Venus Rising (8 page)

“Mother! Father! Laria! No! Wait for me.
Wait!” She was on her knees, struggling with some tall creature.
“Let me go, you Cetan pig. I must find them. Let me go, I say!”

“Narisa, it’s me, it’s Tarik.” Strong hands
held her, pinning her flailing arms to her sides, shaking her hard.
“Wake up. You’ve been dreaming. Narisa!”

She fell against him, breathing hard as
though she had been running for a long time, clutching at him to
reassure herself he was real and not part of her nightmare. They
knelt together in close embrace while she tried to compose herself.
Tarik pulled her head onto his shoulder and stroked her hair until
her tearless cries had quieted and her breathing was normal again.
After a while he eased her gently down onto the sand and lay beside
her, still holding her.

“If you tell me about it,” he said softly,
“you will chase the dream away faster and be able to sleep again
sooner.”

She would never have breathed a word of her
family tragedy to the cold and arrogantly superior Commander Tarik
she had so despised aboard the
Reliance,
the man who had
harshly criticized the most minor details of her work. But this was
a different Tarik from the one she had known then; or rather, she
had not known him at all until they had been forced together during
the last three days. His peculiar ideas constantly threw her off
balance, but he had been genuinely afraid for her when the snake
might have killed her. He had kissed her, not once, but twice. And
just that morning he had put his hand on her bare breast and held
it there. She grew warm again at the memory, and snuggled against
him. She felt his lips brush across her brow. They were lying so
close, almost like lovers, their legs entangled. She thought if he
kissed her brow again, she would raise her face and his lips might
touch her mouth. What would he do then? Would he put his hands on
her as he had before? What was it like to be loved by Tarik?

“Tell me the dream, Narisa,” he urged,
recalling her from her foolish imaginings. She began to talk, and
before she was done she had told him not only the dream, but the
terrible story of the Cetan raid on Belta, and the extermination of
her family along with so many others, the unbelievably cruel deed
that caused the planet to remain devastated and nearly unpopulated
for long years afterward.

“I was at the Capital at the time of the
attack,” she continued. “I was in the second year of training for
the Service, and my superior officer would not let me return to
Belta. As you know, recruits are never allowed to leave the
Capital, not for any reason, until the training is over and they
are assigned to a spaceship. When I insisted I had to go, they told
me Belta was too far away, which was true enough, and they gave me
extra duty to punish me for my insubordination. I have never been
back to Belta since then. I’ve never seen the ruins of my old
home.”

“So, not having seen the material evidence,
you find it hard to believe your loved ones are really dead, and
you keep searching for them in your dreams, as though you could
change what has happened.”

“Yes, I suppose so, though I know full well
in my mind that they are gone forever. It’s my heart that won’t
believe it. I loved them so.” She knew he was right. She had
understood what was happening to her when she dreamed, and thus had
never spoken of the nightmares to anyone until now.

“I often wondered why you cried out in your
sleep,” Tarik said. “Your cabin on the
Reliance
was next to
mine, you recall, and I would hear you.”

It was Suria’s cabin she had occupied. There
had been a door connecting them. Narisa had kept it locked, sealed
with her own private combination so she would have one place on the
ship where he could not come. She should have realized sound would
carry through the door. She ought to have been quieter.

“I’m sorry if I disturbed you,” she said
stiffly.

“It doesn’t matter now.” He gave her a quick
hug. “You lost more of your family on the
Reliance,
didn’t
you?”

“How typical of Cetans,” she burst out, “to
attack and destroy a ship on a diplomatic mission of peace. Yes,
the Beltan ambassador and his senior assistant were both distant
cousins of mine. I didn’t know them very well, but they were kin
and all I had left. Now there is no one at all.”

No one,
she thought,
who remembers
when
Laria and I were little girls, or how happy a family we
were. I have lost all of my past.
The self-pity lasted only a
moment before her usual control reasserted itself. She would have
pulled away from Tarik, but he held her firmly, and she sensed a
tender purpose in his next words.

