Stolen Dreams (8 page)

 

She lifted her chin
defiantly.
"Maybe you should tell me. One minute we were talking, and the next,
you . . . you had your hands on me again."

 

"I what? I
distinctly
remember you being involved back there. If you want proof, I probably
still have impressions of your nails in my back. You were just as
prepared to couple as I was."

 

She spun away from him, hugging
herself against his words. "Couple? I hardly know you. Why would I want
to couple with you?"

 

Stepping
inside the sleeper, he waited for the door to close before replying.
"Know me? What does knowing me have to do with coupling? I've coupled
with females who don't even know my name."

 

"Employees of the
Indulgence Center are paid well to overlook their customers'
shortcomings. My gifts carry a price also, but it's nothing so simple
as signing over a number of credits. When I share pleasure with a man,
it will be because there's a mutual caring, a meeting of the minds as
well as the bodies. A relationship. You and I have nothing in common.
You must have done something to my mind to make me forget that so
easily. I should have expected as much from someone raised in Parson's
Colony."

 

He yanked her around to face him, fury tightening his
throat. "And I should have known better than to trust a Terran. How
dare you twist my confidence into a weapon against me? I told you I
have no power. Nothing! I can't even keep you from crawling inside my
brain without an artificial device. I'm un-talented, but still a
Noronian, which means I do not lie, and that's more than I can say for
you." He let go of her arm, moved to the door, and slammed his palm
against the control panel.

 

Before exiting, he turned to her
once
more. "You're right about one thing. We certainly don't have anything
in common. I am completely rational. Don't fret about giving away any
of your precious gifts. I wouldn't want to chance freezing to death."

 

A
moment after the door closed behind Gabriel, Shara slumped down onto
her bunk. She couldn't believe what she had just done. It had been
wrong to strike
out at him when it was herself she was furious with. All she wanted was
to avoid repeating old mistakes. Professor Gabriel Drumayne was another
man interested in her only for what she could do for him.

 

She
had
previously come to the conclusion that if she didn't couple with a man,
she wouldn't get emotionally involved, and thus, he couldn't cause her
pain. The ache in her chest was proof that she was wrong about that,
too.

 

What had come over her? She should never have let herself
get
carried away like that. She certainly knew better, and he would have no
way of knowing that she didn't share his uninhibited attitude toward
coupling. It hadn't been fair to him, but she couldn't help feeling as
she did. The sharing of one's body should have a meaning deeper than a
simple biological function resulting in a release of stress and a few
minutes of pleasure.

 

So why was her body still demanding that
she go
after the man who offered a meaningless release? Because, no matter how
hard she tried to deny or bury it, she was cursed with a passionate
nature and a weakness for incredibly handsome, self-sufficient men . .
. like Professor Gabriel Drumayne.

 

It didn't matter. After the
scathing insults they had just hurled at each other, even a meaningless
release would be out of the question. Gabriel thought she was cold.
From now until the end of the flight, she would be a block of ice.

 

All
that remained was to get off the ship and time-hop before he realized
she was
gone.          
 

 

Gabriel
knew he had destroyed any possibility of peaceful coexistence with
Shara the moment he called her a Terran. Ferrine's advice about gaining
Shara's cooperation had certainly backfired with a vengeance. He still
felt Shara's slur against him like a poison dart in his throat. He
prided himself on his ability to remain calm in the most dangerous
circumstances and cool-headed in the most hostile situations. He
couldn't remember ever losing his temper over something as trivial as
coupling.

 

How could they have gone from kissing to
name-calling? He
remembered having thought she was childish. Obviously he wasn't much
more mature.

 

But their bodies hadn't been acting childishly in
the
biodrome. There was no question in his mind that they both would have
thoroughly enjoyed themselves had he not paused to suggest they seek
privacy. Not only was he bewildered by his overly passionate reactions
to her, he was utterly confused by her reasons for rejecting him. She
spoke as if she required some sort of emotional bond before she could
enjoy coupling with a man. He knew that was the norm in some cultures,
but . . .

 

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.

 

 

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 re-check 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 a little over a meter 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 hundred
meters 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.