Venus Rising (4 page)

“Commander Tarik, wake up. Oh, please,
please, wake up.”

He opened fever-glazed eyes, looking at her
blankly, and she knew he did not recognize her.

“But soft,” he murmured, “an angel comes
here.”

“Commander Tarik!” She drew back in surprise,
her voice a little sharper than she had intended.

“Sweet lady, curse me not. I am ill and like
to die.” He dropped back into the feverish sleep from which she had
roused him.

“What’s wrong with you?” she cried. “I knew
you were hurt worse than you would admit. Now what am I to do with
you? I don’t know where to get help, and I can’t carry you, even if
I did know where to go.”

She sat there on the moss, trying to recall
every bit of medical information she had received while in training
for the Service. But it had all been about emergency treatment
until a doctor was available, and it depended upon equipment she
did not have. Narisa had almost never been sick. She did not
remember what her mother had done for her when she was young and
ill, and the few minor ailments she had suffered after going to the
Capital to join the Service had been cured quickly, in a matter of
minutes, with the latest treatments. What did one do with a sick
man and no medicine?

Tarik thrashed about in some feverish
nightmare, crying out loudly as he hurt his broken ribs. She
touched his forehead. He was on fire with fever. Narisa had not
felt so frustrated since she had received the news that her parents
had been killed.

“I will not cry;” she said aloud, as she had
said on that terrible day. ”Tears are a sign of weakness. I will
find a way to fight this, and I will win. I will.”

Water would put out a fire. She could put
water on Tarik’s face and torso. Perhaps that would help to douse
the fever. She stripped off her uniform jacket. Beneath it she wore
the regulation undergarment of all females in the Service. This was
a cream-colored shirt, scoop-necked and sleeveless, made of a
stretchable fabric that molded the body closely and supported the
breasts. The material was absorbent, as the heavier outer jacket
was not. Narisa pulled it off and soaked it in the stream, holding
it in the cold water until it was saturated. Then she wrung it out
and brought it back to Tarik. She brushed the straight black hair
off his hot forehead and laid the shirt across it, wrapping the
ends down around his cheeks and chin.

“Cool,” he muttered. ``So sweet.”

She unfastened his jacket. She doubted she
could get it completely off in his present condition, but she could
open it and put cool water on his chest and abdomen. The safety
harness from the pod was still wrapped about his ribs. Narisa
checked it, lifting the elastic straps at several places. It did
not seem to be too tight, and the bruised skin under it appeared to
be unchanged in color, so she left it in place.

The cloth around his face was warm already.
She took it back to the stream to soak it again. After she had
replaced it on his head, she opened his trousers and slid them down
on his hips to expose his abdomen.

Tarik was not as obviously muscular as many
men, but his body was sleek and trim. She recalled his endurance of
the day before, how, injured though he was, he had led them across
that endless desert, made her go on when she would have stopped,
and with a faith and determination she had not shared had brought
them to a safe resting place. Strength, Narisa decided, did not
necessarily mean muscular bulk. His body was beautiful, the skin
unblemished and smooth. She ran one hand along his side, from chest
to waist to flank, momentarily engrossed in admiration and
something else, something that began to stir deep inside her. The
only flaw she could find was the injury covered by the harness.
Then he moaned again, and she withdrew her hand with a guilty start
and hurried to put more cold water on his forehead.

It did not trouble her that she was undressed
above the waist. On her home planet of Belta, the human body was
considered beautiful, and children were allowed to run about
half-dressed during warm weather. She had grown up unhampered by
any sense of shame about nakedness, and not until she had joined
the Service and met members of Races from other planets had she
realized that other people might feel differently.

She took a few moments to splash water on her
face and shoulders before moving upstream to a quiet pool to drink.
There she saw her face imperfectly reflected in the deep water. She
did not need to see it exactly. As she knew her own body, so she
knew her face. She had strong features to go with her tall, strong
body. Her face was oval, the skin flushed to a rosy tan from the
previous day in the sun. Her mouth was wide, with firm lips, her
nose straight but a little too long, her eyes a cool gray with
golden flecks. Her hair, a warm golden brown several shades lighter
than brows and lashes, was worn parted in the middle and clipped
straight all around just below her ears. Service regulations
ordered that style.

