Beyond (10 page)

“Salvan’s parents were on the mainland when the disease struck.”

Zak did not elaborate. He didn’t have to.

Aimee hesitated a second and then her voice cracked as she asked, “Did they test me when I came on board?”

Zak’s pace slowed. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, and his jaw was tight as he responded bitterly. “Yes.”

Aimee stopped and frowned. “Why do you look at me like that?” she asked his back as he kept walking.

Zak stopped but did not turn around.

“I don’t understand what you are asking.”

Aimee refused to catch up to him. She held her ground. “You look at me like I am an inconvenience.
Like I am an enemy.
I didn’t ask to come here. I don’t want to be here. I want to go home. I am not an enemy.”

Zak turned now and his expression was dark. Dark and attractive even in condemnation. “You are Salvan’s pet.”

Her hands slammed down on her hips. “I am nobody’s
pet
. I have seen this Salvan for maybe several minutes since I’ve been on this monstrosity.”

Zak looked somber. “You were asleep for what you would call a week. In that time, Salvan tested you.”

A chill coursed through her at the thought of being unconscious with that man for such a long period of time.
“And?”

“You came up negative as we all suspected. We are certain the cure will come from vegetation. Warm-blooded creatures are merely a vessel for what they eat anyway.”

“I’m not Salvan’s pet.” Aimee couldn’t get past that.

Zak crossed his arms. “He will try to make you into one.”

Before she could rant a response, Zak nodded over her shoulder. “Do you recognize that?” he asked.

Aimee spun around, still angry, but a smile consumed her face at what Zak had pointed out.

“A palm tree!”
She ran up to it, feeling the coarse bark. Glancing up into the balmy leaves she laughed when she saw a coconut. “It’s a palm tree!” She smiled back over her shoulder, her anger momentarily forgotten.

His morose expression eased.
“If you say so.”

“How did you know this was from Earth?”

Zak tipped his head down at the plaque in the ground. A series of symbols were inscribed on the chrome surface. “It says so.”

“But we don’t have palm trees in North Carolina. Did you make another stop?”

He surprised her by joining her and testing the endurance of the trunk with the palm of his hand. “We stop at all the planets in the path of our metagalactic rotation.”

“Right.
Once every five years.” Some of her enthusiasm waned.

Zak’s gaze dropped from the coconut to meet her eyes. His head cocked slightly to the side and he seemed to sense her dispirit. “I like your planet.”

“You’ve actually been
on
Earth? Did you come down and get me? Did anyone see you?” The questions would have continued to roll from her tongue if the rustle of a Sumpum didn’t startle her. She saw its two rear feet disappear into a thicket of red weeds.

“We don’t often visit the planets personally. Our salvage stream will extract whatever we need to bring back. That ray is very accurate. If we see a seedling this size,” he held up the pot, “the salvage stream will retrieve it. That’s why the
accident
of picking you up seems suspect to me.”

Indeed. It wasn’t as if she had accidentally jumped into that ray of light. It suddenly appeared around her, and nowhere else.

“Your salvage stream feels weird.”

“I imagine it would, considering you were broken up into about three billion pieces.”

Aimee glanced down at her arms and wiggled her fingers. “I guess they put me back together okay.”

When she looked up, Zak’s eyes lingered on her arms and climbed up to her face where she could feel them tracing over her hair and touching the curve of her cheek before they met hers. “Yes, it looks like they did.” His voice was husky.

Aimee cleared her throat. “So when were you on Earth?”

Stepping off the dirt embankment, Zak strolled over to an empty plot and crouched down to deposit the seedling into a pre-dug hole. Mud wound around the base of the sprout without him touching it. A light emanated from behind the blank plaque in the ground as symbols formed on the chrome surface. The light faded and Zak stood up.

“On our last pass.”
His dark eyebrows dipped in recollection. “As a warrior, we must protect the Horus. There was another ship traveling just outside your galaxy at the time. We suspected it was the Korons, but the vessel was small and hard to track. What we could trace though was the beam they shot. Earth is the only planet in your universe with mewahs on it, so it’s the only planet worth spending any time visiting. The Korons know that as well, but they are not a peaceful group as you saw in this latest battle. Anyway, I had to track that beam and make sure they weren’t sending some of their own down there.”

“What does a Koron look like? Is it human…ummm…a mewah?”

Zak chuckled. “No.
Not at all.
A Koron looks like a—” His fingers went to his forehead in thought. “I’m trying to think of something on your planet to compare. You have something they call
a Terracotta
?”

“Terracotta?”
Aimee glanced one last time at the palm tree and stepped back down to join him. “My mom has terracotta pots on the deck. The Korons look like pots?”

“No, no.” Zak shook his head, frowning. “You have people called terracotta. They are made of rock.”

He was making her head hurt. “Oh!
The Chinese warriors.
The Korons look Chinese?”

“No.
The rock part.”

“Oh,” she snapped her fingers. “The Korons look like the statues of the terracotta warriors?”

“Yes. They are rock people and you can’t fight them in hand-to-hand battle. It’s impossible.”

“You’ve tried?” She was horrified at the image of Zak going up against a burly stone soldier. He was a warrior, and his body might look like it was chiseled from rock, but his flesh was warm to the touch. Aimee caught
herself
staring and blinked her eyes.

