Rediscovery (32 page)

The “greenhouse” was up on the roof; appropriate, she supposed, since he was

trying to grow native plants. The door to the roof stood open, and when he heard her footsteps below, he called down the stairs, “Is that you?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“Well, come on up! The plants I started before I left are doing just fine, I think you’ll like them.”

She climbed the narrow wooden staircase—more like a ladder than a stair—

carefully. When she poked her head up into the greenhouse itself, she was struck by a faint, sweet perfume. She climbed all the way up into the greenhouse and looked around curiously. Evans had enhanced the lighting and added warmth, so that it was as much like a day in summer as possible, and the plants had responded with riotous growth.

“Where are you?” she called softly.

“This way,” came Evans’ voice, giving her direction. “At the back. Wait until you see these flowers, Liz. You won’t believe they came from around here.”

She pushed her way past luxuriant branches, noting as she drew near the back of

the greenhouse that the faint scent grew stronger. Finally, she found Evans, bent over a growing-table with its own little clear plastic domed and hinged cover. Beneath it, she caught sight of what Evans was talking about— pots of beautifully delicate, five-petaled blue flowers.

“Oh, my,” she exclaimed, coming closer and joining him. “Ryan, they’re lovely!

What are they called?”

“Kadarin calls them ‘starflowers,’ I can’t remember the local name for them,”

Evans said, his eyes glittering as he patted the protective dome. “They require some pretty specific conditions to bloom, and I was hoping my timing was right, getting back when I did.”

“I don’t suppose they have a lovely scent to match, do they?” Elizabeth asked

wistfully, unable to take her eyes from them. A gold pollen coated the inside of each blue bell, making them seem to glow. “I can’t begin to tell you how much I miss scented flowers—roses, lilacs, hyacinth…”

Evans shrugged, but his mouth twitched a little. “Kadarin said so, but you know

me—I couldn’t smell my upper lip. Why don’t I crack the case, and let you find out for yourself?”

He broke the seals holding the dome in place, and Elizabeth leaned down to take a deep breath.

“Ysaye,” Jessica Duval interrupted, tapping her apologetically on the shoulder—

fortunately, while she and Lorill were both sipping their drinks. “I hate to interrupt you, but have you seen David?”

Ysaye turned away from Lorill Hastur, and blinked. Jessica’s question seemed a

little odd. “No, not since just after the naming and Lord Hastur’s arrival. I think he went off with Kadarin, but I don’t know where. Why?”

“I’m trying to find him, and I thought you might know where he went,” Jessica

replied. “Well, if you see him, tell him Elizabeth went off to Ryan’s greenhouse to look at some plants or something, all right? You know David; if he can’t find her, he’ll start worrying. I’m going back to the ship, so you’ll probably see him before I do.”

A thin line of cold ran down Ysaye’s back, and a warning shiver of premonition

crept over her. Plants? Why would Elizabeth want to look at
plants?
And why not go to look at them during the day?

There were more questions, questions she could not ask Jessica. Why would

Evans want to get Elizabeth alone? There would be no one in the Science complex; everyone was here, at the party. So far as Ysaye knew, even the lowliest of techs had made arrangements to keep today and tomorrow free, either by scheduling what needed to be done so as to leave those two days free, or by having her set up the computer to monitor experiments.

Ryan Evans could not possibly have contrived a more private arrangement if he’d

been the Captain. And Ysaye had a dreadful premonition of what Evans planned for that privacy.

Perhaps she was being paranoid; if so, she would apologize. But she would rather apologize than try to explain to David why his wife had been assaulted by his best friend.

“Thanks, Jessica, I’ll tell him,” she said absently, trying to think what, if anything, she could do immediately. If she could just get some time—Elizabeth hadn’t been gone that long. Evans surely could not have gained much headway yet, and if she could interrupt him, she might be able to get to the greenhouse before anything actually happened. How could she arrange for an interruption?

Then she remembered. Evans had specifically said he hadn’t given his report yet.

