The Dark Places (11 page)

Muzzy realization surfaced that I’d
never seen him look this entirely dumbfounded. In my brief time with him, I’d
learned it took much to shake Matt’s calm assurance, so I became anxious too. “What
is
it?” I whispered.

“Not now, doll,” he whispered back,
but he caressed my cheek and laid a quick, warm kiss upon my lips. He turned to
the light being, its appearance transmutated into a golden, pulsating glow. “Timirshil-ka
is going to reclaim the energy portions donated to me fourteen years ago,” Matt
said tonelessly. “That’s the only way to prevent my life force from being
consumed and dispersed by the unraveling essence.”

“What will happen to you then?” Sharp
alarm spiked through my heart.

“I’ll find this out eventually,” he
said, frowning again in concentration. “Timirshil-ka feels that my body’s own
forces will rally and regulate itself, but not at first. She said I won’t be
well for a while. The essence she gave me cannot be renewed because she’s
leaving soon. Her studies are near completion. She arrived here shortly before
my ship crashed and has been here since that time.

“She’s concerned that if she
donated additional life essence, I would weaken again when it also dissipated. Instead,
she thinks that disconnecting and activating certain sections of my genome will
increase my own energy production after she retrieves her essence. She’s saying
that I’m physically strong enough now to fight the battle for my life that I
couldn’t when she first found me years ago.”

My disbelieving stare stayed on
Matt.
She?
Timirshil-ka is a lady?
Studies?
What had she been studying on this godforsaken, dying planet and star system? I
couldn’t fully comprehend what Matt had said about fighting for his life again
after so many years. It frightened me.
Have
I brought him here only to hasten his demise
?

“This is her interdimensional
travel craft,” Matt said casting a careful gaze around us. His expression
reflected awed respect. “We couldn’t enter her craft when it first manifested
in its blue vibration aspect. She wasn’t physically present here in that time
phase because she was collecting data from a distance on this system’s sun. The
second clear manifestation of her craft was when we could enter, for she had
shifted back into this time reality phase after she sensed my presence.”

I stared in awed respect also at
the patiently hovering, shimmering creature. Its appearance now resembled a
transparent column formed from golden glass. “Where did she come from
originally?” I wondered aloud.

“She understood your question, Kai.
Her answer is that it would be impossible to describe her home’s location in
any terms we could understand, except for her to say she comes from the other
side of our dreams….”

The being’s golden color shifted to
a soft white shimmer, and Matt stepped away.

“She’s preparing to recall the
essence portion that she gave me, Kai. Please be patient with me if I’m not the
same. I—I’ve relied so long upon the other essence within my body to keep me
going that it’s difficult to remember how my body felt when it… when just my
own energy filled it.”

A faint white glow emanated from Matt’s
body and threaded itself toward the hovering light being. Matt drew a sharp
breath and his face twisted in pain, but I didn’t touch him, although every
muscle in my body longed to do so.

After a moment, it was over. He
crumpled onto the craft’s glowing floor with his eyes clenched shut. I dived to
my knees and tried to support him as his features contorted and his body
writhed in silent agony.

“Oh, Matt,” I whispered, helpless
as to what I should do except hold him. I glanced up in desperation at the being
called Timirshil-ka.

No words came to me that would
convey my despair and fear for my mate, but she must have detected my turmoil,
for gentle reassurance swept over my chaotic thoughts and into my heart. The
sensation—like huge, invisible, soft arms enfolding me—comforted and held me
cushioned within until I relaxed and released some of my fears.

The warm assurance gradually
withdrew from my awareness. By then my worries had calmed. Timirshil-ka had
just communicated in the most direct way she could that Matt would recover. Her
color transmuted into swirling green, the same green mists that occluded Matt’s
eyes at odd times. He stirred in my encircling arms, and my attention darted to
him. His eyes were open, alert and trained on me. The green glimmer points were
absent. There remained only golden flecks gleaming within his pupils.

He moved to his feet with laborious
care, and I hovered nearby poised to catch him in case he folded to the ground
again. He stood unsteadily, as if his legs didn’t want to support him. I
reached with both hands to grasp his arm. He accepted my support with a smile.

“It’s over, Kailiri,” he said
quietly. “All has come full circle.”

I gave him an uncomprehending look,
then
glanced at Timirshil-ka, who continued displaying
her glowing green aspect.

“I’ve returned that which she gave
me long ago, and I am leaving this planet of death with a new life before me.”
Matt’s intent gaze stayed full upon me. “I will live now to my natural end, and
I’ll leave with a wife and a child.”

