The Fall Read online

  Except her father’s love.

  But John was gone. Stabs of grief shot through her heart and resounded through her soul. Those eyes. She had liked those eyes. No, she had loved those eyes. Gazing at her with kindness, with love, with joy, through a long life together. Dust replaced the face, showering onto a chair and a desk. She gasped.

  A hand touched her wrist.

  “Beloved?”

  She shattered back into the present. The Paran gazed down at her, swimming in her watery vision, something gray in his hands. Wracking sobs shook her.

  He put the gray object aside and slid onto the bed beside her, pulling her into his arms, taking care to cradle her head against his shoulder. “Why do you weep?”

  “I remembered John,” she whispered. “Dying.”

  “My heart grieves for your pain.” He kissed her hair.

  “He turned to dust. Right in front of me, he turned to dust. Marianne said he died in the line of duty, but I was there when it happened. How can that be?” She burrowed her face into his chest and sniffled. Hard muscle rippled beneath the embroidered robe, and he smelled… familiar.

  She stiffened. What was she doing?

  “What troubles you?” The Paran’s voice rumbled through his chest.

  “I—this is not—I must not—”

  “You are on my world, in my province, and by our customs, we belong together. No one here will mock you.”

  She gave herself up to the grief, and somehow he rode the worst of it with her. When the tears had spent themselves, she rested against his shoulder and listened to the patter of the rain against the window. She risked a glance up at his face. He turned a gentle smile on her.

  “Your apothecary wants you to eat,” he said, as a servant laid a tray on the bed beside her. “Will you try?”

  A pile of food lay on the tray, none of it familiar other than the rolls, but enticing aromas rose from it. Her stomach yowled.

  The Paran chuckled. “I will consider that assent.”

  He broke the rolls into manageable chunks, held a soup bowl for her to sip, gave her pieces of strange fruit to nibble. When she had eaten the last scrap on the tray, he offered a steaming mug with a familiar smell.

  “Oh,” she sighed, after taking a sip. “This tastes a lot like… like…” Her thoughts stuttered. She knew the flavor, smooth and smoky, but the words wouldn’t come.

  He uttered something she didn’t understand. She closed her eyes and sipped a little more tea. Sounds of the sea shore filled her ears—crashing waves and unfamiliar bird cries. Images floated across her mind’s eye. The Paran, sitting across a small outdoor table, sipping tea. The Paran, laughing, as she fell into some kind of pool on a beach. The Paran, helping her to build… a sand castle? She found herself starting to smile.

  “Another memory?” he asked.

  “I remember you,” she whispered, “on a beach.”

  He chuckled. “You taught me something new that day.” He leaned his cheek in her hair. “You are a gift, beloved. If I could have only the honor of your presence, it would be enough. You are my heart and my life.”

  She swallowed around a lump in her throat. If he said things like that, no wonder she had gotten involved with him. She sighed and buried her face in his robe.

  * * *

  Farric leaned against the veranda railing, gripping it hard enough to render his knuckles pale, and looked out over a garden full of purple and green vegetation from the Den homeworld, dotted with red stone sculptures donated by the V’kri. Behind him, a presence approached from the sitting room—living room—of the diplomatic suite.

  “Bad news from home?” Bertie’s voice rang with the casual sympathy he intended and undertones of anxiety he did not.

  Farric looked over his shoulder. Bertie had bathed and changed from the clothes he wore for sparring to the everyday wear of a human aristocrat, and stood framed in the doorway, toweling his hair. “Plans run toward their conclusions,” Farric said, turning to lean against the railing and face Bertie. “The ruling caste prepares to meet. Father orders my return.”

  The human uttered a colorful and anatomically unlikely vulgarity. Farric chuckled and brushed past him into the living room, pulling a small tablet from a pocket.

  “What the hell is—”

  Farric raised a hand to interrupt him as he set the tablet to scan the room. It detected two espionage devices and disabled them with faint popping sounds.

  “Now we can talk for a time.” He dropped onto an overstuffed chair. “Until the servants replace the—how do you call the surveillance devices?”

  “Fleas.” Bertie took a seat across from him and started pulling a brush through his hair, his eyes fixed on the tablet. “Please tell me that isn’t Tolari tech.”

  “I regret to disappoint you, but this came from my planet, yes. We borrowed the notion of tablets from a race that disappeared long ago. You humans reinvented them, but your technology is—leaky. And often loud.”

  “Bloody hell.” The human ran a hand through his hair. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “You need to know what you truly face, if you are to represent Tolari interests to the Trade Alliance.”

  Bertie opened his mouth, then closed it.

  Farric grinned. “We are not primitives,” he added.

  “And I wondered why our tech never seemed to surprise you. I chalked it up to superior deportment. Just how advanced is your technology?”

  Farric lifted a shoulder. “More so than Earth’s.”

  “You’re quite sure of that?”

  “Yes.”

  Bertie gathered his hair and tied it back with a black ribbon. “You do realize there will be an almighty explosion in the general direction of Central Command when this gets out?”

  “That is why I would prefer it if you worked from Monralar. You will be safer there.”

