Sweet Starfire (37 page)

Everything he did for her and to her took Cidra farther and farther from the one thing she wanted most in life. Because of him her goal of becoming a true Harmonic was more distant than it had ever been. He had forced the Wolf in her to the surface after she had spent years struggling to suppress that part of her nature.

As he watched, the dracon eyes disappeared under the water. Severance continued staring unseeingly at the point where the creature had vanished. It seemed to him that Cidra had given him more than he’d had any right to take. She had welcomed him in her arms, drawn him into her with an honest, sweet passion that had taken away his breath. She had given him an intense loyalty, the kind he had learned not to expect from anyone since Jeude had been killed. Severance could not imagine any female of his acquaintance who would have thrown herself into a river full of dracons rather than have allowed herself to be carried off and used against him. But Cidra offered more than loyalty and passion. She radiated a sense of rightness, a quiet certainty that he didn’t fully understand. “Severance? Where’s the water?”

He shook off the bittersweet mood and got to his feet. She was standing on the bank, gazing curiously into the shattered wall of the skimmer’s cabin. He grinned. “I’ll have something ready in a few minutes.” He opened the skimmer’s cargo hold. As she had said, he was good at rigging things. Fixing a bathing apparatus for a fastidious lady from Clementia shouldn’t be an impossible assignment.

In reality the job wasn’t difficult, given the contents of the skimmer’s cargo hold. He was cutting a length of plastic tubing when he noticed the carton of sensors. The bright red
COD
seal was still in place. Mail still waiting to be delivered. He looked at it for a long moment and then went back to work on the bathing arrangements.

When he was finished, he handed the bucketful of water and the plastic tubing to Cidra. “Try this. When you’re done, I’ll use it.”

She eyed him critically. “Do you have any depilatory cream left in your travel pack?”

“Don’t worry, Cidra. You’ll look just as cute with hairy legs.”

“My legs are fine,” she informed him. “The cream I use lasts for a month. It’s your beard that needs work.”

Severance touched the side of his face, felt the stubble, and grimaced. “Oh.” For some reason he was oddly embarrassed. The knowledge annoyed him, and he frowned. “There’ll be a skimmer out from Try Again at about midday tomorrow.”

She nodded, seemingly content as she examined the bucket and hose she was holding. “What about your ExcellEx delivery?”

“Funny you should mention it. I was just thinking about that myself. As late as it is, I’ll be lucky to collect for it.”

She looked up, alarmed. “If ExcellEx doesn’t pay for it, don’t give it to them.”

“It’s better for Severance Pay, Ltd.’s reputation if I deliver late rather than not at all. Besides, I’m getting tired of people trying to steal those reeting sensors. Let ExcellEx worry about them.”

“Severance,” she said sternly, “you are not going to simply hand them over without getting paid for them. Not after all we’ve been through to protect them.”

His gaze narrowed in faint amusement. “You’re beginning to sound like a real member of a mail ship crew.”

Her chin lifted proudly. “I am a real member of the crew. I don’t know why you insist on forgetting that fact when it suits you. You certainly had no trouble remembering it the night you came into the Bloodsucker and announced that we were leaving on this little joy run up the river.”

She was right. “I should have left you behind after all.”

“Nonsense. Racer would have gotten hold of me one way or another and used me as a hostage or something. He was a very determined man, wasn’t he?”

“Yes,” Severance said, thinking about it. “He was.”

“As long as you were alive, you were a constant reminder to him. He couldn’t forget his actions that day in the sink-swamp, and he never knew when you might tell someone else about them. On top of that he was the one who got your brother killed. He must have known that if you ever figured it but, you wouldn’t rest until you’d settled the score. It must have eaten at him for ages before he finally decided to take care of the problem permanently.”

“You’re a very perceptive woman at times, Cidra Rainforest.”

She smiled. “I’ve been trained to be perceptive. Now turn around, Severance. I want to take my bath.”

He hesitated, wanting to ask her how she really felt deep inside about the fact that he had killed a man. Then, deciding it might be better not to know the answer, he turned his back and went to work foraging in the skimmer’s cargo hold for other useful items.

