Rediscovery (33 page)

That is hardly polite, lady,
he chided her, with a grin.
After all, these star folk
wonders are things I have never seen before.

His grin widened as she giggled more, then he began to chuckle. As he placed her down on the bed, he glanced up at the walls, and something struck him as so hilarious that he collapsed beside her in gales of laughter.

She couldn’t read his thoughts, exactly, but she caught the flavor of them—

something about how her room resembled the cells of some kind of monastic order.

And for some reason, that set her off as well. They collapsed against each other, helpless with laughter, clinging to each other to stay upright. Anyone less like a monk than Lorill—

Then suddenly, they were clinging to each other for another reason entirely, and Ysaye felt afire with longing for his touch on her skin. It did not matter that she had never touched a man like this in her life—it did not matter that Lorill was years younger than she. None of that mattered, except that he was male and she was female and they were both caught in a storm that neither could control.

In a frenzy, they tore the clothing from each other, each so intimately within the other’s mind that alien fastenings were no hindrance. As they tumbled back onto the bed, there was nothing left of reason. Only passion remained.

Lorill woke first, to find himself in a strangely barren room—and after a moment, he remembered where he was.

And what he had just done. He had seduced—and been seduced by—a virgin of

the star folk, a woman as alien in her color and her thoughts as any
chieri
could be.

But why? He had acted like—like a beast in rut! Or a poor fool caught in a Ghost Wind. And so had Ysaye. But they had been indoors!

He frowned at the thought. For that matter—so had Elizabeth.

Gingerly, carefully, he picked up Ysaye’s garments. And yes, there was a faint,

resinous scent of
kireseth
about them!

Quickly he thrust them away from himself. No, he would not be caught by
that
twice in a row! But what could he do with them?

Ysaye’s memories, inadvertently shared, gave him the answer. He picked up her

clothing, taking care not to shake loose the
kireseth
pollen still clinging to it, and stuffed the garments down a hatch. Her memories told him that the hatch led directly to some kind of laundry, where the garments would be cleansed and sterilized by machines, then returned to her. There would be no further chance of contamination.

But what of the past few hours? What would her folk do if they learned what he

had done to Ysaye? Would they learn? She had been a virgin; was she pledged to be so for her work? Obviously she did not have the conditioning of a Darkovan Keeper, or he, at least, would be dead. But would the loss of her virginity endanger her health? Would it be obvious to her superiors when she returned to work? And what if she got with child by him?

He thought of his father’s—and Flora’s—comments about his lack of self-control

and his entanglements with women, and he cringed. He did not wish even to consider what they would say about this—
kireseth
or no
kireseth!

Perhaps, if no one found him here and there were no physical consequences,

Ysaye might suppose it was all a dream. Perhaps that would be the best, after all—even if it were the coward’s way out. Of course, should she be with child, his honor would require him to acknowledge it.

He donned his clothing quickly, and opened his mind to the stray thoughts of

others nearby. If he could manage to get away without anyone’s seeing him, that would be all to the good, for her sake as well as his. He was not sure what was considered proper behavior for an unmarried woman of her people, but he was not at all sure that this qualified.

He waited until there was no one in the corridors outside, and slipped out of the door, shutting it behind him, thinking as he did so what story he must tell to explain his absence from the festival.

Perhaps—a visit to the tavern. He should go there to make it less a lie. And it was not far from here, which would help matters.

He reached the door to the outside world safely enough, and slipped out into the snow-spangled darkness.

When Ysaye woke, she had more to worry about than the confused memories of

some strange—and rather embarrassing—dreams about Lorill Hastur. Her stomach was in knots, her sinuses felt as if someone had stuffed bowling balls under her cheekbones, and she was dizzy and weak. She fumbled her way to the shower and turned the hot water on herself at full force; it did nothing for her head, but it eased the cramps in her stomach somewhat.

Maybe those cramps explained the blood on her sheets. She’d always been

irregular, but she had never trusted birth control medication to regulate her periods.