  He grunted and pulled on his boots. “Do you throw any parties in dad’s castle?”

  “I regret to say, no. And our food is poisonous to humans, for the most part.”

  “No meat, you said?”

  “No meat.” Farric shuddered. “Will you come?”

  Bertie grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  * * *

  Laura woke alone in dim gray daylight. She sighed. She’d fallen asleep in the Paran’s arms, and now… she wished she’d awakened in them, too.

  Urgent needs assaulted her.

  “Syvra?” she called, struggling to get her elbows beneath her. “Someone? I need the necessary. Badly!”

  Two women in yellow robes hurried into the room. One helped her to her feet to use the necessary, while the other took the opportunity to change the bed clothes. They both assisted while she bathed, a real bath in a stone basin. Afterward, she fumbled trying to pull on a knee-length, dark purple bed-robe with matching loose trousers. Her right arm and leg were weak and her right hand strangely clumsy, and it took much longer than it should have to dress.

  The aides explained that most of the damage had been to the left side of her head, damaging her speech centers but leaving the right side of her brain intact. That didn’t make sense, since her left hand worked fine. Good thing she was a lefty.

  They also talked about some sort of speech implant she’d gotten here on Tolar that had helped, though they didn’t explain how. The question of how she had become planet-bound in the first place… she’d deal with that later. Something was wrong with her; the glow around the people in the room, and the terrible brightness beyond…

  And it wasn’t just her, it was the people, these Tolari. All and sundry around this place, this stronghold, seemed to accept her relationship with the Paran, but as Mama would have said, that didn’t make it right. What kind of person had she been? A respectable woman, an Earth Fleet spouse, a widow, none of those would have carried on with a man at least twenty-five years her junior less than a year after her husband’s death. That didn’t seem like her at all.

  The aides tucked her back
into bed and left. With some thrashing, she managed to roll onto her side, facing the windows and a small bedside table. On the table sat the gray object the Paran had brought and set aside when she burst into tears—a sculpture of what she might call a family of three whale-like creatures, mama, papa, and baby, each with a long, bladed tail and six flippers instead of two. She touched it with a finger.

  The smell of dust. An old, old man in a deep purple robe, his face wrapped in papery wrinkles, his rheumy eyes bright with happiness, sitting in a simple wood chair, this very sculpture in his lap.

  The Paran’s voice murmured behind her. “Receive it with both hands.”

  The vision faded, changed. A picture window, with beads of water dripping down the outside. A voice saying, “He was a master of his craft, and he left a large family, by our standards.”

  She sucked in breath. Who did it belong to? Did the old man in her vision make it? She ran a finger over it again. It was a stunning piece of art, a masterpiece. Had the old man… had he died?

  A loud knock came from the doorway—and it occurred to her that the absence of knocking the previous times she’d awakened represented a significant difference from her past. The door opened, and the Paran walked through. He cocked his head, studying her as he crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “Something troubles you,” he said, covering her hand with his.

  She chewed the inside of her cheek. “I cannot understand how I could forget John so quickly.”

  “You did not forget him, beloved. You continued on your path.”

  “I—what?”

  “A discussion for another time, perhaps.”

  “Why?”

  “Would you like me to explain bonding?”

  She flushed and looked away. He chuckled and gave her the same look John had given her when… when…

  Boston dinner parties. Glittering affairs in floating glass ballrooms, with expensive delicacies and the best entertainment. Virtuoso musicians. World-class entertainers. Interplanetary celebrities. Boston Harbor. Old Ironsides floating in the water beneath them. John, so handsome in his dress uniform, the handsome and eminently capable Captain John Walter Howard.

  Then he was older, graying. Still active and trim, and more handsome with maturity lining his face. An admiral now, with the crew he’d chosen so carefully, returning to Beta Hydri IV.

  Turning to dust.

  She gasped and cried out.

  “Beloved.”

  The Paran had pulled her into his arms again. Syvra stood on the other side of the bed, a hand on her shoulder. The touch soothed.

  “You are remembering,” the Paran said. He tilted his head down to peer into her face. “This is good, beloved.”

  “It hurts,” she whispered.

  “I know.”

  She sniffled. “This is improper.”

  “Must I tell you again?” He snorted. “We are bonded. Look into my heart. It is joined to yours.”

  “Is that why do I do things with you that my mother taught me I should never do?”

  “In part,” Syvra replied. “The lines between you are blurred. There is a part of each of you in the other.”

  “Neither of us will ever be the same person we were before we bonded,” the Paran said. “You are more daring than you were, and I am—I am more steady.”

  “High one, has she eaten?”

  There was that title again. It evoked a line of banners in her imagination, from places she had never, ever seen. Her mind reeled, and she sent the strange senses she’d awakened with around the room. Syvra was confident and professional. The Paran glowed with affection for her. Neither of them had any nefarious intentions, unless she counted the Paran’s obvious physical interest, which he suppressed. At least for now.

  He shifted his arms around her, and hard muscles rippled under his robe in intriguing ways. Maybe that interest wasn’t such a bad thing.

