“No, sir.” She wondered where this change of
subject would lead.
“It was originally Beltane,” Tarik informed
her. `The first settlers there many centuries ago claimed to be
descendants of the Druids of Old Earth. The twin volcanoes erupting
at each solstice reminded them of the ancient Beltane fires once
lit on Earth, and so they named the planet. It was later corrupted
to Belta.”
“I’ve never heard that story before,” Narisa
said.
“You wouldn’t know of it. It’s not part of
the approved’ history that the Races are taught. Change history and
you change reality.”
“I’ve never heard of these Druid people,
either.” Narisa was becoming angry at what he was suggesting.
“Of course not,” he told her slyly. “Some of
them were telepaths. Their descendants were forced to leave Belta
after the Act of Banishment, and a new Race settled the planet. A
Race with no unfortunate tendency toward telepathy.”
A deep silence followed Tarik’s last
words.
“So we come back to the birds.” Narisa
finally found her voice again.
“And to the fact that we are in the Empty
Sector, on an unknown planet where Jurisdiction laws do not
apply.”
“I see. This has all been a lecture, some
kind of lesson for me.”
“Make of it what you will. Think about what
I’ve said. Keep an open mind and follow your instincts, not the
rules you were taught at the Capital.” He caught her chin in one
hand, holding her face steady to look directly into her eyes. “How
very young you are, Narisa. How innocent.”
“I am twenty-six years old,” she
declared.
“And I am thirty-two, and a thousand years
older than you in experience.” He released her and stood up. “It’s
time to go.”
“Go where?”
“Where duty calls, of course. To find a place
where we can communicate with the Capital, if such a place exists
here. Fill the water container, Lieutenant. We may need it later.
I’ll take the food and the tool kit.”
“Are you well enough to travel?” she asked,
watching him rub at his ribs.
“Almost completely well, thanks to your good
care and the bird’s medicine. There is just a little pain in my
side, and that will disappear soon. Ready? Then follow me.”
Narisa had no quarrel with the direction he
had chosen. He headed downstream, and that made good sense. A
stream was likely to run into a river eventually, and a river into
a lake or sea. If there were intelligent beings on this world,
chances were they would inhabit areas near water. So said the
Service manual written for those who visited unknown planets.
Narisa had memorized it, as she had memorized everything given to
her to study during her training. She had an excellent memory, and
was proud of her ability to recall the most obscure details. That
was one reason why she was such a fine navigator. Even Tarik said
she was the best he had ever known.
She frowned, thinking of the other things he
had said. She had been aware that there existed a large body of
knowledge to which she, along with most other people, had not been
given access. It had never bothered her because she had not needed
any of it to do her job. Immersed in navigational charts,
astrophysical computations, and the latest course-setting
instruments, she had convinced herself that what she did not know
was unimportant. Now she began to wonder about all the things she
had never learned.
She blew an errant lock of hair out of her
eyes. While it was not as unbearably hot under the trees as it had
been on the desert, it was still warm, and much more humid.
Delicate red-winged insects darted here and there. She swatted at
several, feeling irritable. She did not want to think about
uncomfortable subjects. She wanted to get safely back to the
Capital and be reassigned to another spaceship, to the life she had
prepared for and accepted.
And enjoyed?
a small voice in her
heart asked relentlessly. No, she told herself, enjoyment had
nothing to do with it. She was pledged to duty. The uneasy question
was Commander Tarik’s fault. He had a way of shaking her resolution
with his artfully insidious suggestions.
Tarik. A walking puzzle. A man from an
important family who had attained high rank in the Service, who
freely spoke treasonous thoughts. Under normal circumstances she
would have continued to avoid him as she had done aboard ship. And
yet, thrown together as they were, he became more and more
interesting, the disturbing things he said only increasing his
peculiar appeal. As for the way he had touched her as though she
belonged to him, she could not think of that without beginning to
blush again while her blood raced through her veins.
She watched him just ahead of her as he led
the way along the stream. He paused, holding back a stocky bush so
Narisa could squeeze between it and the edge of the water.
