Gateway To Xanadu (2 page)

“I don’t doubt that,” he answered, amused now. “And I didn’t mean to imply that Valdon was a sheltered innocent. The reactions of the field team girls he paired with made that clear enough.”

“Then what were you implying?” I asked, genuinely curious. If there was a point to the conversation I’d been a part of for the last few minutes, it would have been nice knowing what it was.

“What makes you think I was implying anything?” he countered, more amused, calmly folding his arms again. “I just happened to be taking the opportunity to voice a couple of my own opinions. I didn’t say they had anything to do with Valdon. You’ll see to it, then, that your people don’t let him get in over his head?”

“Cross my heart and hope to spit wooden nickels,” I promised, holding up my free hand. “Was that all you were looking for, a promise to protect your delicate little former second, and a true, unvarnished declaration on my philosophy of life’? No sworn blood oaths that I return him as sweet and untarnished as I’m getting him?”

“Your penchant for sarcasm must find you almost as much trouble as your line of work,” Dameron remarked, looking down at me with seeming annoyance, and then the twinkle came back. “No, I don’t need an oath like that from you about Valdon; I already have one from Valdon about you. Some of us still believe in the basic premise that women are there to be looked after and protected.”

I stared at him in a disbelieving way for a minute, then burst out laughing. His dark brows lowered over his eyes in a frown that showed lack of understanding, causing me to laugh even harder, then shake my head at him.

“That’s a hell of a sentiment to be coming from the man who deliberately set me up to be attacked by sword-swinging baddies,” I pointed out when I could, still chuckling. “Not to mention the enslavement part. Are you sure you’re not talking about Val this time?”

“Maybe I am,” he agreed very quietly, with a small, sad smile, his dark eyes now unreadable. I cursed myself for an idiot and for having such a big mouth, but, the damage was already done. I’d been well-enough aware. of the guilt Dameron had felt over what had happened to me down on Tildor, but I’d thought he’d managed to put it behind him. Telling him I didn’t blame him would probably only have made it worse, but I was about to try exactly that when he threw off the dark mood and straightened again.

“At any rate,” he said as if there had been no interruption, “Valdon has those papers Phalsyn told you about, and the two of you can convert the time measurement in them to something your people will understand. As a final request I’m going to ask you to try to stay out of trouble and to take care of yourself, but I have a feeling that’s one request you won’t grant. ”

“I always take care of myself,” I answered, still bothered by the way I had hurt him. “There’s rarely anyone else around to do the job for me. As for staying out of trouble, most of the people I know consider the accomplishment in the same category as avoiding death and taxes. Dameron. . . .”

“Don’t worry, girl, I’ll get it worked out after I see you safely on your way back home,” he assured me with a faint smile. “I’ll just remind myself that whatever trouble you find with Valdon you asked for, freely and without any pressure from me. You’d better get aboard now, so I can start evacuating the air from this dock. ”

“Wait a minute!” I protested as he took my arm to head me toward the airlock. “What are you talking about? What trouble with Val? I don’t plan on having any trouble with Val. ”

“Then maybe you won’t have any,” Dameron said with a shrug, his hand moving me right in front of the airlock before leaving my arm. “If you’re a good girl and behave yourself with him, Valdon certainly won’t start any trouble. Have a good trip home, girl, and be sure to stop by if you’re ever in this neighborhood again.”

He patted my shoulder a couple of times before he turned and headed for the dock exit, ignoring the

“Hey!” I sent after him as though I hadn’t uttered a sound. I hefted the monolon bag I still carried, momentarily tempted to drop it and go after him, then said to hell with it and turned back to the airlock. I didn’t know what game he was playing, but calling him on it wouldn’t have accomplished anything. It was a safe bet even he didn’t know what he was talking about, and I had better things to do with my time than waste it trying to find sense where there wasn’t any.

