Laura Jo Phillips (13 page)

Saige nodded, though she looked a little ill.  “He did a lot of bad things to her, didn’t he?”

“Yes, he really did,” Summer replied.

“You have no way of knowing this, but the last time I saw her, Darleen Flowers was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen,” Saige said.

“Really?” Summer asked, surprised.  It was difficult to imagine the emaciated, bald, scarred and beaten woman she knew as beautiful.

“Yes,” Saige replied.  “She was also selfish, manipulative and mean.”

 “I suppose that the changes to Darleen’s interior are as great as the ones to her exterior,” Summer said with a faint smile.  “She just said that she was done with beautiful.  She only wants to look normal.”

“Then you are correct,” Saige said.

“Have you heard anything from the Katres yet?” Summer asked.

“No, you?” Saige asked as she turned around and led the way back up the hall.  

“Nothing,” Summer replied as she followed Saige into a cozy little sitting room.  “But then, the Katres don’t much like me, so maybe Maxim won’t keep his word.”

Saige waved Summer to a chair by the fireplace and took another for herself.  There was a tray on a table beside Saige’s chair and she poured two cups of coffee from it and offered one to Summer.

“I noticed Maxim’s behavior toward you was a little strained,” Saige said.  “I’ve never seen him like that before.  Did something happen?”

Summer sipped the coffee gratefully.  It had been a very long time since she had tasted coffee.  “This is delicious,” she said.  “Thank you so much.”

Saige smiled.  “One of the many luxuries of Jasan is that there is no shortage of coffee.”

“You probably shouldn’t have told me that,” Summer replied with a grin.  She took another sip, then sighed.  “I don’t know what happened,” she said, answering Saige’s question about Maxim.  “They seemed to like me okay at first, then they didn’t.”  Summer shrugged as though the entire subject didn’t bother her as much as it really did. 

“Well, maybe if you tell me what happened, I can help you figure it out,” Saige suggested.

Summer hesitated, but figured why not?  Saige was married to three men.  She had to have a better understanding of them than Summer did.  Maybe she could explain what Maxim’s problem was. 

With that hopeful thought in mind, Summer told Saige everything that had happened from the time the Katres had entered Lio’s office.  Since she had an eidetic memory, she was able to relate every word exactly as it had been spoken.  When she was finished, Saige refreshed their coffee while she mulled over everything Summer had told her. 

“I’m sorry Summer, but honestly, I don’t get it either,” she said.  “Maybe my guys will understand it.  If you don’t mind me telling them, of course.”

“I don’t mind,” Summer replied, trying to hide her disappointment. 

“Speaking of changed personalities,” Saige said, “you’ve changed a bit yourself over the past year.  I don’t imagine it was any easier for you than it was for Darleen.”

“I think it was far easier for me than Darleen,” Summer objected.  “I was treated like an unthinking, unfeeling object, and I was forced to respond to physical commands as though I were a robot.  But I was not tortured, beaten, starved or mutilated as Darleen was.”

“But?” Saige prompted.

“But, yes, it changed me.  I used to work really hard to make people like me.  I hid my intelligence and pretended to be happy and bubbly so that I would fit in more easily with other people.  Fitting in has always been very important to me.”

“Why?” Saige asked, then shook her head.  “I apologize,” she said.  “that came out more rudely than was meant.  It’s just that I was always a bit of an outcast myself as a child, and I understand it can be difficult.  I’m just curious as to why it was so important for you to fit in.”

Summer took another sip of her coffee as she thought about Saige’s question and how to answer it.  She didn’t know why, but she felt as though there was almost a kinship between herself and Saige.  Perhaps because she had met her on the
Cosmic Glory
before she’d been abducted, she thought.  Saige’s face was the first familiar one she had seen since then.