“I’ve been thinking about that skeleton back in the alien ship,” Cidra said later as she finished eating her vegetables. She had been tremendously relieved to find a prespac that contained something besides meat. She didn’t think she would ever grow to actually enjoy the taste of meat. Severance had no such qualms, naturally. He was into his second full prespac meal. Wolfing it down, as it were.

“Don’t think about it. It’ll give you nightmares,” he advised.

“I wonder if that creature was the pilot of the ship,” she persisted, ignoring his advice.

“That sphere didn’t look big enough to house two monsters that size. Whatever it was must have been traveling alone.”

“Except for the eggs.”

Severance paused, chewing thoughtfully. “Yes, the eggs. That’s going to give several biologists a lot to think about. I wonder if the ship was a small colony vessel.”

“Maybe we humans aren’t the only ones who have started settling other worlds.” Cidra had a sudden thought. “What if that ship was just one of many, Severance?”

“If there were others, we have to assume that they didn’t fare much better than that one did. No one has recorded a sighting of anything like that blue monster. At least, I’m not aware of any such sightings.”

“It’s a big planet.”

“True. But an aggressive, intelligent species would have probably made its presence known by now. We’ve been here for several decades.”

“They did appear aggressive, all right.” Cidra shuddered. “Didn’t do them much good, though. They didn’t survive.”

“Thanks to you.”

Cidra allowed herself to absorb the shock of his simple observation. All by herself she had destroyed the only known members of an intelligent, space-faring race. She was unnerved by the thought.

Severance saw the look on her face and hastily changed the subject. “I wonder how old those eggs were. The skeleton in the case wasn’t exactly fresh. It could have been lying in the ship for hundreds of years. But the eggs were ready to hatch.”

“They might have been capable of staying viable for years in the shell until the right conditions occurred for them to hatch,” Cidra pointed out. “Perhaps the pilot of the ship was wounded in the crash. He followed the mind call and left the eggs in what appeared to be a safe location. Apparently mat telepathic call works on any sort of intelligent mind. He set up his own protective device to insure that eventually something would wander into the safehold and become food for the eggs. Then he went back to die in the ship. The case in which we found the skeleton might have been some sort of medical facility.”

“Which failed.”

“As people keep observing, it’s hard to keep machinery working on Renaissance.” She smiled. “You seem to do a fairly good job of it, though.”

He shrugged. “I told you, I’ve always been good with my hands.”

“We make a good team, don’t we? My brains and your brawn.”

He gave her a sardonic glance. “I may not be a near genius like your friend Mercer, but once in a while I manage to think my way through things. I can still take every piece of sardite you have in a game of Free Market.”

At the mention of Mercer, Cidra flinched. She hadn’t thought about him or about Clementia for quite a while. The humor faded from her eyes as she grew pensive. “Yes, you’re still better at Free Market than I am.”

Severance swore somewhat viciously and asked himself what in a renegade’s hell had made him mention her idol, Mercer. Cidra was right. He might be good with his hands, but he wasn’t always the fastest thinker in the universe. Severance slowly finished the last of his prespac, aware that Cidra had slipped off into her own thoughts.

She was thinking of Clementia. He knew it, and the realization hit him in the gut: Clementia and a lofty relationship unsoiled by a Wolf’s passion and need. Severance asked himself bluntly what he had to offer compared to the wise and distant Mercer. The cabin of Severance Pay was a far cry from the formal gardens and glowing fountains of Clementia. Hardly the sort of place in which a gently bred woman would want to set up housekeeping with a man who occasionally drank too much ale and who would frequently reach for her with a hunger he couldn’t disguise as platonic love.

“Are you going to give up your search, Cidra?”

She blinked herself back to an awareness of him and smiled wanly. “I think I’ve had enough of alien mind-tapping. Perhaps one has to be born a Harmonic to feel comfortable with the idea of someone or something else inside one’s head.”

“It doesn’t seem right somehow,” he agreed. “I didn’t like being manipulated by either the good guys or the bad guys during the past couple of days.”

“We learned to control the manipulation to a certain extent,” she reminded him.

