gaian consortium 06 - zhore deception (2 page)

The newcomer carried a black plastic file in one hand. He set it down on the tabletop before pulling out the empty chair and sitting in it. The entire time, those dark gray eyes were fixed on Trinity, and something about the way they scanned her face sent a cold little thrill down her spine.

Maybe it was a mistake, but she couldn’t help pushing out a small ping, just to see if his thoughts would be as opaque to her as Caleb’s had been. To her surprise, she could hear him quite well.

I suppose you wanted to find out if you could enter my mind. Yes, you can…but only those parts I will allow you to see.

Her mouth must have dropped open, because he smiled. “Yes, Ms. Knox. I’m not like your erstwhile lover. On the other hand, I’m probably not like anyone else you’ve ever met, either. I’ve been trained to block the sections of my mind I want to keep concealed from people with your particular…talents.”

Trinity finally found her voice. “Trained? Trained by whom? I thought the Consortium government didn’t even recognize psi powers.”

“Officially, no.” He pulled some papers out of her file, and her eyes widened. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d seen anyone use actual physical paperwork. Everything was digitized and electronic. Far more efficient that way.

And hackable, she supposed. Maybe this faceless agency had decided that it was safer to commit sensitive data to paper, records that could be easily — and permanently — destroyed.

“By the way,” he went on, after organizing the paperwork in front of him, “my name is Gabriel Brant. I’ve been assigned to your case.”

“So you’re my attorney?”

Another smile, although it was only a slight lift at the corners of his mouth. It never reached those gunmetal eyes of his. “No. I’m your…well, let’s just call it ‘caseworker’ for now. You have no need of an attorney, Ms. Knox, because you will not be put on trial.”

“I won’t?” she asked, a sort of disbelieving relief beginning to flood through her. “What, you mean the charges have been dropped?”

“There were no charges,” Brant said smoothly. “All record of your involvement with the TransCal embezzlement case has been expunged. In fact, Ms. Knox, all record of
you
has been expunged. Mr. Prescott is being tracked as we speak — it seems he was headed to Iradia — and that should clean up most of the mess.”

She didn’t reply to that revelation, only pressed her lips together.

An eyebrow lifted. “Not a very social person, are you?”

In response, Trinity gave Brant a stony look. No, she wasn’t a social person. Moving every six standard months at a mother’s whim could do that to a person. What was the point in trying to make any sort of connection if it was merely going to get ripped away when you were just becoming comfortable with someone? There had been men before Caleb, but he was the first Trinity had ever confided in.

And the last
, she thought drearily, although she was careful to keep that part of her mind walled off, beyond her captor’s reach.
I kind of doubt Mr. Brant is going to give you the opportunity to have any more love affairs.

Brant appeared nonplussed by her lack of reaction. “Very well. Moving on. I would like you to provide more information about your father’s identity. Since your mother’s records show no sign of the kind of psychic talent you possess, we would like to know if it came to you on the paternal side. Unfortunately, your birth records have your father listed as ‘unknown.’”

“That’s because my mother probably didn’t know,” Trinity replied, not bothering to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “She was too busy partying to keep track.”

Gabriel pulled an old-fashioned ballpoint pen out of his jacket pocket and made a notation on the paper in front of him. “She never described him? Never mentioned where he was from?”

“No.”

“And you never asked?” The eyebrow went up again. “Never tried to pick it out of her mind?”

God, no.
Trinity supposed she might have done such a thing, but invading her mother’s thoughts was something she could never bring herself to do. Well, except for that one time, but she learned her lesson on that one and afterward left well enough alone.

She shook her head, and Gabriel wrote something else down. “We’ll try to find a match through the genome database.”

That was something she supposed she could have done herself, if she’d been willing to pay the price, or take the risk of discovering something she would have been happier not knowing.

