The Alliance (29 page)

Peter, the male head of the Alliance, was said to have been a soldier and doubly dangerous because of it. He subtly dominated. All faces turned when his lips moved and every speaker commonly glanced at him with their first words, even in private conversation, as if seeking his approval. Without the distraction of sound, the movements seemed exaggerated, but Jenni knew the individuals were unaware of their homage. Peter wasn’t. Jenni zoomed in on his face and saw the sadness it provoked when the others were preoccupied. This was a rare individual, totally aware of his environment. A very dangerous opponent.

Dael, Peter’s wife, was magnificent. Possessing an ageless beauty at its peak, she drew the others like a magnet. Peter, they respected, perhaps even feared a little, but Dael they loved unreservedly. He watched them with compassion; she took them into herself, healed their wounds, and soothed their pain, a great healer.

Karrel, the elder son, was comfortable in his loyalty to his father and not lessened by it. In any other company, he would lead by unchallengeable right, but even his relationship to his wife, Gabrielle, was modeled on his father’s attitude to Dael. His was the truest flattery of all. He imitated what he most admired.

Gabrielle radiated beauty animated by intelligence. Jenni could almost believe her to be the legendary commander of the scout ship discovering non-physical instantaneous travel to revolutionize the universe thirty-five thousand years ago. There were no images of that Gabrielle, Cedric Brown had seen them all destroyed, but Jenni could imagine her as this Gabrielle, a figure to follow into danger and survive.

Anneke, the daughter, was the joker. A disciplined rebel with a sense of fun, her operational record was of snatching some form of victory from the jaws of disaster. She enjoyed the chaos of immediate action and instant results, impatient with the steady progress that ensured unobtrusive gains—a devastating enemy.

Jean-Paul, the younger son, was a mystery. They knew little of him, even if his kinship to the others was obvious. There were no operational records of his involvement in the Alliance; indeed, no records at all of his movements, inside or outside the Federation and facial scans had recorded no hits in any security footage on any planet.

Jack was the quiet achiever and the security man, Dick Smith, had only touched the surface of his activities. Son to Karrel and Gabrielle, he’d been unknown until his rise to prominence of Feodar’s World, just another spacer going about his business on the edge of the law. Since then, his face had shown him involved in more than fifty Alliance operations and probably more. Never in the forefront of the action until his voyage back to the Treaty Port, he’d been as effective an agent as he was proving a president. No wonder the Federation had moved Feodar’s World off the immediate acquisition list. A direct confrontation with the Alliance had a devastating effect of profits and this world was marginal at best.

That brought her to Rachael, the easiest to read, all the classic signs of a woman in love on display. Her body focused on the man at her side, responding intimately to his movements, gaze darting back to him even in the middle of responding to a question. Rachael was smitten.

Jenni bit her lip. She’d intended using sexual passion as her excuse for the botched job of following Rachael, knowing the woman was straight, yet trusting to her sympathy. It was a convincing explanation for everything, including her decision to become PA to a fledgling ambassador, but she knew herself far too well to court this disaster now. Like most Internal Security agents, she was consciously bi-sexual; it was almost a pre-requisite. Rachael had a vulnerability she found attractive. To feign passion convincingly, she would have to allow herself to believe it, and it would be too easy to blur the line between duty and reality with Rachael. She must find another way.

* * * *

Jack walked back from the compound in a daze, having delivered a reluctant Rachael to her door. He’d shared her discovery of motherhood and found it attractive, but it focused all his difficulties into an impossible imperative. He wasn’t surprised when Peter joined him. “Life just got complicated,” he said. “She wants to have my child.”

“What did you expect? We’ve just played happy families in front of someone who endured two years of deep cover and then had her brain picked over by Federation psychologists. We represent idealized normality and security to someone who’s starving for it.”

Jack, who’d never heard Peter speak so harshly before, turned to him, unintentionally probing and finding the older man’s mind closed.

“Don’t mind me.” Peter gave him a lop-sided grin. “I’ve just been eaves-dropping on the Federation. Their stupidity always puts me in a bad mood.” He walked a few steps in silence. “I like Rachael. If you decide to marry her, there’d be no objection.”

