gaian consortium 06 - zhore deception (8 page)

A smaller waterfall flowed down an expanse of beaten copper on the wall behind him. Normally, Zhandar found the sound soothing, but now, as Leizha entered the office, he found the soft burble of the water almost intrusive.

“What is it, Zhandar?” she asked after shutting the door behind her, then taking the chair in front of his desk.

In his mind, he had practiced myriad ways of broaching the subject to her, but now, with his assistant facing him on the other side of his desk of carved
zhel
, he could only push his handheld across the tabletop, the screen set to her hooded image with her information overlaid on top.

A small sigh escaped her lips, hidden behind the hood that drooped low to conceal her face. “Ah, so it was you.”

Was she really going to be that disingenuous? “Are you saying you did not know before this?”

Her gloved fingers twisted around one another. “I had thought…I had guessed.” A long pause. “I had hoped.”

How could he respond to that revelation? Her voice had sounded calm enough, but he heard the tremor behind it. Although his people were supposed to keep their emotions tightly controlled at all times, he could sense some of her worry, her doubt, seeping out from beneath those barriers. And even farther down, beneath the fear…a sense of relief?

“So you would allow yourself to be part of this experiment?”

The words had come out more harshly than he’d intended, and she seemed to flinch. But then she straightened in her chair. Although he couldn’t see her face, he thought she must be staring directly at him.

“Yes, if it meant a chance at having the life I’ve always wanted. A life with you.”

In that moment, he could only marvel at her bravery. He wasn’t sure he would have been able to be so forthright if their roles had been reversed. “How long?” he asked simply.

“Longer than you would care to know.” Her shoulders lifted. “I knew it was wrong. You were bonded to your wife. I knew I was not
sayara
with you. I did my best to put the attraction aside, to try to meet someone suitable. But no one was
sayara
for me, either. I thought I was doomed to be one of those who live their lives alone, unpartnered. And then after Elzhair….” Leizha let the words trail off, even as Zhandar felt his throat constrict, the loss seeming as fresh now as it had been a year ago. His assistant took a breath, then went on, “Once you were alone, I thought…I hoped…perhaps there would be some way for us to be together, even if we did not share the
sayara
bond. It is not entirely unprecedented, although rare.”

“And yet you said nothing to me.”

“How could I?” she said simply, but he could feel the embarrassment and the tension flaring out from her. “There seemed to be no end to your grief, and I would not intrude on that. But when the call went out from the Ministry….”

“Yes, about that. How precisely did that work?”

Again she shrugged. “There was a message on my handheld. I suppose they must have been tracking those of us who were of a certain age but who had not yet bonded with a partner. But all that message said was to arrange an appointment with my local branch of the Ministry. It wasn’t until I went and spoke with one of its agents in person that I was told what their true mission was.”

“And it didn’t shock you?” If it had, Leizha seemed to be recovered now. Despite those frazzled emotions leaking past her barriers, her voice was still measured, calm.

“At first. After all, how could anyone manufacture the
sayara
bond? It is one of the things we hold most sacred. But after I spoke with Jalzhin, I understood better how it all might work.”

Jalzhin again. Zhandar supposed it wasn’t that strange that he should be the one to speak with Leizha. There was a finite number of agents working at the Ministry’s offices here in Torzhaan, so the odds dictated there was a good chance he would also be assigned to Leizha. Even so, Zhandar had the distinct impression that more than the hand of fate was at work here.

“And then once you received your own list of possible candidates….”

This time she did look away from him, her hood swiveling toward the window. “It was not so simple as that. We were told we would be the ones being selected, not the other way around. However, Jalzhin did tell me of several of the men who would be approached, described their situations. And when he said that one of them had lost his wife a year earlier, and that he also had a prestigious position here in the city…well, it was not so difficult for me to piece together those details and deduce that the man in question must be you.”

As he had thought. The question was, now that they had both been revealed to one another, what next? Should he bow his head to fate, and become part of the Ministry’s experiment?