My stare must have remained blank,
because he gave me a wider smile and pulled me into a hard embrace that forced
breath from my lungs. “You’re carrying our child, doll… Timirshil-ka detected
this when she scanned you.”

No!
Not possible.
My
Fertipressor
implants were
new—replaced on exact schedule the week before I met Matt. I’d taken advantage
of the Alliance-sponsored program on Harnaru, just in case. Either the implant
had failed… or…

“Your friend read
wrong
,” I growled and gave both him and
the hovering entity a scathing frown.

Matt laughed. His strange
companion’s appearance pulsed with silvery-green light.

“Timirshil-ka admires your spirit,
but your skepticism will not erase the new life growing inside you. Your blood
scan revealed traces of another separate genome. Our son has been thriving
within you for five weeks and has no desire to leave.”

Do
I dare challenge something that can somehow merge energy into a Human body to
save a person’s life and that can scan bodies and minds?
It seemed safer
and wiser to say nothing. Then the possibility that the creature
might
be right floored me. My knees
weakened and I clung to Matt.

He smoothed away my hair and
touched his lips to my temple with infinite tenderness. “Take good car of our
son, my lady,” he whispered.

My throat wouldn’t work and words
wouldn’t come. I’d been overwhelmed by more revelations than I could handle for
one day, but a hesitant joy had sprung up within me.
We will soon be a family: my elusive, passionate mate, me, and our
child—our son….

Swiftly upon my exaltation, I
remembered the snow-covered grave. Gone now was the envy and resentment that
had pursued me since Rikin. Sadness echoed in my thoughts for Matt’s first love
and wife. Then I thought of Timirshil-ka and felt overwhelming gratitude to the
entity. If not for its compassion, Matt would have died fourteen years ago. And
I would have never known him.

Wildly shifting lights drew my
attention toward Timirshil-ka. The entity was broadcasting several colors at
once before she shifted to a steady, soft violet glow.

“She has read your gratitude, doll.
She’s well pleased that she correctly interpreted my desire to live, and that
she helped me so that I could find my heart’s contentment again before my
natural end.”

My thoughtful gaze stayed fixed upon
the hovering being. “Would you ask her if there’s something we could do for her
before we leave?”

“We already have. By returning the
life essence portion she gave me, we have enabled her to gain enough energy for
the return journey to her home. After she gave that small bit of her essence to
me, it weakened her and she became trapped here. She can’t gather as much
energy in our reality as she could in her own because of the dying star. If
this system had possessed a yellow or white star, there would not have been a
problem. The tiny life essence portion she gave me would have simply dissipated
my own energies in the end and deteriorated eventually from our reality. But
now within Timirshil-ka’s matrix, it will replenish and then renew her energy.

“She, in turn, experiences
gratitude, for she required this tiny energy increment to escape the negative
effects of this system’s collapsing star. She bids us farewell and a fulfilled
life span now, for she will not meet us again.”

His words unleashed an avalanche of
questions in my thoughts. There were so many things I wanted to ask! Not
scientific inquiries, but questions only artists and writers would have—like
why she was there, and how did she perceive Humans and our reality? And what
difference had she felt in that small essence portion she’d reclaimed after its
fourteen years of infusion within a Human’s body?

Matt gave me a searching stare.
“Timirshil-ka has transmitted something like laughter—she’s still laughing—and
she wishes me to tell you that in answer to all your wonderings, it was but a
single moment crystallized by a long pulsing wave of warm regard for two beings
not of her species.” He smiled.

“She
likes
us?” I glanced in surprise at Timirshil-ka’s now golden form.

“She likes us,” Matt softly confirmed.

Suddenly, that was more important
than any philosophic question-and-answer session that we
should
have been trying to conduct with this rare being from not
only another system, but another dimension and reality.

“Would you tell her that we like
her, too?” I whispered.

“She knows.” His eyes sparkled with
amusement, and he turned as Timirshil-ka’s form pulsed with intense, deeper
gold lights. He was silent a long minute. “She’s urging us to return to our
ship, for the climate is unstable and experiencing radical changes. Her studies
found that this system’s star has undergone unpredictable, rapid internal
contractions that are increasing its gravitation attraction on this planet.
This planet is being pulled from orbit, and its normal rotation is undergoing
disruption. Soon this side will become locked into perpetual darkness and
freeze over.” His expression matched his somber tone.

“When will Timirshil-ka leave?” I
asked a final question, concerned for the alter-reality being. After all, she
had placed herself at risk to save Matt.

“Not long after we lift from here….”
He gave the entity a long, pensive stare before turning away. “Let’s go, Kai.”

