No Other Love (9 page)

“Lost in a solar storm,” Herne murmured.
“Adrift on a sea of ions.”

“Your humor is misplaced,” she said. “Since
neither of us is an experienced pilot, a forced departure from
Dulan’s Planet is not a pleasant prospect.”

“I have piloted this ship before, several
times,” he replied, grinning. “So, if Tarik decides he wants us to
leave orbit, you will just have to trust me, won’t you? I promise
to trust you, whether you have ever acted as pilot on a large ship,
or not.”

Refusing to respond to what she regarded as a
deliberate provocation on his part, which was designed to lure her
into revealing something more about herself, Merin did not answer.
She flipped a couple of switches, reset a dial, than stood and made
ready to leave the bridge.

“It’s your watch, Herne.” With that, she
officially turned the ship over to him for the next eight
hours.

“See that you eat something,” he called after
her. “You have been starving yourself.”

Again, she did not answer. She knew he had
been monitoring her food consumption, but she did not care.

She moved easily through the ship,
comfortable in the confinement of its black and grey walls, secure
in the knowledge that so long as Herne was on the bridge she would
meet no other person. In the galley she poured a cup of hot qahf.
Herne had left a tray of pastries on the counter. He had a tendency
to eat sweets when something else would have been a better
nutritional choice, and he assumed that others would want sweets,
too. Merin thought it was an odd attitude for a physician. She
would have preferred a piece of fresh fruit. Reminding herself that
personal preferences were irrelevant, she picked up a piece of
pastry and took it with the qahf to her cabin. It was almost time
for sleep.

* * * * *

She was back in the grotto at Tathan,
watching the globe of white light grow larger and more brilliant,
until she could clearly see every inch of Herne’s naked body. He
was a glorious creature, beautiful to her eyes, totally, excitingly
male.

A wave of emotion swept through her, shaking
her to the foundations of her being. Everything in her - heart,
spirit, mind – yearned for him. Her body ached for his touch. Herne
took a step toward her and Merin felt the air stir against her bare
skin. She was without clothing. Even her coif was gone, so that her
hair tumbled freely down her back.

She waited for him, her heart pounding,
knowing that in another moment he would take her into his arms. His
skin would touch hers. Her breasts would be scratched by the rough
brown hair on his chest. His mouth would be on hers, his tongue
inside her. She would be held…touched…kissed…caressed.

“No! No!” She awoke, sitting up on the bunk
in her cabin aboard the
Kalina,
clutching a blanket to her
chin. She still wore her treksuit and her coif remained firmly
fastened to her head. On the shelf beside the bunk was half of the
pastry and the empty qahf cup, her recorder next to the food.

She had been dreaming. It had been a
terrible, a terrifying dream, but nothing more. Only a dream, and
it was over. All was well. Nothing had happened. Herne had never
seen her unclothed. No one had, not since the day when she had
first put on garments. She understood the need to stay completely
covered at all times, except for the very brief moments required
for hygienic purposes. She had never failed to obey that rule.
Until recently, she had always obeyed the rules.

It was her mind that had betrayed her into
that forbidden dream, her thoughts and the emotions she ought not
to have – could not possibly have – would not allow herself to
have. Not after so many years. She had passed all the tests. She
would have made a perfect Oressian had it been possible for her to
remain on Oressia. Even during her years at Capitol she had never
faltered for an instant. Not wanting to know about forbidden
subjects, she had deliberately kept herself apart from the
activities of humans while she lived in a city where access to any
vice was possible so long as one had enough money and free time.
Merin had never been tempted. Not once.

Only since coming to Dulan’s Planet had she
begun to weaken. She was not certain whether the fault lay with the
planet itself, or with the other colonists. Perhaps it had begun
when Osiyar’s mind had touched hers. Or with Herne’s kisses.
Herne’s kisses….

