No Other Love (27 page)

Merin was oddly invigorated by what had just
happened. Believing that the bird had again transmitted some of its
strength to her as it had done on the previous day, she glanced at
Herne to see if he had been similarly affected. She was glad to see
that he looked much healthier, too. The wan, taut look was gone
from his face and he stood more easily, as though the mere act of
keeping himself upright was no longer a test of his will. Merin
straightened her shoulders and faced the would-be goddess with new
hope.

“You have made a promise,” Dulan reminded
Ananka.

“Only to listen, not necessarily to agree to
what is proposed,” Ananka responded, smirking.

“Throughout history, goddesses were always
capricious, and frequently treacherous,” Merin noted.

“She’s a poor creature for a goddess,” Herne
said, his eyes on Ananka. “She’s just a peculiar entity with
specific but limited powers. She may be an alien to us, and
unimaginably long-lived, but she’s not supernatural. If she were,
the Chon would have no power over her.”

“Excellent,” said Dulan. “You learn quickly,
Herne.”

“Ananka,” Herne said, “I want to know exactly
how you brought us here. I very much doubt if you are capable of
creating the solar storms.”

“But I could take advantage of the
electromagnetic changes the storms caused,” Ananka said with
undisguised pride in her achievement.

“Then you can use the same electromagnetic
changes to return us,” Herne said. “You can send us back to a
moment when we were still aboard the
Kalina.”

“I could,” Ananka told him, “but I don’t want
to.”

“Listen to Herne voluntarily,” said Dulan,
“or the bird and I will force you to listen. The secret Herne would
tell you is all-important, to you and to the people of Tathan.”

“You know what it is?” Herne stared at Dulan
in amazement.

“Dulan learned the secret yesterday, when our
thoughts merged,” said Merin. “Ananka,

You must promise to send us home.”

“It seems I have little choice,” said Ananka
ruefully, looking at the Chon.

“Swear to it,” Dulan insisted.

“If I swear a lie, how will you know it after
your friends have disappeared?” asked Ananka.

“I will know. The Chon will tell me,” said
Dulan, the words making Ananka take a deep, gasping breath.

“I swear,” she said, looking frightened.

“Tathan will be attacked,” Herne said, not
wasting any more time or words. “We don’t know the exact date, but
in our own time there is a record in Dulan’s own hand, of Cetans
destroying the city a century after its founding. Since the
settlement is one hundred years old, it follows that the attack
will come soon.”

“All will die?” That was Saray, her face
white with shock. “Every telepath dies on that day?”

“I have read Dulan’s record several times,”
Merin said. “We know from it that twelve telepaths made their way
safely to the island retreat at Lake Rhyadur, where they lived out
their natural lives in peace. From my friend Osiyar, I have learned
of another group of telepaths who escaped into the forest and later
founded a village beside the sea in the northeastern part of this
continent.”

“Where one of my kind lives,” put in
Ananka.

“I believe so,” said Merin, “for Osiyar spoke
of a mysterious entity, who lived in a sacred grove.”

“
She
was properly worshiped, no
doubt,” snapped Ananka.

“You will not be forgotten. Six hundred years
in the future, Osiyar knew your name.”

“I suppose I shall have to be content with
that.” Ananka did not sound at all content.

“It’s more than you deserve,” said Dulan.

“Herne, you could still stay with me,” Ananka
coaxed. “I will protect you from the Cetans, and I’ll show you
pleasures beyond human knowing.”

“Since I am only a human, how could I know
them?” asked Herne with remarkable patience for him. “Thank you,
but I want to go home. Send both of us back.”

“I wish I hadn’t promised.” Ananka sighed.
“You remind me so much of that earlier Herne. He was stubborn, too.
Very well, then. When do you want to leave?”

“Now,” said Herne. “Just tell us what to
do.”

“Return to the little ship in which you
arrived. You will find that the engines will start. Rise into the
air, hover over Tathan and I will do the rest.”

“There are to be no tricks,” Dulan warned,
and Ananka sighed again.

“No tricks, Dulan, I promise.” But then she
smiled with a sweetly poisonous glance at Herne.

“No,” cried Saray. “We must tell them
everything, Ananka. How cruel you are! I can’t believe I ever
thought you were my friend. Merin, Herne, once you have returned to
your own time you will remember nothing of what has happened while
you were in Tathan. In your time, only a few moments will have
elapsed. There, the last four days have not happened.”