Straight hair, straight nose, level eyes,
strong body, honest mind and heart, all trained to Service
regulations. Willingly. Gladly. Straight, straight, straight. A
good officer. A superb, if somewhat inexperienced navigator with
brilliant potential.

With her family dead on Belta, she had
dedicated herself to the Service. She knew one day they would meet
the Cetans in open warfare and win. Her family would be avenged. In
the meantime, she gave all she had to her work, to her navigational
studies. She adhered rigidly to all Service regulations, forcing
her once free spirit into strict self-discipline, not letting
herself consider the questions about the Service, or the Assembly,
which occasionally came unbidden to her mind. She had always pushed
such questions and the doubts they raised out of her thoughts with
ease. She had tried to make herself into a perfect Service officer,
and she had almost succeeded. Sighing, she stirred the water with
one hand, breaking up the image of Lieutenant Navigator Narisa
raDon, and bent her head to drink.

Tarik lay burning with fever for the rest of
the day, and Narisa spent her time sponging him with her dampened
shirt. Her efforts made no difference that she could detect. He did
not know her. When he spoke, it was to utter strange rhyming
phrases she could not understand. Since he was an expert in
languages, Narisa assumed he was speaking in some of the many
tongues he knew.

So intent was she on lowering his body
temperature that she was only dimly aware of the passage of time.
She sensed rather than saw that the orange sun had risen to its
zenith. Here beneath the thick canopy of leaves sunlight penetrated
only in scattered shafts of orange-gold light, and where the
underbrush was thickest, dark shadows persisted.

Thus it was that she did not see their
companion at first. She took her undershirt off Tarik’s chest and
carried it to the stream, once more to cool it and wring it out. As
she walked the few steps back to him, she perceived a flicker of
movement among the bushes at one side of the clearing. She looked
in that direction, but saw nothing.

“Rustling leaves,” she told herself,
rejecting the first stirrings of fear. “Good. If a breeze comes up,
it will help to cool Tank.”

She laid the cloth across his abdomen,
remembering how, when she was swimming, cold water on her belly
chilled her whole body. Perhaps it would work for Tarik, too.

She leaned back. Reaching behind her without
looking, she drew forward and opened the package of compressed
food. She took out the two waters that made up a complete meal,
then put one of them back. She was hungry, she hadn’t eaten since
the previous evening, but she felt she should conserve their
supplies. They might be without food for some time, and if he
recovered, Tarik would no doubt need plenty of nourishment to
regain the strength he had lost to fever and injury. She laid the
food package aside, preparing to eat the single wafer.

It was then that she became certain she was
not alone. Someone or something, some unknown presence, had moved
from the bushes to stand directly behind her, looking over her
shoulder at Tarik. Narisa turned, and then stopped, half sitting,
half kneeling, the food wafer still clutched in her right hand.
Stunned, she looked up at the creature who stood there.

It was the green one, an emerald splendor of
a bird, its rich, thick feathers gleaming in the dim light. Its
shining black eyes were fixed on Tarik. Its long green beak was
slightly parted, enough for Narisa to see that it had teeth, neat
rows of them, top and bottom. They gave the creature a sinister
look.

Leaping to her feet, Narisa took a defensive
posture between the bird and Tarik. The bird was nearly as tall as
she was, and she was terrified of it, but she tried to cover her
fear with angry words.

“Leave him alone,” she shrieked. “He’s not
dead yet. You can’t have him, or me either. Go away, you
monster!”

Lacking any other weapon, she threw the wafer
of compressed food at the bird. The bird caught the wafer in its
beak in midair, then laid it carefully on the ground at Narisa’s
feet. The delicacy and control in that action stopped her incipient
panic. She stood silently while the bird looked from her to Tarik
and back again. If this creature wanted to kill them both, it could
do so easily with either its beak or its large clawed feet. Yet now
she was over her first fright, she could see there was nothing
menacing in the bird’s attitude. It was simply curious about them.
Narisa thought she must be going mad to believe such a thing, but
believe it she did. The realization lay firmly in her mind: This
bird would not harm them.

