No Other Love (31 page)

Wanting to comfort him, she put one hand over
his fists. He looked up at her, searching her face.

“I don’t usually talk about my past,” he
said. “Do you hate me for what I did?”

“I could never hate you.” She thought of an
argument that might help him. “Herne, you told me once that you
left Sibirna because of the violence. You became a physician
because you wanted to help people, not hurt them. How many lives
have you saved?”

“I don’t know. I’ve lost count. I was in the
Service for years during the Cetan wars, and assigned to Riotha
during the plagues there. It was hard to keep track of my patients
during all of that.” He rubbed his hands across his face as if he
were tired. “I know what you’re trying to say, Merin.”

“I’ll say it anyway. You are by nature a
healer, not a killer. It is certain that you have saved more lives
than you have taken.”

“I hope so. It would be some recompense for
the blood on my hands.”

“Jurisdiction law recognizes self-defense.
You said those men all attacked you. The death of your opponent in
one-to-one combat in which you were fighting for your life is not a
punishable offense.”

“Eight-to-one combat,” he corrected her, “and
the Jurisdiction knows about it. I confessed before I entered the
Service. They cleared me of all guilt in the incident, but I still
can’t forgive myself for those deaths. I should have found a better
way to end the fight.”

“Eight to one? And you think you are to blame
for what happened during that cowardly attack?” She went to her
knees before his chair, taking his hands in hers. “You must have
been terrified. How brave you were, at such a young age, to win
over so many. How proud of you I am. How much I love you.”

“There can be no question you have a soul,”
he said, “but there’s more than a little barbarian in it. Your
ancient ancestors would be proud to claim you as their own. Who
would have thought it would take the story of that dishonest ambush
to make you say you love me?”

“It’s not the first time I’ve said it to
you.”

“Really? When did you ever say it before now?
In the shaft when I couldn’t hear you, when we both thought you
were going to die?”

“I said it in my dreams,” she told him,
knowing there had been another time, another place, when she had
dared so much. But where? When?

“Merin,” he said, touching her face with
gentle fingers, “your watch is over now, and I am suddenly
half-starved. Do you think you could prepare enough food for both
of us?”

“It will take a little while,” she answered.
“But you want to be alone for a time, don’t you? You want to think
about what we have both said.”

“You know me well.” He watched her walk to
the hatchway, a tense young woman barely covered by her skimpy
underwear. There was one thing he did not need to think about, not
for a moment more. “I love you,” he said, and saw the tenseness
leave her slender figure.

* * * * *

“I have a theory about why sex was the
activity most particularly forbidden among Oressians,” Herne
announced. He paused, noting a flush of rising color in Merin’s
cheeks, though she continued to eat with every appearance of
indifference to what he might say. “I suspect it was because
Oressians are an extremely passionate people. I have known a few
women in my life, not many, but enough to know that you are
unusually responsive.”

“We were taught that it is extremely painful
to men and women alike,” she began, “that it destroys the
body.”

“Was it painful for you?” he asked.

“Not at all. It was wonderful.” Her cheeks
were flaming now. She stopped eating.

“It was more than wonderful for me,” Herne
told her, “because of the way you reacted to me. Which is probably
why the ancient Oressians spent so much time at it, until their
promiscuous actions threatened wholesale destruction of their
society. It’s easy enough to imagine jealous passions causing
personal dissension, or family and clan feuds, or even escalating
into international warfare.

“That’s my theory; I believe that is why your
Great Olekan forbade the art of love. That’s why he made all those
strict rules and laws for daily life, why you were created and
raised as you were. Perhaps Olekan’s methods were the only ones
that would have worked for Oressia. I don’t know about that, not
being a sociologist or a historian, but it does seem a shame to me
to force an entire planet to forego the pleasures of rapturous sex
in order to keep peace and preserve the Oressian Race. There should
have been an easier way.” He paused to smile at her. “At least you
are freed from that tyranny. On Dulan’s Planet there is no
punishment for love.”

“Freed.” Her gaze was thoughtful. “I have
noticed that other free women, Suria for instance, or Narisa, or
even Alla from time to time, all incite their men rather than
waiting for the males to make the first advances.”

“Have you thought of following their
example?” He raised an eyebrow at her. “I like that word, incite.
It suggests the possibility of a riot.”

She stood, the movement pulling her
undershirt tighter across her breasts. He looked from her bosom to
the tempting curve of her abdomen and then below, to the dark
shadow beneath her briefs, where her thighs joined. She shook her
head in a seductive motion, making her mane of qahf-colored hair
swing forward across her right shoulder.

“Can there be a riot with only two people
present?” she asked with great seriousness.

“I don’t know.” Herne reached to switch all
the instruments back to automatic. “Shall we find out?”

The lake glittered in ice-rimmed winter blue
and the bare trees swayed in the cold wind. Dressed warmly against
the chill, Tarik and Osiyar had come to the shore to greet Merin
and Herne on their return to headquarters. The shuttlecraft
appeared on schedule, spiraling downward to settle on the
snow-dusted beach.