“But we have made friends here,” Merin
protested. “You, Saray. Tula. And most of all, Dulan. Oh, my dear,
dear friend Dulan. I don’t ever want to forget you and all you have
given to my heart and my spirit. I don’t want to forget any of
you.”

“Stay and remember,” said Ananka lightly, “or
go and forget. The choice is yours. By the way, once the change is
made, they won’t remember you, either, and you will no longer be
aware of what you now feel for Herne. Nor will he remember his
passion for you. It will be as though you never were in
Tathan.”

“Dulan. Saray.” Merin put out a hand to each
of them.

“If it is truly love you feel for Herne, and
he for you,” Dulan said, understanding her deepest grief, “then
your hearts will remember and find a way to join again. As for our
friendship, it will endure through the centuries that separate us.
I know it, and you know it, too.”

“You ought to leave Tathan at once,” Herne
suggested to Dulan. “Warn Tula, take Saray with you, and start for
Rhyadur.”

“And what are we to do,” asked Dulan, “when
you are gone and we suddenly cannot remember why we are headed
northward? No, we must remain here until the moment is right.”

“I will not go to Rhyadur,” Saray said. I
must atone for my crimes. Because of my close association with
Ananka, I
will
remember what has happened. When the attack
comes, Hotan and I will lead the resistance against the Cetans. It
is a role Hotan will relish, and I, at least, can be by his side
until the end comes.”

“You will die,” said Ananka, sounding
surprised at Saray’s decision.

“So be it,” Saray replied calmly.

“You are all mad,” Ananka told them. “I don’t
think I want to be worshiped by your kind, after all.”

“It’s just as well,” Herne told her, “since
you aren’t really a goddess.”

“Still, I can see, where you are blind,”
Ananka replied, laughing. “What is the past for you remains the
future for me. Time moves in its endless loops, and we will meet
again for the first time, Herne. You will find me in the
grotto.”

“We will go now,” Herne said, not responding
to Ananka’s brazen invitation. “Dulan, thank you for everything you
have done for us. Tell Tula I thank him, too, and I’m sorry I was
rude to him yesterday.”

“Tell him so yourself,” said Dulan. “Here he
is, and Jidak and Imra with him.”

“Your mate has returned,” Tula told Dulan,
“and is waiting for you in the computer room, where it is
safe.”

“There isss no sssafety,” hissed Imra, her
pale, triangular eyes darting around the garden. “All isss
lost.”

“As you suggested yesterday, Dulan,” Jidak
added, “we have been monitoring the computer’s scanning device, set
on its longest range. A Cetan ship has just moved into orbit. It
won’t take them long to send out shuttlecraft, nor to locate
Tathan.”

“No doubt they already know of our presence,”
Dulan said with remarkable calmness. “We know what they will
want.”

“Pillage, rape, murder, bloodshed.” Imra
stalked toward Ananka with the swift, smooth movements of her
reptilian kind. “Isss thisss the entity called Ananka? Will you
help us defend our city?”

“I think you will find,” Herne told Imra,
“that if she gives you any aid at all, she will expect you to
worship her in return.”

“Styxians have their own gods,” Imra told
Ananka. “And I would not revere an entity that deliberately harms
others.”

“Nor would I accept the worship of an
insect-eating lizard,” returned Ananka with great contempt. “Don’t
speak to me of hurting others.”

“Don’t make her too angry,” Herne warned.
“She has promised to send Merin and me back where we belong, and we
don’t want her to change her mind.”

“Then you had best go at once,” Tula urged,
“for Hotan and his friends have learned of the Cetans’ arrival and
they are marching on the Gathering Hall even now. We came here to
warn you. Dulan, they are convinced that Herne and Merin called the
Cetans here to destroy us, and Hotan claims to believe that you
helped them. He says you are all Jurisdiction spies, in league with
the Cetans. Listen, you can hear them shouting.”

It was more than shouting they heard; it was
running footsteps. Hotan burst through the doors of the Hall and
into the garden. At the same moment when he appeared, the green
Chon spread its wings and flew away.

“I knew I’d find you here,” Hotan shouted,
sprinting down the steps to grab Merin’s wrist. “You and the other
spies. We’ll kill all of you in the town square and leave your
bodies for the Cetans to find.”