Once I had stalked past the double open doors of the lock and hit the switch that closed them, I made my way deeper into the small ship. The two cabins, salon area, shower and exercise area, and galley were all ranged together after the airlock and before the control room, so I stopped briefly to toss my monolon bag into my cabin before continuing on to the pilot’s console. I also stopped in the galley to fill a mug with coffee, but obviously made too little noise performing those chores. Val was moving around in the second cabin, probably stowing whatever he’d brought with him, and didn’t even stick his nose out to see who had come in. I shrugged a little over such blind trust, still too annoyed with Dameron to be interested in making small talk with Val, and carried my coffee into the control room.

The departure check I started the computer on was longer and more detailed than your average departure check, but I wanted to be sure that everything really was on the green before I kicked off into the deep black. Dameron and Val seemed to be talented in the repairs department, but they still had been working on an alien ship with no more than alien wiring diagrams and inspired guesswork to guide them. An all-systems check is boring only when your life doesn’t hinge on that check, and even so it doesn’t take forever. I was just finishing up when the wide metal doors of the dock slid invitingly open, showing that Dameron had evacuated the air from the dock, giving me access to the departure tunnels. My course computer clicked contentedly as it waited with infinite patience to be meshed into the drive unit; every light on my board blinked green, and sets of parallel blue lines lit up along the dock wall and extended out into the departure tunnels. I raised the ship on secondary breaking jets, nudged us toward the open door, then followed the pretty blue lines until it was time to leave them and the tunnels behind. Tildor showed briefly in my screens, barely noticed in the midst of the departure question-and-answer routine I was involved in with the computer, and then it was a good distance behind us, its moons no longer even visible. I stayed at the board until the entire solar system was behind us, then got out of the pilot’s chair to stretch. Everything from then on until destination-barring emergencies-was automatic, and I was free to play passenger.

I dropped off my empty mug in the galley on my way to the salon, plopped down on the nearer of the two couches, put my feet up as I lay back, then closed my eyes. Although it hadn’t seemed like it while it was happening, the departure from Dameron’s moon base had taken better than three hours, including the time it took to clear the solar system. Under normal circumstances everything after rising from the surface of the moon would have been handled by the computer, leaving me free to watch, worry, or even walk away, but I’d had a private project that needed programming, that had to be done then or not at all.

I’d gone through a lot waiting for Dameron to program my course computer, and even with Phalsyn’s papers handed over for delivery, I still hadn’t been allowed to watch the course and quadrant data being fed in. To say I’d been annoyed would be to say the sayer didn’t know me; I usually prefer getting even to getting mad. I’d asked the main computer to rig up a double-check tape run on its less intelligent cousin the course computer, and had waited and watched to see if the run did what I wanted it to. We were just at the fringes of Tildor’s system when the double check clicked in, running a ninety-second-lag playback of where we’d just been. I couldn’t copy the set-in course without purging the entire program, but there was nothing to keep me from recording where I’d been-up to and including the time of my arrival at destination. All I’d have to do at that point would be to reverse the run tape, and the breadcrumb trail leading back to Dameron’s base would be in my hot little hand. I might never need it, but it never hurts to hedge your

“All finished with starting us on our way?” a voice asked abruptly, startling me half up off the couch before I realized it was Val, speaking the Federation Basic he’d been given, most likely for practice. I wasn’t used to having company on that ship, and settling back into old habits had nearly given me heart failure at the first of his words.

“Don’t do that,” I grumbled at him where he stood by the second couch, about five feet away, then sank back down to sitting on my own couch. “Just until I get used to having someone else aboard, I’d appreciate it if you stomped or sang or in some other manner made your presence known before you came into a room where I was. If you don’t, I’m not going to last very long.”

“From the way you came up off that couch, I don’t think you’re the one we have to worry about,” Val came back, his voice dry, his deep black eyes looking down at me where I sat. “You would have ended up facing away from me if you hadn’t stopped yourself, and I have a feeling that would have been only part of the move. What comes after that?”

“Oh, just a little screaming, a little jumping, nothing very special,” I answered with a gesture of dismissal, smiling some to distract him. Telling him he’d almost been the proud possessor of a reverse crescent kick followed by a roundhouse kick, both to the face and head, would have probably started another argument; Val had already run into a couple of my offensive techniques, and hadn’t liked them much.