“Narisa, have you considered that we may be
all alone on this world? Just the two of us.”

“I have thought of it, but I can’t believe
it’s true. We have to get back to the Capital.”

“Ah, the Capital. I almost forgot your
dedication to Service regulations.” He opened his arms, moving
apart from her, leaving her feeling oddly bereft. “Sleep if you
can, Narisa. It’s still my watch.”

But she lay a long time on the sand, staring
up at the few stars, before she slept again. And she wondered what
would happen if she were forced to spend the rest of her life alone
with Commander Tarik Gibal.

He woke her when the night was half gone, and
she saw by the distance the two moons had moved across the sky that
he had timed his watch precisely. She went to the stream to splash
water on her face to wake herself to full alertness. She did not
quite trust the lake water, not knowing what else flowed into it,
so, cautious as always, she preferred to use the water that had not
harmed her. Not yet, she reminded herself. There might be long-term
effects. Nothing was certain on any unknown world.

When she returned to the spot where Tarik
lay, she sensed he was sleeping. She could see his pale bearded
face and smooth black hair in the moonlight.

Narisa sat staring into the night, thinking
about the events of the last three days. So much had happened. She
still felt disoriented, not least by her constantly shifting
reactions to Tarik. She was honest enough to admit to herself that
she felt a strong physical attraction to him, but she was afraid of
that attraction.

A faint breeze sprang up, ruffling her hair
and rippling the surface of the lake. It was growing cooler, both
moons had set, and it was so quiet, except for the soothing noises
of the water. Narisa leaned back, bracing herself on both arms, to
look at the night sky. The stars glittering brilliantly through the
thin atmosphere were unfamiliar to her, and for all her training
she could not tell from them where she and Tarik were.

Her training had been strictly in the
sciences, and none of it had taught her to appreciate the natural
beauty of any world, but Tarik’s injunction to open her eyes and
look had induced her to do just that. She watched the sky until it
began to lighten into lavender and pale orange, as behind her the
sun rose slowly above the forest in orange-gold splendor. The peak
of the lofty mountain in the distance changed from gold to rose to
pure white, and the mauve-gray mist lying over the lake dissipated
into the clear air. While she looked, marveling at the loveliness
of the landscape spread before her, the sky gradually turned to its
daytime hue of deep purple-blue.

Far out on the lake she saw birds, six of
them, flying high up, then diving straight down into the water and
out again, trailing sparkling silver drops of moisture behind them.
So they did eat fish, Narisa observed. Fishing was the only
activity she could think of to account for what they were doing. It
occurred to her that she knew nothing about animal behavior in any
species. It had been one of the deliberate limitations of her
training. She might have learned on her own, but she had not cared
enough to do so, not after her family was gone. After that, she had
adhered strictly to duty and regulations.

As the morning light grew brighter, she
realized that she had been right about the island in the lake. It
lay directly in front of her, near the cliffs. It appeared to be
quite large. She could see the birds diving on the far side of it,
the water dripping off their wings when they rose again, so the
lake must extend completely around that spot of land. An island,
edged in pale sand and covered with luxuriant vegetation.

The sun rose still higher, its rays gleaming
on something white and smooth, set back among the trees along the
island’s shore. A building. She squinted to see better. It had to
be a building. They would find intelligent life there. She knew
it.

Before she could shake Tarik awake to tell
him of her discovery, something else caught her eye. High in the
steepest cliffs overlooking the lake there were holes, niches,
caves, and deep folds in the rock, and the birds were flying in and
out of most of them, some carrying fish in their beaks. They must
have brought Narisa and Tarik to their home.

Beside her, Tarik stirred, yawning and
stretching, then sat up and rubbed his eyes. Narisa smiled,
thinking how unkempt a man looked with three days’ growth of beard.
She liked him better for it. It made him less intimidating. She
probably looked almost as bad, though she had tried to comb her
hair with her fingers and keep her face and hands clean.