“Have you noticed the odd assortment of
growing things?” he asked.
“No, I haven’t.” Squeezing by the bush meant
brushing against Tarik. When she slipped a little on a patch of
mud, he caught her arm to steady her, drawing her closer. Narisa
caught a whiff of his body scent that had so dazzled her while she
had wrapped his broken ribs, a fragrance compounded of sunshine and
green leaves.
She pulled away from Tarik and stepped onto a
flat rock that overhung the stream. He joined her and stood looking
into the thick growth surrounding them.
“Look there,” he said, pointing. ‘That kind
of tree once grew on Earth, and those, too, I think. Those over
there are giant Demarian ferns, and that triangular bluish-green
plant is from Ceta. There are others I recognize from other
planets.” He named a few, and Narisa followed his pointing finger
to look at each in turn. Then he stood watching her
expectantly.
“How can they all be growing on one planet?”
she asked. When he did not answer at once, she found the
explanation herself. “It’s unlikely they would all grow here
naturally. Someone must have brought them here.”
“And?” He was watching her the way her
favorite teacher used to do, waiting until she worked out the
problem in her own mind and found the solution for herself.
“That means there are intelligent life forms
here.” She paused, looking at the tall trees. “Or once there were.
Those trees have been growing for a long time. But if the people
who planted them are still here, it means our chance of finding
someone with communications equipment is fairly good.”
“Can’t you just enjoy the journey?” he asked.
“Narisa, look around you. Are you blind and deaf?”
“I’ve been on guard, Commander Tarik.” That
was not entirely true. She had been thinking, and not paying much
attention to where they were going. It was the journey’s end that
interested her.
“Being on guard means being observant.” Tarik
caught her shoulders and pushed her to the edge of the rock. She
knew he was annoyed with her and briefly she thought he was going
to throw her into the stream, but instead he held her at the very
brink and made her look into the water. ‘Tell me what you see,” he
commanded.
“Water. And rocks. A few green things growing
in the water. That’s all,” she said stubbornly. But something
caught her eye. “Wait, what’s that? That silvery thing, there by
the round stone.”
“Fish. There are schools of them in every
quiet pool,” Tarik told her, and turned her to look elsewhere. “See
there? It’s one of those creatures we saw the first evening, the
little furry thing with six legs. I don’t know what it is, but it
seems harmless enough. And see that vine draped over the stream
from one tree to another? We could use those yellow flowers for
drinking cups, except they’re too beautiful to destroy. And the
blue butterflies, have you noticed them? I’ve seen at least a
dozen.”
“I haven’t noticed any,” Narisa admitted.
“Open your eyes, woman. This is an incredibly
lovely world. I’m beginning to think someone deliberately planted
it this way.”
“Who? For what purpose? To trick us? Don’t
forget, we are in the Empty Sector, Commander Tarik.”
“I haven’t forgotten. I’m on guard as much as
you are, but that doesn’t stop me from delighting in the things I
see here.”
“There might be large predators.” Narisa eyed
the thick forest before them. “Or the birds might come back.”
“I hope they do. Let’s stop for a while,
shall we?” Tarik dropped to sit on the rock, sliding off the straps
of the packages he had been carrying over one shoulder. He pulled
off his boots, rolled up his trouser legs and stuck his feet into
the water. Then he took off his jacket and dumped it on top of his
boots. Narisa stood watching him while he fumbled at the safety
harness still wrapped about his ribs.
“You should leave that on for a few days,”
she said. “Just to be certain you have healed. That’s the sensible
thing to do.” When he did not answer, she reluctantly sat beside
him.
“Put your feet in,” he advised. “We’ve been
walking all morning. It’s refreshing.”
“Commander Tarik,” she began sternly. He
stopped her.
“No more commander or lieutenant,” he said
quietly but decisively. “On this world you are simply Narisa, and I
am Tarik.”
She absorbed that a moment or two,
considering the implications and trying not to notice the way the
sunlight played over the muscles of his shoulders and upper arms.