“They are not spies!” Saray was at Hotan’s
side. “Here is Ananka. She and I brought them to Tathan, just as I
told you, and Ananka will verify that. Merin and Herne have nothing
to do with the Cetans.”

“Nothing?” scoffed Hotan. “Then what is Jidak
doing here with them? I’ll wager he’s a spy, too.”

“We all know,” Dulan said, “what Jidak
endured before he left Ceta to join us on our journey to this
world.”

“We only know what Jidak told us,” Hotan
declared. “A one-armed Cetan is still a Cetan.”

“Have we come to this in our own time of
peril?” cried Tula. “What has happened to our dream of a city where
all the Races of telepaths could live together in peace?”

“Keep your dreams, old man,” Hotan told him.
“This is war. I’m going to see these spies dead in the square and
then I’m going to fight and kill as many Cetans as I can.”

“Wait.” Saray caught at Hotan’s arm. “My
love, only talk to Ananka. She will tell you the truth, and she
might even help us.”

“Don’t look to me,” Ananka said, laughing. “I
merely promised to send Herne and Merin home again. Which I will
do, Herne, if ever you are able to reach your shuttlecraft and get
it into the air. As for you, Saray, since you refuse to help me any
longer, why should I help you? Fight your own battle.” With that,
Ananka vanished.

Hotan still had his fingers around Merin’s
wrist. He began to drag her up the steps toward the Gathering Hall.
Herne leapt after him, followed by Dulan, Saray, and the
others.

“Good.” Hotan bared his teeth in a mirthless
grin. “I knew I only had to capture this one and the others would
follow.”

“Hotan, stop this at once.” Saray was faster
than Herne. She reached her lover and the struggling Merin first.
She threw her arms around Merin’s waist, trying to pull her away
from Hotan by using all the weight of her body. “I won’t let you
hurt her. Please, Hotan, we have to organize a resistance. Let
Merin go and help me rally our friends.”

They had all reached the interior of the Hall
by now. Ignoring Saray’s continuing pleas, Hotan pulled the two
women in the direction of the Chon statue. With Saray still
clinging to her, Merin kicked and scratched at Hotan, finally
bending over to bite his hand. He did not loosen his hold on her
wrist, but only swatted at her with his free hand as if her
struggles were as unimportant as the buzzing of an insect.

The double doors of the main entrance stood
open, allowing the roar of noise from the square to reach those
inside the hall. Turning her head toward the sound, Merin caught a
glimpse of frightened-looking people rushing about. Suddenly a
group of obviously angry young men and women surged through the
door and raced across the hall to surround Hotan, Merin, and
Saray.

“Death to the spies!” yelled one woman, a
Denebian by her pale grey skin and hair.

“Kill them! Kill all the Cetans, too!”
shouted a red-antennaed Jugarian, whom Merin recalled seeing with
Hotan at the Gathering she had attended.

To Merin’s perception, the crowd about them
quickly disintegrated into fragmented bits and pieces. Someone
snatched at the gear she still had slung over her shoulder. She
heard a loud snap as a strap broke, but she did not have time to
look for whatever she had lost. She caught glimpses of Herne’s
furious face as he bare-handedly pushed through the mob toward her,
with Jidak on his right side and Imra on his left.

Hotan is right about one thing
, Merin
thought wildly, seeing Jidak sweep aside two young men at a blow,
once a Cetan, always a Cetan. Even with one arm and no weapons,
he fights as a Cetan should.

She saw two other opponents pull away when
Imra bared her reptile’s teeth and hissed at them. Behind Imra,
Tula was struggling with a muscular young woman. Somehow, Dulan had
reached Merin’s side. Someone reached out to pull off the
concealing blue hood.

All motion, all sound, ceased at the sight of
smooth, colorless skin stretched over the ruined bones of a
once-noble face. Dulan stood immobilized.

No,
Merin thought, her heart aching
for Dulan’s sake,
not like this, revealed so that rude, uncaring
folk can see.
Struggling against Hotan’s hold on her with
renewed purpose, she stretched her free hand forward. At the same
time Saray released her grip on Merin’s waist and stepped toward
Dulan. Together, Merin and Saray lifted Dulan’s hood back into
place.