gaian consortium 06 - zhore deception (21 page)

There was nothing to hold on to, not a chair, not a frame around the window that looked down on the interrogation room where Trinity sat. Zhandar could only keep himself as still as he could while those impossible words beat inside his brain.

The child is yours, Zhandar.

“How is that possible?” he asked then. “For she is not — that is, she is Gaian.” It was just barely comprehensible to him that he could share the
sayara
bond with a woman who was not of his race. But for two entirely different species to be able to interbreed?

A long pause. Nalzhir shifted away from him, his gaze fixed on the young woman who sat at the table beyond the glass, who showed no sign of discomfort at having her face and form revealed to near-strangers. But of course she wouldn’t, because a Gaian did not share the customs and strictures of the Zhore.

At last the agent said, “It is not something we have made public. The first instance was not so long ago. A little more than a year. A colonist’s daughter and a man of our people named Sarzhin. She had a son, a healthy son. It was a miracle on all levels.”

His thoughts were darting here and there so quickly that Zhandar wasn’t sure which one he should latch onto first. “This Gaian girl and this Sarzhin. They were — they were
sayara?
”

“Yes.”

That a Gaian — a race he had always viewed, when he thought of them at all, as grasping, unscrupulous, and lacking the refinement of mind that was so much a part of his own culture — could be
sayara
was just barely within the bounds of plausibility. But then, he’d felt it with Trinity, even though at the time he’d thought her one of his own people. So he knew it wasn’t entirely impossible, even if the logical side of his mind kept trying to tell him there must have been some kind of mistake.

Then he latched on to something else Nalzhir had told him. “You just said ‘the first instance.’ There have been others?”

“Only one. She is actually here on Zhoraan, with her spouse. Lirzhan, a former ambassador.”

“So that is how they met? Because he had gone out into the galaxy?”

“In a manner of speaking.” A brief pause, and Nalzhir continued, “She is a month away from giving birth, but so far the pregnancy has been unremarkable. Well, other than it being a pregnancy that resulted from the joining of a Gaian and a Zhore.”

It was too much. Zhandar forced in a breath, made himself stare down at Trinity. Of course it was far too soon to see any visible signs of pregnancy in her, but his breath caught at the idea anyway.

“I want to speak with her,” he said.

“As I said, that is not possible at the moment.”

“Why not? She’s asking to talk with me. Perhaps I can have better luck with her.”

Nalzhir hesitated. Another one of those uneasy pulses. “Later. The doctors have determined that it would be best to restore her to herself first.”

The words took a few seconds to filter into Zhandar’s brain. As comprehension dawned, he growled, “You would perform that kind of surgery on her when she is with child?”

“It is for the best. I told you that she is free from disease, but that does not mean she is entirely healthy. From what we can tell, her body is beginning to reject its alien skin. Best to rid her of it, return her to her normal state. It will not be an invasive procedure, so it should not affect the child at all.”

Zhandar turned back toward the window, then placed his gloved hands on it. Trinity shifted in her seat and looked up toward him, although he assumed the glass was the sort that would not allow her to see through it. But her reaction told him that she knew he was there. He hadn’t thought a Gaian would possess such psychic sensitivity, but clearly Trinity had talents beyond those of a normal human.

He was still angry with her…but at the same time, he didn’t want to see her come to any harm. And if the barbaric surgery her masters had inflicted on her was now actively causing her to become ill, then better for his own people to heal her.

And after that…well, he would just have to see.

Once again, Trinity awoke from darkness, but this time she didn’t hurt as much. Or rather, she felt sore and tingly all over, as if she’d stayed out in the sun too long, but it wasn’t the kind of deep muscle ache she’d experienced upon awakening from the surgery that had turned her into a Zhore.

She glanced down, and saw that the hair falling over one shoulder was warm brown, not black. The gold highlights had even been restored. And when her gaze shifted to her arm, emerging from the short sleeve of the pale blue shift-like gown she wore, she saw that her skin was no longer the mesmerizing shifting black of the Zhore, but her normal pale ivory.

