Chains of Loss (23 page)

***

They eased into the cave.  Derek had fired his probe horizontally to find it; it faced out over the escarpment, and they’d had to move over an uneven slope to get to it.  They were probably safe.

He didn’t want to talk.  He wanted to sleep, to let his wounds have the time they needed to heal.  He didn’t really care about waking up, but something needed to be addressed.  He settled in the back of the cave and pulled out the shrouds.  It would take both of them for this.

“Rathiela, would you mind coming over here?”  She complied, her hips swaying.  “Turn around, please.”  He studied her body, taking measurements. 

“Rathiela, do you like those clothes?” 

“No, linita; I do not.”

“Why do you wear them?”

She shrugged.  “I thought you considered it proper.  If you wish, I will discard them.”

“I – er, what?  No, I – you don’t have anything else, do you?”

“No, linita.”

“Could you show me a range of motion?”  She hesitated, so he clarified.  “Show me how you can move.  How flexible you are.”

The answer was immediately apparent:  The taerlae was
amazingly
flexible.  He focused on measurements and tried not to ogle her too much.

He needed organic fibers – or raw carbon.  Rathiela’s current clothing wasn’t even close to enough material to make anything from.  He also didn’t know styles…

He pinged Mycah with an invitation.  She would know.

He entered the simulation first and set up some mannequins with Rathiela’s proportions.  As he waited, he added some basic styles, starting with the clothing Mycah was wearing.  He was debating a New Athenian style when Mycah popped into the simulation behind him.

He turned around, smiling.  “Hey, I…I…”

A wave of red was emanating from Mycah’s avatar, spreading out to consume the entire simulation.  The avatar gave him a calm stare.  She was seven meters tall and studded with spikes.

“You what?” she said, flames licking out between her lips as she spoke. 

“I – was just…”

“Yes?”

“Stupid?”

“
OH?  HOW SO?”
  She muttered the words, but they came out as a roar shook the entire simulation in a manner that shouldn’t actually have been possible.

The words came out in a rush.  “I thought that what she was wearing was bad but we don’t have any other clothes so I wanted to make her something more to wear so that she’d be comfortable and modest but I don’t know what taerlae clothes look like and I was hoping you’d be able to show me some styles to work from so I don’t make something inappropriate or screw up!”

“DO WHATEVER. I DON’T CARE.”

And she was gone.  Derek clutched his chest for a moment.  What had brought
that
on? 

[Wow.  What did you
do
?]

Sha – uh, Mycah’s Shadow?

[Yep.]  A figure flickered in his vision for a moment, but didn’t linger.  [You okay?]

I’m fine.  What just happened?

[I really don’t know.  You don’t want to talk to me, she’s not responding to my questions…I managed to piggyback in here.  That was one hell of a dissonance, by the way.]

What did she see?

[I only caught some glimpses, and I’m not sure I really should tell you anyway.  But her avatar looked completely normal to her.]

I shouldn’t have left her alone last night.

[Guess not.]

Would you mind manifesting?

[Not one bit.  I’m having some trouble, though, so leave it be.  Could I just lurk a little?]

Sure.

Derek returned to the task at hand.  Normal New Athenian women’s styles would have to do.  Silk was just proteins; they could be derived from available plants.  He upgraded the material quality, adding woven carbon allotropes, then ran the simulation through a ballistics test.  When it didn’t score as well as he wanted, he made some modifications and ran the test again.

He couldn’t count on anything to stop the ‘biting’ phenomenon that Mycah and Calarto had explained to him.  Normal weapons were another matter.  By the time he was done, the simulated clothes were more than twice as durable as they’d need to be to stop a crossbow bolt, but wouldn’t slow her down in the slightest.

He slipped back into real time.  Rathiela was still stretching.  “Okay.  That’s enough.  I know what to do now, but I need you to do something.”

“Yes, linita?”  She pulled off her top in a most distracting manner.

“I, uh, need you to go get me some plants.”

“Plants?”  Her face creased in confusion.  “Which…oh.  Laktiri berries?”

Mycah coughed.  She had an odd expression on her face, which was bright red; Derek waited to make sure she wasn’t choking before continuing.  “No, nothing in particular, just plants.  Leaves, branches, anything.”

“If…you need, linita.”  She turned and strutted out of the cave.  Derek watched her go, then turned to Mycah.

“What does that word mean, anyway?”

“Laktiri berries are for men who can’t – ”

“No, that one she keeps saying.  Linita.”

She snorted.  “Beloved.”

“Huh.  Affectionate sort, isn’t she?”

Mycah looked at him like had two heads.  “You don’t get it, do you?”

“Get what?”

“She’s here to be your lover.”

He smiled and nodded.  It took a moment for him to realize what she meant.  “You mean – physically?”

“What
else
would I mean?”

“Why would she do that?  We hardly know each other!”

“You saved her kin-group.  That means they’re bound to you; if you were another taerlae, they’d go their separate ways but come whenever you sent word, rename themselves after you or something you did, maybe even found a new tribe under your leadership if you impressed them enough.  You’d be expected to lead the tribe, and, if compatible, marry one of them when you reached mating age.”

“But I’m not a taerlae.”

“So they adapt.  They’re going their separate ways but they’re trying to do you a favor first; if they see you again, they’ll do you another if they can.  They might even form a new tribe and name it after you, but they won’t get around to that for another fifty to a hundred years.”

“Where’s Rathiela fit in?”

“She’s a special case.  They gave her to you as your mate.”