“Loneliness,” she said finally.  “My parents are wonderful people, but they are both wildly intelligent and extremely prominent, with demanding careers.  Until I reached school age, we traveled all of the time, so I never had the opportunity to play with other children.  I would sit with them at the dinner table and listen to them talk, but I never understood anything they said so I couldn’t join in their conversations.  So I read every book Mother had written, which was dozens, and every book Father brought into the house, which was hundreds, just so that I could understand and join in their talks. 

“That’s when I discovered that I had an eidetic memory.  I remembered every single word I had read, and understood a large percentage of it.  I was five years old at the time, and it was a big mistake.  All of that knowledge in a five year old made me much different from other children my age.  I ended up even lonelier than before, even after we settled down and I started going to school.  I could understand my parent’s conversations, but there wasn’t another child my age that wanted anything to do with me.  I was just too strange.

“When I was ten years old, Father was transferred to another base, so I had a chance to start over in a new school with children who didn’t know anything about me.  I’d watched the other children for years, so I knew what traits other kids liked, and accepted as normal, and those they didn’t.  I used that knowledge to create a new persona for myself.  And it worked.  I made friends, and for the first time, I had a social life.  The only problem was, my parents did not like the new me at all.  It created a rift between us that exists even now.”

“That’s a shame,” Saige said.  “Didn’t they understand why you did what you did?”

“Oh yes, they understood,” Summer replied.  “They just didn’t agree with it.  They wanted me to be true to myself.”  Summer rolled her eyes.  “That’s what they said, but what they really wanted was for me to excel academically so that I could follow in at least one of their footsteps, if not both.”

“So you deliberately got lower grades in school?” Saige asked, surprised that anyone would go that far to have a social life.

“Yes, I did,” Summer admitted.  “It was dumb of me, I realize that, but at the time, it was more important to be accepted than it was to get good grades.”  She shrugged.  “Now it all seems so silly to me.  I’ve spent my life being someone I’m not, and I didn’t realize the magnitude of that until, like Darleen, I was forced to live within my own mind and examine myself and my life.”

“It came at a high price,” Saige said.

“Yes, and that makes it that much more important.  Right now, I don’t really care so much what anyone thinks of me.  All I care about is finding and freeing all of the other women, no matter where in the galaxy they may be.”

“While you are at it, please remember that you have a lot of people on your side,” Saige said.  “People who have the resources to aid you.  You are not alone in your desire to see these women freed, and to prevent more from being abducted.”

“That’s wonderful to know, Saige,” Summer replied enthusiastically.  “Knowing where other women might be is one thing.  Getting to them, and releasing them is another, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to manage that.”

“That’s not going to be a problem,” Saige said.  “If you can find out where they are, we will help with the rest of it.”

Summer was so excited she nearly jumped up to go find Lio and start questioning him about the locations of other slave compounds.  But she restrained herself.  Now was not the time and besides, there was already one raid taking place.  As she took another sip of her cooling coffee, something Saige said finally registered

“Saige, are women still being abducted off of passenger liners?” she asked.

“We aren’t sure,” Saige replied.  “In the past year no passengers have gone missing from any liner or ship to dock at the Jasani skyport.  As far as we can tell.”

“As far as you can tell?” Summer asked.

“We can only compare records.  If the records are altered, there is no way for us to know that.  We have instituted a lot of precautions and warned all of the owners of passenger liners, as well as the captains and even the governments of every planet we have any kind of relation with.  So either the Xanti are staying away from Jasani bound transports, or they are altering the records.”

“And there is no way for you to know for sure one way or another?”

“Not that we have been able to figure out,” Saige replied.  “Worse, we cannot do anything about ships outside of Jasani space.  There is no way of knowing how many women are being abducted from ships going to other worlds.”

“Then the only real solution is to destroy the organization behind the abductions,” Summer said.

“Yes, and until now, we haven’t been able to find a scrap of information to get us started on that,” Saige said.  “Now, because of you, that has changed.” 

