Jenna Starborn (54 page)

“The third option—”

“No, terminate,” he said abruptly. “Evelyn, is that you?”

I could not reply.

“Evelyn?” he asked, a shade of impatience in his voice, but also a shade of uncertainty. “Have you brought my afternoon tray?”

I made myself take a step into the room, and the simple motion freed me of my moment's paralysis. “It is not Evelyn,” I said, “but, yes, I have brought your tray.”

An indescribable expression crossed his face. He half started from his chair, gripping its arm with his one good hand and focusing what senses he had remaining on the apparition at the door.

“Speak again!” he commanded, fear and excitement twining through his words. “I know that voice—surely I know that voice—”

“Where would you like me to put the tray?” I said, coming closer but seeing no likely surface near his chair. I spoke with an almost superhuman calm, for I had resolved to make this reunion as quiet, as far from hysterical, as possible. I did not know how he would react to my appearance at his door—I did not want to presume. And so when I spoke again, my voice was still serene, though my heart was not. “Shall I set the tray on the table by the window or do you balance it upon your knee?”

“Dear God,” he whispered. “Or dear Goddess, as she herself would say. Every accent is so familiar—” And then, falling back in his chair, he addressed me with most unexpected and sternly spoken syllables. “Begone, then! I have had enough of you for one week—indeed, for one lifetime!”

My heart for a moment stopped beating, but his agitation was so great that I realized he was as wrought up as I was, though I was not sure why. So I said, as mildly as I could, “Why, sir, I have not been here to trouble you this twelve-month and more. I do not know with whom you have been speaking this past week, but it was not I. In fact, I just this instant arrived at your door.”

He covered his face with his hand. “Dear God, dear God, it has got her very inflection perfectly,” he moaned into his palm. “Just so would she seem to give the most complete and reasonable answer, and just so would she tantalize by saying nothing at all—” He uncovered his face and glowered at me, rather impotently, from those sightless eyes. “Begone, I say! I want no more spirits haunting me and taunting me. I welcomed you once, twice, a thousand times, but each time you melted away into insubstantial air, leaving me more pitiable and alone than the time before. Begone, I say! Mock me no more. I prefer quiet, and solitude, and despair.”

Ah! In a moment I understood the problem, and I was instantly exuberant, though I hid it. I set the tray on the table by the window and crossed to stand right before him. “I am no ghost,” I said. “I know you cannot see, but can you not at least tell that a shadow has crossed your face? That is because I am standing between you and the sunlight. Could a ghost achieve such a feat? Would a ghost stand here and argue with you about its very existence? Would a ghost”—and here I leaned down to very gently take his hand in mine—“feature true flesh and blood?”

His hand closed with such energy on mine that I had to bite back a cry of pain. “Her fingers—her delicate little bones—her own skin, which I studied so long I knew it better than my own . . .” he murmured, turning my hand this way and that, now lacing his fingers between mine, now running his thumb along the join of my wrist and thumb. Suddenly he pressed my hand against his mouth, then turned his cheek into my palm; I felt the dampness of a solitary tear melt between his skin and mine. “Jenna,” he whispered. “If it were only, really, truly you.”

He still doubted! He still thought himself visited by specters of the past! I jerked my hand away, causing him to sit up in astonishment, looking aggrieved at the behavior of this particular wraith. “I see I have much to do to convince you that I am real,” I said in a voice of decided exasperation. “Is there another chair to be had? I want to sit and make myself comfortable while I explain myself. Also, if you are not going to eat the excellent snack Mrs. Soshone has made up for you, I think I will help myself, for I have traveled far today, and not stopped for so much as a drink of water, and I am famished.”

He stared up at me with blind, marveling eyes. “I—but if you—how could you have—”

“A chair?” I reminded him. “Where might one be found?”

He gestured vaguely toward the hallway. “The room across the way—I think—but—Jenna? Jenna? Is it—”

“Just a moment,” I said, and disappeared through the door.

