No Other Love (2 page)

“Who are you,” he asked. “What do you want of
me?”

“You know my name.” Her low-pitched, quiet
voice reminded Herne of someone, but he could not think who.

“How do you know that? And, come to think of
it, how do you know my name? You have called me Herne from the
beginning.”

“From the beginning,” she repeated. “Herne
the hunter, Herne of the forest; you know what I want. What you
want.” She moved toward a wide couch half-hidden by netlike
draperies that billowed and swayed with the movement of air.

“Ananka.” He used the name Osiyar had called
her and she stood still, smiling at him. Again he felt that odd tug
of recognition.

“Ananka,” she said, putting out one hand to
him. “I am your Fate, for this night at least. Come, accept it, for
there is no breaking the threads spun before time began.”

He saw that the golden cloak she had worn
when first she appeared to him was gone. She shrugged her shoulders
and her gown fell open down the front, revealing porcelain skin. He
noted the rich curves of her breasts and the curling luster of her
golden-brown hair. And then he realized that he wore no clothing at
all. It did not surprise him. In this place, nothing could surprise
him.

Ananka took his hand, drawing him with her to
the couch. When she lay down upon it, he stood above her, enjoying
the elegant display of gleaming limbs, the tempting possibilities
revealed, concealed, then opened to him again as she shifted
position, making room for him.

“Come, join me,” she murmured. “You do not
remember, but I do. As I once promised you, this night is our
time.” Her beautiful lips parted and her eyes smiled into his. He
still could not tell what color those eyes were, whether brown or
purple, or some other shade.

Herne was a healthy male in the prime of
life, and he had not pain with a woman for half of a Jurisdiction
year. Suddenly, he did not care about the color of her eyes, or if
she was real or a mirage of some kind, or whether she would poison
him with food or drink, or the touch of her luscious body. He
wondered briefly if he would ever see the sky or his fellow
colonists again, before Ananka drove everything else out of his
thoughts. He lowered himself to the couch and she put her hands on
him.

She was vibrant with experience, ripe with
lush womanliness. She was alluring beyond any man’s dreams. Again
and again she roused Herne to wild desire, then granted him
intense, prolonged pleasure. But she took from him, too, took and
took until he felt drained of his very life force. At last, when
her eager mouth and searching fingers could stimulate him no
longer, he drifted toward exhausted sleep with Ananka propped above
him on one elbow, watching the failure of her most recent
efforts.

“Poor, weak man,” she said with a ripple of
mocking laughter. “Not like my kind at all. But, still, an
interesting experiment, to know human sensations….”

* * * * *

“Herne. Herne, wake up.” Tarik shook him
hard. When the effort failed, Tarik pushed the button that
converted the bed back into a chair and swung it into navigator’s
position.

Jolted into sitting upright by the movements
of the chair, Herne opened his mouth to utter an oath most improper
to use with one’s commanding officer. He stopped when a small hand
entered his line of vision. In the hand was a mug. The fragrant
steam curling up from the mug began to clear his groggy brain.

“Here,” Merin said. “Qahf will help.”

Something about her quiet voice touched a
memory in him. He made his bleary eyes focus on her face, but it
was the same Merin he had seen nearly every day since he’d joined
Tarik’s colonists. Beneath the stiff white coif her face was thin
and rather sharp-featured. Her skin was pale, her lips a milky
coral shade. As always, she kept her eyes demurely lowered. Just
the same old Merin; cool, distant from everyone, never showing a
trace of emotion. But she could be kind. The qahf was just what he
needed. Herne gulped it.

“If we are all awake at last,” Tarik said,
“we ought to get started.”

“I will work with Osiyar,” Alla informed
him.

“We’ll make two groups,” Tarik ordered. “I
want a historian with each, so Merin, you will work with Herne, and
I’ll join Alla and Osiyar.”

“We won’t need you,” Alla began.

“Oh, yes you will,” said Tarik in a voice
intended to remind Alla just who was heading this expedition. He
touched a few buttons at the shuttlecraft controls. “The computer
will monitor our movements. Each of us is to check in every hour,
on the hour. If anyone doesn’t call in, the computer is programmed
to send an alarm signal to all the others.”

