The Mandala Maneuver (9 page)

H
e had
to stoop at times, for this tunnel was not as large as the others they’d traveled through. But it was rocky and clean and carried no smell of the slugs or any other predators, and so a stiff neck or shoulders seemed a small enough price to pay.

Alexa trudged along beside him, for although the tunnel was not all that tall, at least it was wide enough for the two of them to walk abreast. Poor choice of words there; he’d seen the smooth, pale expanse of her back and the barest flash of the side of a creamy bosom before she shrugged herself into her jacket. As weary as he was, desire licked through him as he recalled that glimpse of her body. Somehow it didn’t matter to him that she was alien, that her skin was so very different from that of his own people. Her shape was delectably female, and he wanted her now more than ever.

He could tell, too, that she was fascinated by him, that she had to force herself not to stare at the features he had kept hidden up until now. Surely that must be a good sign, for if she were repulsed by his appearance, she wouldn’t seem to be so intrigued. Or perhaps not; perhaps it was only simple curiosity, for being the only one of her race to have ever looked upon the face of a Zhore. Well, the only one that she knew of; that unknown girl on Lathvin IV was truly the first to have ever seen one of his people face to face.

There was no way to ask what Alexa was thinking without being horribly intrusive, so he said nothing, only continued their passage through the tunnel — which, he was beyond relieved to note, had begun finally to slope upward. If there were any mercy in the universe, they would finally regain the surface, taste the wind and see the sky, but he did not want to speak of his hope, not yet when so many things could still go wrong.

His clothing gradually dried as they walked, and he began to be cold. Several hours had passed since they emerged from the lake when he paused.

Alexa stared up at him, blue eyes wide with concern. “What is it?”

“Nothing, except that I think I am now dried off enough to put my robes back on.”

Was that a flicker of disappointment he saw cross her lovely features? But she only nodded and said, “Sure, just a minute,” before pulling them out of the emergency bag and handing them to him.

He took them gratefully, shrugging into the heavy garments with the ease of long practice. Warmth surrounded him, dispelling some of the chill he had felt ever since leaving the water. Out of habit, he reached up to pull the hood back over his head once more.

Her voice stopped him, surprisingly hesitant for someone so forthright. “Do you — that is, do you think you might leave the hood down for now? There’s no one else here to see, after all.”

Joy surged through him then, for he was sure she would not have made such a request if she weren’t in some way pleased by looking at him. He sensed confusion from her, an odd diffidence, as if she were struggling with feelings she couldn’t quite comprehend.

“Of course, if you wish it,” he said, and let his hands fall back to his sides.

She flashed him a quick, uncertain smile before turning back to the empty tunnel ahead of them and beginning to walk again.

Lirzhan knew it would be better if he said nothing else. Things had perhaps begun to change between them, but no use in pushing when their connection was still so fragile. For now he was content to walk beside her, and know she was glad that he hadn’t decided to retreat to the safety of the hood once more.

When light flooded the tunnel, he blinked, because he’d been halfway expecting that they would continue to trudge through these barren, rocky caverns forever until their food and water was gone. Next to him, Alexa went stock still. In unbelieving tones she asked,

“Are we out?”

It appeared they were. Or almost, anyway. The tunnel opened out into a shallow cave, and the cave in turn opened on a hillside far more lush than the one they had left behind two days earlier. Trees in shades of olive and dark teal crowded the view outside, and above them the sky was a serene gray-blue, clouds streaking it that were beginning to turn shades of pink and coral. There were no skimmers in sight.

“Sunset or sunrise?” he asked, as he could not see the sun itself, not with it low in the sky and tall hills crowding on every side. Oddly, his sense of direction seemed to have deserted him for the moment.

She pushed back the sleeve of her jacket and looked down at her chronometer. “It’s not an exact match, but as far as I can tell, it’s sunset.”