I could hear him calling out questions attached to my name for the next few minutes as I checked the room across the hall and found a nice, sturdy high-backed chair. I carted it back into the sunroom and set it close to Everett's, though at an angle that would allow both of us to sit in sunlight. Then I dragged over the small table which now held the tray of food, and situated this so it was convenient to both our hands. All this time he continued to pelt me with questions; all this time I refused to answer.

“Now!” I said, when I was finally comfortable. “How about a little of this bread? I will butter it for you, if you like.”

“Jenna? How is it possible? Where have you been? Are you really returned? How have you survived these many months?”

“I will answer every question, but first you must swear I am not a ghost, and then you must eat at least a piece of bread, and probably a slice of cheese too, before I will give you any hard information.”

“Oh, it is really you, all-too-human Jenna, I believe that now!” he exclaimed, and though he attempted to imbue his voice with the mock scorn he had always used with me, I could hear the trembling in his speech. “No ghost would saunter in and force me to consume a meal before proceeding to break my heart again!”

“No, I assume that eating and drinking are activities that the dead might wish to engage in but cannot,” I said around a mouthful of food. I knew I was being uncouth, but I did not care. For so many days I had been unable to summon up an interest in any meal—but now, suddenly, face-to-face with the man I had crossed the universe to find, I was starving. “I, on the contrary, intend to make a most hearty meal. Here, try one of these—grapes, I suppose they are. Some kind of fruit, though it's a little pinker than any grape I ever saw. Quite good, though.”

He took the item from my hand, put it in his mouth, then returned his hand quick as a flash to take hold of my wrist. “If I must eat, then you must allow me to touch you,” he said when I pulled back as if to free myself. “I must have constant reassurance that you are real, or I shall falter again—I shall slip into my old ways and accuse you of possessing merely a spiritual nature.”

“You may hold my hand, then, if you choose, but you must continue to eat.”

A moment's silence. “I cannot,” he said at last.

“Oh? And why is that? You have two hands, I suppose.”

“Two,” he said, “but only one that functions.”

I knew this, of course; it was not the dread revelation he expected it to be. “Oh? Well, let me see it. That shall be the hand I hold while your other one scoops up food.”

“You will not want to hold it once you see it,” he said, and withdrew it from its hiding place between the arm of the chair and his seat cushion. It was truly a wretched sight, a mangled mess of ripped, scarred flesh, and bent, ill-healed bones. It resembled a monster's claw invented to scare children, and it was clear, from the way he held it, that his range of motion was either severely limited or nonexistent.

“Do you have feeling in it still?” I asked in a very nonchalant voice.

“Yes—not extensive, but I can tell if it is touching silk or leather, and if I have plunged it into water hot or cold.”

“Good,” I said, and reached out to take it between both of my own. He started; I felt the maltreated fingers twitch in their highest degree of pain or ecstasy. “Can you feel my hand?” I inquired.

“Yes,” he whispered.

I sat forward on the edge of my chair, and brought his hand to my lips. I kissed each broken knuckle, each separate scar. “Can you feel that?” I asked.

This time he merely nodded dumbly.

I sat back in my chair, retaining my hold on his hand and letting it lie in my lap. “Good,” I said briskly. “Now let us finish our meal.”

“Jenna,” he said, and nothing else.

“Were you going to ask me something?” I said politely.

“No—so many things, but—no—”

“Then let me ask you something,” I said. “Why have you not had the hand repaired?”

This, like so many of my observations this afternoon, seemed to catch him completely off-guard. “What?”

“The hand. And the scars on your face—and your eyesight, which I understand is nearly ruined. Why have you not had them repaired? You know as well as I do that there are doctors throughout the galaxy who could make each of these perfectly whole again. Why have you not had the treatments done?”