“You’re back with us.”

The last thing she’d expected to see was Zhandar sitting at her side, waiting for her to wake up. How could he seem so calm, so controlled, when she’d used him so badly?

But she wouldn’t think about that now. For one thing, she simply didn’t have the energy. “I suppose I am,” she said, then lifted her right hand and flexed her fingers, watching the light from overhead pick out the faintest traceries of the bluish veins beneath her fair skin. She realized then that they were still speaking the Zhore language, which by now felt like second nature to her. Her alien disguise had been removed, but what about that hideous implant, the one that had spied on everything she said and did?

Her fingers reached up toward the back of her neck. The tiny bump there was gone, and the flesh left behind tender to the touch. So they’d found it, thank God. Trinity would have loved to see Gabriel Brant’s expression when he discovered that not only did he have no way of retrieving her, not with her in the hands of the authorities on this alien world, but that he’d also just lost his only means of seeing what was happening to her.

Did Zhandar know about that implant? Or had the doctors who’d removed it decided that it was better not to tell him that his every interaction with her over the past few months had been recorded?

She decided she’d leave that aside for later. That was some very dangerous ground. Instead, she asked, “How…?” And then she let the question break off, because she knew that what she really wanted to ask was
why
.

He seemed to understand. “You were in the early stages of rejection.”

Well, that would explain the tiredness, the vague sensations of nausea and the low-grade headaches. The borrowed Zhore skin had probably been poisoning her from the outside in. Not sure what she should say, she picked up a strand of her hair and held it between her thumb and forefinger, inspecting it as if it was the most important thing in the world right then. “They did a great job with the color.”

“I’ll pass that on.” She caught an unlikely twinge of amusement from him, one that faded abruptly. “How do you feel otherwise?”

“All right. A little tired.” His question made her pause and take more detailed inventory. Yes, she did feel somewhat taut and sensitive, but she assumed that sensation would pass as she continued to heal. But her head didn’t ache, and she could already tell that if she just rested a bit more, she should be back to her old self fairly quickly.

Her old self. There was a joke.

“Do you feel well enough to talk?”

Physically, yes. But emotionally…? She didn’t know. Zhandar deserved the truth from her now, though, since all she’d handed him before were lies. Anyway, she’d told the interrogator the day before that she wouldn’t say anything to anyone until she talked to Zhandar first.

Well, here he was.

Trinity shifted in her bed, reflecting it was more comfortable than the one provided for her back on the Consortium base. The room itself here was also vastly more comfortable; there were no water features, but plants hung from sconces on the walls, and everything had been painted a soft, dreamy blue. And Zhandar himself….

He had his barriers up. She supposed she could have expected nothing less. What she hated was that hood, the way it drooped low to hide his face. She needed to see him, to see his expression as she tried to explain to him why she’d done what she’d done. Why she’d been forced into it.

The hood didn’t surprise her, though. They were in a hospital room, but it could still be considered a public place. And for all she knew, even though the Zhore were not ordinarily a surveillance-happy race, they had cameras hidden around the room, recording everything she and Zhandar did and said. She couldn’t blame them for that. The Zhore might have given her a very comfortable place where she could recuperate, but she was still a prisoner of sorts. She’d been caught spying.

Even with all that, she had to ask. “Zhandar….”

“Yes?”

“I’ll tell you everything you need to know. I swear it. But I need to see you. Please.”

No response at first. Then he moved in his chair, shifting so he faced her directly. His hands went up to push back his hood. “Better?”

She loved the bones of his face, the sculpted curve of his lips. It didn’t matter that he was an alien. He was still so very beautiful. Inside and out. “Yes, much better.”

“You don’t care that I am…not like you.”

A bitter laugh forced its way past her lips. “Zhandar, I am
very
glad that you’re nothing like me.”

He shook his head, then deliberately peeled off one glove, followed by the other. Fingers now bare, he rested his hand on top of hers. The shields were still up, but she could feel something more now — a hint of sadness, and then worry for her. Well, that was a start. At least she wasn’t sensing deep pulsing waves of hatred and anger.