Considering the losers her mother had picked up throughout Trinity’s childhood, she really didn’t want to know. In her mind, she’d always imagined her biological father as some handsome, dashing type — maybe a spy — who had a brief passionate fling and then had to move on. If he’d known of her existence, of course he would have made sure to be a part of her life, but since Acantha Knox had kept her existence from him, he’d never returned.

It was a nice romantic fantasy. Trinity knew that was all it was, though. For one thing, her mother would have had to get black-market shots to counteract the birth control meds all women on Gaia were given, just to avoid little “accidents” like Trinity Elizabeth Knox. Acantha had known what she was doing. Why, though…that was something that Trinity had never dared to ask. Had her mother thought she could keep this particular lover around by having his baby, or had there been something special about him, something Acantha wanted to ensure lived on in his child? Those questions had danced around in Trinity’s head her entire childhood, but she hadn’t been able to summon the courage to demand that her mother give her the answers. Instead, she’d let her daydreams take the place of the truth. Better to have a pleasant fantasy than an ugly reality, especially when her life already had its fair share of ugliness.

She’d never had any close friends. How could she, when her mother had dragged her to a new city at least twice a year ever since she could remember? And as her gift developed and grew, she isolated herself even more. A friend was someone you were supposed to confide in, and she didn’t dare take that risk, let alone face the problems of being friendly with someone whose every thought she could read. Once she was done with her mandated fourteen years of school and working as an admin, Trinity had moved out on her own and tried to build some kind of a life that was hers and hers alone. That had never seemed to work, though, maybe because she still couldn’t allow herself to get close to anyone. Men were different — you could be intimate physically without revealing anything of yourself, your true self. Besides, she’d always been able to hear what they were thinking about her, and that sort of unvarnished truth was the kind of thing that could drive a stake right through the heart of a romance.

Until Caleb. If only she’d been able to see into his black heart as well, she probably wouldn’t be here.

“Good luck with that,” Trinity told Gabriel Brant, placing her hands flat on the tabletop. Maybe her father hadn’t even been from Gaia, but from Nova Angeles or New Chicago or someplace even farther away. He might not be in the database at all. She had far bigger things to worry about. Voice flat, she went on, “It sounds like I don’t exist anymore. I suppose that’s your call. But now that you have me, what do you plan to do with me?”

Brant cocked his head to one side and studied her carefully. She didn’t flinch, but gazed back at him, noting his fine straight brows, his strong nose. Yes, he was very good-looking. For all she knew, he’d been chosen as her handler just because he was so attractive. But if the people pulling his strings thought she was going to fall for him and then be easy to control because of that, they didn’t know her very well.

At last he smiled. Well, smirked, really. She knew the difference. Then he said, “You, Ms. Knox, are going to be our secret weapon.”

Zhandar entered his counselor’s office at the agreed-upon time, precisely one hour before noon. Because their relationship as counselor and counselee was considered intimate enough, she had allowed the hood of her robes to drop down around her shoulders, and her black hair gleamed with bluish highlights under the light streaming in through the bank of windows that overlooked her balcony garden.

Counselee
. On other worlds, he would have been referred to as Rozhara’s patient. That was not the way on Zhoraan, however. Wounds of the mind were not seen as a sickness, but rather as a temporary condition, one that could be overcome with the proper guidance and compassion. This was why he had been assigned to Rozhara, although he had begun to wonder how much longer she would have continued their professional relationship if she were not under instructions from the local council to do so for as long as necessary. Perhaps once Zhandar would have taken some pride in the notion that the council found him valuable enough that he required such cosseting, but now he was only impatient, thinking these sessions a waste of time better spent elsewhere.

“And how are you, Zhandar?” Rozhara inquired, once they had seated themselves on a pair of low, soft divans near the windows.

“Fine,” he said shortly, gazing past her to the welter of plants in their self-sustaining beds. The
lizhain
were looking a bit droopy; he made a note to check on their watering tubes once his session with Rozhara was done. Not that performing such a task was really his responsibility, but it would help to distract him, and he’d been sorely in need of distractions lately.

“Merely fine?” she probed, green eyes keen.

