Tau Ceti (an Ell Donsaii story #6) (40 page)

After they sat Raquel asked
“So, did Donsaii explain whatever was going on with your equations?”

“Are you sure you want to talk about my other woman?” Shan
raised an eyebrow
at her over his Coke.

“No,” she snorted, “I’m talking
about that
‘
scientist that you never noticed
was
a woman.
’
”

“Oh, that one. Yeah she explained my issues alright. She explained them and incorporated them in a paper she wants to submit
for publication
. She thinks they explain some
of the issues that have resulted in the dark energy and dark matter hypotheses.”

“Really? That sounds pretty cool. You going to let her put your stuff in a paper?”

“Oh yeah! She’s putting my name on the paper. I’ll be proud just to have my name on the same document as hers.”

“Hey!” Raquel grinned at him, “Remember you’re out on a date with
me
. Don’t go putting other women up on pedestals when
we’re
together!”

Shan tilted his head, “Come on. You’ve got to admit that that particular woman deserves to be on a pedestal?”

Raquel paused momentarily, slice of pizza in front of her mouth, then her eyes crinkled, she said, “I plead the fifth,” and stuffed
in
a big bite
,
her eyes sparkling as she chewed
.

As they left for their movie, Shan looked over
at her slender form and
thought wonderingly
about how much she ate around him
. He
began to worry that she might be bulimic.

At the movie
he put an arm around her shoulders and she snuggled in under it.
It
felt so good that he left his arm there long after it started to cramp and
went to sleep
.

***

Deltain packed the last of the goods hie had made during the summer into a crevice in the escarpment. Hie packed in the poles that supported
hies
shelter and folded up the leather cover that went over the poles, putting it on top. Finally hie fit rocks in over all
of
it
.

Strapping the few things hie was taking with
himr
to hies harness hie looked out to the north where much of the tribe was already flying
back
toward their winter home. For a moment hie again considered flying north by east to the winter home of the
Ol
n
etch tribe on the eastern slopes of the big mountain. Hie
could
just start over now. W
hy fly back to the Yetany’s cave?

Finally, admitting
to himrself
that hie wouldn’t rest until hie returned to the Yetany cave and looked one
last
time for Dex’s remains, hie launched himrself off the escarpment
back
toward the place hie had called home all of hies life.

***

The sky had dimmed when Syrdian called to Dex, “Let’s camp at these
big
rocks.”

“But if we pushed on…”

“Dex, we don’t need to reach the cave tonight! In fact, I don’t think we should take most of this stuff to the cave.”

“You don’t? But,
you said…
having so much
would
help our status!”

Syrdian had turned toward the rocks, “Remember, we don’t want them to know about the spears right away. We want to keep our new method of hunting
a
secret unti
l they have accepted us
.
T
hen
we’ll agree to teach them and we’ll show them the spears.”

The next morning Dex and Syrdian sorted through their bounty. They chose a large crevice in the rock face and packed away most of their dried meat and all but four of their spears. A pile of the harnesses that Dex had made, a stack of cured and tanned skins and a stack of nodules of flint and finished spear heads all went in there too. Then Syrdian carefully fitted rocks into the crevice over it, jumbling the last few so it would seem more natural.  They headed on down the mountain to the cave, arriving about midday
.

Syrdian was glad to see they had arrived before the Yetany tribe
’s return
. Hie’d been fairly confident that hie’d judged the timing of the return migration correctly but there’d been a niggling doubt. Hie turned to Dex, “Great! They’re not here yet.
I’ve got some ideas for how we can
prepare for their arrival…”

***

Shan opened the door to the D5R building and stepped inside. He
recognized
Bridget from the first night he’d danced with Raquel sitting at the desk there. Making a little wave with his hand, he said, “Hey Bridget. I have an appointment with Ms. Donsaii this morning. Can you tell me which way to go?”

Bridget grinned hugely at him and stood, “
Shan
.
Y
ou’re
Mr.
Kinrais
?”

He nodded.
“Is there any chance you could take me by to see Raquel while I’m here? I’m a little
bit
early.”

Bridget blinked as if nonplussed a moment, then said, “Uh sorry, Raquel isn’t here today.” She grinned, “But co
me
on
and I’ll take you to
Ms. Donsaii
. I think she’s out in the big research room
this morning
.
She won’t mind you being early.
”

Ell and Emma had their heads together studying a new rocket design on a screen when Emma nudged her arm. “Don’t look now but Bridget’s heading this way with a real hunk of man-flesh! Oooo, could
that
be the math whiz you’ve been waiting for?! Oh my Lord, I didn’t think mathematicians
ever
looked that good!”

Ell hissed, “Calm yourself girl, you don’t want me to have to tell Roger you’ve been out here salivating over another man do you?
”

“Hah! You wait ‘til you see this guy. I have a
right
to salivate over someone that cute. Surely Roger would forgive me.”

Bridget said, “Ms. Donsaii?”