Behind Narisa’s guardian’s back, Tarik tossed
and moaned.

“He’s sick,” Narisa said. “He may die, and I
don’t know what to do. Why couldn’t you have been an intelligent
life form?”

The bird looked directly at her, cocking its
head, then turned away. As it did so, one of its wings brushed
against her bare arms and hands. The contact lasted only an
instant, and when it was broken, Narisa felt an almost
uncontrollable urge to put out both hands and touch the bird again.
She did not, for she had just seen something she had not noticed
while the bird stood quietly with folded wings. Now the wings were
open, and Narisa could see that at the last joint on each wing
there were three clawed fingers, which were separate from the wing
itself and clearly capable of independent movement. It seemed to
her that the bird had the bones for three more fingers, but those
were incorporated into the last segment of each wing. She had ample
opportunity to look, for both wings were fully spread as the bird
flew to a branch of a nearby tree and, using the three fingers on
one wing, plucked a yellow-green fruit. It flew back to land close
to Tarik and laid the fruit next to his head.

“What are you doing?” Narisa cried. It did
not seem at all strange to be talking to a bird. This was like no
bird she had ever seen before, and much of her earlier fear of it
had dissipated.

Tarik turned his head toward the bird, his
eyes closed, moaning from pain and fever. The bird bent down, and
using its beak, gently pushed the fruit toward Tarik’s mouth.

“You want him to eat it?” Narisa was
beginning to understand the bird’s purpose. “But he’s sick. He
can’t eat.”

“Chon,” the bird said. “Chon-chon. Chon.”

The sound was so sudden and unexpected that
Narisa stumbled backward a pace or two. The bird waited. Narisa
moved forward again and, kneeling beside Tarik, picked up the
fruit.

“I wonder what it is?” she murmured, turning
the smooth yellow-green globe over in her hands. It was perfectly
round, with no markings at all except the stem, and it fit easily
into her palm. “How do you eat it? Is it safe?”

It contained juice. That knowledge lay as
solidly in her mind as had the earlier belief that the bird would
not hurt her. Juice. Tarik needed liquid. The high fever was
burning off the fluids in his body, Narisa knew that much. She had
tried bringing him water cupped in a large leaf, but he had refused
to take it. Perhaps he would drink the juice contained in this
fruit. Might it harm him? Did she dare feed him an untested
food?

She barely hesitated. Tarik was going to die
soon anyway. She might as well ignore Service regulations and take
the risk.

She found the knife in the tool kit and
carefully cut a hole in the fruit. The smooth skin was thick, and
she had to press the knife hard. When she finally got through to
the liquid center of the fruit, some of the juice spurted out onto
her hands. She brought a finger to her lips. It tasted tangy,
refreshing, unlike anything she had ever encountered before. Just
the few drops that had touched her tongue made her feel happier,
more hopeful.

She sat beside Tarik, lifted his head onto
her knee, and when he opened his mouth to groan, she poured a
little of the juice into him. He choked at first, but then he
swallowed it, and she gave him some more. Nothing happened.

“How will I know how much to give him?”
Narisa asked the bird, who stood quietly watching her. Tarik opened
his mouth as if asking for more, and she poured the rest of the
juice into his mouth. The fruit was empty. Narisa set it on the
ground and cradled Tarik’s head in her arms, hoping she had not
killed him. She smoothed his hair and laid her cheek against the
top of his head, wondering what would happen next.

She had disobeyed Service regulations
repeatedly, drinking untested water, treating a sick man when she
had no medical knowledge, and now feeding him some mysterious fruit
juice. She could be court-martialed and imprisoned for the things
she had done in the last two days, yet the breaking of so many of
the rules to which she had held so firmly for ten years was now
unimportant. The Service to which she was dedicated, the Capital
and the Assembly, Belta and the Cetans, were all part of a distant
past that scarcely mattered at all in this strange new place. She
still had sense enough to recognize what was happening to her.