For a moment he looked completely stunned—then, slightly embarrassed. “I—the wounds are relatively new—I have not had a chance yet to investigate—”

“I think you like sitting here feeling sorry for yourself,” I said, taking a bite of a rich chocolate pastry. “Mmm, this is very good. I think you like sitting here, wounded in the dark, and remembering all the dreadful things that have happened to you. I think you are a man who has gotten addicted to grief.”

He snatched his hand away from me and looked angry enough to take a shove at me too, if he could have been sure of my exact location. For a moment I thought he might knock the tray over, so furious did he appear. “That is
not
so!” he declared. “I have suffered worse wounds than this in silence—wounds to my soul, wounds that I did not ever expect to heal—and I did not mope around looking for sympathy. I have not addressed these broken parts because—because there seemed no reason to do so. There was nothing I particularly wanted to look at, nothing I particularly wanted to touch, and so I did not care if I could see or feel.”

“Good. Then you will have no objection to me doing a little investigation on the best surgeons to be had for your condition,” I said brightly. “Unless—oh, but perhaps I misunderstood—there may have been another reason you hesitated—”

“
Now
what will you say?” he demanded, sounding so exasperated that I almost laughed aloud.

“You may have some distaste for the results of any operations you undergo—that is, the synthetics that will have to be incorporated into your body to make you whole again. That is a sensitive subject to you, I know.”

“Not that you would care if it was so sensitive it made me weep merely to have it addressed,” he muttered, and I could not help but grin at the irritation in his voice. “Banish that thought, you provoking girl! I would let myself be remade, every bone, every blood cell, if it would please you. My only condition would be that they not exchange my heart for something artificial, for it is my own that I would want to love you with, and not something cobbled together from rubber and metal and electric wires.”

I smiled again, and reached for the hand he had jerked away from me. The broken fingers stirred and tried to return my grasp, then lay quiet inside my own. “That was very pretty, sir. Thank you.”

His good hand came up to cover mine with an urgent pressure. “May I speak now, Jenna? Have I swallowed enough morsels to earn your permission to ask a question or two?”

“Yes, you have done quite well. Ask me what you will.”

“How did you come to be here? Why did you leave? What have you heard of the disasters that have befallen Thorrastone?”

“I saw news of the tragedy on the StellarNet, but I could not find the details. I had to know what had happened—to you, to everyone. And so I journeyed back.”

“You could have sent a stel-letter,” he suggested. “Contacted someone at the spaceport who could have supplied the information. Hired an investigator—though that would have taken money, I suppose.”

“I have money now, sir,” I said, smiling.

“The devil you do! How did that happen?”

“It comes at the end of a very long story,” I objected. “And this has been a long, tiring day—”

“Oh, no, you don't! Some of the details you may skip, but I expect the outline now. Tell me what has transpired in your life during the eighteen long months since I saw you last. Begin with the night you left here, in stealth and sorrow, leaving me so terrified for your well-being that I became, for a time, almost a madman—”

“Do not dwell on that, I beg you,” I interposed swiftly. “It hurt me to leave you for your own sake almost as much as it hurt me for mine, but I could not stay. My reasons you know. I need not outline them again.”

“You took nothing,” he said, disregarding my prohibition. “A few items of clothing—a pair of shoes—nearly everything you owned was on my cruiser, and you had scarcely a note of credit to your name—”

“Yes, but I managed quite well,” I said, instantly deciding to edit the greater number of horrors from the tale of my escape. “I went to the spaceport and found an outbound ship that was willing to take on a last-minute passenger to fill up an available berth, and I traveled practically to the end of the universe.”

“Where did you go, Jenna? I looked for you everywhere. I sent messages out to every planet and outpost for which I could find a general address.”

“To Appalachia, sir. Have you heard of it? It's a frontier world, and still growing, so there is a great deal of opportunity there for someone who is willing to work hard.”

“Yes, that's one of the places I sent my messages. Did you like it there? Did you apply for a farming license and learn to grow beets?”