Ell turned. There was Shan, tousled hair tamed, wearing a jacket and tie. All six feet of handsome good looks that seemed even more impressive today, no
w that he was turned out and Emma had exclaimed on his looks. She tore her eyes off Shan and focused on Bridget, “Yes?”

“This is Mr.
Kinrais
, here for his appointment.”

“Oh, yes.” She stood and extended her hand, “Mr.
Kinrais
, thank you for coming.”

Shan felt stunned. Donsaii was about the same height
and build as
Raquel
though she had much
lighter skin and
her nose wasn’t as big.
W
here Raquel was very pretty
Donsaii was simply beautiful
. Still they were somehow somewhat alike
, especially the graceful way
they both
moved.
Must be weird to see them together.
“Uh, no problem. It’s my honor, thank you.”

Ell guided him to an open conference room. “Those were some amazing insights you had into the 5
th
dimensional math.
I am just so impressed and am hoping that we can work together some more in the future. How much longer do you have on your PhD?”

He grinned sheepishly, “Maybe not much longer if I can use some of this material in my thesis?”

“Really?!” She sounded excited, “That’d be fine with me. Shall we talk about it to be sure we agree on what it all means?”

“That’d be great.”

They spent about an hour going back and forth through the paper. At one point one of Shan’s questions resulted in a period of great excitement in which they tested the effect of one of Donsaii’s equations against data on the cosmic background radiation. That data correlated too, leading Donsaii to give him a high five that left Shan’s palm stinging.

Shan left the building, head whirling. He had to present this to his advisor and Donsaii had already sent the paper in to
Science
. He might be able to submit for his PhD pretty soon.

He found that he couldn’t wait to tell Raquel.
His thoughts had been frenetic lately. Either focused on Donsaii and her weird wonderful math or on Raquel and her… just plain wonderfulness. Maybe he shouldn’t talk to Raquel about Donsaii? He thought Raquel was kidding when she acted jealous about Donsaii but she couldn’t be really could she? It wasn’t as if
he
had
any
chance with som
eone like Donsaii. F
amous, a genius, incredibly beautiful—
Shan
Kinrais
would never have even had an opportunity to even speak to
someone like that
except for
his
lucky insight on her math
. He suspected that someday he would be telling his grandkids about the
time that
he spent a
morning
with Ell Donsaii.
He had
no doubt
that
it would be a highlight of his life as he looked back on it.

Then he
remembered
that Raquel actually worked there in the same building as Donsaii. To her, perhaps Ell Donsaii
wasn’t
a mystical creature.
Shan didn’t really think of her as legendary and unapproachable anymore after spending the morning with her.
Maybe Raquel
could
see her as someone to be jealous of? Still, Shan
desperately
wanted to tell Raquel
how
Donsaii found his math interesting. Perhaps just a tiny bit jealousy would be the stimulus that Raquel needed to fall in love with Shan?

Wonderingly,
Shan
realized that somehow, without knowing
how
or when
it happened, he
loved Raquel. It had become much more serious than he had thought,
while he hadn’t
even
been
considering
the possibility
.

To his AI he said, “Please connect me with Raquel.”

A moment later she came on, “Hey big guy, how did it go with Donsaii?”

“Good, I’d
hoped to see you though.
Bridget
actually
took me around
but
she said you weren’t
in today
.
Where are you?”

“I got sent away, I guess Donsaii didn’t want any competition while she was
talking to
my intended boyfriend.”

Shan’s scalp prickled,
boyfriend?
Could she be as serious about
him
as he was about her?
“
Would you like to come over to my place for dinner tonight? Then I can
tell you
all about it.
”

“That’d be very nice,” Raquel said quietly, “very
,
very nice.”

Ell leaned back in her chair musing. S
he realized
then
just
how
worried s
he’d been that Shan would dump Raquel
after
he met Ell.

She snorted
;
how weird could she be, to worry because a man liked one ver
sion of her better than another?
But, she really wanted someone who loved
her
, not the famous, rich “Donsaii.” It had broken her heart when Gordon had immediately turned to her rich, famous, dancing version and dropped her
alter ego
“Belle
.
” Shan calling to ask “Raquel” over for dinner immediately after meeting “Ell” lifted her soul in a way she
just
hadn’t anticipated.

On the other hand, she felt bad about not being honest with
someone she cared this much about
…

***

Dr. Rhoades heard a gentle rap on his doorframe. Looking up he saw Shan
Kinrais
.
Brilliant, handsome, Shan
Kinrais
who he feared was going to destroy all his amazing potential
while
trying to make headway in Donsaii’s
frustrating
math. For a while Rhoades had thought that
Kinrais
might be one of the few people smart enough to actually do
something new with
it
.
B
ut
,
he didn’t want
Kinrais
destroying
his ebullient love of math, just because he couldn’t succeed in this one area
of math
where only the world’s most luminous genius had succeeded so far.
How to get him to give it up without ruining his hope though…