GABRIEL (The Innerworld Affairs Series, Book 4) (9 page)

The answer came to him instantly. Her mother's culture was one of those. Apparently Aster had passed on her personal values to Shara. He had always been a firm believer in each person having the right to practice his or her own lifestyle, as long as it didn't overlap his.

Since he was not looking for a long-term relationship with a female, he would be certain not to initiate any further physical contact with Shara. Such a relationship carried responsibilities that would interfere with his studies regardless of who the female was, but an attachment with an irrational creature like Shara would undoubtedly tie his brain in knots.

It wasn't as if he
had
to have a female. There were plenty of times in the past when he remained celibate for months on end without giving it much thought. His hunger for knowledge had always been the strongest driving force in his life.

This would simply have to be another one of those periods of celibacy, in spite of the fact that he couldn't remember ever feeling the need to make physical contact with a woman the way he did with Shara. Though he had promised to curb his tactile impulses, he hadn't even known he had any. Until he met Shara, he had never experienced such strong urges to put his hands on another person.

Though the incident was entirely her fault, he supposed it would be up to him to ease the tension between them before they set off on their journey.

As docking time neared, he knew he could no longer put off making the apologies that he assumed she required before they could go back to communicating with one another. When she didn't answer her door, he followed a hunch and pressed the control panel. The door opened to his touch, verifying she had already vacated the sleeper and canceled the inhabited code.

Within seconds, he retrieved his satchel and headed for the deboarding area. Several crew members were there, preparing for the all-clear to open the gates, but none of them had seen Shara. Deciding this was the best place to waylay her, he waited. And waited.

The mailship docked, the gates opened, and most of the crew disembarked, but Shara had not yet appeared. Suddenly that problem became critical when he caught sight of four black-uniformed men striding toward the gangway. He didn't need any special talents to know they were coming for Shara and the tempometer.

Chapter 4

Inside one of the emptied cargo holds, Shara considered making the time-hop from within the ship rather than risk running into Gabriel. The problem with that was that she was at least twenty kilometers from where she wanted to arrive—near the administrative buildings in First Province—and she had no idea if any transportation would have been available from this point back then. Besides that, she'd always had a slight difficulty with her sense of direction.

When she guessed that sufficient time had passed for Gabriel to have left the ship in search of her, she headed toward the deboarding area. Her dismay was obvious as she saw the one she wished to avoid striding toward her, pulling his floating satchel behind him.

"It's nice to see you, too," Gabriel said sarcastically. "But, believe me, I am the least of your problems." He grasped her by the elbow and pushed her back the way she had come. When she balked, he told her, "There's a security team right behind me. Guess who they're looking for?"

"Drek!
I'm going to have to hop from here then."

"You mean
we're
going to have to hop from here," he corrected her. "But only if you make it fast." He glanced behind him then gave her another nudge forward.

Shara quickly led him down two passageways and back to the hold.

"Is this where you were hiding for the last hour?" he asked as she secured the door.

Ignoring him, she pulled the tempometer belt out of her bag and snapped it around her waist. She had already preset the program so that all she had to do was implement it. From Lantana's notes, she understood that anything she was holding would time-hop with her, so she tightly clutched her bag in her left hand and worked the tempometer with her right.

Gabriel watched her finger trace the beveled edge of one of the large crystals on her belt. He was about to question why she was wasting time when the front of the glowing stone flopped open and he realized he was looking at the tempometer. As Shara took a step away from him, he instinctively pulled her into his arms and grasped the handle of his satchel.

A firm knock against the sleeper door alerted Shara that the security team had probably found her. She couldn't send them a suggestion and concentrate on escape at the same time. She had no choice but to time-hop immediately and take the professor with her.

"Let's go!" Gabriel ordered.

Shara moved the tiny switch beneath her finger from left to right three times then held her breath.

The knocking increased to pounding as someone called out, "Security! Open the door!"

Panic gripped Shara as seconds passed and nothing happened. Suddenly she felt as though they'd been hit by a wall of energy that hurled them across the room. But they were no longer
in
the room. In fact, they didn't seem to be anywhere at all.

She clung to Gabriel as they and their baggage seemed suspended in a black void. As abruptly as they had arrived there, they were slammed by another force that sent them spinning through a tunnel of illuminated, swirling colors. A deafening, high-pitched squeal sent needles of pain into her mind as they tumbled over and over within the eerie kaleidoscope.

Just when Shara was certain they were either going to die or be driven insane from the noise, their bodies slowed to a gentle float and the squeal quieted to the tinkling of wind chimes. She remembered how that sound had accompanied Lantana's appearance and hoped it meant they were coming to the end of the time-hop. A moment later, she felt solid ground beneath her boots.

A blast of frigid wind greeted them. Wherever... or
whenever
they were, it was ice cold, and there was no sign of inhabitance. Snow covered the hilly ground and icicles hung from barren trees. It made no sense. Even if they had arrived in the winter season, winters in the First Province were mild and rarely yielded more than a few snow flurries on the coldest days. Only seconds had passed, yet Shara could already feel her toes going numb.

With chattering teeth, she looked up at Gabriel. "What do you th-th-think?"

"I think we're going to freeze to death if we just stand here. Maybe you'd better take us back and recheck your programming."

