A Thousand Words For Stranger (10th Anniversary Edition) (32 page)

I straightened up, package in hand, only to be buried by a virtual shower of blankets. I could hear Morgan laughing through the pile. Struggling free, I pulled loose a clod of moist moss and cocked my arm, waiting for him to stick out his head.

Chapter 21

ACRANAM’S nightfall had startled me. I hadn’t been prepared for darkness that arrived almost as quickly as if I’d ordered the lights off in my cabin, though the heavy shadowing of vegetation above our heads should have warned me.

I smiled to myself, gazing upward. True darkness hadn’t lasted long. Almost immediately, it had been broken by the opening of large, glowing white flowers suspended throughout the canopy overhead. The soft light of their petals attracted hapless flying things; once close, they were captured by tendrils dangling almost invisibly below. Although the thought of feasting plants bothered me at first, I admired the flowers.

The fire tumbled to embers; the outermost of these blackened at the edges as they cooled. I hurried to put on more wood, afraid the fire might die on me.

I’d never imagined I’d enjoy watching a fire, yet I found myself staring into its complex, fickle color until I had to rest my hot and dry eyes by gazing up into the cool darkness. A magical night, lit by a galaxy of flowers and centered around this fragrant campfire.

“Going to sit there until morning?” Morgan said as he reentered the firelight, bedrolls in one hand, blankets over the other shoulder. A tiny portlight hovered over his head like an anxious mother bird.

The end of daylight had put an end to Morgan’s sketching. He’d packed away his pad after showing me, not without some coaxing, the drawings he’d done. Most were quick, light reminders; I knew he already pictured where they would belong in his cabin on the
Fox,
should he ever have her again. The exception had been a sprig of moss whose dainty capped stalks had kept him hovering in cramped frustration for an hour or more, before straightening with a pleased groan and stretch.

I smiled again. That picture now resided in my pack, unknown to Morgan. It was a theft I could live with, given either of us had a future after tonight.

I accepted my share of the bedding, but refused to stir from my comfortable mossy seat. “I can’t possibly sleep and miss all this,” I told Morgan firmly. “How often in our level of civilization can life return to the primeval— fire against night demons—brain and brawn against the predators lurking in the dark?” I rubbed my hands together with delight.

Morgan shook out his bedroll at the side of the fire farthest from the pod. He was barely visible, having sent the light back to recharge, his smile betrayed only by a glint of white teeth. “Let’s not forget the distort field and life-form monitors so thoughtfully provided by yours truly. I’d hate to slip too far back.”

I made a rude noise. “Take the fun out of it if you must. I’m going to take first watch.”

Morgan was, by this time, only a lump in a pile of blankets. “Watch all night, if you like, Sira. I, for one, plan to get some well-deserved sleep. Good night. Just don’t forget that we’ve a fair amount of walking to do tomorrow if we’re going to find Huido before dark.” In the following silence, the crackle of new flames was loud when I added another dry branch.

 
Though it was an effort to fight the tendency of my head to nod heavily, I was still spellbound by the flames much later when the first whisper of my name brushed my consciousness as a gentle breeze would lift and turn a leaf.
Sira.
I glanced at Morgan’s unmoving, featureless form, expecting to see him open his eyes and look at me. Then I realized the voice wasn’t his and closed my mind tightly.

I was so terrified that I produced only a faint bleat when I tried to call Morgan. And then even that impulse faded as the projection formed—the image of the Clanswoman named Rael so lifelike I almost warned her about the embers glowing beneath her feet.

This time the projection grew more substantial, almost solid. Her hands were outstretched in welcome. I could easily make out every detail of her face, and its glad expression. And hear her voice. “Sira. At last I’ve found you. Greetings, dear Sister.”

“No!” I shouted that with enough force to scorch my throat. Why didn’t Morgan stir? “I’m no kin to Clan.”

She seemed stunned. “What are you saying? What’s happened, Sira, to make you—”

I shook, suddenly gloriously angry. At last I had a target. “What’s happened? Wouldn’t a better question be what’s been done to me? Oh, I know it all, Clanswoman. I know how the Clan has tried to manipulate and control me. You’ve failed. I don’t fear you.”