“Lots of problems though,” Jack was unconvinced.

“Nothing you can’t handle if you play it smart.” Peter’s tone held no sympathy. “Feodar is a better example than I intended.” He was gone before Jack could reply.

“Thanks.” The sarcasm made Jack feel better, even if Peter couldn’t hear. He wished his grandfather’s advice wasn’t so Delphic.

Karrel said it was because Peter saw so clearly and having to state the obvious embarrassed him. “He assumes we’re his equals, forgetting how special he is,” Karrel’s explained, and Jack believed it. He’d looked back at the end of too many missions and understood Peter’s planning at last. It seemed impossible that any one man could juggle so many variables into a coherent outcome, yet Peter did it repeatedly, a skill Jack had not appreciated fully until he became president. It became a comfort, knowing Peter was somewhere in the background, watching.

“Feodar is a better example than he intended.” He repeated Peter’s words, searching for their relevance. “In what?”

His first problem was deceptively simple. He’d passed the point where he could step away from Rachael. This evening’s moment of panic at the thought of a fully telepathic Rachael had disappeared. He loved her and wanted her to share his life and bear his children, but he had too many secrets. Jesse had known all about Anneke and had loved her in spite of it. Rachael knew a little, but was too smart not to discover the rest, even if she never became telepathic. Therefore, he must get in first and present it in a way she could accept. Once it was out in the open, they could discuss the other problems.

Anneke and Jesse had chosen not to have children, a decision he’d never questioned before. She would have discussed it with Dael. He must do the same.

Jack smiled at the thought. Conversations with his grandmother were always easier than those with Peter.

“Dael.”
Jack sent his request carefully, trying to balance its urgency and not alarm his grandmother. “
I need you.”

“You do,” she agreed, materializing at his side.

To save time, he shared his moments when Rachael seemed on the brink of sensing his thoughts, not omitting his selfish reaction, and Peter’s advice to look at it from the outside.

“Perhaps this will explain.” Dael drew him in to share a memory and he was inside Rachael’s mind.

She was dreaming, a half nightmare of a formless menace circling just beyond sight, threatening, not her, but him. He saw other fears in her mind. The Pontiff, the flames of an
auto-da-fe
, and phantoms from her childhood, but her fear for him dwarfed them all.

“Come back a little.”
Dael suggested, and he felt her at his side. “
See when this happened.”
She guided him outwards to sense Rachael’s environment.

It was the inner circle building where they’d first met. Rachael was in her undercover role as a temple maiden, a prisoner-at-large in the temple compound. He reached further, sensing the time frame and was astounded. It was the night he’d crossed the channel to the main island and the shark had just chomped six feet of the end of his make-shift raft. Rachael shared his fear, the emotion strong enough to bridge the distance between them.

“Do you understand now?” Dael stood beside him, her expression sympathetic, but a smile hovered at the corners of her mouth, a more accurate indicator of her thoughts.

“How long has she been a latent telepath?”

“All her life. Some of her childhood memories are not real. They were what she sensed rather than what happened.” He felt Dael’s sadness. “She loved her father so intensely, she sensed his awareness of her beauty, but didn’t understand the difference between his thoughts and reality. Her responses roused guilt and made being forced seem essential.” Dael smiled at his memory of love-making in the temple. “I’ve eased the link free, but it’s overlaid with so many memories of illicit pleasure, the effect will remain.”

“Can she develop further?” Dael would know.

“If we do it slowly. She’s not emerging from life-long hypnotic conditioning like Gabrielle so there are a lot of obstacles.” Dael withdrew, politely not probing his mind. “Are you ready to help?”

Jack stifled an automatic nod. Dael’s manner hinted he should think first, which showed her concern.

Why
? He’d dealt with his initial selfish reaction to the prospect of a fully telepathic Rachael, when he’d thought like a lover rather than someone in love. It wasn’t going to be an instant thing. They’d both have time to accommodate the changes. He smiled. It felt exciting, not daunting, to have the prospect of sharing completely for the rest of their lives…Jack stopped smiling.

