Whispers on the Wind (12 page)

Though it was physically possible for women to bear children up into their sixties and seventies, and some did, she didn’t believe it was necessarily good. Not for the woman. Not for the child, despite a female life expectancy of one hundred fifty years.

“So why didn’t you work harder on the others? Bring them, instead of me?” Why did you prey on my most potent desires if, in the end, you’re only going to tell me to suppress them?

“Before I had strength,” Jon said, “there was only you for me to touch, to borrow from. Except,” he added, “for one brief moment, Zenna.” His voice cracked on the name and his face twisted with pain. “I touched her. I know I did. Then she was...gone.”

The heartbreak in his tone echoed deep inside Lenore, an ache she could not negate. “Zenna?”

“My birth-mate. My...sister. I touched her.”

“Touched her? How?”

“As I touched you.”

Lenore felt her eyes widen. That was no way for a man to touch his sister! She heard her voice coming from a long way away. The dying fire swayed and danced and beyond it, Jon’s eyes locked with hers. “That’s sick,” she said.

His expression of amusement told her at once he’d understood. “With my mind, with the memories shared by our
Kahinyas
,” he said. “I called to her, not as I called to you, but as I have always signaled her, since we were children. Aazoni families are very close. Almost all are born with a birth-mate.”

“What’s that?” He’d said sister, but ‘mate’ could have several meanings.

“Two infants from the same mother at the same time.”

“Oh!” Her surge of relief came as an unwelcome surprise. “Twins.”

“Yes. A birth-mate is what you would call a twin. But always one of each...gender. I know her signature as well as she knows mine. I recognized it, as fleeting as it was, and then it was damped so swiftly I could not find it again, to home in on. I could find only you.”

She tried to speak, for a moment, could not, then managed, “What a terrible disappointment for you.”

He didn’t deny it, but nodded. “I must find Zenna. I am very sorry I was forced to do that to you, sorry I had to...to take from you. That I...imposed and...entered your mind, disturbing you in the process. I did not know you would find it such a terrible...iniquity. I had no choice, if I were to live and save the others. I did not at first know you would even sense or understand what was happening. But for me, there was great need. My
Kahinya
needed you, the strength of your healthy body, to heal me.”

Again, he touched his wounded head. She stared, staggered closer, looked again, and saw that the skin had knit back together neatly, that the ragged edges showed scarcely a seam. Even as she watched, the hair on his head seemed to shake itself and then lay tidily over where the gash had laid open his scalp.

“Your head...”

“It was a small thing.” He smiled. “Like your hands.”

She started, turned her palms up and gazed upon their unblistered skin.

“They are well?”

She met his steady gaze. Again, she nodded, jerkily, then stared at his injured leg. The purple was gone, the taut, shiny skin had taken on the same bronze shade as the rest of him. As she watched, he reached down with both hands, clasped his foot and turned it straight. There was a faint clicking sound, and he smiled. “The leg,” he said, “was a little more difficult. It will be several hours before I wish to risk my full weight on it. Is there more food?”

She backed away from him, eyes burning as she stared. Great shuddering sobs shook her, but no tears flowed. She wrapped her arms around herself, closed her eyes and prayed for sanity, for strength to withstand the terrible self doubts and mental turmoil that tore at her.

“This isn’t happening,” she babbled. “You are not real. You are not here. You can’t read my mind. You haven’t done what I think I just saw you do. You didn’t turn into smoke and slide into the cave through a crack in the rock. You aren’t—”

“
Toor-a-loor-a-loor-a, toor-a-loor-a-lie
...”

Lenore broke off as the melodious tenor voice flooded the cave with the same kind of melting warmth as did the golden glow. Her mouth snapped shut, then fell open again. Her eyes felt as if they might bug out of her head. “What...what are you doing?” she croaked.

Jon, sitting upright and naked, legs crossed, arms folded, smiled benignly at her. “I am...comforting you,” he said. “You are afraid. I do not wish that for you.”

He sang again as if she had not interrupted him. “Toor-a-loor-loor-a, hush, now don’t you cry...”