“Don’t I get a say in this?”

“Yes.  You could just let her hang around for the five to ten years it’ll take her to die.”

“Excuse me?”

Mycah sighed.  “She’s a taernoscai.”

“What do you mean?”

“A taerlae her age shouldn’t look like she does.  She’s too young.  She looks mature, but she deferred to Calarto, who couldn’t have been over two centuries.”

“Wait.  How old is she?”

“I am one hundred and thirty-eight years old,” Rathiela said, ducking into the cave with a double armload of dead branches.  Mycah glared at her.

“Have I offended you, Mycah?  You said you – ”

“I’m
not
.”  She cut into the taerlae language.  Rathiela shrugged and responded; Derek didn’t understand a word, but he closed his eyes.  The topless taerlae was remarkably distracting when she shrugged. 

“Do you mind?” He asked.  “If you’d like to keep talking, go ahead, but let me have those plants.”

Their argument continued as he fed the bundle into the shrouds, but he tried to tune it out as long as they weren’t speaking a language he understood.  Instead, he focused on refining carbon and silk from the material he had to work with.  He frowned.

“Rathiela, I need more than this.  Just one more load should do it.” 

The taerlae nodded, but spouted out another phrase at Mycah, who gasped and flinched in response.  Derek shook his head.

“What’s going on?”

“None of your business.”

“Wrong.  You two are fighting and I have a non-human woman who thinks she’s my unexpected wife.  How sprecked up is the situation?  What’s a taernoscai?”

She glared at him.  “Some call them half-elves, but that’s an insult.  Rathiela’s diseased.  She ages too fast; for her kind, she’s not really an adult.”

“And?”

She took a deep breath.  “She…her people don’t…she’s way too young to mate.”

Derek shrugged.  “Okay.  Kids are always precocious.  I’m still not sure what’s going on, so please continue.”

“Taerlae are…different.  They barely distinguish between genders most of their lives.  They don’t even
care
about sex until they’re five, six hundred years old.  That’s when they actually start to look…”

“Mature?” Derek offered.

“Sexy.”

“So she’s
really
precocious.”

“They spend their last century settling down with one mate, have a few dozen children, then die.  Judging by her hair, she’s been in that stage of her life for at least six years, but she’s just a kid – and she was locked up with a bunch of others her age; none of them were valid mates.”

“I’m still not seeing exactly what’s wrong now that she’s free.”

“She’s probably been desperate for about six years, but her own kind won’t touch her.  You’re the first available male she’s met.  If you
do
sleep with her, she’ll bond with you for the rest of her life.  Probably five to eight years.”

“It’s that bad, is it?”

She nodded.  “I’ve seen others like her.  It never ends well.”

“Then we should cure her.”

“Can you really do that?”

Derek thought about it a moment, then nodded.

“How long would it take?”

“Probably weeks, with just the shroud.  But…”

“But?”

Derek ran through a number of scenarios.  “There’s too many unknowns here. I don’t know her species at all and the equipment I have isn’t enough to learn what I’d really need to know.  That’s why we probably can’t give her cybernetics; they were made for humans.  My ship has the equipment we’d need to set up a nanobath; that would both teach us what we need and allow us to cure her, but that’s inaccessible right now, and we’d need to meet more of her kind.  But that’s the same kind of technology that’s being used to make those Kharai.  Probably.”

“So we take her to Kaitopolis?”

He nodded.  “And then we cure her.”

“Even if – I mean, aren’t you attracted to her?”

“Well, she’s
is
aesthetically pleasing.”

“She won’t look like that if you cure her.”  Mycah looked him in the eyes.  “She won’t be attracted to you at all.”

“But it’ll save her life.”

Rathiela reentered the cave with another load.  “Save whose life?”

“Yours,” Derek said, accepting the stack and feeding it into the combined shrouds.  “Mycah told me you’ve got a…condition.  You’re not like the other…taerlae.”

Rathiela nodded.  “Yes, linita.  It’s why I came with you.”

“Well, I should be able to – how to say this – make you more like another member of your species.  Cure you.”  He extracted a finished brassiere from the industrial shroud.  “Here, try this on.  It’s a little bit hot.”

She accepted it, wide-eyed.  “If you didn’t have such powerful magic, I would not believe you, linita.”

The blouse finished and he pulled it loose as well.  “It’s not really magic.  Just tools.”

“As you say, linita.  It matters little to me.”

“You don’t have to call me that.  I don’t plan to…”  He lost track of what he was saying as she laced up the front of the bra.  It fit her perfectly.  “I’m…not really looking for a mate.”

She smiled at him; her teeth looked slightly sharper than a human’s.  “Your kind always say such things.  Why do they lie so?”

“I’m not lying.  I’m really not looking.”

“You already have me, linita.”

“By your peoples’ customs, maybe, but not by mine.  I saved you because it was the right thing to do; I don’t need you to do anything in response.  You don’t have to – to mate with me.”

She raised her eyebrows.  “What your people say and what they do have heard of each other, but never met.  You rescued me.  You find me appealing.  I find you appealing.  Why do we call the road a maze?”

A transmission hit him.  [She’s right.  You saved the maiden in distress; what did you
think
happened next?]

Shut up!

“Rathiela – I’m not looking to sleep with you.  Your condition is killing you and I want to cure you.”

“I heard.  But for that we must go to Kaitopolis.  It is a very long road from here to there, and many things may happen on the way.”

This was the tricky part.  “Do you want me to cure you?  It will save your life.”