by Jean Johnson
Evanna wasn’t used to being left alone with outsiders. She was always surrounded by people whenever strangers were present, whether it was assistants, lab workers, support services, or security personnel. I suppose Amanda has something to do, she allowed, lifting her chin a little as she moved forward. And Security will send someone here shortly, I’m sure. Besides, this is just a delivery. As soon as he hands over the isotope, I can have someone from Accounting pay him for his trouble.
She almost hadn’t spotted the package; it was white and gray, and tucked into the curve of his left arm, blending into the rest of the room and its view of the Moon. An odd, sudden thought wafted across her thoughts. I think I’m getting tired of everything being soothing, pastel shades of white and gray. I think I want more color in my life . . .
But isn’t color a distraction? Distractions were discouraged, because distractions weren’t productive. Evanna had been given the opportunity to explore her intellect; she knew she had an obligation to pay back all that the Lunar Intelligence Trust had done for her. So. No more wit-wandering.
Pulling her wayward thoughts back into order, Evanna lifted her chin a little more. “Thank you for delivering the isotope, Captain. If you’ll hold out the container, I’ll release you from the security cuff, and you can be on your way.”
His light brown eyes warmed with what looked like humor. They were very alive, flicking down over her plain white lab coat and the gray slacks visible beneath its mid-thigh hem. The rest of him looked like a molten copper statue, sculpted and still, but those eyes moved. So did his lips. “No.”
That checked her mid-stride. Fumbling to a stop, Evanna stared at him. Not only had her assistant deviated from procedure, leaving her alone with this courier who didn’t look like a courier should, he had . . . he had said no to her. No one said no to her. Not when she was in charge! “What do you mean, no? I ordered the isotope, I am paying for the isotope, and I shall receive the isotope. Hold out the security cuff so I may receive the goods I am purchasing.”
He shifted the arm cupping the oblong container, hitching it a little higher against his waist. Not protectively, just pointedly. “No.”
She stared back in confusion. “Why not? You can’t go around forever with my purchase shackled to your wrist. It’s mine!”
“No, I can’t. And no, I won’t. You will receive your goods,” he stated, his eyes flicking up over her hair, which she had pulled into its usual knot on the top of her head. A knot which she realized was coming loose, thanks to the unruly nature of the fine blonde strands. The corner of Captain Amariei’s mouth curved up. “In due time.”
Like her hair, this situation felt like it was coming loose when it should be neat and tidy. Evanna frowned at him. “Nonsense. You have no control over whether or not I receive my goods. I hold the personal access code, and the thumbprint to unlock it from your wrist.”
“Your delicate hand holds the lovely thumb meant for the scanner to read, yes . . . but the miners gave me the correct access code,” he corrected, smiling.
“Nonsense,” Evanna repeated. “Why would they do that?”
“Can I show you something?” the copper-clad man asked, gesturing with his free hand at the bank of triple-paned plexi windows.
Bemused by the non sequitur, Evanna moved across the conference room. He made room for her to pass by the end of the table, stepping up behind her as she faced the windows. This close, she could feel the chill of space seeping through the layers of tough, transparent material, despite the narrow vents blowing warm air up from the edge of the carpeting and the stark glow of the sunlight slanting in from the left. It reminded her of how fragile and precarious her existence was, how dependent she was upon the stout, sheltering, atmosphere-sealed walls of the compound for her survival.
The strange copper-clad man stepped up close behind her, forcing her to edge closer to the windows, until it was either risk chilling herself on the white-enameled grid framing the view or let him touch her. As it was, she could feel the heat of his body warming hers. Warmer than the sun, and more enveloping than the air of the vents toying with the loosened wisps of her hair.
“What . . . what exactly are you trying to show me?” Evanna asked, firming her voice so that she could retake control of the situation. “That you come from a culture that has no appreciation for the boundaries of personal space?”