I did, of course. The sight of her hovering in the fire was enough to raise the hairs on my neck. It was even harder to ignore my worry for Morgan. Couldn’t he hear us?

“Fear—me?” Rael’s cheeks looked pale. They weren’t lit by the firelight, I noticed, distracted. But then, she was really somewhere else. Where, I wondered.

Her words spilled out as if I’d released some flood-gate. “Why would you fear me, Sira? You know I’d never send you back. Haven’t I always taken your side? Why do you look at me that way—with such loathing?” her voice broke. “My dearest sister—”

“Stop calling me that!” I stood, bristling impotently since the object of my rage was no more within striking range than the flowers over my head. Yet, the Clanswoman’s distress would have wrenched sympathy from a rock. Great jewel-like tears overflowed her eyes. Her full lower lip trembled. Confused, I didn’t know what to say or think.

“Have you grown to hate us all, then?” her voice was faint. The image flickered as if its motivating force was weakening.

“Why shouldn’t I?” I said slowly. It hurt to see her unhappy. I sent a pleading look toward the lump of blankets that hid my erstwhile partner, not daring to lower my own mental barriers.

Her head shook sadly. Rael was now more misty ghost than vivid presence. “Sira, we were heart-kin as well as blood-kin. If those ties are not enough, what more can I say?”

And abruptly, devastatingly, as her image faded completely, I realized the truth of what she had said. Every muscle in my body stiffened and locked. The distance between what I’d thought myself to be and this new Sira was an unbridgeable infinity. Nothing was left for me to believe. I hadn’t even known my own species. I was a stranger to myself.

Sira.
I knew that mind voice better than any other; it treaded the frozen waste of my thoughts delicately, warily. The wariness betrayed him; it told me he’d been watching, listening, deliberately silent. I couldn’t make the effort to care.

I raised my eyes from the dying fire. Morgan, still wrapped in his blankets, shifted to within its dim circle of light and sat stirring up the blaze. Somehow the mental exchange was less taxing.
You heard all of it?
I asked.

Yes,
a touch of guilt quickly dispelled by concern.
Are you all right?

I ordered my body to sit. It obeyed in a strangely disjointed fashion. My hands folded in my lap of their own accord.
Rael called me her sister.

Very cautiously, but with a familiar resolute honesty:
She named you Clan.

I nodded unnecessarily.
I suppose she did.
I spent a moment in a slow, inner searching.
Shouldn’t something
show? Shouldn’t I at least feel different?
I threw my confusion and pain across our mental link at him.
I’m not
Human
anymore!

The intensity of the sending hurt him. I saw Morgan wince, though he poked the fire as if to cover the movement. He chose to speak out loud. “Human or Clan. Both sapient, both civilized, both standard humanoid. So how could you know?”

“But you knew, didn’t you,” I said, clamping down my own barriers, horrified to discover I was becoming suspicious of him too, of everything. “All this time, I believed I was Human. You were in my head. You knew what I believed! Why—” I stopped.

Morgan’s face was difficult to read in the fire-thrown shadows. “Why didn’t I tell you?”

“Yes.”

“At first, I thought you were trying to fool me. When I knew better, I discovered I was afraid to tamper with Sira Morgan.” He was quiet for a moment. I could hear small rustlings beyond the firelight. “You’re different from any Clan I’ve met, Sira. It’s not the blockage—it’s something else. I can’t describe it.” He shrugged. “For a while, I wondered if Barac had lied and you were Human. But then, you began to do things no Human telepath can.”

My palms began to sweat. “Why am I different? Rael is my sister. She claims to care for me. I don’t know what to think, Morgan. What am I?”

Morgan scowled into the fire. “A pawn.”

I jabbed with a stick, ending the glow of a spark that had landed by my feet. “Like that.”

He’d watched me. “Once, maybe. But we’ve managed to throw a few changes into things, don’t you think?”

“What do they want, Morgan? Why did they destroy what I was?” I said furiously. “I don’t care what Rael said. The Clan are my enemies, not my kind.” The words left a taste in my mouth, bitter and unpleasant, like the truth.

Then I sighed, my fury and its heat gone. “Where would I be now if I hadn’t met you and joined the
Fox?
You’re more my kin than they’ll ever be.”

