The Dark Places (3 page)

Then my thoughts flitted to the
stretched fabric canvases I’d covered with representations of Harnaru in the
rain season, Harnaru in the dry season, and Harnaru in general. No sane gallery
owner wanted to show paintings of the planet when no one living here wanted it
hanging on their walls…. Featureless gray-and-beige deserts.
Pale
green lakes.
Bleached-white skies.
And dominating over it all, the distant but blistering white sun star
of this dreary little mining planet.
Not
all
the planet was covered with deserts—just most of it.

“You know, I really hate Harnaru,”
I said, thinking about the scorned canvasses stacked against a wall in my
studio room’s tiny closet. “I never should have tried painting something I
hated,” I muttered to myself. I’d half-forgotten Matt’s presence.

His silence lasted a long minute,
as if he was immersed in deep thought. Then he captured my hand in a firm
grasp. “Why did you come to
Harnaru
?”

I glared. “It was a far as my
savings would take me in this system, third class,” I snapped. I resented these
questions. On the frontier planets, no one so much as poked into anyone else’s
past. Everyone took it for granted that you wouldn’t be crazed enough to stray
out here if you weren’t trying to outrun bad memories or grim situations. It
was common courtesy not to ask about anyone’s past, like I was trying not to do
to Matt Lorins.
What demon is he escaping
out here on the frontier?
Mine?
A manipulative family.

Matt’s strange dark eyes steadily
absorbed my mutinous look. “Would you like to leave Harnaru?” he asked, keeping
his intense gaze fixed on me.

“As soon as I save up enough for a
ticket somewhere else,” I vowed through clenched teeth.

“Would you like to leave sooner
than that?”

“What do you mean?” My tone came
out brittle, and I was sorry to be acting hostile to Matt, who had just treated
me to a wonderful—up to that point—evening.

Was
that green haze clouding over his eyes
?
Was
there something wrong with the torch lights?
I blinked, and they’d regained
their unusual dark aspect with their central fireworks.
Maybe that Sauran cordial deserved more respect
. I filed away a mental
note not to touch another drop that night.

“What I mean, Kailiri, is that I
have enjoyed this evening with you and I’ve no desire to see it end,” he said
quietly. He drew a deep breath and tightened his arm about my waist. “But it’s
your decision as to how we shall go on from here.”

My eyes widened. He was an
attractive, intelligent man with beautiful manners—and he hadn’t asked me to
split the tab. If he was alluding to spending the rest of the night together, I
might
be persuaded—if he got me in
the mood…. But that other thing he’d mentioned about leaving the planet raised
my alarms. The media had inundated the public with stories about off-world
abductors and slavers snaring unwary females.

Conscious of the close-by crowd, I
lowered my voice. “What does leaving Harnaru have to do with this evening?” I
sounded belligerent to my own ears and winced.

Matt gave me a lazy, charming smile
before he lowered his head and covered my lips with his. My breathing must have
stopped, because my head felt giddy. Spontaneous tingling shot through me under
the spell of his warm, questing lips.

He raised his head, and a puzzled
frown drew his dark brows together over his compelling eyes. Then he captured
my dazed look in his unblinking stare. Gazing into his eyes this close, with
his desirable lips poised a mere finger’s length away, felt like drowning in a
dark pool lit with green-and-golden fire sparks. An insidious chill crept
through my body and surrounded my heart, and I couldn’t suppress the quiver
that seized me.

At first I thought the shiver
response sprang from a creeping chill caused by cooled-down desert air borne
into Marnu upon a sly night breeze. But when Matt’s arms encircled me and drew
me closer, as if the diners didn’t exist on the balcony, I knew the chill’s
source sprouted from a deep uneasiness.
Would
harm befall me with this man
?

I couldn’t think. One kiss had
toppled me into turmoil, and the shivering continued. It was like standing
unprotected out in a blinding, wind-driven snowstorm on Dearleth.