She felt him lean in closer, felt his body brushing against the back of her lab coat. Felt the soft heat of his cheek barely brushing against hers. “I’m trying to show you a heavenly body.”
His right arm slid around her waist, fingers splaying lightly over her belly. Evanna sucked in a sharp breath, startled by the uninvited, unexpected touch. No one touched her there. The hand, the shoulder, those places yes, but not her stomach. She backed up instinctively, but that bumped her spine against his chest, and her backside against his thighs. He wasn’t that much taller than her, and a corner of her mind catalogued the way their torsos fit together. An odd comparison flitted across her mind. Like two complementary electron orbits bonding chemically together . . .
Don’t be silly! This is a distraction, she reminded herself sharply. Distractions detract from all the good I can do��Ooh . . .
Somehow, without dropping the oval container from the crook of his elbow, Captain Amariei had managed to cup the fingers of his hand around her left hip bone, pulling them closer together. Those fingertips had managed to find nerve endings Evanna hadn’t known about. She certainly didn’t expect the sympathetic tingling that zinged out to her navel and dropped straight to the bottom of her pelvic girdle, making her clamp her thighs together. The action didn’t contain the feeling, but rather enhanced it somehow.
The feel of his right hand lifting, gliding up, and brushing against her white-draped breasts distracted her further. His arm didn’t linger—she might have had cause to protest if it had—but instead moved to gesture at the shades of gray before them.
“Every single day of your life is surrounded by the dullest rocks of the Moon,” he murmured. “Barren. Dead. Lifeless. Black and white. You have been told over and over by your colleagues that your mind needs to be equally black and white, focused solely upon your work. In fact, you have been told this so much and so often since being handed over to the Lunar Intelligence Trust that you have come to believe them. You have been told over and over that there are only black, white, and shades of gray, to the point where you now refuse to believe in colors like red and green, gold and blue . . . things they don’t want for you. Every single day, you are told how important your work is, and how you don’t dare let anything distract you. Isn’t this true?”
Evanna craned her neck, pulling away just far enough so she could frown at him. “How did you . . . ?”
“How did I know? Ask me instead, how do I know what your favorite story was as a child, back when you were still allowed to live a life full of color and potential?” he murmured. His light brown eyes glowed with an almost copper warmth. “Do you remember why you liked that story? Do you even remember what story you liked best? Or has everything you ever liked in your young life been shoved and exiled so far away, it’s now farther away than the Earth itself in that empty, barren sky?”
His questions were confusing her. Evanna blinked and tried to gather her scattered thoughts. She wanted to demand the release of the isotope, knew she should demand it, but his questions about her childhood disrupted her thoughts. So did the return of his right arm, which he wrapped around her ribs just below her breasts. Old memories surfaced, making her blink and look out at the barren stretch of powdered grit and sun-bleached stone.
My favorite childhood tale . . . I haven’t thought of childhood tales in . . . in twenty years. I haven’t had time to think of such foolish things, she told herself, shaking her head. Or rather, she tried to shake her head. Captain Victor Amariei pressed his cheek against hers, stilling her denial even as he soothed her distress with his next words.
“Your moth
er told me which one was your favorite. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. She read it to you every night when you were little. You used to have fifteen different books of it, too—real books, with illustrations painted on their pages in the fullest of colors.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see his mouth quirk in a smile.
“She said your favorite part was when Snow White was lost in the forest. You always stated that Snow White should have been happy to be among all those trees, not frightened . . . remember? Do you remember why you thought she should be happy?”
Overwhelmed by his odd embrace—by the first embrace she could remember since she was a child—Evanna licked her lips. “I . . . wanted to be Snow White. I wanted to . . . to walk among a whole forest of trees. To go to the Motherworld and see and hear and . . . smell everything.”