“I still don’t feel comfortable with the whole idea of mind communication.” Severance set down the prespac and leaned back on his elbow, gazing into the flamer. “I never will.”

She followed his gaze. “As I said, perhaps one has to be born a Harmonic to have mind-touch feel natural and right. I wasn’t born a true Harmonic.”

“But you were raised as one.”

“Yes.”

“Cidra,” he began with a rough edge in his voice mat he couldn’t control, “you can go back to Clementia, can’t you?”

She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Of course. No one kicked me out. I left of my own accord. It’s my home. I can go back whenever I wish.”

“And work in the Archives?”

“I’m a good archivist, even if I’m not a Harmonic,” she said firmly. “Besides, I’m the only archivist they’ve got who’s bothered to make a speciality out of First Family tales. I have virtually a whole field to myself.”

“What would they do without you?” He tried to make it a joke but didn’t think he pulled it off. She took the question seriously.

“They’d relegate First Family tales to the bottom of the pile of acceptable literature. No big deal. It’s already on the bottom of the pile. I did get Mercer to admit once that the sociological implications of some of the first traditions were interesting, but that was about all.”

Severance stared at her grimly. She could and would go back. He had nothing to offer her to induce her to stay. Nothing to put up against all that Clementia could offer. She would go home and take with her all the tenderness, companionship, loyalty, and passion she had brought into his life. Severance’s hand tightened into a frustrated knot on his thigh. Coolly he forced himself to relax. He would take her back to Port Try Again, put her on a freighter, and never see her again. Something knotted up again, this time inside. Never see her again. The years stretched out ahead of him, as empty as the farthest reaches of the galaxy.

“We’d better go to bed. We’ve had a long day.” He got to his feet and began the small ritual of checking the deflectors. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Cidra obediently pick up the remains of dinner and dispose of them. A few minutes later she disappeared into the tent. He kept himself busy for as long as possible, thinking of her crawling into her own sleeper and fastening the closure. When he could delay things no longer, he went into the tent.

She had blanked the light, and it took a while for his eyes to adjust. Severance peeled off his shirt and yanked off the boots. Unconsciously he put the pulser and utility loop within easy reach and fumbled for the opening of his own sleeper. Deliberately he kept his eyes off the other portable bunk. If he allowed himself to look at Cidra in bed, he knew he would crawl in with her, regardless of whether or not she invited him. He was selfish enough to take what memories he could. Hell, he was Wolf enough to take what he could.

He took a deep breath and a savage grip on himself and turned to slide into his sleeper. His hand touched a bare female shoulder before he realized that the bed was already occupied.

“Cidra! What are you doing in here?”

She smiled up at him in the shadows. “Waiting for you. What took you so long?”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“Going to throw me out?”

“Sweet Harmony, I haven’t got the strength.” He unfastened his trousers and stepped out of them, leaving them lying on the floor of the tent. With a heavy groan he crawled into the sleeper and found Cidra naked and waiting. He buried his face against her breasts, aware that his body was hardening already with a fierce desire. “I doubt that I’d ever have the strength to throw you out of my bed.”

“I’m glad.” Her fingers laced through his hair as her body stirred against his.

He felt her soft leg moving along his thigh, and the tight ache in his loins became a fire almost instantly. She had such a powerful effect on him that he would have been alarmed if he hadn’t been so excited. Severance stroked her, savoring the curve of her hip and the smoothness of her belly. At this moment he easily convinced himself he had a right to this night. She would be gone all too soon from his life.

Hungrily he sought and found her lips, drinking the taste of her into his veins. He would never forget the sensation of probing the sweet warmth of her mouth. Her small tongue darted around his a little anxiously at first and then with greater boldness. Her body arched, opening to his touch. When he drew a palm across one breast, he could feel the nipple tighten. The response sent a wave of excitement through him.

She was his. The need and the longing roared through him, swamping the knowledge that soon he would have to send Cidra back to Clementia. The primitive certainty that she belonged to him and no one or no place else was too strong in that moment. Severance forgot about the morning and what it must bring in the way of reality. Tonight was his, and he was going to take all he could get.