“You were right,” Narisa informed Tarik,
dispensing with any morning greeting. She told him about the birds
and then pointed out the building on the island.

Tarik leapt to his feet, completely awake
now, and ran to the water’s edge to get a better view. Narisa
joined him.

“If there is communication equipment there,”
she said excitedly, “we can call the Capital, and they will send a
ship for us.”

“Don’t get too excited, Narisa. We don’t know
yet what we’ll find. Can you swim that far?”

“I am Beltan-born,” she replied proudly. “I
can swim anywhere. Can you?”

“Easily.” He frowned a little, his eyes on
the island. “I see no sign of life, nothing moving over there.”

Narisa’s hope would not be dashed, not until
she had seen for herself.

“Let’s go at once,” she urged.

“Not before food and a little preparation. I
thought you were the cautious one of our expedition, Narisa.”

“I suppose I am,” she admitted. “Usually.
It’s just that I want to return to civilization. I’m not accustomed
to wild places like this.”

“Nor am I, but I find I like it, certainly
more than I like the Capital.”

They broke the night’s fast with a single
compressed wafer for each. Then they returned to the forest to pick
up what fallen branches they could find and break off a few from
living trees. Tarik climbed a tree to pull down several thick
vines, while Narisa watched him fearfully, shivering at the memory
of the vine that had proved to be a snake.

They carried their findings to the beach.
There, under Tarik’s instruction, they wove the vines around the
branches to make a small, leaky raft. They lashed to it the
watertight containers of tools and food, arid the water container,
now full of water they had taken from the stream. Next they took
off their boots and uniforms and fastened them on top of the
containers, using the safety harness from the pod, which Tarik
insisted on unwrapping from his ribs, saying he felt certain they
were completely healed. Narisa privately doubted that, but she was
so eager to get to the island she did not want to waste precious
time arguing with him.

“Our clothes will get damp,” Tarik said, “but
if we push the raft carefully, we shouldn’t have to walk in boots
that are completely soaked, and the uniforms will dry quickly.”

He glanced at Narisa, his eyes glowing with
appreciation. She wore only her close-fitting undershirt and the
regulation lower undergarment, which was cut high on her thighs.
Her long legs were bare, her frame slim yet strong and healthy.

Tarik wore a similar lower garment and
nothing else. He had a fine, supple body, so well proportioned and
sleek with taut muscles that he looked much taller than he was. He
was not short for a man; it was just that Narisa was so tall he
topped her by only two inches. There was a light furring of smooth
black hair on his chest and forearms.

They stood looking at each other, each
frankly enjoying the sight of a handsome specimen of the opposite
sex. Fearing she would embarrass herself by blushing again, Narisa
turned away and went to the stream to drink. She knew his eyes
never left her. She could almost feel them caressing her shoulders
and back, buttocks and legs, down to her slender ankles and narrow
feet.

She wanted him to look at her, but she wanted
him to touch her also, and to kiss her again. Her thoughts
frightened her. She had looked at other men, boys really, on Belta,
and they had looked at her, and there had been a pleasure in the
looking, and in the touching, too, but never this kind of tension,
this shameless urge to throw herself into a man’s arms and let him
bear her down to the sand and do whatever he wanted with her. She
knew what it was she felt. She had heard other women talk of it,
and she had felt it herself once or twice before, though never so
strongly. It was desire.

“Not Tarik,” she whispered to herself,
splashing cold water on her burning cheeks. “I can’t want him, not
for my first man.”

“Are you ready?” Tarik called across the
beach. She got off her knees and left the stream and went to help
him launch their little raft.

The lake was cold. Narisa did not quibble
about the possible composition of the water, or the possibly
dangerous animals that might be living in it, as she ought to have
done. She was too eager to get to the island.

She was glad to have the coolness swirling
about her ankles, then her knees and hips, until she was shoulder
deep and began to swim and help Tarik push the raft along. She let
the chill water wash away the unhealthy desire she felt, leaving
only a residual warmth deep inside her that she could easily
control.