That wasn’t optimal, for striking out just as the sun was beginning to go down seemed to him to be a very bad idea. Still, the cave where they stood now appeared to be empty and clean enough, with no trace that any living thing had stood here before, no bones or scat left behind by predators. “Then I think we should stay here for the night and set out in the morning. That will give us time to rest, and I can’t imagine that we would find a more secure place by heading out into that forest.”

Something about her posture seemed to change, as if she had relaxed slightly, knowing that they would push on no further this day. “Let’s see my tablet. Maybe now that we’re back on the surface we’ll be able to pick up a signal.”

He drew it out for her, although he wasn’t certain she would have much success. Lacking satellites, the beacon on the science station worked more or less on line of sight, although the signal must be very strong out of necessity.

But she tapped away, and then let a little relieved gust of breath out between her lips. “Looks like our luck might be changing. I’m getting something, even though it’s a little faint. Must be the mountains in the way. You can still see the route, though. Look.”

She angled the screen so he could see what she was talking about. Sure enough, the signal for the station pulsed away, a reassuring green, showing that they did not have as far to go as he had feared. Another thirty kilometers, maybe a little more. That was even something they might be able to accomplish in a day, although he glanced at the mountainsides directly across from them, now turning darker and darker with the setting of the sun, and wondered if they were as impassable as they looked. Well, that was something to be tackled tomorrow. At least they had made good progress while they toiled away underground.

“We are getting close,” he told her. “All the more reason to rest now, so we can leave early in the morning. With any luck, we may reach the station before night comes again.”

“I’m not much acquainted with luck,” she told him, “but one can always hope, I suppose.” She turned away from the cave opening and inspected the bare floor, which was much smoother than the caverns they’d left behind. She smiled at him then, and this time he noted no hesitancy in either her expression or her tone. “Mind if I borrow some of that robe to sit on again?”

A
ll right
, she really didn’t want to admit to herself how good it felt to sit here, the fabric of Lirzhan’s robe protecting her from the dirty ground, her back up against the cave wall, her head resting against his shoulder, the meager meal she’d just consumed keeping the worst of the hunger pangs at bay. Maybe it was just the chance to sit down after so much walking — seriously, she hoped she’d never have to walk any farther than down a hallway at work or from a cab to her apartment again — but somehow she knew it was a little more than that. Something had changed.

You are so goddamn shallow
, she told herself.
You barely wanted to talk to him, but now you’ve seen his face and know he isn’t Quasimodo or something under there, suddenly you want to get all cozy with him?

Put that way….

All right, maybe that was a little bit true. But after years of hearing rumors about the Zhore’s unprepossessing appearance, it was a little disconcerting to find that instead he looked like some dark elf out of those old Norse tales she’d read as a child, hiding under the covers with a tablet loaded with free public domain stories so she could try to avoid the ugliness of her life. Hard to accept that she found his face oddly beautiful. If she were any kind of an artist, she’d want to paint those elegant planes and angles, try to capture something of the light in those deep jade-green eyes. But she wasn’t, so the only thing she could do was try to watch him without staring, to commit as much of his features to memory against the time when the outside universe intruded again, and he retreated to the safety of that damned hood.

For now, though, they were alone, and it was all right to lean against him, to feel the warmth of his body against hers, although the night air on her face was downright chilly. No one was here to judge, or wonder how she could allow herself to be wrapped in those heavy, concealing garments, snuggled up to one of the galaxy’s most secretive aliens.

Not that she imagined anything was really going to happen between them. No, they’d share these few odd hours of intimacy, and then they’d be rescued and — well, all right, they wouldn’t really be going their separate ways, not with the two of them both assigned to the Council’s headquarters in the Targus system, but she couldn’t imagine anything much happening after that.

It wouldn’t be like being with Trin. Yes, he was an alien, too, but humans and Eridanis had been mingling for more than a hundred years now. No one batted much of an eye to see members of those races having relationships, or even marrying and starting families together. There were a few people at the embassy who had been less than pleased, but that was probably more a territorial thing than because they were racist. The Consortium couldn’t exactly tell its diplomats to stay single…much as its representatives probably would have liked to. Even so, having a member of the embassy staff involved with one of the locals was not exactly encouraged.