A fully telepathic Rachael dying, as die she must, could he bear the pain of sharing even her death?

Rachael whistled softly the tune Peter had sung in the beach pavilion, the jaunty notes mimicking the happiness bubbling within her. She felt great; better than she could remember feeling, the last black cloud dissipated from her mind. She would marry Jack, bear his children, and be his wife. She’d been foolish to worry about the distant future. She would die no sooner for loving Jack and live much better with him than alone. He might be the son of an Elite and outlive her by years, but he was still Jack. It didn’t change him anymore than it changed the color of his eyes. She wasn’t quite sure why she knew Jack had committed himself to her, nor could she pinpoint the moment when it became a certainty. It just was. Jack was hers. She could trust him with her life. She’d had these feelings before and they were never wrong.

“Jenni.” She saw her PA at the end of the hall. “I’d thought you in bed by now. Don’t you ever sleep?” Her normally imperturbable assistant flushed and looked uncertain. “Thank you for worrying about me. It wasn’t necessary for you to follow. I was in no danger.”

“So it would seem.” Jenni seemed relieved. “I thought you’d be angry I’d overstepped myself.”

“You did, but it doesn’t matter. Please don’t do it again.” Rachael’s mood forbade anger. She’d have even forgiven the Pontiff tonight.

“Thank you.” Jenni nodded and backed away. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“You will.” Rachael impulsively stepped close and kissed the girl’s cheek. “It’s good, knowing you care.” A frisson of doubt nagged at the back of her mind, but she was too happy to take notice.

“Goodnight, Madame Ambassador.” Jenni backed away further, leaving Rachael little option but to turn away and continue down the passage to her suite. Her mind lingered briefly on the girl’s behavior, but too many other ideas demanded attention and she gave in to their allure. She’d deal with Jenni tomorrow.

Sleep came sweetly, filtering slowly into the background of her thoughts and ambushing her in a moment of distraction so she fell into its embrace with a smile. She woke the same way, with no conscious transition between the two states. There’d been dreams, pleasant things just beyond her grasp, vague memories of Dael’s warmth and Peter’s authority, which could have been from the beach pavilion more than dreams. They dissipated quickly as her mind reached for them, leaving a tantalizing sense of something missing in their place.

“Good Morning.” Jenni was there. She looked tired.

“Good Morning, Jenni. It’s a great day.” Rachael rose from the bed without conscious effort and took the offered cup of coffee. “We’ll have breakfast in the canteen with the others. How do you take your coffee…or perhaps you prefer tea.”

“Coffee, white with one.” She felt Jenni’s surprise.

“Why don’t you get one for yourself while I dress?”

“I will.” Jenni’s answer sounded automatic rather than considered. She’d come in worried about yesterday and the change in direction left her floundering.

“Don’t worry about yesterday. It’s forgotten.” Rachael responded to the knowledge without thinking how she knew. “I want to reinforce their trust this morning. Make sure I speak to Dick Smith…or, even better still, tell him yourself that we mentioned the excellence of his report in the summary.” Her mind ran on, noting Jenni’s surprise. “We need our people onside. Help me keep track of their achievements. You’re in a better position than I. We must foster a climate of excellence.” She grinned at Jenni’s reaction. “I know. I sound like a recruiter spouting clichés, but the thought behind them are real and the principles valid. Help me get it across to them.” She paused. “Get your coffee first though, before I run off at the mouth again.” She smiled at Jenni’s confusion. “I mean it. Get your coffee.”

Rachael turned away, sipping her coffee as she regarded the rack of everyday outfits in the wardrobe.
What impression did she want to make, today
? There must be no sharp contrast to the others in the canteen.
Would they react to her visit yesterday by smartening their dress
? She nodded. Probably, they would. Jenni would be a good measure. Matching her assistant’s choice would be the safest. It would make two of them…Rachael laughed...her red hair made successfully hiding in a crowd of two improbable.