Morgan didn’t answer. I knew I was Clan and that meant something was different, I realized, a sinking feeling in my stomach. I could read him well enough by now. His face was hidden, but there was disappointment—or was it defeat?—in the set of his shoulders under the blanket.

I switched to inner speech, hoping to feel something more from him.
So I’m not Human. It doesn’t change things between us. Does it?

As he looked up, his eyes took on a glow, but Morgan replied out loud, his mind closed tighter than a drum. “If the non-Human caused me sleepless nights, I wouldn’t have lasted one trip outsystem.”

“Then what’s wrong? Why are you disappointed?” After the words were out, my cheeks began to throb with heat. I leaned away from the fire and its light.

“Disappointed?” Morgan laughed. The sound was hollow. “It’s nothing to me what you are, Sira. I knew all along it was unlikely you were Human. Why should I be disappointed?”

I pulled my blankets up with me as I stood with what I hoped was a dignified flourish. “I don’t know. But I do know you’re lying, Captain Morgan.”

I threw down my bedroll at the edge of the firelight farthest from where he sat brooding over the crackling wood. I was huddled under several covers, with one pulled over a nose grown cold away from the fire’s warmth, when Morgan’s thoughts touched mine.

For what?
I sent to him, pulling my blankets tighter.

A shading of remorse.
For lying to both of us.

More than remorse, I decided, tasting the emotion Morgan was letting through the light barrier between our minds. Regret.
I’ll live,
I answered. What was the matter with him?

I pulled the blanket off my nose so I could look over it to where he sat, still and shadowed.
But my being Clan does make a difference to you. Why? You’re not afraid of me, are you?

His thoughts were flooded by an odd mixture of embarrassment, confusion, and reticence. I withdrew from the contact, rather amused to have for once disturbed the usually imperturbable Morgan.

So much time had passed, I’d settled back to sleep, when a rustling of leaves startled me awake. Morgan sat down a short distance away, a darker shadow among those cast by the last of the flames. “I’d hoped,” he said, aloud yet almost as quietly as mind speech, “you’d stay . . . after this business was settled.” He hesitated, seemingly at a loss for words, without the confidence I was used to and suddenly missed. “With me.”

“What I said on Plexis still holds,” I warned him. “I haven’t decided to return to the
Fox,
or whatever she’s called now.” I smiled to myself in the dark. “But it’s nice to know I’m welcome.”

“It’s not that simple!” Morgan’s shout surprised us both into an uncomfortable pause. I listened to rustlings in the forest that subsided slowly. Morgan went on more quietly: “What I want doesn’t count anymore, Sira. You’re Clan, not Human. And I know the Clan better than most, believe me. They’re xenophobes. They can barely tolerate alien species. They especially despise Humans.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” I said, and meant it. “I don’t—”

“Not now. But what happens when that block in your mind dissolves? What about Sira di Sarc? How does
she
feel about Humans? Why shouldn’t that Sira react to me as a typical Clan?”

“After what’s happened to me,” I paused to curl more comfortably under my blankets. “I doubt I’ll ever be a typical
Clan
again anyway, Morgan. Aren’t you looking a bit too far ahead?”

There was a strangled kind of sound, then, as if frustrated to exasperation, Morgan pulled me out of my nest with a rough grip on my shoulders. “Just how much of this must I explain to you, Sira? I wanted you to stay with me. Not as crew. With me, always. For a while I dared to think it was possible—but now I know you won’t—you couldn’t even if you wanted to.”

“Oh,” I said, my heart pounding in my ears, echoing the thick passion of his voice. How could I have been so blind? He’d been alone for so long. I’d missed Morgan’s need, too intent on my own.

Maybe it was less than flattering to be chosen out of no selection at all; maybe that didn’t matter. I didn’t move from the now-light hold of his hands, aglow with a deep pleasure that was so much more than all my hidden fantasies had promised.

“Sira?” Morgan was peering at me in the dim light.

I raised a hand to stop him. “It’s all right, Jason.” I blushed as I used his first name, feeling foolish and wonderful at the same time. “I understand now. What you tried to tell me on the
Fox.
” That seemed so long ago.

“About what?”