But since Trin was a university professor with a spotless reputation, and because his work had absolutely nothing to do with Alexa’s own duties, the whole thing was let slide. She imagined that suddenly going out for drinks with Lirzhan at the Targus station’s commissary wouldn’t exactly meet with the same placid reception.

Getting a little ahead of yourself, aren’t you? Next thing you know, you’ll be settling down with him on a colony somewhere and popping out a bunch of half-alien babies.

That was definitely ridiculous. She’d never given any thought to marriage at all. She had nothing to model on — no happy home life to make her want anything more than a life of service. There had been a few men, but not many. She wasn’t very good at the whole trust thing. The only reason she’d started seeing Trin was that he’d been so importunate in his pursuit of her, so clearly enchanted. If he’d heard any rumors about the “Ice Queen,” he definitely didn’t show it. He told her she was beautiful, that she was intelligent and exotic. What woman wouldn’t want to hear such things, even an ice queen?

She’d known even as the relationship began that it wouldn’t last, and had tried to let him know they really didn’t have a future together. He hadn’t wanted to listen; it was pretty obvious that he thought he could change her mind. No such luck for him.

She shifted slightly, and felt Lirzhan move as well to accommodate her new position. What he thought of her, she had no idea. Probably that she was some sheltered female who couldn’t even be bothered to learn how to swim, who was woefully unprepared for the ordeal they were now enduring. Well, she couldn’t argue with that. Then again, she’d never signed up for this sort of duty. If she’d wanted bivouacs and slogging through the wilderness and dodging wild animals, she would’ve enlisted in the GEC rather than the diplomatic corps.

Anyway, all she could do was hope, as she drifted off to sleep, that he didn’t think her too much of an idiot.

T
his might be
the last night he could be with her like this, her head pillowed on his shoulder, the warmth of her body seeming to fill the space within the robes wrapped around them both. If they made it to the station tomorrow, they would have proper beds to sleep in, and she’d have no more need to huddle against him as protection from the chill of the night.

He wished he could ignore the pang that went through him as he contemplated this prospect. Something in her seemed to be softening, but whether it would soften enough in time…well, that was the real question. There was every chance that rescue would come before he had the chance to say anything to her, explain the
sayara
bond…try to tell her why, through some happy accident of mind and spirit and body, she was the one most suited to being with him.

Yes, somehow he had a feeling that sort of announcement would not go over very well.

A sigh reached his lips, but he did not let it out. He did not want to do anything that might wake her, not when she slept so peacefully, eyes shut, lashes dark against her pale cheeks. One of Mandala’s moons was tracking through the sky, casting a pale bluish light over the landscape and pouring through the cave opening. In its radiance she looked oddly fragile and even more beautiful. He wished he could touch her, could reach over to push back that loose strand of hair which looked as if it might fall across her closed eyelids at any moment.

No, that wouldn’t do. She might sense the lightest brush of his hand near her face, and misinterpret the gesture. So guarded, so many walls within her. She’d been hurt deeply, that much he could sense, and he wondered if she would ever feel free to discuss such things with him. He thought that perhaps she did whatever she could in order to avoid talking about herself. In a way, being in the diplomatic service made sense for such a personality, for she could put her own ego aside as needed to work through the issues of the opposing sides.

But such self-abnegation must come at a cost. He’d begun to see the smallest change in her, the tiniest hint that the edges of her flinty exterior were beginning to chip away. With all that, though, he feared that the second they were back in civilization, had returned to their duties and routines, all the walls would be back up again, and their chance together would be forever lost.

It was not normally his way to accept defeat before it had even occurred, but he had never met a woman like Alexa Craig before. There were no stunted childhoods, no bleak emotional landscapes, among his people, for such things were nigh impossible when every intimate relationship was based on such deep compatibility, such harmony on every level of body and mind and soul. Once he had ventured out into the galaxy, he saw that his people were an anomaly, and that there was much conflict he could not even begin to understand. He could only hope that whatever might lie in Alexa Craig’s past, it hadn’t scarred her irrevocably.