He could sense the worry coming from her, overlaid with a hint of skepticism. They had had this conversation too many times before.

In the past, he might have tried to tamp down his frustration, which he knew must be radiating from him in waves. Now, though, after coming to see Rozhara for nearly a year, Zhandar had decided he wouldn’t bother any longer. This was an exercise in futility, and they both knew it, even if his counselor refused to see that particular truth.

“I am a good citizen of Zhoraan,” he said in ironic tones. “I rise every morning and bathe myself, then go to do the work that benefits everyone who lives in this city. What more is needed?”

“Healing, Zhandar,” Rozhara replied, sadness tinging the word.

“It has been a year. I believe I am as healed as I will ever be.”

Without speaking, she rose from her divan and went over to the window. It was a fine spring day, with lacy bluish-green clouds fanning out across the skies and a bright, fresh breeze playing with the leaves in the garden. And not just Rozhara’s garden, but the gardens on every balcony and rooftop, bringing life and energy to Torzhaan, the capital of their province. Zhandar knew well enough how all those gardens functioned in the living organism that was their city, as it was his task to keep them all running at the optimum levels required for health and vitality.

After a long pause, Rozhara turned back to him, her hands open and turned toward him, a gesture of trust, but also of pleading. “Yours is a loss no man should have to suffer. I understand that. Elzhair is gone, and yet you show no sign of healing, of beginning the next chapter in your life.”

“And what is this ‘next chapter,’ precisely? I have met no one else who is
sayara,
whose heart speaks to mine. Perhaps I never will. Most of us are blessed to have only one such connection in our lifetime.”

“Most…but not all. Such connections — such second chances, as it were — are rare, but they are not unknown. Of course your chances of meeting someone else who is compatible are lower if all you do is stay here, continuing the same routine, day in and day out. I’ve urged you many times over the last year to take a sabbatical, to travel and open your eyes to new vistas, new situations. And I am urging you again. A fresh perspective can be very helpful.”

Perhaps Rozhara was right, but Zhandar didn’t wish to leave Torzhaan. At least here he had some sort of purpose when he awoke each morning. The city breathed more easily because of his work. That had to be of some value.

He would not admit to Rozhara that he also wanted to stay because here he had reminders of Elzhair around every corner. The botanical gardens where they had walked and talked of his beloved plants, the holo-theater where they went to view compositions made of both light and music. Yes, it was painful to pass by those places and know she was gone, and that the dream they’d discussed so often had died with her, but better that than to be alone in a strange new place, unanchored, with nothing familiar to hold to.

It had been a risk, but one which Elzhair wanted to take. And things had gone well at first — at least she was able to conceive a child, something that fewer and fewer of his world’s women had been able to do. The first few months had been uneventful, the doctors saying that she was healthy and everything was proceeding well.

But then she had fallen ill, the child she carried seeming to sap her strength with every passing day. Although they understood the gravity of what they were asking, Elzhair’s doctors had at last urged her to give up the child, for them to perform the necessary surgery to save her life. She had refused, and told Zhandar that their child was more important than she was, that their child was the future.

He’d pleaded with her, saying that they could try again when she was well. Oh, how he had begged her. He knew their world was going into a decline, and that without enough children, his race might someday cease to exist altogether, but in those last frantic moments, all he could think of was how much he loved her, how his world would end without her by his side. Weighed against that, their child did not seem nearly as important as an existence with Elzhair absent from it.

Being Elzhair — stubborn, wild, passionate — she hadn’t agreed with him, had held onto her life for as long as she could, thinking that if she persisted, their child might be able to survive on his own. In the end, though, she had gone, taking their unborn son with her. And Zhandar had been left with nothing.

“My mind says that you are right, Rozhara,” Zhandar began, the words heavy, slow. She didn’t move, but only remained there by the window, watching him carefully, perhaps in the hope that this time he might tell her something different. “But my heart says I must stay. The work supports me, fulfills me. In this place and time, it is all I am. Can you understand that?”