In the Company of Others (48 page)

She clawed loose hair from her eyes and couldn't tear her gaze away from Pardell's face. He looked normal, if a little wary. Not the look of someone who'd just learned how soon, and how directly, he was going to meet the dark truths of his past.

There wasn't an easy way
, Gail knew suddenly.
There was only one way.

“I came—” Her voice was still too shaky. Gail took two more deep breaths and smoothed down her lab coat by jamming her hands in the pockets. “I came to ask you to have breakfast with me, Aaron.” She then took another breath and added reasonably: “If you have had breakfast, we could have coffee—or tea.”

Now the hazel eyes were puzzled, but oddly off guard, as if she'd caught him relaxing at home. “I've had tea with your entertaining Captain, Dr. Smith.” Then, perhaps because her face wasn't under any type of control and must have shown something of her desperation, Pardell clarified: “But I haven't had breakfast.”

“Good. That's good. Someone call the steward's office and have breakfast for two sent to my office. You've had breakfast,” she informed Grant, staving off any thoughts he might have of joining them.

Gail had fully expected to have to order Grant to allow her to be alone with the 'sider. After all, to the FD commander, Pardell was still an unknown quantity and proved lethal—a security risk by any definition. But Grant hadn't argued. In fact, the flash of sympathy in the look he sent after Pardell was almost unnerving.

Gail fervently wished she did as the door closed, leaving her alone with Aaron Pardell. “This is my office,” she heard herself announce.

Aaron looked at her out the corner of one eye. He was prowling, something he seemed to do automatically in a new room, as though checking the exits. Probably a 'sider habit—Gail had seen Rosalind do it, too. “Not in the science sphere?” he sounded surprised.

“It's a compromise. I'm close to the bridge if Captain Tobo needs me. And I've meetings with representatives from the university here. That sort of thing.”

“And breakfast.”

“And breakfast,” she agreed. Gail shoved her hands in her pockets again, then realized that might appear defensive and shrugged off her lab coat, tossing it over the back of her chair. A rain of stylos, clips, and forceps hit the floor. She hurriedly bent down to retrieve them, holding her hair out of her eyes with one hand and wishing she'd remembered to tie it back.

“Here,” a quiet voice said. She tilted her head and saw Aaron balanced on his heels in front of her, with most of the escapees from her lab coat in his glove. “Hold out your hands.”

“Thank you,” Gail said softly, in case her voice might startle him back behind the wall he'd kept between them. She cupped her hands and held them out, studying his face rather than looking down as the small objects dropped into her palms.

His face.
She'd mapped it, surface and underlying tissue both, and tested its skin's sensitivity with remotes and volunteers. If she were an artist, she could have drawn its clean, sharp lines from memory. It haunted her dreams.

She'd never seen it, not like this, with his eyes traveling over her face as if finding something lost, his lower lip slowly drawn into his mouth and held between his teeth, then released with a sigh that feathered warm against her skin. His eyes traced their way across her mouth, then her neck, then lower—not assessing, but memorizing. They stopped where she hadn't bothered fastening the top of her shirt this morning and she watched the blood rise along his cheekbones.

Her own were flaming. Gail felt an almost visceral shock as Pardell brought his eyes to hers at last and she saw the naked
wanting
in them.

She couldn't remember how to move.

“Your breakfast, Dr. Smith?”

Aaron leaped to his feet and Gail heard him talking to the steward. She took advantage of the distraction to fasten her shirt all the way to her throat, then collect the escaped contents of her pockets from the floor. She'd dropped them again.
When?
By the time she stood, Aaron and the steward had two places set at the meeting table in the corner.

Keep the steward here
, part of her mind babbled, even as she nodded her thanks and realized the man had taken it for dismissal.

They were alone again.

“This was why you asked me here, Dr. Smith, wasn't it?” Pardell asked, his voice deliberately curious, nothing more.

“What?” Gail blinked, realizing she was still standing behind her desk while Aaron had taken a seat at the table.

“Breakfast?” his mouth deepened at the corners, as if he tried not to smile.

“Yes. Of course.” Gail hurried to the other chair and tried to compose herself.

Aaron glanced up at her, his face oddly unreadable, then took two glasses and poured water into both. He put one glass in front of her, took the other in his hand, and waited.

No blame; no apologies.
Gail's hand almost slipped from the glass as she recognized the ritual and suddenly realized what Aaron must be assuming. He had to believe she'd brought him here for this, to put aside whatever conflict lingered from that night. Since he accepted the gesture, she knew beyond doubt he'd abide by it. She lifted her glass and sipped once, when he did, then again. They put their glasses down in unison.

How strange,
Gail thought. The small act didn't reduce the tension between them at all—merely changed its focus from the past to the present. “I have a—confession—to make, Aaron,” she said. “When I said I was the only one to see the vid from the
'Mate
, the one with your parents—that was a lie. I'd shown Captain Tobo. Grant as well. I had a reason—”

Aaron didn't look surprised. He simply raised one eyebrow and waited.

“I knew about the
'Mate
before leaving Titan University. I came to Thromberg to find you—a direct descendant of Susan Witts—that part's true. I needed your genome for the suits. But I also came to find your ship and her records. I was looking for—”

“Pardell's World?” He raised both eyebrows. “That is where you're taking the
Seeker
, isn't it?”