The thing was, he had sensed yearning and need from Leizha, but no real passion. It was possible that she had done a better job of hiding it than her other emotions, but Zhandar wasn’t so sure. In all their time working together, Leizha had always impressed him as a remarkably level-headed woman, even more so than one might expect from one of his race. Perhaps she had no true fire at her core, and that was why she had never bonded with anyone else. Her attraction to him could be based on a simple need for companionship, without truly understanding what could attach a man to a woman, make him want to live for her.

Or die for her.

The sound of the waterfall somewhat masked the silence in the room, but it could not erase that uneasy quiet completely. Leizha waited, clearly expecting him to speak next. However, he had no idea what to say. That he would put aside all his misgivings, take Jalzhin’s misbegotten drug, and see what happened next? That perhaps the drug would engender the passion she so far seemed to lack?

His entire body and soul quailed at the prospect. He had told Jalzhin he would consider it, and had in fact called Leizha in to speak on the topic so that he might make up his mind once and for all. Now, though, with her sitting there and watching him, Zhandar found his resolve deserting him. He could not do this. He would not.

“Thank you for your honesty, Leizha,” he said at last. “You have given me much to think on.”

He’d meant the words as a dismissal, and she did not overlook that. A brief clap of anger, quickly hidden, and then she got to her feet, saying,

“That is all? After I have told you the truth of my heart, you will send me away as if we had discussed nothing more important than a new order of irrigation tubing?”

That, he felt, was being somewhat melodramatic. Yes, she had spoken somewhat of her feelings, but it was not as if she had flung herself into his arms and told Zhandar of her undying love for him.

Not that he would have wanted such a thing, of course. In fact, he was very grateful for her restraint. Now, though, he thought she had begun to push things a bit too far.

Forcing his tone to remain even, he said, “This is not something I can make a decision on right now. I wanted to know how matters stood with you, and now I do. If you find my hesitation hurtful, I apologize for that. But I hope that you would not expect me to rush into something as important as this without thinking it over carefully first.”

He’d expected her to nod and accept his words as the truth they so plainly were. Instead, she stalked to the door and pushed the button to open it. Stopping in the open doorframe, she snapped, “If it was something you truly wanted, then you would not have to stop and think about it, would you?”

With that parting remark, she was gone, the door whooshing to a close behind her. And Zhandar was left staring after her, wondering what he had just done wrong.

“Freaky,” was Blake’s observation as Trinity took a seat across from him in a small conference room, one outfitted with only a round table and two chairs.

Since Gabriel had guided her here but then left, saying that Blake didn’t want the intrusion of someone else’s thoughts in these exercises, Trinity knew she had to stick up for herself. Not blinking, she stared at Blake across the polished plastic surface of the table and asked, “Wasn’t that sort of the whole point?”

To her surprise, he grinned. “I suppose so. It’s just one thing to hear about it in the abstract, and quite another for it to be facing you in reality.” He stopped then and peered into her face, so rudely that if it had been anyone else, she would have been tempted to give him the middle finger. That sort of behavior wouldn’t fly here, however. Gabriel might not be physically in the room, but you could be damn sure he was watching through a hidden surveillance system.

“And I’m the ‘it’?” she inquired icily.

“Maybe.” He continued his inspection of her features, then said, “It’s just weird because it looks like
you
under all that. It’s almost like it would be easier to process if you looked completely like someone else.”

“Well, I don’t. This is how it all worked. So are we going to get on with this?”

Since Blake, as Gabriel Brant had pointed out, didn’t have much of a filter, he also didn’t take offense at the same things that would irritate a regular person. “Sure. It’s not that hard, really. You already have some mechanisms in place to keep other people out, so now it’s more a matter of redirecting those mechanisms so you can keep your own emotions and reactions hidden from others.”

She nodded. Put that way, it didn’t seem too complicated. Of course, things that sounded simple in theory were often difficult when actually put into practice.

“Okay, then.” He reached out and pinched her arm, hard. Since her flesh was still tender from the procedure that had turned her into a Zhore, it hurt far more than it normally would, and she gasped.

“What the hell?”

“Hurts, right? And I can feel you broadcasting that pain right at me. So tamp it down before the whole world knows about it.”