“Nothing but a couple of mild surprise reactions, is that it?” he asked, ignoring my smile as he settled himself on the neighboring couch, stretching his big body out in a relaxed sprawl. “Are you sure that’s all it was?”

“What else could it have been?” I asked with mildly curious and very innocent reason, at the same time wondering if he could have found out about the double-check run. “It’s embarrassing to admit, but I’m afraid I forgot you were here. ”

I showed my embarrassment in my smile, but he still wasn’t paying any attention to it. His dark black eyes continued to stare at me out of an expressionless face under dark black hair, and he didn’t seem to be as relaxed as his sprawl might suggest. He was still wearing his cobalt blue base uniform, but that wasn’t a likely reason for what seemed like discomfort.

“Are you sure you forgot I was here?” he asked very quietly, keeping those eyes on me. “Are you sure it wasn’t more a matter of remembering all too well? Didn’t you see that I took the other cabin?”

“I don’t understand,” I told him. “Why would I say I forgot when I remembered? And what has cabins got to do with, anything?”

“I’m trying to tell you that you don’t have to worry about my being here,” he said very gently. “Whatever happened between us at the base doesn’t have to happen here, not if you don’t want it to. Our being alone together doesn’t mean you have to think about defending yourself from me. I won’t be doing anything that needs to be defended against.”

He was still staring at me, but now there was a very definite expression on his face: a sincere entreaty for belief and trust. To say I was stunned would be putting it mildly; Val thought I was afraid to be alone with him!

I leaned back against my own couch still more wide-eyed and open-mouthed than I’d been in a long time, but the reason for what he’d just said wasn’t hard to figure out. Val was a man in whom the ancient male hunter could be seen by any woman he turned those eyes on, the sort of man who traditionally took whatever he wanted, most especially the use of females. Women in ancient times feared men like that, but they were also used to them; whole cities were pillaged, and rape was a natural concomitant. Modern times brought about the advent of civilization, and women weren’t expected to put up with that sort of nonsense any longer-but every once in a while a hunter turned up anyway. Val had been raised to be considerate of the feelings of women, to understand how fragile and helpless they were, but the hunter still looked out of his eyes. He’d been taught to feel like hell---‘ every time a woman cringed back from his appraisal, and he’d learned to make very sure of full agreement before letting his basic nature take over. He bent over backwards to reassure the females around him, most especially at the first sign of nervousness at his presence. I didn’t know if he’d been brooding over the point since he first came aboard, or if my aborted attack in self-defense had triggered the thought, but most likely a combination of the two had produced the statement of intended chastity. That he hadn’t learned to know me better over the last few days was annoying, but not nearly as annoying as being lumped in the “fragile, helpless” category. I’d thought I’d taught Val the hard way just how well I liked gentlemanly condescension, but it was clear the lesson hadn’t taken. It looked like it was time for another lesson.

“You really understand the way a girl feels, don’t you?” I said at last feigning relieved gratitude. “I can’t say how much better I feel now, to know that we’ll be occupying separate cabins. You’re an absolute doll, Val.”

I beamed at him as I stood up from the couch, pretending not to see the way he flinched at my complete agreement with his offer. We had a decently long trip ahead of us, and hunters don’t make very successful eagle scouts. Still beaming, I kicked off the deck shoes I was wearing, then opened my ship suit and started to wriggle out of it. Those black eyes were on me instantly, sliding over every curve I had, the look in them saying they still liked what they saw, and then memory returned of what had been committed to. If it hadn’t been so far from his nature, I think Val would have started blubbering then; the muscles tensed all over his body, his face went expressionless, and swallowing turned his voice hoarse.

“What are you doing?” he demanded as he looked up at me. “I don’t understand what you’re- Diana, you’re taking your clothes off.”

“Sure,” I agreed with a smilingly innocent nod, tossing the ship’s suit in the general direction of my cabin. “It’s so warm in here you don’t really need clothes, but I couldn’t take them off until you said what you did. I never wore anything on the trip out.”