He stared back, which disconcerted her all the more. That connection was finally broken when he spoke. "I reached the surface just as they were coming through. We have superior weapons, but your atmosphere impedes their effect. I had to try a physical assault.”

“Oh my God, what happened?”

“The Korons are formidable, but they have a very substantial weakness. Their greatest foe is water, and your planet was gracious enough to rain on them."
She caught his quick grin. "They disintegrated before I even had a chance to draw my star-laser.”

“Did anyone see you?”

“A little girl and a canine.”
His grin remained. “Do I look like I’d fit in on your planet?”

How could she answer that? Yes, he was human. He would fit in that respect. But Zak looked better than any human male she had ever seen. To think of Corey and how he thought he was the best-looking guy in school.
Wow
, was he wrong. Granted, Zak was older, but it wasn’t that. It was the dark intensity to him.
The feeling that when you were near him you were around something powerful.
In his presence you were motivated to better yourself.
To achieve more.
She wanted to impress this man. Not merely because of his physical attributes, but because she knew he executed his best every moment of the day. No second was left to waste. Even this small task of planting an alien seedling was important, and it was a byproduct of his heroic acquisition of that sapling.

And yes, there were his physical attributes. He was taller than most of the men on the ship. She would venture to guess over six feet. But it
wasn't
the height so much as the way he carried himself.
Always standing erect.
Always prepared.
The black suit slid across his muscular frame. He was not bulky, like a football player. He was lean and solid, and she guessed that he could probably hold his own in a hand-to-hand combat with a stone rebel.

All these facets aside, the
feature
so unique to Zak was his eyes. In them she saw the dawn of new horizons—worlds, the likes of which were unimaginable. And each world he entered with assurance, not fear. If she looked hard enough she could travel to those galaxies in one glance from him.

“Aimee?”

And that voice. That husky timbre that made her cheeks grow warm and her stomach tumble.

“You might be able to blend in if you wore sunglasses.”

“Your sun does not hurt my eyes. No sun does.”

Of course not.

“
Where did you go?” she asked.
“Where on Earth?”

“I’ve been there twice. Once to a place they called, New Jersey. The other was—” He rubbed his fist over his eye, deep in thought.
“Shine-ah.”

“China?”

“Yes, that’s it.”

“No wonder you knew about the terracotta warriors.”

Zak hoisted his hand.
“Let me show you something,” he said.

She thought he was going to touch her, but he had hefted his hand to point at the nocturnal ceiling. Why did she refer to it as night? It was space. It was always going to look like this.

Before he could speak, she asked, “How do the plants in here thrive with no sun to nurture them?”

Zak’s hand dropped, but he looked patient. A faint smile even dusted across his lips. “Most of these plants are accustomed to this environment. Your palm tree and some others are nurtured with solar rays from the ground. We emulate your sun with cosmological lamps embedded in the turf.”

“Oh.”

“Now, look up there.” He pointed at the stars.

On instinct, Aimee moved in closer to him to narrow down the direction of his finger. She felt the heat of his body and her shoulder brushed up against his arm.

To hell with the stars
.

“There, the orange one. Do you see it?”

An orange sphere, the size of
an—
orange
, floated within a ring of orbiting bright lassos.

“Yes.”

“We’re going there next.” He brought his hand back to his side and glanced down at her, noticing how close she was. Did she imagine that his eyes flared slightly, or that his lips parted as if to add more, but the words were forgotten.

Reluctantly she dragged her gaze away from his to look up at the celestial roof. “Are you going to retrieve some more plants?”

“That’s our intention.”

The somber ring to his tone drew her eyes back. He was staring up at the planet and a muscle twitched in his jaw.

“What’s wrong?” she whispered.

His glance made her shiver. “It's just that
we've
never been there before," he explained. "Every time we enter into a new system…we don’t know what to expect.”

“Are you afraid?”

He smiled at her and she thought she had never witnessed anything as captivating.

“No. I’m not afraid.”

Well, she was.

“I have to head back.”

Aimee didn’t want to leave here. She didn’t want to leave this magical vestibule with its crown of stars and its vast forest. She didn't want to leave the funny-looking Sumpums. And she didn't want to leave this enigmatic man. Being with him had given her the first touch of normalcy she had since she walked Ziggy around that pond.

“I understand,” she said.

Zak looked at her and she was aware of that same prolonged stare he had used when watching her across the assembly hall. It reminded her of an animal of prey, but she did not feel like she was being stalked. In fact, she liked when he looked at her like that—as if he was committing her face to memory. But that was a silly notion.

"I have to start readying the
terra angel
for the flight tomorrow," he explained.

"Can I see it?" she rushed.
"Your
terra angel
?"

Again his eyes brushed across her face...lingering. One eyebrow arched before he managed a brief nod. "You've never seen one, have you?"

"Honestly, I have no idea what a
terra angel
is. But it sounds interesting," she beamed.

Some of the intensity left his expression. He didn't go so far as to smile, but he looked less like a lion now.

He started back down the aisle and hesitated, waiting for her to fall in next to him.

"Where did you learn to play the Tak wand so well?" he asked.

The compliment made her feel good. "It's similar to something I play back home."

"You did well today with the young ones."

When she glanced at Zak, she detected the shadow of a single dimple carved beside his mouth. "Gordeelum has never been able to do anything but squeak," he observed.