Osiyar and Alla left the shuttlecraft. Tarik
prepared to follow them.

“Tarik, wait.” Herne got to his feet. “I need
to speak with you in private.”

“I’ll be outside.” Merin slipped through the
hatch and closed it behind her.

“Well?” Tarik looked impatient.

“That woman I saw last night came back,”
Herne began. “She took me with her to an underground room.”

“Before you awakened,” Tarik said, “I checked
the scanning instruments. Nothing living approached the
shuttlecraft during the night. No one left it, either.”

“I tell you, she was here! And I did leave!”
Angry now, and feeling more than a little guilty over what he had
done with the woman, Herne recounted his adventure of the previous
night, ending with, “I have no idea how I got back to the
shuttlecraft, nor any recollection of dressing myself. I don’t even
know where my treksuit was after we reached the grotto. Except –
except, just a moment ago, when I stood up I thought I saw myself
standing beside my sleeping self, and the standing Herne was naked
until I merged with the body wearing the treksuit.

“By all the stars.” Herne drew a shaky
breath. “I’ve been spending too much time with Osiyar. His
telepathic abilities must be rubbing off on me.”

“I know you well enough by now to be certain
that you are not a telepath,” said Tarik with a chuckle.

“It’s not funny,” Herne declared, insulted by
Tarik’s humor. “This was not just an erotic dream. I
was
with a woman last night, or with something that looked and acted
like a woman.”

“I believe you. We sometimes forget,” Tarik
said, laying a friendly hand on Herne’s rigid shoulder, “that this
planet is in the Empty Sector. The reason space travel is forbidden
through this part of the galaxy is because the laws of physics
don’t always apply here, because legends tell of dreams more real
than waking life, and of strange life forms flourishing.”

“Like telepaths.” Herne frowned, trying to
make sense of his experience.

“Like telepaths,” Tarik agreed. “This
planet’s isolation and the laws against travel in the Empty Sector
made this a safe place for the telepaths to found their colony of
Tathan, so long ago. For the same reason we came here, to build a
listening post to monitor the Cetans, to make certain they keep
their recently signed treaty with the Jurisdiction.

“You were right to inform me of this
incident, Herne. Be sure to tell me if anything else happens to you
that seems strange. Do you feel well enough to work today?”

“Absolutely.” Herne nodded. “Thanks to
Merin’s hot qahf, my brain is starting to function again. Look,
Tarik, I know you said we would start our excavations with the
building you found yesterday, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to
study the area where I first saw that woman. Perhaps I can find
some evidence of what really happened.”

“That’s a good idea. Just be careful,” Tarik
advised. “How much will you tell Merin?”

“She will need to know what I saw,” Herne
decided, “but I don’t intend to reveal every intimate detail.”

“Merin is an intelligent woman.” Tarik
surveyed the physician, taking in his bedraggled appearance, and
Herne knew his leader was trying not to show any further sign of
amusement. Still, Tarik could not resist a last, teasing comment.
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she is able to guess what you’ve
been doing all night.”

Merin could tell that Herne was not feeling
well. When she re-entered the shuttlecraft she found him drinking a
second cup of qahf, swallowing the hot liquid as though it was an
unpleasant but necessary medicine; which, from his appearance, it
probably was. His face was a pasty-white color, there were dark
circles under his eyes, and his step was none too steady. This she
learned by quick glances while he was occupied in gathering
together his kit and strapping it on his back. She did not allow
their eyes to meet. It would not be right. But then, nothing would
ever be right again, not until she died.

It had not taken her long to understand that
she should not have come to Dulan’s Planet. But she hadn’t belonged
in the archivists’ carrels at Capital, either. There was no place
in the Jurisdiction where she could possibly fit in and feel
comfortable now that her home planet was forever closed to her. All
she had left in her exile was her need to make herself useful in
order to justify her continued existence.