  Her eyes fell on her hand, lying against the Paran’s chest. She flexed it, brought it closer to her face to examine. The skin looked youthful. She ran her fingertips over one cheek. Smooth and firm. How? She was… she was… she wasn’t sure how old she was, but she had grandchildren. Her skin shouldn’t feel this way.

  She pulled her hand away from her face and stared at the lines on her palm. A man who looked like the Paran but older, his face lined and his hair gray, smiled back from the opposite side of a table. His robe had embroidery at the collar and cuffs, like Marianne’s, rather than over the entire upper half. He shook her hand, and something flashed in his eyes.

  She blinked, her hand returning to be just her hand again. She looked up at the Paran. “I remember meeting you,” she murmured. “You looked… older. You shook my hand.”

  He nodded. “Yes. I wanted to greet you in the manner to which you were accustomed.”

  “It was somewhere else, with walls made of darker stone. Not here.”

  “We were in the stronghold in Suralia, at a conference of artists and musicians.”

  “Music.” She closed her eyes. It came suddenly, then—a harp, playing a melody that swooped and soared. The Paran, sitting next to her in some kind of hall. The Paran, kissing her. She had longed for him to kiss her like that. Her eyes came open on a gasp. “First kiss,” she whispered.

  “In the Sural’s audience room, after the morning concert.” He stroked her face with the back of his fingers and smiled into her eyes. “You have much to remember that is not painful.”

  Syvra bowed and left the room.

  “Kiss me,” she said. “Before she comes back.”

  “I should not,” he said, tracing her jawline with a fingertip.

  She pouted. It undid him.

  When their lips touched, all awareness fled of anything but the world inside the Paran. The hard strength of him. The soft, almonds-and-spice taste of his lips, almost familiar. Most of all, the love wrapped around her like a cocoon. Her stomach turned to water, and she forgot to breathe.

  Someone coughed in the doorway. Laura groaned, and the Paran broke the kiss to look up. Marianne stood with a tray of food in her hands, grinning. She placed the tray beside Laura and took up residence in a chair between the bed and the window. Laura picked up a roll and nibbled at it.

  “You look a little stronger today,” Marianne said.

  Laura nodded. “Maybe it will not take as long as I thought to recover.”

  “Tolari do heal quickly.”

  “I am not Tolari.”

  “Are you not?”

  “Of course not!” She looked up at the Paran. “Tell her.”

  He remained silent. Laura squinted at him.

  “I was born on Earth!” she exclaimed. “In Boston!”

  “Perhaps that also should be a topic for another time, beloved,” he said.

  Laura’s patience broke. “Oh, come now,” she snapped. “What else could I be? Either I am human or I am not. It is not such a hard question.”

  The Paran heaved a sigh. “At present, you are more human than Tolari, but you will never be fully human again.”

  She stared at him. He believed what he said. She closed her eyes. This day had started out so well.

  “Have you wondered yet why you look so young, but you remember being a grandmother?” Marianne asked. “And how you know what everyone around you feels?”

  She opened her eyes to give the other woman a mutinous glare. “None of this is possible. None of it.”

  “Tolari have life extension based on rejuvenation, Laura. You are young again, and you are becoming Tolari as a consequence. It made you an empath, too, an extraordinarily strong one.”

  Truth. She only heard truth. And Marianne continued to gaze at her with those calm, shocking blue eyes.

  “I need to rest now,” Laura whispered, and closed her eyes.

  * * *

  CCS-52-1687

  Memorandum

  FROM: Adeline Pearson Russell

  SUBJECT: Tolar activity

  Tolari ambassador departed Capella
Free Station 1630 hours via Rembrandt fast courier Star of Britannia with his entourage, the ashes of a deceased Tolari physician, and Duke Alistair Rembrandt’s youngest son, Albert. The attempt to freeze Lord Albert’s assets proved unsuccessful. The Den and the V’kri banks refused our request.

  A search of the Tolari quarters turned up two destroyed fleas. Will deliver to R&D for study.

  (signed) Adeline Russell, Major, Central Security

  Head of Field Operations, Inner Sector

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Sharana stepped out of the warm pod and into the cold air of the central transit hub in Suralia’s city. Signs pointed the way to various buildings and structures, both for the benefit of visitors and because not everyone could translate their knowledge of the city above to the underground walkways below. According to the signs, the Hall of Scholars lay nearby. She headed for it, shivering in the chill. Her robe, unlike those of the Suralians going about their business around her, did not insulate from the cold, and while the Suralians heated these pedestrian tunnels to provide safe routes through the city during their dangerously cold winters, their idea of warmth did not match her equatorial sensibilities.

  She heaved an audible sigh when she emerged from the stairs into the Hall. The scholars heated their meeting place to a much more comfortable temperature. She looked around the entrance room, searching for anyone she could identify as the Hall’s chatelaine.

  “May I assist you?” came a woman’s voice from behind her, in melodious Suralian.

  Sharana turned. Before her stood a tall woman in scholar’s blue, wearing a chatelaine’s sash of the same color about her waist. “Scholar,” Sharana replied in the same language, bowing. “I need access to communications.”