take time . . .”
Jeran frowned. “How long?” Now an FT&T Prime spoke.
“As long as it takes,” said Isthia with a shrug. “I’d like to reassure Jeff and Rowan—” she added, gesturing toward the board.
“Certainly,” Jeran said, stepping well away from the conformable chair. “It’s break time for me anyway. Will you be going right back?”
“Heavens no,” and Isthia grinned as she settled into the chair. “When I meant no mental exertion, I meant none, which includes me leaking metamorphic theory all over them. Physically, they’re well able to take care of themselves, and each other.” She shook her head, thinking of how true that was and trying very hard not to chuckle at her private merriment. “You’re stuck with this white man’s burden again.”
“Never stuck, Gran. Glad to have you anytime.”
Isthia snorted, knowing perfectly well that Jeran was rapidly reviewing how to conduct his current affair with his grandmother in the same house. “Or, I can always move into Kantria’s digs. Yes, that makes sense, and she’s on the outskirts of the City, anyway. Do be tactful and ask her first, Jerry.”
She laughed as she caught the quickly suppressed ripple of consternation from Jeran as he hurriedly closed the shielded door behind him. That should divert him sufficiently from speculating further about his sister and Afra.
Then she settled back in the chair and, picking up the pulse of the generators, sent her mind ranging the long distance to Callisto.
Isthia? The Rowan caught her up immediately and did not moderate her understandable anxiety. Damia was foremost in her mother’s mind.
They’re both well and they will both recover, Rowan.
Mother? Instantly Jeff’s mind joined the link. Without loss? Afra’s recuperation worried Jeff more but only because he felt Afra had been in more jeopardy than his daughter.
I don’t foresee any diminishing in either mind. As I told you, rest from any mental stress, plenty of sleep, and solitude will cure them.
Relief flowed from them to her and back again.
Any idea when their cures will be complete? Jeff the Prime spoke.
I haven’t a clue, Isthia blithely reassured them and felt their misgivings. Heavens, I’ve never treated such overextended minds before. Metamorphically, Damia buffered Afra, and you two cushioned her even as she blocked and destroyed Sodan.
There was a brief pause. Does she blame herself for not saving . . . The Rowan’s voice faltered.
Yes, but that was inevitable and we cannot spare her that grief. You will be surprised when you do see her, and Isthia was rather glad there was no one in the Tower room to see her smile. She liked and admired her son’s mate. It was scarcely Angharad’s fault that she had overcompensated her children for the vicissitudes of her early childhood.
Surprised? Jeff asked.
Agreeably, Isthia replied. She might as well predispose them. The incident has matured the girl.
Rite of passage? Jeff asked.
A rocky, grievous one, to be sure, but considering Damia’s personality, only that sort of experience would produce the proper tempering.
Aren’t you being hard on Damia? the Rowan began.
I’m being objective, I assure you. You should be grateful for her fortitude and resilience. She could have been consumed and broken.
But she is well? She will recover?
Given time. No more headaches, Angharad, or lapses of concentration? Isthia asked, skillfully diverting the contact into a new channel.
No, because we’ve cut down the traffic, Jeff replied brusquely. Sometimes FT&T expects too much of its Primes. Both of us, and he sent his mother a rueful grin, are letting our assistants handle inanimate stuff. Gives them a feeling of accomplishment and us a brief respite. And Aurigae got their ears bent for the sort of loads they were having Damia ’port. She’s not to do that again. You did say that Afra’s going to be all right?
Isthia chuckled. Oh, you’ll notice a change in him, too. All for the good. Then before her inner amusement broke through, she hastily ended the contact. Goodbye now. Jeran wants his chair back. I’ll keep you informed.
CHAPTER
TEN
BECAUSE they were so isolated and because they had been in the habit of being wide-open in every sense to each other, Damia and Afra both experienced the first tendrils of query.
Damia censored the incident. Afra ignored it. Neither mentioned it; Damia because she wasn’t going to get caught twice the same way; Afra because he didn’t trust his mind.
Not only had Isthia left them a diet sheet—easily digestible foods at first, graduating to some of her more esoteric and exotic combinations—but also she had left them a work sheet. As her note reminded them, the cabin was not automated.
“Nothing to tax your energies but light chores to keep the place ticking over and to combat boredom.”
“I’m not sure that I like her going on about boredom,” Damia told Afra as they looked over the roster.
Afra’s eyes gleamed, but his finger running down her cheek took the sting out of his words. “We both know our quick-silver Damia, restless, curious . . .”
“I need rest,” and Damia pretended a haughty air, “and I got an overdose of curious too recently to indulge in another. I shall vegetate, right along with you, Afra Lyon!”
“We are not precisely vegetating, love,” Afra said and demonstrated.
They were, however, scrupulous about doing the various tasks Isthia had set: keeping the cabin neat and clean, tending the garden planted around it, weeding the vegetable plot, reinforcing the guard fencing to prevent forest life from browsing the young plants, and fish
ing. The lake was stocked with many tasty varieties.
Damia liked fishing, liked the excuse to sit beside Afra, shoulders and legs touching as they sat on the bank waiting for the sparklers to rise to the bait. The enforced idleness of angling permitted Damia to satisfy her insatiable interest in every facet of her lover’s childhood and early training, though she forcefully denounced such heartlessness.
“I guess I was a lot much luckier in my parents than I knew,” Damia had to admit when he had finished with his early childhood trials.
“Even being sent away as an infant to Deneb?” Afra asked, his eyes intent on her expression.
She grimaced with chagrin. “Yes, I was a right wagon, wasn’t I?”
“Heavy duty big daddy wagon.”
“You don’t have to agree!”
“Why not? I knew what you admit to.”
“But you’re not supposed to agree!”
Afra chuckled. “If it’s true, why not? It’s perspective that counts, love. It isn’t that I don’t know your faults—as I have tried to admit to mine—it’s that I love you more because of them.”
“Love me for my faults? How stupid!”
“Should I ignore them because I love you?”
“Well . . .”
“Nonsense. It’s those odd quirks of yours that are endearing, not your very stellar qualities which I respect and admire. That could get tedious . . .”
“You mean, boring?” Damia suggested, eyeing him speculatively.
“No, tedious, because then I’d have to watch everything I said and did, trying to be equally respectable and admirable.”
Damia’s eyes widened in protest. “But you are respected and admired.”
“By you?” His soft voice was entreating and his look made her melt.
“I think,” she said in a deliberate way, playing with the long fingers that held one of her hands captive, “that I have always admired and respected you, Afra. You always listened to me, even when I was a baby. You always made me feel as if you had time for no one else in the Tower.”
“That’s true enough, love.”
Damia Page 31