She hadn't realized how much his body had been protecting hers until he released her and moved away. Her hands trembled as she tried to reverse what she had done. "It's not responding, and I'm af-f-fraid I'm g-g-going to t-t-touch the wrong thing the way I'm sh-sh-shivering."

Gabriel shook his head with a sigh. "All right. Give me a minute." As he lowered his satchel to the ground and opened it, he asked, "Do you have any idea where we are?"

She rubbed her arms and stepped in place to keep her blood circulating. "According to Lantana's n-n-notes, we sh-sh-should be exactly where we were, only in a d-d-different time p-p-period." She watched him remove several squares of silver material and two short metal poles from his bag. With a flick of his wrist, the two poles telescoped out to several feet in length. Within a matter of minutes, he had constructed a small tent with an inflated mattress for a base. Before her eyes, the silver turned white and was effectively camouflaged against the snow.

Gabriel was digging something else out of his satchel when a loud roar echoed around them. With the howling wind blowing gusts of snow in her face, it took Shara a moment to locate the source of the beastly sound. Less than a few hundred feet away, atop a high rise, a bulky creature tipped back its head and roared again. Another roar, then another answered the first as several more dark shapes lined the horizon.

They were unlike anything Shara had ever seen, with their squat bodies and long horns curving upward out of the sides of their heads. Shaggy brown hair concealed the legs and face entirely.

"Wartbulls?
Don't move a muscle!" Gabriel ordered Shara as he slowly straightened and faced the animals. "They may only be—" He didn't bother to complete his sentence as the pack of animals charged down the hill. "Get behind me!"

She dashed to his back as fast as her frozen feet allowed. Staring at the animals, she flung a mental order at them to stop then sent an image of them turning around but neither method had any effect on the primitive creatures.

Gabriel was braced with legs apart and both hands clasped around the grip of a paralyzer rod. Choosing the animal in the forefront, he pointed the weapon and fired. The red beam hit the beast between the horns. It stumbled, momentarily confusing the others in its pack as they slid to a halt around their leader. A few seconds later, however, the leader recommenced its roaring charge.

Gabriel had no choice. He increased the setting and fired again before the animals could close in on them. One creature after another collapsed in a hairy heap as they were hit by the lethal blue light. In seconds the snow was littered with carcasses.

Shara's violent trembling was now caused as much by fear as the cold. She had never felt so utterly helpless in her life. "Th-they would have k-k-killed us," she muttered.

Gabriel didn't waste time responding. He shoved his satchel and her bag into the tent then transferred the antigravity device to the outside. "Get in and sit still while I move us away from here. Drek knows what sort of creature will come to prey on our welcoming committee."

Shara hurried to do as he said and instantly felt some relief once she was out of the icy wind. She was surprised to discover that the material was transparent from this side. The entire tent abruptly rose, tipping her sideward, but she tried to remain as still as possible after that.

For several minutes, Gabriel guided the floating shelter until he reached a spot where the wind was partially blocked by high snowdrifts. Shara wondered how he was managing to tolerate the cold so much better than she, but when he lowered the tent and crawled in, she realized he was merely more stoical. His lips and fingers had turned blue and his hair and clothing were covered with frost.

His entire body was shaking as he began rooting through his satchel again. "He-he-heater," he whispered, placing a crystal ball in the center of the tent. Instantly it emitted a soft golden glow. Seeing him place his hands close to the orb, Shara did the same and sighed as a mild warmth seeped into her stiff fingers. She barely began to thaw when he took several small metal boxes out of his satchel and crawled toward the tent opening.

Grasping his arm, she asked, "What are you doing now?"

"Have to... s-s-set b-b-barriers to k-k-keep animals away." As he spoke, two of the boxes fell from his trembling hands.

Shara picked them up and held out her hand for the other two. "Give them to me and tell me how to do it." When he hesitated, she added, "It's very clear that I need your help, Professor. You will be of little value to me if you're frozen to death."

He gave her the two boxes and pointed out the activator button. "Just p-p-push them... under the s-s-snow... at the f-f-four corners of the tent. And hurry."

She rolled her eyes at him. "No kidding!" Opening the tent flap as little as possible, she went back out into the cold. The snow was packed so hard she had to use the boxes to dig out holes to set them in the way Gabriel had instructed. By the time the fourth barrier projector was activated, she was again shivering from head to toe.

Crawling back inside, she noted that Gabriel was now huddled in his sleeping pouch but he was still quaking something awful and she wasn't doing any better. Because she'd had to open the tent flap and let in the freezing wind, the space heater had yet to make a substantial difference.

Shara tugged on the edge of the pouch he had tucked under his chin. "Let me g-g-get in th-th-there with you." When he merely arched an eyebrow at her and kept his grasp on the pouch, she explained, "Hypoth-th-thermia. B-b-body heat helps."

"Only if... you t-t-take off those... c-c-clothes."

Shara blinked at him then realized her body suit was covered with melting frost and his damp clothing had been discarded on the floor next to him. Another violent shiver racked his body and she set aside her natural modesty in light of practicality. Reminding herself that most of the people she knew would think nothing of being seen in the nude, she stripped to the skin as quickly as her shaking hands permitted. Nevertheless, she kept her eyes averted and hoped he did the same.