Merin lay down, pulling the blanket up to her
nose and tucking it tightly around herself, to make herself feel
safe. In the dream she had felt air on her skin because once a day
she removed all of her clothing to bathe. She had felt her hair
loose and falling down her back because, twice a day she took it
down and brushed it. But she had not felt the touch of Herne’s
naked flesh on hers because a dreamer could recall only the
sensations that had been experienced in waking life. The trouble
was, she should not have had the dream at all. That she had was a
sign of how dangerously far she had fallen from Oressian
discipline. Were she on Oressia, she would have been honor-bound to
turn herself over to the Elders, to be exterminated for the good of
society.

But here, outside Jurisdiction boundaries, on
a lost planet in the Empty Sector, there was nothing to stop her
from dreaming again – and again.

* * * * *

“There’s food ready for you.” Herne indicated
the tray next to the science panel. “I fixed it for myself, but I
couldn’t eat. No point in wasting it.”

“Thank you. Relieving you of duty.” Neatly
avoiding any opportunity to touch him Merin mounted the two steps
to the science officer’s seat. Herne did not leave the bridge
promptly, as she had hoped he would. Instead, he stood on the deck
directly behind her. She could almost feel him there. If she moved
her head backward just an inch, it would rest upon his chest. Then
he would surely put his arms around her. She could relax against
him.

Vile, disgusting thought! Never touch
again…never allow anyone to touch…. She stiffened her back, sitting
rigid before the panel of blinking lights. He had to leave the
bridge before she lost control of her emotions. He had to….

Herne leaned forward, his left shoulder
brushing against her coif, his right hand pushing a button.

“Pay attention to what you’re doing, Merin.
You might have missed that solar flare. You know we are supposed to
watch and record each one, no matter how small.

“The computer will do it,” she said
absently.

“Not if the flares interfere with the
computer’s power, which is a distinct possibility.” He spun her
chair around so quickly that she gasped in surprise. “What’s wrong
with you? I can see you aren’t concentrating. The records in ship’s
store indicate that you have scarcely eaten since we came aboard.
Does my presence offend you so much that you lose your
appetite?”

“I seldom eat much,” she said. “You didn’t
eat the latest meal yourself.” She glanced toward his untouched
tray.

“Look at me.” She had heard him use that
voice before, when he was performing surgery and meant his orders
to be instantly obeyed. She could not deny his command. Intense,
worried grey eyes bored into hers. He pulled from his pocket the
diagnostic rod he always carried and used it to scan her body
quickly, from head to toe. “You are a bit undernourished and
dehydrated, but otherwise healthy. See that you eat properly and
increase your fluid intake. That’s an order.”

“Please,” she whispered, “keep your eyes
lowered.”

“You said once that to an Oressian, a direct
glance constitutes a challenge,” he recalled, setting one hand on
each arm of her chair so she could not escape him. “A challenge to
what? Physical combat? Lovemaking?”

“No.” It took every ounce of willpower she
possessed to keep herself from giving way to total panic, and so
the truth slipped out before she could stop the words she ought not
to say. “Never lovemaking. Leave me alone, Herne.”

“Why do you find me so repulsive while I find
you incredibly attractive?” he wondered, half to himself. When she
did not answer, but sat wringing her hands in distress at how much
she had revealed to him in the last few days, he added, “Can’t we
at least be friends?”

“Friendship is forbidden.” That much she was
permitted to say to anyone who might approach her.

“No love, no friendship. Yours is a cold
world, Merin. An inhuman world. Yet you are human. I have just
proved it with this diagnostic rod.” He straightened, releasing her
from the prison of his closeness. He paused before leaving the
bridge. “Someday, even you will know how human you are. I hope that
day is soon, before you break from all the emotions you are
repressing.”

The overlapping hour between their watches
had become a torment to Merin. When she had first come aboard the
Kalina
with Herne, it had been the one time when she could
not ignore or avoid him, but at least it was only an hour. If it
was the end of her own watch, she could cut the time short by
leaving the bridge as soon as she had made her report to him. At
the end of his watch, when she came on duty, she pretended to be
absorbed in her work until he left the bridge to seek his cabin or
to wander around the ship, checking on the various systems that
kept it in orbit. Now, however, a disruption had occurred in one of
those systems, and Merin and Herne were going to have to work
together to repair it. Thus, one of the two most unpleasant and
difficult hours of her day would be extended to an indefinite
length.