Matt rose from the balcony wall,
drawing me with him. He guided me from the noisy crowd to a less brightly lit,
unoccupied balcony area. He studied me with unsettling intensity before he
stepped close and covered my quivering lips with his.

Was
there urgent need in his kiss?
In mine?
With the
numbing cold enveloping me, I couldn’t tell.

He moved back, searching my eyes.
“Are you afraid of me, Kailiri?” he whispered.

I wasn’t certain if I nodded or
shook my head because the tremors had intensified and rocked my body.

He gently grasped my chin,
effectively capturing my fear-distracted attention. “You should be,” he said
softly. “You have been imprinted upon my awareness. I cannot let you go now. If
only I had more time to gently woo you… but I don’t. And now I can only trust
that your feelings are true enough to bind you to me.”

I tore away from his touch and
stumbled back. “What are you saying?” My voice quavered. I wanted to shout the
words, but my heart felt like it had lodged within my throat and blocked my
outcry.
Why can’t I stop trembling?

“Come with me,” Matt said in a
soft, urgent tone and held out a hand. When I didn’t move, he came close and
grasped my cold hands. “If your lips haven’t lied to me, Kailiri, you have
nothing to fear,” he said quietly, “but if your heart is false, your life—and
mine—shall be full of pain.”

What
is he talking about?
I didn’t want to know. I wanted this to still be a normal
evening on a restaurant balcony.
He
kissed me and everything changed
. My soul screamed dire warnings while the
world suddenly turned mysterious and menacing.
And
why is it so cold?
I
stared in bewilderment at Matt. He had a green haze shimmering in his eyes. I
hadn’t imagined that occurrence the first time it had happened, I assured
myself.

“Who are—
what
are you?” I whispered through stiff lips.

“Come, Kailiri.”

I numbly
followed,
his firm hand about my waist. He led me at a casual stroll past the chatting
diners, and soon we were down the spiral staircase and out the restaurant’s
door. He caught the attention of taxi flitter driver, and we sped along uptown
Marnu’s streets. Matt held me in the backseat, my body powerless to move away.
Some of the tremors subsided, but a numb, cold void filled me.

Our taxi flitter stopped in front
of Marnu’s City Records building complex. No emotions flickered within me as
Matt paid the driver. I followed him without resistance past two uninterested
guards on duty and then down an echoing, deserted corridor. We walked through
large glass doors into the all-hours Records complex. Escalators carried us
down several stair flights into the complex’s deep, underground sections and
delivered us before another department entrance. I forced my brain to
concentrate on the large black official script plastered upon the wide glass
doors before they slid apart.

Department of Marriage Records, it
proclaimed in Alliance Basic, and New Basic, as well as T-bar Syntaxico, a
unified coded language for species that didn’t use Basic.

My quaking returned. “Matt, why are
we here?” I tried to keep my voice steady, but it quavered.

“You have been imprinted upon me,
Kailiri,” he said, as if that explained it all.

“I don’t understand.”

The chills prickling my bones felt
like a vicious viral infection from frigid Dearleth had me in its grip. I
opened my mouth to protest and ask for more about that imprinting matter, but
Matt spoke again.

“I never expected to find you now,
at this time in my life,” he whispered and drew me into his warmth. His
persuasive mouth and tongue silenced me, melting my objections.

You’re
inside the Marriage Records Department!
My benumbed brain reactivated and
sent up a faint warning.

I should have pulled away and
demanded further explanations, but instead my hands clung tight to Matt when he
lifted his lips from mine. To my further conflicted dismay, my body ignored my
brain and pressed hard against him.

“You are also being imprinted by
me, doll,” he said softly. “This is the only cure for imprinted couples.”

Imprinted?
What did he mean? He’d made no mention about love or desire. Earlier, he’d only
said that he
liked
me and enjoyed my
company. Then I recalled my parents’ meddling with my fate and gulped.
This was more, at least, than what had
awaited me on Dearleth
. At least
I
had chosen
this
man. Or it seemed my
body had done the choosing, because my brain had gone muzzy and nonfunctional
in his arms.

