Keir (9 page)

“I…felt it. Now you are frightened.”

She stood and turned away as if recoiling from him in dread, one hand to her mouth.

He was suddenly, terribly certain he had broken some unknown taboo. “Quin, what is the matter? What have I done?”

“No, you’ve done nothing wrong. It’s what I’ve done to you. I…I have a confession to make.” She turned back to him with a guilty look in her eyes and her hands clasped together in supplication. She was silent for so long he began to think she could not bring herself to go on. “Did you know that you died after I brought you here?” she whispered.

Keir shivered reflexively. “No one told me. I thought I might be dying. I have never felt so close to it before,” he murmured. “Who brought me back?”

“I did.”

“And that is your confession?”

“No. It’s the way it was done. The medical team couldn’t save you and I was told to let you go, but I couldn’t.” Quin swallowed hard. “I wouldn’t. So I went after you. I joined my mind to yours and brought you back, whether you wanted to or not. I gave you no choice.”

He stared at her in disbelief, mystified by her apparent contrition. She seemed overwhelmed by shame for her actions, as if she had committed some grave sin against him.

“You believe I wanted to die?”

“Didn’t you?”

Keir frowned and closed his eyes, trying to think. It was harder than he would ever admit to go back to that place. “I remember darkness,” he murmured. “I was so tired and I wanted to sleep. I did not want the pain any more. I wanted it to stop.”

Quin walked away suddenly, arms wrapped around herself, and he knew she was crying. Guilt poured from her like waves, and he remembered sinking into the sea, remembered her reaching out for him. Still unsteady, he rose and went to her. The sight of her tears hurt more than the dark memories of his death. He had no wish for her to endure such pain on his behalf.

“You took my hand, even though it meant you drowning with me.” He took a deep breath then slowly, deliberately, took her face in his hands, desperate for her to understand. “Do you remember what happened then?”

Her eyes widened, and a long moment of silence wrapped around them. “You…you held onto my hand,” she stuttered at last. “I couldn’t let go.”

“Because I had made my choice. I wanted to be saved.” He wiped a tear off her cheek with his thumb. “I came back because I wanted to live, and if you need my forgiveness for that, you have it. You have shown me nothing but kindness. Why would I hate you for it?”

“Because that isn’t the end of it! Our minds are joined forever, an unbreakable bond. If anything happens to me, you’ll feel it whether you want to or not. You’ll never be free of me, and one day, one of us will die. Have you any idea what that will do to the other?”

Keir shook his head. “I have faced Death. How can it be any worse than everything I have been through already?”

“You’ve no idea what it will be like.”

“Then I will learn. Or is it that you want to be rid of me? Do you regret doing it?”

“No!” Quin shook her head, seemingly horrified. “But I’ve lived through it once and I don’t know if I’d have the strength to do it again. I had no right to condemn you to that.”

Her whole body shook as she sobbed, her mind radiating terrible despair as she buried her face in her hands. He ached to hold her, to ease her pain as she had done for him. Instead he stood helpless.

“Quin,” he said. “You have brought me back from death and offered me a new life. I would walk back through Adalucien for you. I would take any pain for you. If you need me to forgive you, I do. If you want me to leave in the hope of breaking this link, I will. Do not punish yourself for this. I am, and always will be, grateful to you.”

He touched her hair, a fleeting gesture. Her tears unnerved him, and he found himself unable to comprehend the profound remorse and self-recrimination she was subjecting herself to over an act of compassion. It wound itself into his chest and pulled tight.

“Quin, please do not cry.” When her tears continued unabated, he panicked. “Must I beg?”

He made to kneel but, still shaky on his feet, he lost his balance and found himself sprawled on the grass, staring up at her.

She burst out laughing then clutched her hand to her mouth as if to hold the laughter back. “Oh, Keir, I’m so sorry.”

She held out her hands to help him up and he rose awkwardly to sit back on the bench. After a brief hesitation, she sat beside him, sniffling as she wiped her eyes and took a deep, steadying breath. For a moment, they sat in silence, lost in thought. Keir glanced at her sidelong, sensing her sorrow as clearly as if it were his own. The weight of it pressed on his thoughts. It left him uneasy to see her so downcast, full of regrets and unnecessary pain, and to be sharing it with her. Did she realize how much he could feel? Did she feel it too?

His stomach cramped in hunger. “Quin?”

She turned to look at him, eyebrows arched inquiringly. “What?”

“I am sorry but…I am very hungry.”

Quin chuckled. “Now that you mention it, so am I. Let’s eat”

By the time they arrived at her quarters, Keir had his arm slung around Quin’s shoulders once more. His ordeal and two days of not eating had left him with little strength despite the restorative Taler had given him before he left the medical center.

Quin’s lodgings were set deep within the complex. An unmarked doorway opened into a short corridor with subdued yellow lighting that led to a curved bank of soft, dark-gray seating. She directed him to sit and make himself comfortable, before fetching him a drink. This time it was chilled fruit juice, another new flavor for him and tarter than anything he had tasted before. He accepted it gratefully, though the coldness and acidity of it set his teeth on edge.

As Quin busied herself cooking, Keir took the opportunity to look around her home. Ahead of him stood the main entrance, and to his left two further doors were set at right angles. To the right, kitchen units took up the adjacent wall, with a plain wooden table and chairs opposite. The long wall leading away had a landscape painted across it, similar to the view he had seen outside. He admired it for several moments before it registered that the clouds were moving across the brilliant blue sky and a white butterfly flitted among a patch of multicolored flowers. He blinked and leaned forward, certain his eyes had tricked him.

The curved wall behind him was made of several narrow, vertical panels of a reflective black material that looked like metal but felt surprisingly warm to the touch when he dared investigate. The rest of the walls were a muted blue-gray and the floors were covered in a dark-gray fabric.