Damn.
Gail stared at him. “You knew? I didn't tell anyone but Tobo and Grant. The course is sealed even from the bridge crew. Who told you?”
So much for worrying about his reaction.
Now she had a major security leak to report to Grant—who wasn't going to be pleased.
At all.

No mistaking Aaron's amusement now. “No one, Dr. Smith. Your secret destination is safe. But I do know something of starships and the section of space around Thromberg Station. If you'd wanted the nearest Quill-contaminated world, you had your choice of three in the time we've been translight. The only possible explanation I can see for bypassing those—opportunities—was that you wanted not just a world with Quill, but a specific world. The one where I was born.”

“Have you told Malley any of this?”

“You'd know if I had.” This time, he sounded less amused.

Gail blushed, not because the 'sider was right about being under surveillance, but because of the collection of those surveillance records she wasn't by any stretch of protocol supposed to have in the drawer of the desk. The desk she could see behind him, with the cup shard from the
'Mate
in plain sight. “Best we keep it to ourselves a bit longer,” she managed to say. “We'll be in orbit in two days; then it won't matter who knows. I should have told you, Aaron.”

“You couldn't know I'd respect a secret,” he replied frankly. “I hope you do now.”

“Yes.” Gail took a deep breath and the universe seemed to settle itself, or she was simply light-headed. She wasn't taking bets on either. “Let's have this breakfast before it's cold. Coffee?”

“Please.” He held out his cup and she poured, acutely aware of the distance between her fingers and his.

When Aaron was alone, he removed the gloves to eat. He didn't now—she caught herself wondering if it was for the same reason she'd fastened her shirt uncomfortably high.
As if it helped
, Gail told herself, feeling her skin burn beneath the clothing.

“Are those grapes?”

The table was set with a variety of dishes. Since all were to be shared, Gail hoped this satisfied the 'sider's sensibilities. She found the fruit plate and spotted the generous bunch draped over one end. “These? Yes. Would you like to try some?” Without thinking, Gail picked up the bunch and held them out, then realized Aaron might not know which parts to eat. She tugged one grape free and popped it into her mouth, then offered the rest to him. “Watch for seeds inside. They're not supposed to have any, but they might. You don't swallow those.”

He looked fascinated and somewhat alarmed, but went to take one. Then he hesitated. Before she could ask what was wrong, he solemnly pulled off his gloves and folded them neatly on the table beside his plate. “You don't mind, do you?” he asked. “You've seen—”

“Of course not,” Gail assured him quickly.

“Thank you.” The 'sider pulled one of the grapes from the bunch in her hand, his gold-wrapped fingers close enough to hers that she imagined their warmth, but carefully no closer. He chewed then swallowed with a curious expression. “They didn't get them right, on the station,” Aaron decided, taking two more. “The look, maybe, but not the flavor or texture.”

The rest of the meal was like that. Aaron seemed to take it as a chance to experiment, perhaps feeling that way inclined in her company—more probably enjoying the freedom to choose outside Dr. Lynn's list. He liked the slips of ham but frowned after the egg. He'd already discovered salt wasn't a favorite, but pepper was, and used the mill to sprinkle the spice on almost everything.

They found themselves talking easily about food and its preparation. Gail traded no-longer embarrassing stories about her family's occasionally disastrous tradition of home cooking on Sundays for Pardell's anecdotes about the efforts of the station to add variety to the daily rations.

“They tried to make apple pie out of fungal proteins? Did that work?” she asked, frankly amazed.

Pardell grinned at her. “I wouldn't know. I've never had apple pie. But it tasted awful to me. Malley ate mine and Syd's—almost made himself sick.”

Gail shook her head. “I confess—I had this image of life on a station as being a grim battle for survival, with people barely able to think about tomorrow, let alone share apple pie, real or not.”

His face immediately closed up and she wished the words unsaid, but it was too late. “We don't want your pity,” he said, his voice abruptly harsh. “I don't want it.”

“I don't pity you,” Gail protested. “I never have.”

His eyes bored into hers. “That's a lie.”

Was it?
Gail made herself coldly analyze everything she'd felt about this man since she'd first learned of his existence.
Had she pitied him?
“Once,” she said, sensing herself on the verge of something vastly important. “Only once. When you told me how you watched Malley with his mother. I thought of how you must have felt—how it would feel to be a child unable to be touched.”

“Only then?” he challenged her, his face grown pale and stern, like a judge demanding an oath. “Am I supposed to believe that?” he demanded fiercely.

Don't ask him why it matters
, Gail warned herself,
don't think about what this said about his actions since that night.
She wouldn't allow distraction now, when she was so close to understanding.
Did Aaron understand?
“You felt it,” she said, slowly, carefully. “The emotion.
My
emotion. You felt it through my arm, through your hand. That's it, isn't it? When anyone touches you, you experience their emotions somehow. That's what we couldn't measure—”

“I get sick,” Aaron rebutted angrily.
Too angrily
, she thought, considering how hard he'd been trying to make sense of himself during their experiments, of results showing only what he'd already told them—that the response was immediate and its intensity scaled geometrically upward depending on the interval between contacts, and the amount and duration of each.
But nothing of
what
he responded to
, what
he sent back out.

“That's all,” Aaron continued. “It hurts. You measured that just fine. That's all I feel.”

“It can't be,” Gail insisted. “You said I pitied you—I don't. The only way you'd think so is if you picked up that emotion
the only moment
I felt it. Maybe you don't recognize it as such; maybe you process emotions differently—”