Candidate (Selected Book 4) (80 page)

But the distance stayed under one kilometer, and finally I dashed into the woods and found an easy hiding place, tucked in underneath a tree with thick vegetation surrounding me. They wouldn't possibly find me.

Fifteen minutes later, the brush parted, and they were both looking down at me.

"Clover! Did you cheat?"

They grabbed me and pulled me to the trail.

"No," she said. "I don't know how they did that. They shouldn't have found you."

The next night was nearly the same, but they found me even faster.

But the night after that was truly unexpected.

The event began like the others. I decided to just put distance between us. And so I jogged. By the start time, I was well hidden a half kilometer from the starting position. They couldn't possibly locate me.

And they didn't.

The event started, and after only a few minutes, I had the incredible urge to leave my hiding place. A few minutes after that, I stood up and began walking, then jogging, then running back to the start.

I couldn't have explained it.

"What are you doing?" Jasmine asked.

"I don't know."

"You promised to play to win."

I ignored her. I had to find Harp and Jaguar. I had to find them. I had to.

I burst into the starting clearing. They were seated in the grass near the lander. I ran to them, walking the last few steps, and sat down at the apex of a triangle.

They both looked at me. They were holding hands, and when they reached out, I set my hands in theirs.

"The triangle is formed," said Jaguar. "It is fragile, but it is formed."

I couldn't have explained it, but I was filled with such deep joy, such joy it couldn't possibly all be mine.

"You are in trouble," Jasmine whispered into my ears.

But I didn't care.

They didn't strip me, although they did touch, and then we rose together. We moved onto the ship together. I took my seat, and was filled with such joy.

But Jasmine was waiting for us, and she was angry. I could see it in her tentacles. Together we walked to her.

"Our triangle forms," Harp said. "Tonight we share, and tomorrow. Then Jaguar and I will leave, to give our competition one last chance. But we will come back to finish what we have started. Andromeda will be the third point of our triangle."

"Well, Andromeda and I have something to discuss," Jasmine said. "If she has any skin left when I am done with her, you may have her back. But I do not believe she will have any privileges, and if you wish to visit with her before you go, it will be in her cell."

Somehow, I didn't care.

She didn't wait. A tentacle snacked out, grabbed my wrist, and practically yanked me from them.

That
I cared about. I protested, but Jasmine told me to shut up, and she practically dragged me through the facility.

She brought me to one of the conference rooms, shoved me into a chair, and had it swallow me. Then she stepped forward and forced my hands to the table, and they were swallowed.

"Why are you doing this? What did I do?"

She didn't answer. Instead, she stormed around the room, speaking rapid Catseye. I kept asking what I had done and asking permission to go to Jaguar and Harp.

Finally she spun to me, leaning on the table. "You made promises to me! I have been very generous with you because of those promises. And you broke them!"

"I don't understand. I don't!"

She yelled for a while. She told me every privilege I had earned was gone. She deactivated the visor and yanked it from my face.

"No more swimming. No more leaving your cell. And we do not need your continued assistance. You will sit in your cell and rot, for all I care!"

"What did I do?"

And then Jaguar and Harp were there. They rushed into the room, then moved to my side, putting arms around me.

"What are you doing?" Harp asked. "Why are you hurting Andromeda?"

"I haven't touched her since I put her in the chair," Jasmine said. "She broke her promises to me."

"I didn't! What promises?"

"You promised to do your best for each challenge. And instead, you decided you couldn't win, so you left your hiding spot, found them, and sat down. Why?" She screamed the last word.

"We called her," said Jaguar. "We didn't know if it would work yet. If she were stronger, she might be able to resist one of us, but no point on the triangle can resist when the other two points call to her. We called, and she came."

"Stop hurting her," Harp said. "This is a good day! Do you know what this means? We can make triangles with humans. We have one with Andromeda. It is weak, but it was strong enough to call her. It was strong enough she came to us."

And then they both turned inward to me, murmuring quietly, surrounding me with their... love.

They loved me. I could feel it.

"They love me," I whispered.

"Yes," said Jaguar. "And you love us."

"You called her," Jasmine said, her voice flat.

"Yes. She tried to resist, but we were two, and she was one. When we return, we will strengthen the triangle."

"Please release her," Harp said. "Let us celebrate."

Jasmine stared then said quietly, "My apologies, Andromeda."

"Please may I go?"

She paused, collected my visor, and handed it to Jaguar. Then the table and chair released me.

* * * *

We didn't make love. They told me we must wait. But we showered together again, touching, all of us touching. They let me touch them, and they touched me and each other.

And then they drew me to bed, and together, we slept.

* * * *

In the morning, we touched some more, but I had duties.

"I wish I didn't have to. Do you have to go?"

"Yes. We can feel your affection for the Kitsune. She deserves one chance more."

"I'll never have this with her," I said. "Please stay."

"We cannot. We promised to Jasmine Brighteyes. But it will not be long."

"When are you leaving?"

"Late tonight."

"Are you going back to the space station?"

"No. We will stay on earth. The space station is too far."

"Is there a challenge tonight?"

"Dinner and touch," Jaguar said.

* * * *

It was the longest day of my life, or so it seemed, and I was distracted besides. But finally Jasmine said, "Go to them. You're going to be worthless, anyway."

I didn't stay to argue with her.

They were waiting for me, and I threw myself into their waiting arms. We touched. We kissed. And I could feel them both.

It was glorious.