There were so many things she had to do to her body that she rebelled at subjecting it to one more medication, to which she would probably be allergic anyway. And she

certainly didn’t need birth control medication for birth control; celibacy had fewer failures and no side effects.

She found a clean uniform in the closet and pulled it on, resolutely blotting out those dreams of Lorill Hastur. Those awful hallucinations probably had something to do with the drug Ryan Evans had slipped to her and Elizabeth last night. At least she had made sure that Elizabeth was with her own husband, not with Evans.

Well, if she could
prove
he had done so, his career would be finished. The Service might put up with a lot, but it wouldn’t tolerate drugging and seducing female

personnel.

But first, before anything else, she had to get to Aurora for an allergen booster, before she got too sick to do anything at all.

She bundled her coat on, and turned the light in her room out behind her.

Room? It’s like a cell of the penitents at Nevarsin!

She jerked her head up. Where had
that
thought come from? For that matter, where and what was Nevarsin?

Then she shook her head to clear it, as she ventured out into the snow, heading—

or rather, staggering—in the direction of the ship, and Aurora’s excellent sickbay. It was probably something she’d heard last night. And right now, given how dizzy she felt, she probably shouldn’t trust anything her mind came up with. She really wasn’t rational during these attacks.

The ship seemed a million miles away, and she was having trouble putting one

foot in front of the other. Fortunately, just as she got to the ramp, one of her techs came trotting past, took a second look at her, and stopped her.

The next thing she knew, she was looking up at Aurora through a haze of pain

from her head.

“—looks like another one of her allergy attacks to me,” the young tech was

saying. “I was there the last time.”

“I think you’re right, Tandy,” Aurora said briskly. “Thanks for getting a medic

team down to the ramp. The shape she’s in now, she might have collapsed before she got up here.”

Aurora leaned over Ysaye and tried to look encouraging. “You should be all right in a few days, Ysaye, but right now you’re pretty sick.” Ysaye heard a faint hiss as someone administered her allergen booster, but everything seemed fuzzy and far away.

She ought to tell them about Evans, but it was too much effort to talk.

She heard Aurora’s voice fading out into the distance “…hook up those monitors

and start running scans. See if you can find out what triggered this…”

“Ysaye?” Aurora’s voice was fading back in again. “Ysaye! Can you hear me?”

Ysaye opened her eyes to see Aurora’s face inches from her own. She felt oxygen

tubing running across her cheeks into her nostrils. She tried to speak, but her mouth was dry and her voice came out midway between a croak and a groan. The end of a length of flexible tubing was slipped between her lips. “Here, sip on this—it’s all right, Ysaye, it’s just water. You’ve been mostly out of it for four days, so you probably feel pretty thirsty and weak.

The water moistened her mouth, but when it hit her stomach, her stomach rebelled instantly. Years of habit enabled Ysaye to roll sideways and grab the basin that was always kept next to each bed in sickbay. Aurora helped support her and the basin, and a pair of hands from behind her retrieved the tube she had dropped and held her braids out of the way. But even when her stomach was totally empty, she still felt sick. She fought dry heaves by force of will as Aurora gently laid her back against the pillow.

“Can you tell us
anything,
Ysaye? This isn’t following your usual pattern. After the first booster it looked as though you were going to sleep it off and recover, but you didn’t wake up after twenty hours, so we gave you a second booster. When you didn’t respond to that, we started IV fluids—nothing we haven’t given you before—to counter the dehydration that was starting, but whatever triggered this attack must still be in your body somehow.” She looked dubiously around the room, and Ysaye saw that she was in the isolation chamber. There was definitely nothing in this room to which she was allergic. So it wasn’t the room, it wasn’t the air (in here it came through special filters), it wasn’t the IV fluids or the water.

“Try to remember, Ysaye,” Aurora said urgently. “You were at the banquet at

Aldaran—did you eat anything that seemed strange?”

Ysaye’s memory started to return. “Elizabeth…is Elizabeth all right?”

