gaian consortium 06 - zhore deception (20 page)

The trouble was, she had no idea what else she could have done.

Sighing, she pulled off her heavy cloak and tossed it over the arm of a chair. If she was going to order in any food later, she’d have to put it back on, but for now it felt good to be free of that continual weight on her shoulders. She still wondered how the Zhore could put up with those damn things day in and day out, but maybe it wasn’t as much of a problem when you’d been doing it since childhood.

It was strange to be here and know that she wouldn’t be going over to Zhandar’s apartment tonight. Occasionally she would come home first to gather a few things, but now, to be wandering around aimlessly, not sure what to do next….

Maybe a nice hot bath. She’d never been much of a bath person — it was a luxury her water allotment back on Gaia really hadn’t allowed — but the bathtub in this apartment was luxurious, carved stone with plants all around it, and no one on Zhoraan seemed to be terribly concerned about water consumption.

The sound of the water filling the tub was soothing enough. On a whim, she’d bought some scented bath oil a few weeks back, but this was the first time she’d used it. She opened the cabinet to retrieve it, and then her gaze fell on the box that contained spare tubes of shampoo.

Well, that was what the box said, anyway. What it actually contained were a series of small innocuous-looking plastic tabs.

If you put one of those tabs on your tongue and it turned purple, it meant you were pregnant.

Trinity had used a couple of them the first few times she and Zhandar were intimate. Due diligence and all that. But the tabs had remained stubbornly white, and she’d decided she only needed to check once a week. The last time had been a week ago, and still nothing. Maybe humans and Zhore weren’t quite as cross-fertile as she’d been led to believe.

Still, she knew she should be checking. Her hand hovered over the box, and she hesitated. She’d been feeling so very tired lately….

She really didn’t want to complete the thought, just as she didn’t want to pick up one of the tabs and set it on her tongue. Because once she knew, there would be no turning back. She’d see it, and Gabriel would see it, and the next thing she knew, an extraction team would be there, taking her away.

And she couldn’t bear that. Especially not today, when she and Zhandar had parted on such bad terms.

But if the people watching the feed saw her start to pick up one of the tabs, and not go through with the test….

That would be much, much worse.

Before she could lose her nerve and stop herself, she popped open the box and extracted one of the pieces of white plastic, then set it on her tongue. Thirty seconds to wait, and then she would know. It felt hard and foreign in her mouth, and she wanted to spit it out, even though it had no actual taste. She kept it there, however, because she knew that was what she had to do.

The plastic tingled on her tongue, letting her know that the thirty seconds were up. Using her thumb and forefinger, she pulled out the little tab.

Bright purple.

Her stomach lurched, and the piece of plastic fell from her fingers onto the stone countertop with a faint
clink
.

No,
she thought.
No.

Problem was, she could think that all she wanted, but it wouldn’t change the fact that she was now carrying Zhandar’s child.

Pressing her hands on the counter, she stared into the mirror, into the alien face that had somehow become hers over the past month, even though she knew it wasn’t her, not really. “All right, Gabriel,” she said distinctly. “It looks like you got what you wanted. So you can send your lackeys to come get me.”

Then she had to turn away from the mirror, because tears had begun to sting her eyes. She tried to blink hard so they would disappear, but that didn’t work. Angrily, she reached up to wipe away the moisture that had begun to trickle down her cheeks. The last thing she wanted was to be a big weeping mess when Blake or Gabriel or whoever it was showed up to take her away.

The door chime sounded, and she startled, thinking that they’d gotten here already. No, that was ridiculous. Even Gabriel Brant didn’t move that fast. Besides, she doubted he would do anything so polite as ring the door chime.

Mystified, she hurried out to the front room, grabbing her cloak along the way so she could shrug into it and thereby satisfy convention by not shocking whoever was waiting outside her door. But even before she opened it, she realized who stood there. She could feel him, warm and comforting, but at the same time worried and contrite, blaming himself for his harsh words earlier that afternoon.

“Zhanna?” came Zhandar’s voice. “What is the matter?”