A
nother morning
, another stiff neck. She pushed herself away from Lirzhan with care, feeling several vertebrae crack as she did so.

Hope there’s a good chiropractor on Targus Station
, she thought, and looked over to see Lirzhan gazing out at the bright morning beyond the cave opening.

“All well with the world this morning?” she asked.

“As far as I can tell,” he replied quietly. “I have been listening to the birds, or whatever they are, and I believe I hear the buzzing of insects in the trees, but other than that, things seem peaceful enough.”

“Good.” Yes, a nice quiet walk through the woods would be a welcome change of pace. True, those mountains didn’t look all that promising, but maybe there was some sort of pass they weren’t seeing because of all the trees clustering on the mountainsides.

They both lapsed into silence then, sharing the ritual of eating their protein bars and drinking enough water to wash them down sufficiently. One good thing about that dunk in the underground lake yesterday — Alexa felt a lot cleaner, although she still longed for the bathrooms at the science station. Most of the time they were equipped with solar water heaters, so there might even be a hot shower in the offing if she were really lucky.

Afterward, they packed up their empty wrappers and set out again. The walk down the hillside below the cave mouth was steep but not impossibly so. And of course going down was easier than going up.

All around them clustered trees in various shades of gray-green and green-blue, actually quite lovely with their lacy, almost feather-like foliage. The forest floor was coated with more leaves in various states of decay, muffling the sound of their footsteps. From time to time she could hear odd little rustling sounds in the undergrowth, as if small creatures were fleeing from the clumsy two-legged creatures blundering through the woods, but she saw no sign of them.

“This is quite a beautiful world,” Lirzhan said after some time had passed. “I am surprised the Consortium has not begun colonizing here.”

“They probably will, if they get desperate enough,” Alexa replied. “The GEC actually prefers barren worlds that it can terraform. Trying to coexist with native flora and fauna has proved deadly too many times, so even if they eventually decide to come back here, they’ll just scorch-earth the place and start over.”

He turned and sent her a disbelieving look. “You mean to tell me that your people would actually rather destroy all this rather than attempt to live peacefully with the plants and animals that have evolved on this world?”

She found she didn’t much like being on the receiving end of his narrow, green-eyed stare. It wasn’t a policy she particularly liked, or approved of, but she wasn’t in the GEC and had no control over that organization’s actions. “Well, the Gaian Exploration Commission will. There are actually people who’ve been protesting such policies for years, but it hasn’t done much good.”

“Why not?”

“Because, well — ” She floundered for a second. “It’s complicated.”

“I believe that is what your people would refer to as an excuse.”

He had her there. “Look, Lirzhan, you’re a diplomat, so I know you must’ve done some serious study of Gaian culture and politics. The corporations have a stranglehold on the government, so even if there are well-meaning people who don’t agree with some of the Consortium’s more destructive policies, they don’t have enough of a voice to effect any real change.” She paused, noting the disapproval that seemed to fairly pulse from him. “Don’t try to tell me that any of this is a real surprise to you.”

“It isn’t. I suppose I had hoped — ” He broke off, and appeared to be deciding exactly what he wanted to say next. “That is, I suppose I find it surprising that one of the Consortium’s representatives would be so frank on the topic.”

She met his gaze, trying to focus on the condemnation on his face, and not the beauty of its particular features. “You know a lot more about us than we do about you,” she said, not bothering to hide the weariness in her tone. “I’m pretty sure I’m not telling you anything you didn’t already know.”

He did not blink. “True enough. But what do you think about it?”

“I hate it,” she told him shortly, then turned away and kept trudging ahead, her boots making soft rustling sounds on the bed of dead leaves beneath her feet. “But it doesn’t really matter what I think.”