Bastard. She’d never punched anyone in the face, but in that moment she understood why someone would. Gritting her teeth, Trinity blinked back the throbbing ache in her arm, doing her best to shove it behind the same wall she used to keep other people’s thoughts from invading her every waking moment.

“Not bad,” Blake allowed. “But I can still feel some of it.”

All right, so those walls needed to be a little higher. Even though they existed only in her mind, she made a conscious effort to visualize them, twenty meters, no, fifty meters tall, smooth gray duracrete, impregnable to anything short of a pulse cannon attack. Behind that wall, her emotions could rage all they wanted, but they weren’t getting past that barrier.

Blake was silent then, brows knitted together. Trinity realized that he was trying to probe the wall she’d built, looking for any sign of weakness. He wouldn’t find one, though. She’d spent the last twelve years making sure nothing could get into it from the outside. It circled the hemisphere of her mind, a fortress that should be able to keep out anyone or anything…even Blake Chu.

“Pretty good,” he said at last, settling against the back of his chair with a faint sigh. He reached for the pouch of energy drink he’d brought with him and took a long swallow.

Of course no one had thought to give her an energy drink. Not that she really wanted one; she’d always thought they were pretty nasty. But a nice glass of ice water would do well right about now.

She wouldn’t ask for one, though. That would be a sign of weakness. She was pretty sure Gabriel and Blake had conspired to make sure she’d be thirsty during this meeting, and therefore not at the top of her game.

Bring it on, boys,
she thought, secure in the knowledge that Blake couldn’t possibly get through her defenses.
I can suffer for a half-hour or so. It’s not going to kill me.

“Thanks,” she replied, her tone tight. “Anything else?”

He didn’t reply at first, but only sat there and stared at her through those rimless glasses he wore. At first she’d thought they were only an affectation. Now she realized they served another purpose. With the light reflecting off the lenses, it was difficult to get a good read on the expression in his eyes. She’d always relied on those sorts of observations to assist her in deciphering what other people were thinking, how they were reacting. In many cases, watching someone’s shifting expressions could tell her almost as much as their thoughts did. Now, though….

“Yeah,” he said. “Not as easy as you thought, huh? And I’m just one guy wearing glasses. How about a planet full of aliens, all of them hooded? No faces to read. No expressions to interpret. And they tamp down their emotions pretty hard, from what Brant told me. So the only way you’re going to get anything from them is if you probe. Hard.” He rocked back in his chair. “Try it.”

“On you?”

“Who else? No one here but us chickens.”

She raised an eyebrow, not understanding the reference. But she knew he didn’t want her to ask any questions. He wanted her to do what she’d come here for.

In the past, she’d always been careful when dipping into other people’s thoughts. It was easy to get lost in the welter of their emotions, of their hopes and fears and the million stray ideas that passed through someone’s head at any given moment. She’d only ever gone in to get one particular piece of information, and in her own mind, she’d always thought of the procedure as rather like using a laser scalpel, a beam of targeted light aimed at a very specific point.

Now, though, when she tried to use the scalpel approach, it was clear that it wouldn’t work. It was like trying to poke a needle through a surface made of concrete.

She needed a sledgehammer.

And that was how she visualized it — like an enormous hammer she could slam down on the smooth, unyielding surface of Blake’s own defenses.

“Ouch!” he exclaimed, then pushed his chair away from hers. “Subtle, Knox. Real subtle.”

“Sorry,” she said, although she really didn’t mean it. Anyway, trying to get into Blake’s mind that way hadn’t worked at all. It had felt like swinging a mallet into shatterproof glass. Her attack had bounced back, shaking her as well.

“Obviously, that approach isn’t going to work.” He shifted, moving so he was perched more or less on the edge of his seat. “You try pulling that crap on a Zhore, and they’re going to feel it and be on you so fast, you won’t even realize what’s happening until you’re locked up in jail. Or whatever they use for jail, I guess,” he added, with a scratch on the side of his nose. “Anyway, the last thing you want is to do something that’s going to attract everyone’s attention. So try again.”