Oh, hell. In her agony, she’d probably been broadcasting all over the place, her barriers shattered to rubble by the news she’d just received. “Nothing, Zhandar,” she said through the door, hoping she sounded relatively normal.

“Let me in,” he replied.

It was not a request, she could tell. Anyway, it wasn’t as if she could just leave him standing out there in the foyer. At least if he was inside her apartment, they’d be someplace private.

She pressed her palm against the door’s controls, and it slid open. Zhandar stood immediately outside. As always, his face was concealed, but she could feel the agitation roiling the air around him, as if he was moving within his own personal thundercloud.

He came inside, and she shut the door behind him. Almost at once he pushed back his hood. His features were strained with worry, and he came to her in the very next second and took her hands.

“My love, I couldn’t stay away a moment longer. I had no right to speak to you that way. I — ”

And then he paused, his hands tightening on hers. Trinity flinched, worried that somehow he would be able to tell from her very touch what she carried within her. He couldn’t know about that. He just couldn’t. Bad enough that she should leave, but if she took with her the child he’d been longing for….

It would kill him.

She wanted to wrench her hands away. Instead, she withdrew her fingers from his grasp as gently as she could, using the pretext that she wanted to reach up and push back her own hood. He let her go, but with obvious reluctance.

Her hands were shaking. In a nervous gesture, she peeled off her gloves and tossed them onto the sofa. Damn. Maybe it would have been better to keep them on. Trinity knew she couldn’t do anything about that now, so she continued the pretext of wanting to remove the garments that concealed her face and body from him. It was hard to undo the clasp that held the cloak shut, what with the way her fingers were trembling, but somehow she managed it.

“You upset me,” she said, not quite looking at Zhandar.

“I could tell that. It is why I came here.” He paused then, keen silver-gray eyes searching her face. “But…there is more, isn’t there?”

“No,” she replied. Of course it was a lie, but she couldn’t tell him the truth as to why she was truly so upset. But if he went into the dressing area of her restroom, saw the discarded plastic tab on the counter….

No, he wouldn’t know what that was, most likely. It was Consortium technology, not Zhore. Still, it would look very out of place, and she might have to try explaining it away.

Zhore couldn’t flush, but something about his expression appeared to darken. “Why are you lying to me?”

Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Clamp it down, Trinity.

Walls. High walls of duracrete. Unbreakable. Unassailable.

But they had shared a bond, the two of them. Trinity tried to push him away, but his emotions — his mind — seemed to hammer at hers, seeking a way in, wanting to know what it was that troubled her so much she would lie to him.

Zhore didn’t lie.

His black brows drew together, and he reached out and took her by the wrist. Not roughly, but so she knew she wouldn’t be able to pull away. He was too strong for her. She’d worried all along that might turn out to be the case.

“Who are you?” he demanded. Then, as she didn’t reply, his grip tightened. Waves of dismay seemed to ripple out from him. “
What
are you?”

It was over. Somehow he’d been able to see inside her mind. Somehow he’d gotten past the defenses she’d worked so hard to build. She could have asked why, but she knew the answer.

Because she loved him. And the more she loved him, the more she hated herself. Eventually, it had to spill out, no matter what she did to hide how she felt.

“My name is Trinity Knox,” she said sadly. “I’m a Gaian.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

For a long moment, all Zhandar could do was stare at her. Then, slowly, he let go of her wrist. She rubbed it, but absently, as if it didn’t matter much whether or not he’d hurt her.

At last he found his voice. “But you look — but we — ” He had to stop himself there. They had shared so many intimacies, he and this woman who stood before him. She was
sayara
. He knew that, knew it as well as he knew the color of the sky, the number of moons that circled Zhoraan. But…how could she be
sayara,
and Gaian?

“I know,” she said quietly.

He couldn’t stop studying her face, attempting to see something in its contours, its shape, that would reveal her as an alien. If the clues were there, however, he couldn’t see them. That made some sense. The Gaians wouldn’t have sent her if she could be that easily detected.

“Why?” he asked at last.