It took a great effort to stop looking at his sleek, hard body and
consider his words instead.
“You don’t believe we will be able to leave
here, do you?” she said at last. “What’s more, you don’t care.”
He said nothing. He was watching the water
flow across his bare feet and wriggling his toes in pleasure.
Narisa remembered her childhood, and wading in Beltan rivers. She
pulled off her own boots and stuck her feet into the stream beside
his.
‘This,” she stated, “is dereliction of duty.
We could both be court-martialed. We ought to be trying to find a
way home, not playing.”
“No one will ever know,” he promised. Then,
more seriously, “Narisa, you must understand, although we will keep
searching, it is possible we won’t find anyone here who can help
us. We might find those who will be our enemies. In either case, it
is unwise for us to quarrel. We will need to trust and depend on
each other, whatever happens.”
“I understand. It’s just that you are so
different now from the way you were on the
Reliance,
and you
won’t pay any attention to regulations. It’s as though you are
happy we’ve been marooned here.”
“I suppose I do appear to be different. I’m
certainly not pleased about the loss of all those lives on the
Reliance,
but there is nothing I can do to change what has
happened, and I see no point in scrupulous adherence to rules that
don’t apply here.
“Did you know this was to be my last voyage?”
Tarik heaved a sigh that might have come from inside his very soul.
“The truth is, I ought to have left the Service long ago. I’ve
always had an independent streak. One of my ancestors was an
anarchist who was punished for his crimes by being pushed out the
hatch of a prison ship into deep space without an air supply. My
family has become more respectable in the centuries since then, but
sometimes when I was naughty as a child, my father accused me of
being like that ancestor. I suppose I did inherit a need to go my
own way, and I have always been skeptical of anything I was told I
ought to believe without question. Those traits did not make me a
likely candidate for the Service, but somehow I managed to keep
myself under control and not cause scandal to my family. I would
have been captain of my own ship one day, but I’ve seen and heard
too much, in the Service and in the Assembly. My older brother is
also in the Service, and my father is a Member of the Assembly.
Whenever we were all at home, I listened to them talking together.
I want no part of Service, or Capital, or Assembly. Not any more.
I’d like to find a quiet world outside the Jurisdiction where I
could live, and someone to live with me, to be my companion.”
“A world like this one?” Narisa wasn’t
certain she could live on a world without the strict regulations
she was accustomed to after so many years in the Service. The
thought was frightening. How could people know what to do without
regulations to guide them? Yet somewhere deep inside, she felt
strangely excited by the idea.
“Well,” Tarik said with a crooked smile, “you
must admit this world is outside the Jurisdiction.”
He would want Suria to live with him, of
course, not Narisa. Beautiful, flame-haired Suria, with her
sensuous body and her sultry voice that could make the simplest
navigational instructions sound like an erotic invitation. Narisa
had met Suria when their duties had overlapped for one day so Suria
could fill her in on the eccentricities of
Reliance’s
navigational instruments. The woman had been friendly enough, but
she had made Narisa feel totally unfeminine and incompetent. No
wonder Tarik resented Narisa, considering what he’d had to give up
when Suria left the ship.
Narisa looked at Tarik. They sat shoulder to
shoulder, and he was staring into the stream, presenting his
profile to her. He had such sharp, clear-cut features, only
slightly blurred by three days’ growth of beard. Whereas Narisa was
partly in shadow, the orange sun shone directly on Tarik’s face,
and his shoulders and arms glowed with the golden light. Dark hair
grew on his forearms and chest, and his hands were long and
slender, and very strong. She remembered the touch of his hand on
her breast, and began to feel the same warmth she had felt
then.
He must have sensed her close observation,
for he turned his head suddenly. They gazed directly into each
other’s eyes for a long, breathless moment. Then Tarik bent toward
her. He did not have to move very far before his mouth lightly
touched hers, withdrew, and returned for a deeper kiss. Narisa sat
perfectly still, unable to respond.