Oh, yes. Absolutely. There was no longer any doubt. She was stark, staring crazy...and sharing a cave with a man who thought he was an alien from another time and space. What was even scarier was that she believed he was, too, however much she might tell herself she didn’t. And he was an alien who thought she could be comforted by the ancient words of An Irish Lullaby?

Lenore dropped weakly onto the ledge, stared at him as he sang, then threw back her head and laughed.

As abruptly as Lenore had plopped onto the rock, Jon stopped singing. “My song amuses you. That is good.” He smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling charmingly. Lenore’s laughter faded to a chortle that sounded to her suspiciously like a sob. She drew in a deep breath, trying to steady herself.

“No,” she said. “Your song does not ‘amuse’ me. Frankly, it scares me even more than I was already scared.”

“I am truly sorry. It has never been my intention to frighten you. I hoped to soothe with the song. It is what your mother sang to you when you were an infant.”

Lenore shot to her feet. “No!” She turned her back on him, wrapping her arms around herself. “Maybe your mother sang An Irish Lullaby to you, but believe me, no one ever sang it for me.”

“Yes,” he said, sounding so certain that she turned back to face him. It had become hot, too hot, in the cave. She unzipped her jacket. “Your mother sang it to you. It was in your memories. You will sing it to your children one day.”

“You can’t possibly know that. My mother left me before I was a year old. She joined a commune. My father told me they all committed suicide—killed themselves—several years later, hoping to move to a different...plane of existence, I believe. And now I suppose you’re going to tell me she succeeded in that aim?”

“I have no way of knowing. There was nothing of that in your memories of her.”

“I have no memories of her! I don’t even have pictures of her. My father destroyed them all after she left us.”

“You do, Lenore. Memory-pictures. They are there. Before you told me I must not, I saw those memories. Your mother looked much as you do now, but for her longer hair. She had beautiful hair. If yours were longer, it, too, would be as beautiful, too. You see yourself with hair like that. In your dreams.”

The memory of a long, silky tress of her hair flowing over her breasts flooded into Lenore’s mind and to her disgust, she knew that this time, she actually was blushing. Dammit, she should be far beyond such juvenile embarrassment.

The biggest problem was that she more than half-believed him about her mother, which didn’t say a whole lot about the kind of grip she had on reality. Because, when Jon spoke of a woman much like her, but with longer hair, she came close to envisioning her mother, close to regaining a memory she couldn’t possibly have. It was...tactile. Her small fists reaching up to fill themselves with handfuls of that hair, smelling its perfume, feeling its softness and...She clenched her teeth until she thought she had control of her voice, then proceeded with her questioning of this weird man, hoping for a brisk kindness that nevertheless told him she meant to be firm, meant to get to the bottom of his ridiculous story and worm the truth out of him one way or another.

“Who are you, really?” she demanded—meant to demand, but her voice came out in a pleading whisper. She cleared her throat. “What are you? Where are you from? And don’t give me that Estonia/Aazonia crap, either, Mac. We both know it’s simply not possible.”

He was suddenly clothed in a dark, outdoor-weight jumpsuit similar to hers, and a red ski jacket, laced up hiking boots, and leather gloves. He hadn’t moved. He did move, though, to take a black knitted cap from the pocket of his jacket and tug it onto his head, almost obscuring his hair but for a few bits curling around his ears and across his forehead.

“Shall we go?” he asked blandly while she blinked—and blinked again. “Let me help you load your pack.”

Before her eyes, the sleeping bag case stood itself upright, the bag crumpled itself and slid into it the way a baby kangaroo dove into its mother’s pouch, just the way she’d seen on Edu-Holos. She took two stumbling steps back as her pots stacked themselves, their handles unclipping in mid-air and clattering into the pocket of her pack where she habitually carried them. It was like watching an old rerun of
Bewitched
on the Classics channel.

Then, her pack, plump and readied, its straps adjusted to fit his stature, was on Jon’s back, the lightcell snapped neatly into its customary position to recharge from the sky. “Shall we go?” he asked again, just as politely.

Lenore found her voice somewhere. She wasn’t certain where. “I thought you didn’t want to put your full weight on that leg for a while.”

“I won’t be doing so,” he said, and outside the cleft-entrance, Lenore heard Mystery whuff and give a plaintive whinny.