Matt took my insulated hood from my
hand and busied himself with maneuvering it over my curls and securing it back
onto my head, then restored his hood. He activated our suits’ heat and caught
the supply bag’s strap. Glancing at the light entity a final time, he took my
hand and led me toward the reflective translucent panels we’d bypassed earlier.

We’re
leaving this
instant
? But this was
momentous. An alien entity! Shouldn’t there have been more ceremony in our
leave-taking?
I looked over my shoulder at Timirshil-ka and kept my stare
focused upon the glowing golden column until I lost sight beyond the reflecting
partitions. I expelled a long sigh filled with sad regret.
We’ll never see her again….

Chapter Twelve

A crystal section shimmered and
vanished before Matt. He stepped through the portal first onto the frigid, ice-covered
surface of the dying planet. We hurriedly readjusted our hoods to reduce more
skin exposure, for a fierce wind howled like a lost soul across the empty
wilderness. Snow and ice pellets fell in sheets upon the previous accumulations,
as if the planet was hell bent on a single-minded rush toward the glaciations that
both Matt and the entity had mentioned.
How
long were we inside for all of this to happen
?

We struggled against the wind-driven
elements away from Timirshil-ka’s crystal travel craft. Matt and I turned once with
our hands held up as shields against the pelting ice to stare upon the
translucent construction, where glittering lights pulsed along it. No actual
snow had accumulated over it. The craft appeared to repel the elements’
attempts at cloaking it.

Time merged into a long blur as if
we transited a long vortex leap while we struggled against the elements and
exhaustion. The constant energy needed to force my way through the accumulated
snow’s never-ending semisolid obstacle course eroded my stamina. Despite this,
wonder clamored over the weariness as my thoughts dwelled upon the sights and
revelations we’d experienced. Worry also consumed me, wondering if Matt would
be strong enough to last until we got back to the ship.

The snow and ice accumulation made
visual tracking for our previous footpath impossible. We fought our way back
within several hundred yards, according to Matt’s murmured estimates, to where
we’d left the
Stardancer
, but the
blizzard hid any distinguishing features. I couldn’t spot either the ship or
the
Fire Dawn’s
wreck in the
distance. I don’t know how he was able to track our position. He hadn’t yet
consulted the ship transmitter.

Much trepidation roiled within me.
No landmarks existed in that desolation to show how far we’d traveled, nor
where we were, or even if we’d traveled in the right direction. It seemed so
much like my old birth world,
Dearleth, that
my
exhaustion made reality blur. A new fear haunted me that I’d never left
Dearleth and I’d
hallucinated
everything—eight months
on Harnaru; the Lilith; my tumultuous, emotional month with Matt; the wondrous
Timirshil-ka…. Was it possible my family had triumphed and betrayed me before I
fled? Had they exiled me from our comfortable, sheltered, underground colony and
then sentenced me to a harsh life in the hostile Dearleth
mountains
with that isolated, cruel-featured prospector? Was
that
why I was struggling through a frozen wilderness with him even
then?

No.
Wake up, Kailiri—it’s Matt walking next to you, and nobody else!

I was grateful when Matt’s hand
tightened painfully upon mine, as if he’d known about my inward fight. It drew
me out of my own dark place.

He pulled me to a pause and
extracted a ship transmitter from his pocket. The
Stardancer’s
navilog comp promptly broadcasted a tracking pulse
that would guide us in.

Relief buoyed my spirits as I
glimpsed the tiny lighted display’s blinking arrow. We
were
headed in the correct direction, but more distance remained
ahead. Without the transmitter—and Matt’s zealous determination to prepare for
anything—we might have wandered in circles until we succumbed to exhaustion and
the elements.

Even so, the storm and brutal wind
chills drained my strength. We dared not halt for rest breaks in that tempest,
as there was nowhere to shelter from the storm. Somewhere along the way, old
memories about brutal Dearleth winters and the colder-hearted mining company
officials and colonists returned to hound me.

Matt extracted the trail flask
filled with the hot energy drink. He made me pause and hauled me close. His
shoulders sheltered me from the winds while he urged me to sip deep from the
still-warm contents before he drank. I smiled at our role reversal.

Despite this, I knew Matt wasn’t as
strong as he’d been when we first set out, even in his earlier deteriorating
condition. He proved, however, to have more determination and stamina than me
in getting us back to the ship. Much of the return trip to the
Stardancer
was a blur to my storm-lashed
senses and body. I hazily recalled him increasing the thermostat on my suit for
me several times. Nevertheless, the frigid wind chills greedily leached away my
body’s heat during our travails across the ice- and wind-razed plain.