“I haven’t bothered to do anything about decorating it,” she explained suddenly, as if she had read his mind. “It’s just a place to come back to, and to keep things safe.”

“Can you hear all my thoughts?” he asked, his voice tight.

She grinned at him, the same hint of mischief on her face he had seen just before she destroyed their prison cell. “If I wanted to,” she said. “But I wouldn’t do that. In any case, I’ll teach you how to shield your thoughts and project them, so I’ll only hear what you want me to.”

Reassured somewhat, he watched her working as he finished his drink then set the empty beaker on the floor. Quin used a small knife to chop up something green and leafy that she added to the contents of the large, steaming pot beside her.

“You cannot produce food by magic, then?”

Quin laughed, stirring the metal pan. “No, not really. And we call it science, not magic.”

“Science?” Keir tried the word, a touch embarrassed at his ignorance, and she gave him a sympathetic shrug, sensing his discomfort.

“I could ‘magic’ something up,” she said, making it clear from the emphasis she had used the term in jest. “But I prefer to cook, if I have the time. It doesn’t taste the same out of a machine.”

“You have machines that can make food?”

“Yes. We have machines that can make pretty much anything.”

He resumed studying the landscape, and wondered what magic or… science made it work and whether he would be able to learn it. “Does a machine make that painting move?”

“Yes. It’s a CHI–a crystalline holographic imager. It uses light to create the image and makes it move like the real thing.”

“It sounds very complex.”

“Probably. I don’t really understand how it works myself. It just does.”

The arrival of the promised food soon distracted him from his questions, the smell unfamiliar yet appetizing. Quin brought two large cups and offered him one with the warning, “It’s hot. Mind yourself.”

“What is it?”

“Vegetable soup. I don’t know if Adalucien has an equivalent. If you don’t like it, tell me and I’ll get you something else.”

Keir held the cup with both hands, warming his fingers appreciatively on the beaker’s smooth surface. He sipped with caution, managing not to burn himself and enjoying the strong flavor. “It is good. I thank you.”

“I wasn’t sure if it would be to your taste.”

“You would not want to know some of the things I have eaten at need. This is good.”

Quin stared at him over the edge of her cup as she drank and he looked away with a flicker of unease. He returned to his examination of her living mural, his gaze darting from one image to the next as he discovered other fragments of interest.

“That’s an image from my home world,” she told him.

“I thought it was of the landscape here. They seem very similar.” He followed another insect with shimmering wings across the wall. “Is your entire world like that?”

“No, not much of it, actually. That was taken near my home. I used to walk there.”

“Do you never go back?” he asked, hearing the edge of wistfulness in her voice.

“I can’t. It doesn’t exist anymore.” Her tone revealed a hint of anger mixed with bitterness, and Keir sensed he was close to the source of some of her grief.

“Taler said this was a place for strays.”

“I’d call them refugees,” corrected Quin, sounding piqued by the choice of phrase. “‘Strays’ makes us sound like a litter of abandoned puppies. Otherwise, yes, that’s accurate. Most of us have lost our homes.”

“What happened to yours?”

“A woman called Rulk and a being known as a Sentiac destroyed my home and my family. I’ve been looking for them ever since.”

“That is a terrible loss to bear,” Keir ventured. “Was it a war? A blood feud?”

“I suppose you could call it a war, yes.” Quin kept her gaze averted, but her pain was clear in the lines etching her face. Sorrow threaded into his mind from hers. For a moment she stared into her cup before speaking again, and her voice was muted. “Rulk was a talented, though ruthless, scientist. She took over the machines that controlled a lot of the systems on my world, things like power for light and heating, water, travel, things your people would have no concept of. Then she made herself an army.”

Confusion filled his mind. “I do not understand. How could she make an army? Is this more science?”

“Yes. A very advanced form of science called genetic engineering. It’s like…” Quin struggled to find the words. “Like picking the best horses to produce better offspring? Does that make sense to you?”

“You make it sound as though this Rulk was breeding fine steeds or cattle. But you mean men for war?”

When Quin nodded, unease prickled down his spine. Would he ever make sense of this world?

“She took certain humans…” Quin’s voice broke and dropped to a whisper. “She took my sisters, both of them.”

Horror clutched at his throat. “I am sorry for your loss, Quin,” he managed. “I cannot imagine the grief you hold.” But he could feel the sharp edge of it in his thoughts, sense the emptiness it had carved into her soul as surely as he could see the glimmer of tears in her eyes. With it came a cold rage–her anger and bitterness that those she loved had been taken from her for such a purpose. For another’s gain.

“My family had a touch of psychic talent, so she used them and the Sentiac to create a race of hybrids with telepathic abilities,” Quin continued as if she needed to purge herself of the story by telling it. “Then she used her army to take over my world, turned the true humans into slaves and started shipping them off-world.”

“She traded your people as slaves?”

“No, just used them as labor to gather resources from other planets. But it would only have been a matter of time before they died out.”

“But you escaped?”

“Yeah.” She snorted. “Lucky me.”

Her response resonated with him. All those times he had felt close to death and yet survived, wondering whether it was a curse or a blessing to live another day. “So now you have a blood feud to settle with this Rulk?”

“You mean do I want to kill her?” She met his gaze then, her face hardening. “I’ve never killed anyone in cold blood before. I don’t know if I can.”

“Then why seek her if not for revenge?”

“Before she escaped, she opened a gateway, just as I can, and I lost a good friend through it. I don’t know where or when she sent him. I’m hoping I can...persuade her to tell me.”

A strange pang filled him. Guilt? She felt his loss was her fault? Surely in such a battle, each warrior must fight with the possibility of death before them? Yet there was more to it than the whispers of thought coming from Quin. He found himself resenting the friend she sought.