She gasped and whirled, distinctly recalling having shut Mystery into his stall for the night to protect him against cougars and other large predators. There was no way he could get out on his own. “You brought my horse here?”

“My strength is not yet fully replenished, and your talents are not yet developed to the point that we could translate together the distance to your home. And I would also like to see some of your world—the way you see it.”

Lenore edged toward the slit leading to the outside, never taking her eyes off Jon. “You won’t fit through the gap,” she said in faint tones. “Not with that pack on your back. Even I have to come in sideways.”

“Of course,” he said and took her hand. Without having traversed the narrow opening, she—and he, complete with her equipment—were outside and suddenly, inside her mind there grew a picture of a black-eyed, snarling man who emanated hatred and evil and intent to kill.

With a scream, she turned to Jon, saw his face tight with pain, pale with instant anguish. She watched his corporeal form waver as if he were about to disappear again. As she reached out to him, he groaned, “Rankin!” and fell to the ground.

Then, abruptly, the evil was gone and Lenore was tumbling, falling, being churned in a horrifyingly icy deluge of snow that came from a vast height, an avalanche of immense proportions that left her gasping for breath, fighting for her life...and losing the battle.

From somewhere, a whisper breathed the name
Minton
...and she fell deeper into the avalanche that held far greater danger than mere suffocating snow.

With effort dredged from his depths, Minton shielded from the vicious lash of Rankin’s mind, but shielded in that way, he could no longer translate even in atmosphere. He dropped out of translation abruptly, naked, of course, and fell into deep snow up to his armpits. It frothed around him, filling his nose, his mouth, his eyes, as with a slow rumble, it began to move.

He tumbled over and over, caught in a whirling whiteness in which there was no up, no down, only motion, dizzying and disorienting, and intense, unbelievable cold. He knew he had to translate out of there or risk death, but if he went incorporeal again while Rankin was still alert to his presence, he would surely be found. He knew that, with the amplifier to add to his own not inconsiderable powers, Rankin had the capacity to drag him from his hiding place. Wherever that might be.

At length, Minton realized the tumbling motion had ceased to be the major factor in his life. Now, cold became the enemy. Slowly, with great physical difficulty, not fully convinced he was heading upwards, but obeying the urgings of his
Kahinya
, he began scraping with his hands, creating a small air-pocket before him.

He struck something solid. Easing his hands along it, he learned it was more-or-less flat and that it rose before him in large, hard, rounded ridges. Digging more frantically now, he saw glimmers of what could only be daylight through the thinning cover of snow.

Yes! Air and light flooded in with the next scoop of his hands. He gulped in deep breaths, struggled to keep his frozen body moving, and managed to flail his way out of the snow to lie on top of it. Sunshine, blessedly warm, glowed onto his back, heated his
Kahinya
and gave him energy.

Standing, he recognized a dwelling of sorts, poor and primitive, built of tree trunks laid on their sides, stacked one on top of the other, but it would provide shelter. It must have been this to which his protective
Kahinya
had directed him when he was forced to break out of translation. Struggling, often sinking deep into the snow again, he made his halting way around the first corner of the building, seeing no openings as he passed. The next wall afforded him only a narrow slot he knew he’d never fit through in his corporeal state, but the third one, in the lee of the avalanche, was only partially buried. There, a rectangle of different construction from the walls suggested a door. He pressed against it to no avail. Bending, he dug downward, tossing back snow like a
welligan
seeking the tasty nuts that burrowed under a
belgrina
tree after they fell.

Ah...there! A device recognizable as a locking mechanism. He mentally probed its interior electronic components, deactivated them, and the door swung inward. He tumbled through and as he did so, lights came on and heat, and music. Carefully, with great effort, for the snow was heavy and he was weak, he shoved the door shut against the weight of it that had tumbled down to follow him into the dwelling.

In seconds, the icy white drift in which he stood had melted and been sucked away by some unseen means. Ahh! Perhaps this place was not as primitive as he’d first imagined.

Grateful for the warmth, he stroked his
Kahinya
, searching for the true memories it contained, hoping to ascertain if he had really heard Jon’s call, or only wished it.