Then at last, icy blasts no longer
pelted me, my feet no longer needed to push through frozen resistance, and my
breathing didn’t form plumes upon the air. I blinked snow from my eyelashes and
stared around with dazed surprise. A big sigh flowed from my numb lips. We
stood inside the ship’s airlock compartment. The inner cabin door slid open,
and welcome warmth caressed my face.

Matt didn’t pause after we stepped
inside the
Stardancer
. He cast aside
the snow-covered supply bag and led me straight past the control center and the
living area to our sleeping quarters. The ship’s balmy internal temperatures
quickly melted the accumulated snow on my suit’s hood. Water leaked into my
bleary eyes and streamed along my face.
How
much melted snow and ice are we leaving behind on the deck?

The now familiar confines of our
sleeping quarters looked odd
. Shouldn’t
there be shimmering, crystalline sheets suspended before us and underfoot
instead of solid, conventional gray metal ship hull and carpeted deck?
My
mind seemed stuck between dimensions: this one, and Timirshil-ka’s.

Matt removed his gloves before he
stripped away my water-beaded gloves, boots, and hood, and then unsealed my
insulated suit. New gaunt lines sharply defined his jawline and cheeks. He
looked beyond exhausted.

Guilt assailed me:
I
should be the one taking care of him.
He
was the fragile one after losing the
foreign energy essence that had sustained him.
If only I
could summon up
more strength
. My arms felt numb and heavy as boulders.

He finished extracting me from the
environment suit, and I stood clad in my bright pink underwear and socks.

Matt snatched up the extra blanket
that lay draped over our sleep couch’s end. He enfolded me inside its warm blue
softness. He lifted my hair free from entrapment under the fleecy fabric’s
folds. Then his gentle hands cupped my face between them while his intent stare
focused upon me. “Thank you, Kai. Thank you for believing when I couldn’t hope.
You’ve given me another chance at life.”

He slipped an arm around me and the
blanket while the other swept beneath my knees, and he lifted me. He cradled me
several long moments and then laid me down on the sleep couch before he sat on
the edge. His lips touched mine in a long, gentle kiss, and my eyes drifted
closed.

We were safe and secure again.

When he pulled away, I opened my
eyes. My dazed attention revived enough to notice he still wore his protective
suit and watched me with a somber expression.

“I must go out again before we
lift, Kailiri,” he said quietly. “Do not be concerned. I won’t be far and I’ll
have the ship transmitter with me to find my way back. Try to rest while I’m
gone.” His unusual eyes dimmed and seemed touched with pain and sadness.
Intuition told me he was going to bid farewell to A’lia and their son, who’d
never borne his father’s name nor lived to look into his eyes.

My attention wavered as
unconnected, muzzy wonder swam up in my weary mind over the possible color of
our child’s eyes and if he would inherit his father’s eyes.
So tired….

Matt rose and left without another
word. The cabin door closed, but my ears tracked muted sounds from his heavy boots
as he crossed the living area, paused at the control deck, and then stepped
into the airlock. The soft hiss and click from the airlock’s double door
locking mechanism faded, and I was alone in the ship’s deep silence. Her
engines were shut down. Not even the howling tempest’s fury that reigned
outside invaded the
Stardancer’s
thick, insulated hull to break the unnatural, hollow stillness without Matt’s
presence.

I swallowed around the lump in my
throat, remembering his abrupt departure.
No
final caress. No last reassuring kiss….
Where did he gain the energy to
venture outside again? His strength and energy was low. I’d seen it in his face
and sensed it in his slow movements.

Self-pitying thoughts crept in as I
recalled the pain buried in his eyes when he’d announced he was going out
again. Then I chased the poisonous thoughts away.
Of course he needs to visit his first family’s graves.
There were
no guarantees that turbulent planet would exist to infinity.

It proved difficult to swallow
envy’s bitter dregs from my tongue. He must have been very devoted to her to
brave those furious elements again. I imagined Matt out there in the wild,
slashing snow, ice, and wind as he struggled past the doomed
Fire
Dawn’s
wreckage to A’lia’s grave. A tear ran along my cheek. Others followed as I
silently cried for him and her.

After a while, my thoughts turned
to Timirshil-ka and what Matt and I had experienced in her presence. My hand
crept beneath my undershirt to caress my lower abdomen and protectively cover
it. I’d always thought that anyone seeking the Divine Intelligence need only
spend a few years upon harsh Dearleth to find
It
. I
prayed then to that Great Intelligence and Creator of the Universe that our son
lay safe and unharmed within my womb, unaffected by my exertions in the storm.
And I prayed also that the Unknowable Spirit watched over Matt and would bring
him safely back to us.