They had clothing for me, so we dressed and went out. It felt so odd to be unshackled, although it was now the second time. We had a lovely dinner. I don't remember what we talked about. I just felt so amazingly good.

Then we returned to their apartment. "We have two hours," Harp said. "Let us sit."

They pulled me to the sofa, and we sat together, touching. "The bed is better."

"If we take you to bed, then we won't talk," Jaguar said.

"Talking is overrated."

"Before we return, you must think about what you want to bring from Earth. We cannot return if you forget something."

"I suppose you don't visit very often. The station is so far."

"We don't live on the station," Harp said. "We live somewhat further."

"Further? Saturn is pretty darned far already. Well, I suppose if I need something, we can get a shuttle to bring it, but that has to be expensive."

The two exchanged a look. "You should make sure you think of everything," Jaguar said.

"We know you are close to your parents," Harp added. "We'll take you to say goodbye."

"Goodbye? But we'll come to visit sometime, won't we?"

That was another look.

"But... I'll be able to talk to them, right? Jasmine told me she could talk to the people on the space station. "So I'll be able to talk to them, right?"

"We don't live on the space station," Harp said again. "It is further."

"Further. How often will we come back to visit?"

"We don't know," Jaguar said. "It will be difficult."

"But... you came here. You said you were harvesting asteroids. That is how you made the metal for my necklace. The asteroids are between Mars and Jupiter. That's closer than Saturn."

"We weren't harvesting those asteroids," Harp said.

"We'll explain everything when we come to take you home with us," Jaguar said.

"Wait. Just wait. Where is home?"

"We can't tell you."

"What do you mean, you can't tell me?"

"We can tell you once we leave human space," Harp said.

"What?" I screamed. "Leave human space? Do you live back on the Whiteblack homeworld?"

"No, no, that is much too far."

"Where? Tell me where!"

"It is another star. It is near, but traveling between the stars is difficult. We harvest the asteroids for fuel so we could come back. When we got here, we heard about you."

I looked back and forth between them. "How far?" I asked in a cold voice. "We're talking another star. That means light years. I did research. The nearest star is over four light years away, and you said it's not that one. Saturn is a billion kilometers, and that's an incomprehensible distance to me. But you're taking me a thousand times as far. Ten thousand, twenty thousand, fifty thousand times as far."

I jumped to my feet, pulling away from them. "Do you go into some sort of cryosleep?" I asked. "It takes years. Decades."

"No. Not that long," Jaguar said. "But it is difficult, so we cannot come back soon."

"How soon? Next year? Five years? Five decades?"

They stared and didn't answer. "That means never! Never! I'll never see my parents again. They'll never see me. It will be like we're dead to each other. How can you do this to me? I told you that first night how close I was with my parents. The space station. Okay. The space station is bad, but I could talk to them, and I could get promises to be allowed to come home. Jasmine told me that once. Not often, maybe not even every year.
But not never
!"

"We left our parents," they said quietly. "To come here. We left our families and our people to come here. To... to do the things that must happen here. And humans leave their families. It wasn't that long ago when humans would move across America. It would take months. People died during the travel. They certainly didn't expect to ever go back. They left their families."

"You're talking two hundred years ago! Chances are their parents were dead. Women died in childbirth all the time. They left to make a better life. Well, I like my life here! And I'm not leaving my parents!"

And then I ran for the exit, sobbing, yanking the visor on as I ran, nearly slamming into the door until it opened, the visor now locked to my face. Jaguar and Harp ran after me, but I dashed away from them, sobbing, running.

I didn't even care I wasn't wearing a stitch.

I trigged the emergency signal on the visor. Jasmine appeared a half second later.

"Where are you?" I cried "Where are you? Where are you?"

"Follow the lights, Andromeda," she said calmly.

And so I ran, Jaguar and Harp calling after me. Except they weren't chasing me. I could feel them calling. It felt like it had earlier.

But this time I ran away from them.

Jasmine waited for me in her apartment, and she had a robe open to me when I burst in. She wrapped me in it, then pulled me into her embrace. "How could you do this to me? How could you?"

"Let's sit at the table," she said.

"You did this to me. You're making me decide not just between them and Charoite, but between them and my parents!"

"They were supposed to tell you at the beginning," Jasmine said. "They told me they would tell you."

I pulled away but moved to the table and plopped on a chair and buried my face in my hands.

She let me cry, and then I could feel my triangle moving closer. They were still trying to call to me, but I stayed where I was. And then they were there.

Jasmine met them at the door, and when I looked up, her tentacles were waving wildly. "You didn't tell her," she said. "When were you going to tell her? When you were already two light years away? Oh, by the way, you'll never see your parents again."

"We don't understand," Jaguar said. "We are a triangle. We are replacing her relationship with all others."

"Like hell you are!" I screamed.

"We do not understand," Harp said. "We feel the triangle. We feel her grief. We have a triangle. She no longer has a triangle with her parents."

"I don't know what you're talking about, but if you are making me pick between you or my parents, I'm picking my parents. You can just go off to Alpha Whateverthefuck without me."

"We do not understand," Jaguar said again.

Jasmine said, "Let us talk about it."

"There's nothing to talk about," I said.

But she led them in. They tried to go around the table to me, but I scrambled out of the chair and kept the table between us. "And you stay away from me, too!" I said, pointing at Jasmine. "This is your fault!"

"You two sit there," Jasmine said. "Andromeda, sit here. Now." She pointed to a chair.