Tanderon (45 page)

“How did you get here so fast?” I asked, suddenly curious as I lifted my head to look at him.

“I commandeered a private ship at the orbital station,” he said with a grin before pushing my head back down on his chest. “Between my I.D. as an agent and the landing field here at the hospital, I made it almost as fast as you did.”

I thought that would be the end of it, but I’d forgotten about Ralph – who wasn’t a man to let himself be forgotten about forever.

“If all these little problems are taken care of now, there’s still a hospital bed and treatments waiting for Diana,” he put in. “As far as I’m concerned, they’ve been waiting much too long already.”

“Treatments for what?” Val asked, and I could hear his frown.

“She and Teddy had a bad time in Flowerville,” Ralph responded with his own oral frown. “Didn’t you know?”

Val’s hands were suddenly back on my arms, and I found myself being held at arm’s length and stared at in a very untender way.

“Am I mistaken, or were you on your way out of here when I first came in?” he asked in what was little short of a growl.

“I – ah – well, it was just – you see – ” I groped around trying to sound lucid, but none of the sentences wanted to come out whole. I would have stood there floundering for an hour, but Val wasn’t about to wait.

“There won’t be any more of that same nonsense,” he stated, his voice hard again.

“You get to where you’re supposed to be.”

“But, Val, I don’t want to – ” I began, but the protest ended abruptly when I tried to meet his eyes. I hadn’t agreed to anything more than that I understood what he’d said, but right now it was beyond me to point that out. And since I understood nothing at all about the rest of how I felt, I ended up saying meekly, “Yes, Val.”

“That’s better,” he told me with a nod, pushing me gently toward Ralph. “You go with him now, and I’ll come by later to make sure you’re behaving yourself.”

I moved a few steps toward Ralph, then turned to look at Val and spoke to him in the trade language of his people.

“Why don’t you use the waiting time to think about this a little more carefully,” I suggested, hating to say the words but knowing they were necessary. “I have the feeling you still don’t know what you’re getting into, so a bit of calm, unhurried thought will – ”

“Do nothing to change my mind,” he interrupted very flatly. “I’m not doing this on a whim, Diana, but I don’t expect you to take my word for that. I’ll have to work at getting you to believe me, which I intend to do as soon as you’re out of this place.

Until then you’ll just have to give me the benefit of the doubt.”

I found myself forced into nodding to that, then went ahead and followed Ralph down the hall. But I also looked back a few times, to see that Val had this … open expression on his face. I believed that he hadn’t been lying about how he felt, but I still didn’t know how I felt.

Considering the way he’d handled himself on the job today, I doubted if it would take me more than two weeks to give him the balance of that procedures course.

After that I would twist Ringer’s arm until he gave Val and me a short vacation, one during which he and I should be able to clear the air. I needed that vacation even if Val didn’t, and I wanted to go home for a few days.

I tried to remember if I’d ever told Val that my home planet practiced nudism, and finally decided that I hadn’t. Oh, well, no sense in burdening him with too much information since he’d find out soon enough once we got there. I wondered if he had body modesty, but couldn’t really tell. Just because he wasn’t modest with me didn’t mean he could peel in public with the same equanimity. It wouldn’t be too long before I found out, but meanwhile thinking about it certainly was … interesting!