When she had heard two other Capital
archivists discussing in sneering terms the rumors about a group of
misfits whom Commander Tarik was gathering to take on some
mysterious expedition into the unknown, she had realized that he
would need someone to keep his records. She had once helped Tarik’s
older brother, Admiral Halvo, with some difficult and confidential
research that he had wanted done immediately. He had been so
pleased with her work that he offered to use his influence in her
behalf if she ever needed it. Merin went to Halvo, to ask him to
recommend her to Tarik. Within a day she was signed on as a member
of the colony. Seven days later she was on her way to Dulan’s
Planet where, she hoped, no one would ever learn what she really
was.

She found Tarik’s colonists a disparate lot.
There was even a Cetan among them, although Gaidar seemed a mild
enough character and had mated with a Jurisdiction woman, Suria.
Both had tried to be kind to Merin. So had Tarik and his wife,
Narisa. Still, Merin felt ill at ease with them, because she could
not tell them the truth about herself.

On Oressia, it was accepted, a necessary
thing, but it was an aspect of Oressian life that could never be
revealed to outsiders. The few who left Oressia to live elsewhere
were sworn to eternal secrecy by the most solemn oaths. At the time
of her own leaving, it had not seemed a great thing to ask of her
because it was clear that those who lived on other Jurisdiction
worlds would be incapable of understanding the very good reasons
for the Oressian way of life.

“I’m ready. Let’s go.” Herne had pulled
himself and his gear together at last. For the second time that
morning, Merin left the shuttlecraft, but when she started walking
toward the area of the ruins where Tarik and the others were
working, Herne stopped her. “Not there. This way.”

She saw where he was going. With a lifting of
interest, she followed him.

“Are we going to search for evidence of the
woman you thought you saw?” asked.

“The woman I
did
see,” he corrected
her. He pointed toward a pile of stones. “As a historian, what is
your opinion of that pillar?”

“By Jurisdiction time, it is six to seven
hundred years old,” Merin replied, glad to forget her personal
troubles in work. Quickly, she pushed the buttons on her hand-held
recorder that communicated with the shuttlecraft computer, entering
information on the dimensions, composition, and exact location of
the pillar.

“Six to seven hundred years would be about
right,” Herne mused, looking at the ground near the pillar. “Isn’t
that when the telepaths settled here? They must have built
this.”

“It seems likely.” Merin watched him scraping
at the ground with one foot. “For what are you searching?”

“For the other side of the arch.”

“I see only a broken pillar, with no evidence
of an arch,” she told him.

“It was here. It was part of a one-story
white building that had a garden behind it.”

“You think this was the arch?” Merin stood
where Ananka had stood the night before. She waved the hand holding
the recorder. “And on this side was the interior of the
building?”

“Yes. The garden was that way,” Herne
insisted, noting that, measured against the masonry of the pillar,
Merin was almost exactly as tall as Ananka had been.

“Show me.” Still Merin’s eyes were on the
recorder. Her fingers flew over the buttons, adding more data.
“Count the steps, or if you cannot remember how many steps you
took, then just approximate the distance.”

“You believe me?” He sounded surprised.

“What is important is that you believe in
whatever you think you saw,” said Merin. “Describe it to me as we
go along. I will record it all. Even if we can make no sense of it,
perhaps the larger computer at Home can. Or perhaps your
information will fit with any discoveries made by Tarik and the
others.”

“Here,” Herne said, stopping by a slight
elevation in the overgrown debris. “At this spot was a huge, golden
statue of a Chon.”

“If it was valuable metal, the Cetans
probably hacked it to pieces and carried it off when they destroyed
the city,” Merin told him. She made notes on the recorder while
Herne attempted to clear the dirt away from the ground. Stooping,
he picked up an oblong chunk of solid material that had fallen away
as he worked.

“Look at this. It was down here near the
bottom, as if had fallen off the pedestal. Perhaps it’s a piece of
the stone the statue sat on.” He scraped at what he held in one
hand, using his fingernails until a spot of dark metal was
revealed. “What the -? This isn’t stone.”