Whispers on the Wind (18 page)

To her utter dismay, she giggled, watching them do just that as she turned her head back and forth, moving her hair over her breasts. Then, she sat down on the fuzzy toilet seat cover, buried her face in her hands and wept. When she was finished, she turned the shower on full force, stepped in and scrubbed her body until it glowed, and shampooed her hair until it squeaked. Then, after wrapping her head in a towel that soon turned soggy—much soggier than if her hair had remained at its normal, practical length—she rubbed herself dry. That done, she grabbed a pair of scissors and hacked her hair off short to the nape of her neck, angled it back and down from her ear lobes, and pinned the front firmly off her face. As far as style went, there was none.

But she felt infinitely more like herself.

Then she snatched up a terry-cloth robe she had left hanging behind the bathroom door, jammed her arms into the sleeves, wrapped it tightly around her middle and defiantly knotted the sash.

“I am my own person, Alien. And the sooner you learn that the better.”

Feeling much more in control, Lenore strode from the bathroom. “We have to leave here,” she said decisively. “If you want to access the full web and the information we can collect from it, we can better do it from my own home.”

Jon glanced at her over his shoulder. He’d been watching a holo on the newsie. He made no comment on seeing her body covered, or her hair short again, just raised one expressive eyebrow, which made her want to smack him, or at least toss a blanket over his magnificent form.

“This is not your home?”

“No. This is a place I visit whenever I can because I like to be here.”

His face brightened as if he fully understood. “It is one of your safe places.”

Lenore had never thought of it in those terms. She nodded slowly. “Something like that, I suppose.”

“What makes it safe for you?”

She shrugged. “Well, for one thing, if it hadn’t been summer when the Big One hit in ’31, I wouldn’t likely be here talking to you. Caroline and I would both have been killed when much of the Cascadia Corridor was reduced to rubble despite all the earthquake-proofing building standards that had been developed. Against a quake of that magnitude, little remained intact. Caroline was a day-student in the school where I boarded, but because it happened during summer vacation, we were here with her grandparents. Her parents died in the quake.”

Her voice shook, but she steadied it. “Two-thirds of the Pacific Coast from Northern Mexico to Alaska either changed drastically or simply disappeared. As it was, we got pretty shook up even here in the mountains, and the roaring went on for what seemed like forever.”

“You speak of a tectonic action? My studies included the fact that there is geological instability in many sections of Earth.”

“Yes. And the luck of your draw landed you in one of those sections. Or close to it. Much of the Coast was in ruins when the Pacific Plate finally slid under the North American Plate, and dropped the Juan de Fuca Plate about eight feet. It completely changed the coastline. Vancouver Island, which used to be one, is now three separate chunks of land separated by mile-wide channels. Baja California no longer exists except as an archipelago. The Olympic Peninsula is an island. What once was Puget Sound is now Puget Strait, open all the way down to the Columbia River. As I said, we were pretty badly shaken even here, but worst was the fallout from the volcanic ash. Mount Rainier, Mount Baker, and Mount Garibaldi all blew their tops within a thirty-minute period. Mounts Hood and Shasta along with a couple in Alaska acted up a little later, during the aftershocks.” She shuddered. “So many people died.”

“But not your father? He was here, too?”

She laughed. “Of course not. My father would not lower himself to visit such an out-of-the way place. He was in Geneva at the time. Naturally, he stayed there until everything was cleaned up and moderately civilized again. Though he did make arrangements for me to attend a boarding school in Europe while that happened.”

She drew herself up as if proud. “I chose not to go, but stayed on here with Caroline and her grandparents. We were both eight years old and attended the local school for couple of years. It was a...different experience for me, living as part of a family. Grandma and Grandpa Francis were as wonderful to me as if I were their grandchild as much as Caroline was. I’d been in a boarding school since I was five.”

“Boarding school?”

“A school where children live and are educated.”

He sounded outraged as he asked, “They do not live with their parents?”

“Some do. I didn’t. But for those two years, I lived with Caroline’s grandparents and attended the local school. As I said, it was a different experience.”