The Captain knew he was here, and had given tacit approval to wait until tomorrow—

but that
wasn’t
according to regulations, and the computer was not aware that Evans was officially back in Caer Donn. According to regs, he
had
to at least log in, and the computer was the one in charge of making sure he did just that. All she had to do was tell it he was within paging distance, and the computer would do the rest.

She activated her communicator—even here, at a party, no member of the Terran

crew was without one—and tapped into the computer. In a few moments she had logged his presence in Caer Donn, which would prompt the computer to page Evans and

continue paging him until he answered. There was no way to escape that insistent beeping, which would sound both in his lab and from his wrist-com.

That would hold him for a little while, at least—long enough for Ysaye to get to the greenhouse and find an excuse to get Elizabeth away.

Lady Ysaye,
Lorill Hastur said into her mind.
You are concerned for your friend,
and you seem to think she is threatened. Can I help in any way?

She didn’t think he had picked up on her suspicions, only her concern, but she

was touched and grateful for the offer. Well, the boy wasn’t so bad a sort after all!

Find David and tell him
—
tell him that Elizabeth needs him,
she said, telling him the minimum she could.
Then come to the Science building and Ryan Evans’ greenhouse

—
look, I’ll show you where it is.

She wasn’t sure why she added that; perhaps out of a sense of needing someone—

a male, however young, someone that Evans wasn’t going to be able to overpower—to back her up. Now she regretted all those lost opportunities to learn self-defense. Jessica Duval wouldn’t have to look for a man to back her up—nor would Aurora. She didn’t want to involve any of the other Terrans just at the moment, either. How would she explain her sudden dread of what Evans might do to Elizabeth? They would only laugh or argue; both wasting time. He was a Terran, one of their crewmates, and the best friend of Elizabeth’s husband. Why would he try to molest her? By the time she got one of them to cooperate, it might be too late. Evans wasn’t exactly popular, but no one had ever accused him of rape or the intention of rape. Lorill wasn’t arguing; he took her premonition at face value. He was the best she had.

This mind-to-mind communication had an advantage she had not dreamed of until

this moment; she was able to
show
Lorill exactly how to find the greenhouse. He nodded, and before he could do anything else, she had whirled and was running toward the door, ignoring the puzzled looks of those around her.

Elizabeth leaned down to breathe in the heady, intoxicating scent of the flowers—

just as Ryan’s pager went off.

He swore, and punched it to turn off the insistent beeping, but it wouldn’t stop.

“Damn computer overrides,” he muttered. “Stay right here, I’ll be back.”

He ran to the front of the greenhouse, then down the stairs to his office, leaving Elizabeth alone.

The scent of the flowers was heavy and resinous, like gardenias mingled with

pine, and just as momentarily overpowering. But a fraction of a second later, Elizabeth wondered how she could have thought the perfume to be so overwhelming— it wasn’t heavy at all, it was light and delicate. So light, in fact, that it buoyed her up and made her feel as if she were floating.

The wine had given her a trace of a headache; now that was gone, and she was

filled with an incredible sense of well-being. Was this why people liked to get drunk?

She sat down beside the tray of flowers and looked up at the glass roof of the

greenhouse, watching the light break into splinters and shards of crystal above her.

She felt, for the first time, the sense of
one-ness
with nature, with the world, even with the flowers beside her, that so many mystics had described. It was incredible. Why, she could even feel what the flowers were feeling, how they reached upward for light and downward for nourishment. How they yearned for summer breezes, the way she

yearned for David—

She wanted him then, as she had never wanted anything else, her body on fire

with need for him.

At just that moment, she heard footsteps; thinking it would be David, come to

answer her longing for him, she rose giddily to her feet and turned—

Only it wasn’t David, it was Ysaye.

She frowned with confusion. Why was it Ysaye? She wanted David! “Where is

he?” she asked, then giggled to see the words come floating out of her mouth and hang in the air, like the words of the Caterpillar in a picture of one of the Alice books.

“Where’s David?”