For the first time, she glanced away from him. Gaze apparently fixed on a blooming shrub in the planter off to her side, she said, “I’d rather tell you that someplace safer.”

“Safer?” he asked, looking around her apartment in some confusion. Surely they were private enough here. Or was she saying she’d rather have this conversation in his own home, a place where they’d spent so many happy hours together?

A sad smile pulled at her mouth, but at the same time, he could sense fear slipping out past her barriers. Not fear of him, though. But who?

She said, voice too calm, “On second thought, it’s probably better if you call the authorities and have me arrested.”

He hadn’t really known what to do. The Zhore had no need of a police force the way some worlds did. There were probably agents in his government who would be of help, men and women more accustomed to Gaians and their unscrupulous practices, but he knew no one like that.

So, unable to think of a better alternative, he had contacted Jalzhin, from the Ministry of Health Services. In a very short time, a large transport vehicle showed up outside Zhanna’s — Trinity’s, he corrected himself — apartment building, and she was whisked away.

Now Zhandar stood with Jalzhin and a man from the government who had only identified himself as Nalzhir. That in itself was not strange; unlike the Gaians and the Eridanis, his people did not use surnames. In general, though, when introduced, they would state something of where they came from, or the current position they held, simply to provide some context. But this Nalzhir had omitted that particular detail, which told Zhandar that his was the sort of occupation the government didn’t want discussed openly.

The three of them were standing in a sort of observation room that overlooked the chamber where Trinity now sat opposite the woman who had been assigned to interrogate her. While the interrogator was still cloaked and hooded, Trinity had not been allowed any such concessions to propriety. She wore a slim-fitting tunic and pants, but her face and head were uncovered, her black hair spilling over her shoulders.

No, not
her
black hair. Nalzhir had shown him, based on her DNA readings, what Trinity truly looked like. Hair a warm brown with deep gold streaks in it, skin fair, almost delicately pink and white, like the blossoms of the
charazh
. Only her eyes were the same, the brilliant blue-green, like the changing waters of the sea.

Alien, and yet…still beautiful. The contours of the features he’d come to love were still there, only with a different wrapper, so to speak. And then he’d hated himself for thinking that, because she had lied to him. She’d been sent here by her government to use him and steal what secrets she could.

His jaw hardened. “What has she told you?”

“Not much,” Nalzhir allowed. “Unlike the Gaians, we do not engage in forcible interrogations. All she’s said so far is that she never meant to hurt anyone.”

“Too late for that,” Zhandar muttered.

“Lirzhair — our questioner — pointed that out to Ms. Knox. But that didn’t seem to do much to persuade her to be more forthcoming. She keeps saying that she wants to talk to you before she says anything to us.”

“Then I will talk to her.”

Nalzhir’s hooded head shook. “I’m afraid that’s not possible. At least, not yet.” He paused then, and although of course Zhandar could not see the other man’s face, he sensed a ripple of unease coming from him, quickly masked. “There is something else, though.”

How there could possibly be anything beyond the betrayal he’d already suffered, Zhandar didn’t know. His gloved hands, hidden within the folds of his robes, clenched. “Tell me.”

“We performed a nonintrusive physical examination, just to make sure she had not brought any Gaian illnesses or microbes with her.”

“Did she?” Zhandar asked in alarm, thinking back to the many times he had been intimate with the Gaian woman. But no, surely if she had been ill in any way, he would have shown his own symptoms long before now.

“No,” Nalzhir replied. “She is free from disease, as far as we are able to ascertain. Only….”

The government agent — or whatever he was — had very good control, but Zhandar was still able to detect the faintest tinge of unease slipping past his barrier. “Only what?”

“Only it appears that she is with child.”

The world tilted, but then Zhandar told himself that there must have been some mistake. Either that, or…. He said, tone dripping with disdain, “The Gaians stooped to sending a pregnant woman on an underhanded mission such as this one?”

“I fear you misunderstand me. She is in the very early stages of pregnancy. It had to have occurred after she arrived her. The child is yours, Zhandar.”