The main hatch opened and a woman stepped
out. She wore a vivid blue heat-conserving jacket over her orange
treksuit, but her head was bare. Gleaming hair the color of
well-brewed qahf was coiled neatly at the back of her head,
controlled except for a few stray wisps caught by the wind. She
turned her head to say something to her companion, who was still
inside the shuttlecraft. The sound of laughter drifted toward the
watching men.

“Merin?” Tarik gaped at the smiling woman
coming toward him. “Is that really you?”

Herne jumped out of the shuttlecraft and
followed Merin up the beach. When he reached her side he put an arm
across her shoulders. She regarded him with open affection.

“She looks different without that cursed
coif, doesn’t she?” he asked with a big grin. “I convinced her to
take it off and dump it into the recycling chamber.”

“One must wonder,” murmured Osiyar, “exactly
how you achieved that notable end.”

“Can’t tell you.” Herne’s arm tightened
around Merin. “Medical confidentiality, you know.” With that, he
and Merin headed for the warmth of the building at the center of
the island.

“I did say,” Tarik remarked, watching them,
“that they wouldn’t mind a few extra days alone together.”

“It is as I had hoped,” Osiyar mused, also
looking after the lovers. “I was not wrong about Merin. She knows,
though she has forgotten what she knows. It is enough. She will
find her way, and so will Herne find his.”

“I won’t pretend to understand what that
means.” Tarik began to walk toward the headquarters building,
toward Home. Osiyar went with him, Jurisdiction officer and
telepath together, friends in spite of the cultural and psychical
gulf that should have separated them. Tarik spoke again. “There are
more things in heaven and earth than we can know.”

“If Narisa could hear you,” said Osiyar, “she
would doubtless warn you about misquoting poetry.”

Tarik’s only answer was a wicked chuckle.

* * * * *

“I thought you would be interested to learn,”
Narisa told Merin, “that Tarik and I have finished cleaning and
analyzing the recorder you found at Tathan.” She gave a copy of the
report to Merin, who shook her head in disbelief as she read
it.

“What’s wrong?” asked Herne.

“I held both recorders at the same time, one
in each hand while we were in Tathan. I know the numbers match,”
Merin said, “but there must be some mistake. The laws of physics
–”

“We have talked about the peculiar effects of
the Empty Sector before,” Tarik said, joining them. “Where is your
recorder, Merin?”

“I took it with me to the
Kalina
in
case I should need it.” She spoke slowly, going over in her mind
the last seven days aboard the spaceship. “I put it in my cabin, on
the shelf by my bed. I saw it there every day, until three days
ago. It seemed to me I had taken it with my other gear when we went
to the shuttlecraft to leave. But we didn’t leave, we stayed on,
and I haven’t seen it since. I looked everywhere for it. It’s
lost.”

“Why would you pack and go to the
shuttlecraft when you knew you would have to remain aboard for
several more days?” Tarik asked.

“We didn’t pack,” Herne put in. “We just
continued with our alternate watches, as you wanted us to do.”

“Then why does Merin remember packing to
leave?” Tarik’s dark blue eyes searched her face.

Merin rubbed at her forehead, trying to
better focus her thoughts. Her memory was oddly indistinct about
the hours in question.

“Perhaps I was thinking about the last time I
served on the
Kalina,
with Suria,” she said.

“Perhaps.” Tarik looked unconvinced.

“May I see the recorder?” Merin asked.

“Of course. It is yours.” Tarik nodded to
Narisa, who hurried to the storeroom, returning at once with the
instrument. It had been cleaned of centuries of encrusted dirt, so
it looked old and well-used, but still serviceable.

“It will work now, but too poorly for daily
use,” said Narisa. “We tried to obtain any information that might
have been stored in it, but nothing made any sense, except for a
couple of sentences about bolts of lightning.”

“That means nothing to me,” said Merin. “I
don’t remember recording anything about lightning. Did you check
the data I put into the main computer?”

“We found nothing that matched the phrases on
the recorder,” Narisa said.

“I’ll issue a new recorder to you.” Tarik
took back the old one. He held it for a moment, weighing it. Then
he looked from Merin and Herne to Narisa. “This represents a
mystery we may never solve. Tantalizing, isn’t it?” He gave the
recorder back to his wife.

“Where is the book with Dulan’s notes?” Merin
asked suddenly. “I want to read it again. I would also like to
review the historical tapes the telepaths left here. And Tarik,
when you make your next archeological trip to Tathan, I want to go
with you. Herne?”

“Yes,” said Herne, “I’ll go too.”

“I see,” said Tarik, winking at Narisa. “Will
that be as colleagues, or as husband and wife?”

“As both, if you will be good enough to marry
us,” Herne answered. He turned to Merin, taking her in his arms.
She made no resistance at all, but went to him with complete trust
and love. “Our hearts have found a way through all the differences
and the rigid laws that once separated us.”

“’Our hearts have found a way,’” Merin
repeated, frowning a little. “I have heard something like that
before. I wonder where?”

“Does it matter, so long as we are together?”
Herne gazed into her eyes and made his pledge. “Wherever you go, I
will go, too, until time ends. And for me, through all of time,
there will be no other love.”