All she could see was barren lunar rocks, and all she could smell was . . . No, not all she could smell was the same slightly dusty, recycled scent of the ventilated air. Evanna realized she could also smell something warm, something slightly soapy and a little musky. The scent of the copper-clad man holding her. Unless it was a chemical that she needed to pay attention to in the labs, or the food on her plate, Evanna couldn’t remember the last time she had paid attention to smells. Certainly not how a particular man smelled.
“I see that even then, you were a very smart little girl,” the courier who wasn’t a courier murmured. “Books and videos and holograms aren’t the same as the real thing . . . and books and videos and holograms are all too easily shoved aside and locked away by the people who try to control you.”
“They’re not controlling me,” she countered, feeling the need to assert that fact. “I am here of my own free will.”
“I read your employment contract.”
That wasn’t expected, either. Puzzled by the change in topic, Evanna twisted to look at Captain Amariei. The movement caused the canister to drop, since it dragged his fingertips along with the twisting of her hip. As the canister dangled on its security chain, she ignored the bouncing of the lump against her thigh, in favor of demanding, “You read my contract? Why? And how?”
“By Terran law, you are legally entitled to a minimum of three weeks of paid vacation every single year . . . and yet according to the work logs of this lovely little prison . . . you haven’t once left the Lunar Ceramics Institute.” His eyes, alive as they were, pinned her in place. “Not in the ten years you have worked here. You earn more in a single year than I can earn hauling cargo around the solar system in five, even with the best of cargos . . . but not once have you bought a shuttle ticket, or booked a hotel room, or traveled to see in person the forests you longed to visit as a child. And I’ll bet you every single atom in this can of bismuth that your colleagues and superiors in the Lunar Intelligence Trust were the ones who convinced you that you didn’t need to go anywhere.”
Evanna flushed at his words. “It’s not that I don’t need or want to go elsewhere. It’s that I’m needed here. And I’ll have that can of bismuth from you, or I’ll—”
“You’ll what, have me thrown off the Moon? With your precious can still attached?” he said mockingly. “You know as well as I do that you specified the isotope should be delivered in a catalytically encrypted container. If it is removed from my wrist by force, or by anything but the right code as well as your thumbprint—a code which you do not have—then according to what I was told, the liquid bismuth in this can gets mixed with the compressed oxygen in the outer shell, turning this stuff into a very expensive version of a fire-starter. Until you can separate out the pure metal again, it won’t be good for anything involving the extremely high temperatures of the ceristeel ceramics manufacturing process your LUCI requires it to endure.”
Evanna stared at him. “You’re just a courier! How do you know all this chemistry?”
“You don’t have to be the pawn of a brain trust to have the brains to spare, Doctor,” he drawled. “I just did a little research in my free time before I came here. My point is, you designed the security system to avoid risking the sample being contaminated by industrial espionage, but the miners gave me the correct access code. That means I can make whatever demands I like, and either you fulfill them, or you wait another eight months before they can mine and refine enough of the ore under their current production methods to send your way again.”
“You’re trying to blackmail me?” she demanded. She craned her neck again, this time peering at the black bubbles in the ceiling. Why isn’t Security here yet? Why haven’t they leaped in here to rescue me from this . . . this . . .
“Actually, I prefer to think of it as ‘rescuing’ you.” Cupping her cheek with his free hand, he brushed his thumb over her lips, stilling her next protest. “I want three things from you, in exchange for the correct release code. Three simple things.”
“What do you want?” Evanna asked warily, wondering why his thumb should be causing the same electrified feelings his fingers had on her hip bone.
Warm brown eyes gleaming, he murmured, “The first is a kiss, here and now.”
Disgusted that he was interested in something she had been told over and over was nothing more than simple, crass, useless biology, Evanna wrinkled her nose. She did want that isotope, and she didn’t want to have to wait eight months to get it. But she also didn’t want to commit herself until she knew the full extent of this blackmailer’s demands. “And the second thing?”
“Oh, no. First, the kiss. Nothing less will unseal these lips,” he murmured, smiling.