Summer hoped that she would be as much help as Saige seemed to think she would be.  She started to tell Saige that when her vox beeped softly in her ear.  She reached up to tap it.

“Summer here,” she said. 

“Miss Whitney, this is Maxim.  I am afraid I have some bad news for you.”

Chapter
17

Slater Sugetku was worried. 

He leaned down to sniff the contents of the daily meat bucket left for him at the bottom of the path, and sighed.  The meat was not rancid, but it was not far from it.  Well, he thought, it was better than nothing at all.  He picked up the bucket and headed back up the slope to his little stone house. 

He stood in front of it for a moment, but decided he really did not want to go inside.  Instead, he walked around to the back and climbed up to the roof.  He set the meat bucket down carefully so that it would not fall off, then settled himself in his usual spot so that he had a view of the village in the distance.

Things had not gone quite as he had expected this past year, and he wasn’t really sure how or when it started going bad.  It had just snuck up on him.

First, there was the matter of Xi-Kung.  In the beginning, he and the Xanti had stuck close to each other, working together to fulfill their plans for Onddo, trusting only each other.  Slater admitted to himself that he had enjoyed that time.  Even though he hadn’t truly trusted Xi-Kung, he had experienced a camaraderie with the Xanti that he had never experienced with anyone else.

Slater had never had any close friends as a youngling, had never concerned himself much with social matters.  Partly because it was not in the Narrasti nature to be social until they reached breeding age, and partly because it had never occurred to him to try to make a friend.  His thoughts and dreams had always been centered on his own advancement, his own personal glory.

Just when he was becoming accustomed to having someone to plan and work with on a regular basis, things had changed.  Xi-Kung began to spend more and more time alone with Magoa, and less time with Slater.  When Slater had asked Xi-Kung about it, Xi-Kung had seemed surprised.  He had reminded Slater that it was part of their plan for one of them to get close to Magoa, and that they had agreed it should be Xi-Kung.  Slater had nodded in silent agreement, though he did not remember any such plan.  Even now, many months later, he still wasn’t sure if Xi-Kung had lied, or if his own memory was faulty.

Not that it mattered, Slater decided as the darkness grew thicker and the village lights began to come on.  He rarely saw Xi-Kung any more, and had not spoken with him in many weeks.  When he did see the Xanti, he was always in the company of Magoa.  That bothered Slater a great deal since Xi-Kung was the only one who knew Slater’s secret. 

The other thing that bothered Slater was the way people treated him.  He had imagined that being a mighty sugea, the only sugea in thousands of years, would earn him instant respect and power.  He had even dared to hope that he would eventually supplant Magoa as the leader of their people.  But it hadn’t turned out that way at all.

Instead, people avoided him.  They had granted him a stone hut located at the far edge of the village, which Slater had, at first, thought to be a sign of their respect for him.  Then he had realized that none of the people ever came near that area, and in fact, went far out of their way to avoid it, and him.  The only time anyone ever came close to his dwelling was once each evening when they sent someone to deliver a pail of meat to him.  He never saw who delivered it, but from the scents he picked up when he went down the short path from his hut to the main road where his food was left for him, it was rarely the same person twice.

Slater had not understood why he was feared, but not revered, and had asked Xi-Kung about it on one of the rare occasions when they met and spoke.  Xi-Kung had explained that the racial memories that his fellow Narrasti had of the sugea were not all that pleasant.  The sugea had been arrogant, demanding and cruel leaders over the rest of the Narrasti in ancient times.  Of course Slater knew that, or pretended to anyway.  He wasn’t really sure that he remembered quite that much about the sugea.  Mostly, he just knew that they had been great.  But, when he told Xi-Kung that he still did not understand, the Xanti had explained that none of the Narrasti on Onddo wanted to see a return of the sugea and their ways.  They preferred Magoa, who ruled with a gentle hand in comparison, in spite of the large numbers of people he had sent to the exterminators in an effort to cleanse their gene pool.