“Your smile tells me it was a happy one.”

“Yes. Quite happy. Then, when we were ten, and Grandma and Grandpa thought we were ready for it, they sent us back to the school, both of us boarding at that time. But we returned here after that for holidays and vacations as long as we could.”

“Why could you not do so forever?”

“We grew up, Jon. We developed other interests. I took a position of responsibility with my father’s firm. Caroline became a roving journalist. Our vacations do not necessarily coincide.” And Frank, like her father, had been scathing of her affection for the log cabin perched on a mountainside above the Robson Valley.

“So you come, but you do so alone.”

“Most of the time, yes. When Grandma died, a few years after Grandpa, she left the house and property to the two of us, jointly. I use it more than Caroline does, though. She’s a photojournalist and travels the world looking for oddities and other newsworthy stories—”

She broke off and lunged from the kitchen to the living room where she pressed her wrist against her compad, and began to key in the code that would connect her with Caroline.

“Stop!” Jon’s hand on hers somehow broke the connection even before it had a chance to form.

“What? Why, for heaven’s sake? Caroline can help you better than I can. It’s her job to track down anomalies and—”

“And report them, yes?”

“Well, yes.”

“Would you ask your friend to lie for you?”

Lenore looked at him curiously for a moment, then closed the face of her compad. “I see what you’re getting at. You would expect her to want to report what she might learn on your behalf.”

“It is what she does.”

“Yes. And you would rather remain undercover.”

He clearly didn’t immediately comprehend the term. Lenore watched him seek it out, then watched his face clear.

“That is correct. I would rather not have the world at large know my kind and I are here.”

“I doubt very many would believe the stories,” she said.

“Perhaps not. The difficulty would arise if Rankin and B’tar were to hear them. They, of course, would have no trouble believing. Though I think they are aware of our presence already.”

“What if you offered Caroline an exclusive when this was all over?”

He smiled. “I offer it to you, to offer to her. When this is all over. Will she believe you?”

Lenore had to laugh again. “Not in a million years. She’d think my mind had finally snapped. She’s a very pragmatic journalist, and doesn’t, as her grandfather would have said, ‘suffer fools gladly.’” She puffed out a short sigh and muttered, “Damn. Well, like I said, we’ll do better with a full-access system such as I have at home. We’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

“I’m not sure I will have regained enough strength to move us,” Jon said.

“I don’t intend to ‘translate’ with you,” she retorted. “I have a perfectly good vehicle at Angus McQuarrie’s farm.”

He looked extremely doubtful. “We will travel in that?”

“Yes. It’s a two-seater car. You have some kind of objection?”

After a moment, he met her challenging tone with an uneasy smile. “I have ridden in many different forms of transportation over the years of my career. But not in such as thing as you refer to—a car.” His eyes took on that slightly vacant expression she had to be quick to catch, and she knew he was swiping the vision of a car from some unsuspecting mind.

She wanted, suddenly, and with a fierceness that took her aback, to be away from him, not to have to look at him, not to have to wonder what she would learn if she could see into his mind as easily as he could see into those of others. It frustrated her that she could not, and infuriated her that she should even want to.

She stomped back to the bathroom, did the necessary and emerged to find him exactly as before.

She glared at him. “I’m going to bed. The bathroom’s in there.” She gestured. “Caroline and I always keep a stack of new toothbrushes on the bottom shelf of the medicine cabinet. Help yourself. Towels are stacked on a shelf near the tub. If you’d rather shower, don’t forget to pull the curtain all the way around the tub. I hate it when the floor gets splattered. This is not a house that takes care of itself.

“There’s another bedroom through that door.” She pointed to the far side of the living room. “You’ll find linens and blankets in the closet across from the bathroom. Use what you need. Or perhaps you can just create the ‘illusion’ the bed is made up.”

She gave him a long, hard look. “And I do not want my dreams disturbed or invaded in any way at all, Alien. You got that?”