No, she didn’t think she needed to worry about that. Zhandar was capable of anger, true, but his soul didn’t possess the capacity to hate.

“Tell me,” he said quietly. “Why would you allow your own people to mutilate you in such a way?”

“‘Mutilate’?” Trinity repeated, startled. “Why would you call it mutilation, when I was made to look like one of your own kind?”

“Because it was not you. Yes, you were beautiful as Zhanna, but you are far more beautiful as Trinity Knox. Because that is who you truly are.”

She hadn’t allowed herself to think about whether he would find her attractive as a human. What did it matter, when her lies had destroyed any chance of a future with him? Besides, now that she had been caught, she was sure the Zhore government would ship her back to Gaia just as soon as they were done getting any useful information out of her. And no way of knowing how much this incident would set back Consortium/Zhore relations, which had never exactly been what one would call cordial.

For some reason, her throat felt very tight. “Water?” she managed.

If Zhandar had noted her reaction, he showed no sign of it. Giving her a nod, he rose gracefully from his seat and went over to a small table set up against the wall, where a pitcher of bluish plastic and several tumblers sat. He poured some water into one of them, then returned to his chair and handed her the cup.

“Thank you.” She sipped the water, relishing the cool, faintly mineral taste of it on her tongue. Why did even the water taste better here on Zhoraan?

But she knew she couldn’t delay much more, not with Zhandar sitting there and watching her, clearly waiting for her to go on. After taking a few more sips of water, she didn’t hand the tumbler back to him, but rather sat there with her hands cradled around it. As much as she’d loved the touch of his fingers against hers a few moments earlier, she knew she needed to stay focused as she recounted her story.

Funny how she hadn’t even hesitated about doing so. He deserved the truth from her, and Gabriel and Blake and the rest of the people who’d done this to her could all go straight to hell.

“I’m not a spy,” Trinity began. “That is,” she added, when Zhandar’s eyebrows began to lift, “I’m not a
professional
spy. I was tapped to do this because of my — well, I guess you could call them gifts. Talents.”

“Your psychic abilities.”

“Yes.” She’d never liked to think of them that way, because that had always made her feel like even more of a freak. But all she felt was a gentle pulse of concern from Zhandar, so she went on, “The Consortium government was obviously feeling threatened by these human/Zhore pairings that were occurring, so — ”

“All two of them?” he broke in, sounding amused. “Yes, I can see why that would be quite a threat.”

Put that way, it did seem rather ridiculous. But the Consortium took any threat to its hegemony seriously, especially now, when it was still having to field probing questions about its handling of the situation in China. Having the descendants of the toxic Cloud’s survivors demanding answers was not something the government wanted to waste its time on. And it wasn’t just that isolated group, either. Even the Eridanis, ostensibly allies of Gaia, did not seem overly thrilled by the revelation that the Consortium’s agents had been methodically harvesting the bodies of the dead rather than giving them the respectful burials everyone had thought they were receiving.

“Bad enough in their eyes that there are all those human/Eridani pairings,” she replied. “Even though they’ve been going on for generations, the government doesn’t make it easy on the people involved. In most cases, they end up emigrating to Eridani space. But the Zhore?” She shrugged. “You’re an unknown quantity. The Consortium hates that. So of course you’re a threat.”

“And so they sent you here.” Zhandar’s gaze sharpened, and he inquired, “How is it that they were able to be so exact in their reproduction of Zhore biology? We have never submitted to any kind of study by your people.”

That was something she really didn’t want to explain, but Trinity knew it would be unfair to withhold the truth. At least if she told Zhandar about the corpse of the dead Zhore her government had used for a study specimen, then he could pass the word on to his own government officials, and perhaps then they’d be able to piece together who the dead man had been. His family deserved closure if nothing else.

“There was a — a man of your people killed on Bathsheva. The Bathshevans sold the body to the Consortium.”

A wince, and Zhandar shut his eyes for a second. Trinity could feel the shock and sorrow flood from him before he shut his barriers down once again.