Aurora looked startled. “As far as I know, she’s fine. She hasn’t been in lately that I know of.” She looked over at the tech on Ysaye’s other side. “Check the log for the past week, Tandy.”

Tandy’s voice came back a minute later. “Negative. She hasn’t been in.”

The oxygen was clearing Ysaye’s head a little, enough for her to hold a train of thought if she tried hard enough. “The banquet…Evans’ greenhouse…the pollen—is

there still pollen in my hair?”

“We’ll find out,” Aurora said. “Get a suction hood, Tandy.”

Ysaye felt a partial vacuum around the top of her head, and then heard Tandy’s

voice. “There does seem to be traces of some sort of yellow dust here,” she said.

“It was yellow—golden, really,” Ysaye murmured.

“Take it to the lab for analysis,” Aurora ordered.

After Tandy left the room, she looked at Ysaye’s hair and sighed. “How do you

feel about having your head shaved?”

“In this climate?” Ysaye shot back.

“You do have a point—not that you aren’t going to be stuck right here for a while, but I hope it won’t be long enough for your hair to grow back!” Aurora started digging equipment out of various cupboards. “I’ll put a full face mask on you and cover your skin up to your neck. Then it should only take me a couple of hours to undo each and every one of those braids you wear and wash this whatever-it-is out of your hair. The things I do for my friends!”

“Thank you, Aurora,” Ysaye said softly. “I really do appreciate it. I’m sorry to be such a nuisance.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Aurora said lightly. “I don’t have anything else planned for the rest of the day. And it’s really a relief to have you awake again. I wonder what the devil that stuff is?”

Ysaye woke up the next morning certified pollen-free; Aurora told her that the last traces had passed out of her bloodstream during the night. But as soon as Ysaye tried to sit up, she was overwhelmed by nausea.

“Lie flat, and don’t move,” Aurora said. She dashed into the next room and

returned a moment later with a package of salted crackers. “Nibble on these and see if they help.”

Oddly enough, they did. Five minutes later Ysaye was able to sit up. It was then that she noticed how heavy and sore her breasts felt. “Aurora, are you sure you didn’t overdo it on the IV fluid? I feel positively bloated.”

Aurora laughed. “With any other woman, I’d test for pregnancy if she reported

symptoms like that.”

Ysaye sat very still, memories of herself and Lorill Hastur running through her

head. “Test for it.”

Aurora looked at her in astonishment, then closed her mouth and silently took a

blood sample and left the room.

A few minutes later she returned.

“You’re right. You’re pregnant. Do you want to talk about it?”

Ysaye shook her head, cradling her hands protectively over her flat abdomen. She couldn’t even think, much less talk.

Aurora sighed. “Well, if you decide you do want to talk, I’m here. But meanwhile, like it or not, we’re going to have to report this to the Captain.”

Leonie gasped at the doctor’s words, and quickly ran her own sort of confirmation of them. And she was right. This star woman called Ysaye was with child, a tiny speck of a thing that had hardly been in existence for more than a few hours.

Lorill’s child.

She had managed to escape from her duties long enough to follow Lorill as he

brought his apologies to Kermiac Aldaran. She had felt a sense of premonition about that mission of repentance; and afraid that something would happen to him in Aldaran’s hands, she had watched over the entire proceedings.

But nothing at all happened, other than Lorill humbling himself. That rankled, but she admitted that after all he had deserved to be humbled—and that her father was right in convincing him to make the apology in person. The Domains could not risk a conflict with Aldaran, especially not with these strangers among his people.

Besides, she was still curious about the star folk. The few things she had gleaned from her contact’s mind were frustratingly incomplete. She wanted more specific

information, and with Lorill there, she had a way to get it without revealing herself.

So she had stayed with him until he went to speak—as she had asked him—with

the strange dark woman, Ysaye. Then she had transferred herself to the star woman’s mind, lurking undetected where she could watch Ysaye’s surface thoughts, as she

answered Lorill’s questions, questions she had directed him to ask. Leonie was