His thumb brushed her lips again, confusing her. Oh, come on. Evanna chided herself. It’s not like you haven’t kissed anyone in the past. The very distant past. She vaguely remembered kissing her mother at the end of each bedtime story, though it had been a good twenty years. Sighing, she puckered her lips and leaned in, bumping them against his cheek. “There. Your kiss. And you’re a blackmailer, not a rescuer, Captain Amariei. If you are a captain.”
His mouth quirked up at the corner. “I am a captain, but that is not a kiss. And I will rescue you, as you will see.”
“Rescue me from what?” Evanna demanded.
“This place. This is like that other fairy tale, the one about the princess whose father dumped her on the top of a glass hill. Your father said you didn’t like that one so much, though your little sister asked for it often enough . . . You’ve been isolated from everything and everyone for too many years, Evanna,” he told her. “Including that forest you used to long for.”
A nudge turned her around to face the stark, lifeless moonscape beyond the triple-thick windows.
“Trees don’t grow on glass hills. Nothing grows up here, because life needs color instead of black-and-white. Life needs freedom and fresh air. Life needs everything you don’t have . . . because you’ve been told over and over that you need to stay on your precious glass hill. Entirely alone, up here.”
One moment she was all but wrapped in the warmth of his unorthodox, uninvited embrace. The next, he stepped back, abandoning her to the cold, impersonal air of the conference room. She couldn’t feel the warmth in the air puffing up from the vents, or the heat of the sunlight streaming in from the left, an unrelenting part of the weeks-long lunar day. All Evanna could feel was alone, just as he claimed. Alone and bereft. An electron torn from its rightful path and sent careening without control through the interstitial void between atomic orbits.
That is a silly piece of mental imagery, she scolded herself after a moment, striving to collect her dignity. You are not a free radical! Free radicals are dangerous! They cause trouble, and . . . and . . .
The view of the crater, stark and lifeless, mocked her. Barren. Lifeless. A glass hill on which nothing could grow. She remembered that fairy tale, too, as well as her favorite. Evanna hadn’t liked it because she had always thought the father of the princess had been unnecessarily cruel, abandoning her on top of that hill with nothing but three apples for company.
She had always li
ked this view, since it was the largest section of windows in the complex, but the transparency of the tough plexi sheltering her from the vacuum of space was too glasslike now for comfort. Worse, this not-a-courier captain was right, now that she thought of it. Every time she had made a comment about taking a vacation elsewhere over the past ten years—no, the past twenty years, Evanna realized—the others in the Intelligence Trust had convinced her out of it, often coming up with a solid, logical, school- or work-related reason why she should stay.
I do love my work, she admitted silently. I didn’t mind staying . . . after a while, honesty prompted her to add. And I did use my holoprojection programs to simulate being in a forest . . . but I did long to see a forest for real.
I still do. Now more than ever, now that I’ve been reminded of everything I’ve been missing . . .
Turning, she half expected the copper-clad captain to be gone. He was only a couple meters away, lounging against the side of the long, black conference table like a sober statue. His hand cradled the canister of bismuth against his hip, silently reminding her of why he was still there. For one wild, irresponsible moment, she was tempted to toss aside her quest to explore the potentials of adding diamagnetic repulsion properties to military starship hulls. Only for a moment.
I’m not abandoning my work, she asserted silently, staring at him. I’m not! But . . . I am going to take a vacation. A real one. On Earth, no less. And soon. I’ll do it very soon.
He hefted the canister, balancing it on his palm. “Care to try again? Or do you not want this after all?”
“I already kissed you once, Captain Amariei,” Evanna pointed out, flustered. “Is that your second demand?”
“That wasn’t a real kiss. You’ll have to give me a real one to know what my second request is . . . and you should call me Victor. You are about to kiss me, after all,” he added. His somber appearance seemed to melt away as he smiled. The copper statue was alive once more, and though he wasn’t even within arm’s length of her, she felt warm again. Warm all over.