“He’s coming, Elizabeth,” Ysaye replied instantly, and Elizabeth frowned again to see her thoughts. Why would Ysaye think that Ryan meant any harm to her? How silly

—Ryan had simply brought her to see these lovely flowers…

Ysaye set her jaw at the sight of her friend’s face; there was no doubt whatsoever that Elizabeth was in a state of extreme intoxication, and probably hallucinating as well, given the way her eyes kept flicking from side to side, as if she saw something. Not surprising, given Ryan Evans’ little hobby. So it wouldn’t—technically—have been rape.

Elizabeth probably wouldn’t have known what was happening. Only God and Elizabeth knew how he’d gotten the drugs into her, though. Something at the party, perhaps?

Well, it didn’t matter; what
did
matter was getting her out of here before Evans came back.

“Come on, Elizabeth,” she coaxed. “David’s waiting for you.” Elizabeth was

wavering on her feet, and Ysaye moved closer, getting an arm around her shoulders to support her, and inadvertently moving farther into the cloud of scent and pollen rising above a tray of blue flowers. The golden pollen settled on her clothing and seemed to stick to her. She sneezed a couple of times, then clenched her jaw and tried to breathe as little as possible. Damn Evans and his stupid plants! On top of everything else, she was going to need an allergen booster when all this was over! As soon as she got back to her quarters, she’d better stick this uniform in the cleaning chute, or better yet, the disposal.

She’d see that Aurora took the allergen booster out of Evans’ pay. That would

serve him right.

She guided her friend’s uncertain steps out of the greenhouse, down the stairs and actually out into the hall before the sound of running feet—coming from the corridor, and not from the lab and office—made her look up.

It was Lorill Hastur, and David with him. She had never been so overjoyed to see two humans in her life.

I
told him Elizabeth was ill,
Lorill said in her mind, and she gave him a wordless burst of thanks for thinking of something so quickly.

“David, Elizabeth is reacting to something in the refreshments, I think,” Ysaye

called as they ran up. “She’s acting kind of irrationally, and you’d better take her home.”

“If anyone would know an allergic reaction, you would,” David replied gratefully.

“Bless you, Ysaye! Anyone else would have thought she was—”

“Intoxicated or worse, and ignored it,” Lorill said gracefully. “It may have been some of the delicacies at the feast; Aldaran should have anticipated that you star folk might become ill with such unfamiliar spices and the like. A night in the safety of her bed should cure her.”

David just nodded his thanks; for at that moment, Elizabeth’s knees gave, and she nearly fell, dragging Ysaye to the ground with her. David caught them both, and picked Elizabeth up like a small child.

“I think that’s just where I’d better put her,” he said with an anxious glance at his wife’s face, as Elizabeth giggled dreamily. “Looks like all those years of weight-lifting finally paid off.”

Ysaye was beginning to feel dizzy herself, but she kept herself in tight control until David was out of sight. But Lorill was not as callow as he appeared; nor as insensitive as she had thought. Before she swayed and lost her balance, he was at her elbow.

Ysaye, I think you are ill, yourself. Can I help?

I
—
I
hate to ask
—

Lorill smiled.
Let it be thanks for patience with my sister’s questions. Can I help
you to your quarters?

The ship—the ship was so far away—she didn’t think she’d be able to make it

there, even with Lorill’s help. This was no ordinary allergic reaction; everything had rainbows around it, and she felt as if she had drunk an entire bottle of wine by herself.

But wait—she had a room in the Singles quarters that she hardly ever used, except when she was working double-shifts on something here in the Science building.

I
will take you there,
Lorill said, following her thoughts with an ease she envied.

And a moment later, he had picked her up as easily as David had picked up Elizabeth.

She closed her eyes as the corridor swung about her; the snow on her face as they passed between the buildings revived her a bit, but as soon as they were back in the warmth of the living quarters, she felt euphoria overcoming her again.

It must have been something in the food, or the wine
—
something he slipped to
both of us. Could he have slipped it to more of the women? To all of us?

But it hardly seemed to matter, for she had rarely felt such an enormous sense of well-being. As Lorill opened the door of her room, and closed it behind him, the lights came on automatically. He looked startled for a moment, and she giggled.