He nodded. Though his face was grave, something about it suggested he was carefully controlling his amusement. She didn’t care. Right now, she was still filled with righteous indignation, still on a roll, and she had no intention of letting it go.

She swept a glance over his nude body. “I don’t have anything to offer you in the way of pajamas, so I guess you’ll also have to create the illusion of some for yourself if you want them.”

“I do not require clothing in which to sleep.” He regarded her curiously for a moment. “Do you?”

“In this part of the world I certainly do. It gets cold here in the mountains.”

“If I maintain a steady, comfortable temperature throughout the house, will you sleep as I do, clad only in your skin?”

She stared at him. “Why would you want me to do that? Didn’t I make myself clear? I am sleeping in one of the bedrooms upstairs. You are to occupy the one down here. So what I wear, or don’t wear, will be no concern of yours.”

“I would like to think of you as sleeping unclad.”

Her stomach did a quick, uncomfortable flip-flop. “You can think of me any way you want,” she retorted. “So long as I don’t have to know about it. Goodnight.” She marched up the stairs, trying very hard to ignore the soft laughter she heard rising behind her.

A
S LENORE BUTTONED THE
high neck of her warm, flannel granny-gown, she couldn’t help thinking of Jon, in the room beneath hers, lying naked and golden, asleep on the bed the Francises had occupied.

She climbed into her own bed, rolled on her side, tucked her knees up to her middle and pulled the covers over her ears. It was a long, long time before she slept.

Jon lay gathering strength and thinking about Lenore, about how fortunate he had been that his
Kahinya
had led him to her—or as near to her as it could get him. She had helped him regain his health. He stretched his muscles. His once-broken leg was fully healed. He wrinkled his scalp. That wound had long since disappeared, as had the gash across his lower back. He exercised his mind by letting it drift carefully, quietly, into the minds of the other two he had been able to access, keeping his power very low lest Rankin still be on the alert, though he had no sense of the other man’s presence, and his
Kahinya
offered no alarm.

Slowly, carefully, feeling his way, he learned much from the man who had dreamed of the riches gold would bring him, from the woman who thought she wanted adventure. If it were in his power, he would give them both what they really desired—though it would not be what they believed they did. He had done his best already to thank them, showing them how to be content with what they had.

He took from them only what he needed—local knowledge, information about customs he might have missed despite his studying the data gleaned by other explorers of Earth. With so few, and such widely separated windows of opportunity to visit, often information banks had big gaps and much outdated intelligence. He had not been aware of what Lenore referred to as “the Big One,” referring to geological activity which sounded, from her description, as if it had been catastrophic.

Catastrophe came in many different forms, though. He had a difficult and dangerous mission ahead of him and only a limited time in which to succeed. Failure, to Jon, was not acceptable, so the more data he could gather, the better able he’d be to fulfill his duty.

From Nancy, the woman with yellow hair, he learned that Lenore was a good friend, one who listened and did not judge. Nancy liked Lenore, admired her, envied her, but knew little of value concerning her life away from here. He wished he had been more capable, and had delved deeper when he’d had the chance, before he made that promise of privacy to Lenore.

From the man, Angus McQuarrie, he collected knowledge of crops and stock and fatherhood and the warm comfort of a long and fruitful mating with a woman whose mind Jon could perceive only dimly. There was no opening for him to penetrate it, just as there was no opening for him in any of the other human entities he knew populated the immediate area. There was, he sensed, no
baloka
between the two, but what existed fully satisfied Angus McQuarrie.

Even more important, from Angus he accessed a firm grasp of geography.

Casting further, he sought out places nearby where avalanches could have occurred, where there would be dwellings similar to this one he was in, but smaller, such as he had sensed from Minton’s quick projection. Purposefully, he touched a particular bead on his
Kahinya
and focused on Minton’s image, meanwhile casting forth a narrow, laserlike query, waving it delicately from side to side, with frequent and random changes of pitch and intensity, hoping Minton’s presence would bounce it back to him, make the needed connection, but instead he was plunged suddenly, startlingly, into another mind.