In the engineering chamber, where the
controls for the
Kalina’s
propulsion system were housed,
Herne pulled the grate off a shaft in the lowest section of the
bulkhead and shone a handlight inside it. At his command Merin
squatted beside him, craning her neck to look where he
indicated.

“There,” he said, moving the handlight to
give her a better view. “Can you see the dial? And that loose
cable? The cable will have to be reconnected and the dial
reset.”

“This should not have happened.” After
looking into the shaft, Merin scrambled to her feet to call the
ship’s plans onto a nearby computer screen. “According to this
information, when the ship was refitted at Capital new cables were
installed and then double-checked to be sure they were properly
connected. I’m no engineer, but this diagram looks simple enough to
me.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Herne interrupted her
disparaging comments about whoever had originally made the cable
connection, “because you are the one who is going to have to fix
it. That shaft is too narrow for me to fit into it.”

“Herne, I’m a historian, not a mechanic,” she
protested, now regretting her hasty remarks.

“We are all supposed to be able to perform
every necessary chore on this ship or on the planet. You have
accomplished every other task Tarik has set for you. I’m sure you
can do this one, too. Are you afraid of small spaces?” The look he
gave her was kind but determined. “If you are, I’ll give you a
relaxant so you won’t feel frightened, but that cable has to be
repaired and you are the only one to do the job.”

“Small places are home to me,” she told him
with a murmur of silent laughter at how true that statement was. “I
will not need drugs to enable me to enter the shaft. I was only
concerned about the work itself. I have never reconnected a cable
before.”

“I’ll show you how to do it.” From the
computer Herne called up another screen to demonstrate the repair
process. “Think you can do that?”

“I’ll try my best.” Merin looked at the hole
through which she was expected to crawl. “Isn’t it bad planning to
build a shaft too small for the average man or woman to crawl
into?”

“No one has ever accused the Cetans of
careful advance planning,” Herne said. “Gaidar certainly wouldn’t
fit in there. At Capitol they have a narrow trolley, a flat gadget
on wheels that rolls right into tight spots and does the work
automatically. I’ve seen it in action. It only takes a few seconds
to make a repair like this.”

“We should have one on the
Kalina,”
Merin said.

“Complain to Tarik when we return to Home.”
Herne strapped a flexlight to her left wrist and set it for full
brightness, then handed her the tools she would need, explaining
the use of each. “There isn’t much room for you to move around in
there. You won’t be able to get your arms over your shoulders in
that space, so you will have to lie down on your back with your
arms over your head out here. Then I’ll push you inside. When
you’re done, I’ll pull you out again.”

Startled by this proposition, she looked
directly at him. He gazed back at her with a reassuring smile. She
thought he was trying to convey to her without putting it into
embarrassing words that he would not touch her in an improper way
or take advantage of her inability to defend herself while inside
the shaft. She sank to her knees, then stretched out on her back as
he ordered, holding the tools and putting her hands into the
opening of the shaft.

By bending her knees and pushing with her
heels she was able to help at the beginning, but the shaft was
deeper than she had anticipated. Before she reached the
disconnected cable, Herne’s hands, on her thighs, then on her
calves, and finally around her ankles, were all that moved her
forward. She knew, with a sickening jolt of her heart, that when
she dreamed again, she would feel his hands on her. Deliberately,
she used her will to blank out all physical sensation so she could
concentrate on her work.

It was not complicated, but the position was
awkward and she was unfamiliar with the techniques required.
Minutes ticked by as she tried to fasten the end of the cable to
the terminals, failed, and tried again. Herne’s worried voice came
to her like a tinny echo through the layers of metal. He seemed
think she must be suffering from claustrophobia. She called back
that she was perfectly fine. And she was. She felt safe and
comfortable in that narrow shaft. It felt like home. She was almost
sorry when the cable was fixed, the dial reset, and she could tell
Herne to pull her out.