Before I could sort out how it
happened, we stood before a bored Marnu City deputy judge inside the large,
mostly empty office. In a hoarse voice barely above a whisper, I pledged my
obedience, loyalty, and person to Matt Lorins. He pledged the same to me, with
strong assurance in his tone.

At Alliance Standard Time 2315, on
the Fifteenth Standard Day of the Eight Standard Month of the New Empire
Alliance Year 0192 A.I.C.—After Intersystem Colonization—we both signed the
city, province, and planetary records forms. Then we allowed a medi-scanner to
nip bits of skin tissue and to sample tiny blood droplets from our index
fingers for positive genetic identification.

Why
can’t I wake from this trance and stop cooperating so tamely?

In less than fifteen minutes, Matt
led me from the complex, and we were inside another taxi flitter headed for the
Marnu Grande Hotel—if my dazed brain had understood his instructions to the
driver—where he likely was lodging during his stopover. Silence lay heavy
between us throughout the brief ride, but I was very aware of Matt’s warm grasp
upon my cold hands and his encircling arm.
Was
he regretting his actions?

It wasn’t until I stood beside my
companion at the hotel’s registration desk, listening while he made occupancy
changes and identified me as his
bride, that
the
reality of the past hour’s events converged on me.
I just married a man about whom I know almost nothing, except that he can
drink strange, deadly brews and stand upright—and that his eyes are stranger
than Bilk’s.

What
have I done?
How
had I done it?
I’d cunningly evaded the snare my traditionalistic parents had set to bind me
with on Dearleth, only to end up with
this
one on Harnaru.

My knees weakened and my fingers
clutched the gleaming white, gold-streaked marble counter. I frantically combed
my memory, trying to recall if ours was a short-term marriage tract or
something longer.

I swallowed rising panic when we
walked from the desk toward the lifts.
Surely
it is just a short-term
tract
,
I reassured myself, taking in the well-dressed guests of Marnu’s largest and
most lavish hotel. A delicate-boned, honey-haired lady traipsed past me on
sequined slippers, enveloped in a heady, flowery perfume and expensive yards of
fragile, pink Barshoni Satin interwoven with silver threads. Gleaming jewelry
adorned her arms, neck, and hair. Chances were great that they were all
precious stones and metals.

I wryly contrasted that ethereally
groomed vision with my own unexciting appearance, garbed in mundane,
formfitting black coveralls and black city boots of sturdy, synthetic material,
along with unadorned and unpampered hair. The only perfume that might exist
upon my person after six hours in the Lilith’s smoky interior was the deodorant
soap gel I’d showered with earlier in the day.

I glanced sideways at Matt,
noticing for the first time with quiet shock that his conservative dark gray
tunic and pants suddenly looked very expensive against the elegant hotel’s
backdrop. The grid-patterned grain in his mottled black and dark gray boots
indicated they were fashioned from real animal hide. That ring on his left index
finger, gleaming beneath the lobby’s crystal chandeliers with refined elegance,
could well be platinum, or something rarer. I’d dismissed it earlier as mere
silver.
He
looked like he belonged
here. I didn’t.

I turned and assessed the distance
to the hotel’s entrance, thinking if I left now, I could be back on Marnu’s
portside in under an hour—if I walked fast. Matt’s strong fingers clamped onto
my arm before I sidled away. He pulled me beside him into a patiently waiting
glass elevator. We were alone within the deeply carpeted and mirrored interior.

After a quick look, I avoided the
stark truth reflected by the mirrors. Neither a comb, nor my fingers had tamed
my hectic dark ringlets in hours, and my dark, slant-angled eyes had faint,
sleep-deprived smudges beneath them. I was small and thin, and my golden skin
was sallow from avoiding Harnaru’s hot sunstar during the day hours as I napped
to rest for late-afternoon-through-evening shifts at the Lilith.

I couldn’t understand what possible
attraction Matt Lorins could have found in my outward appearance.
I imprinted myself upon him, he’d said….
How?

When we were inside his room, I
questioned my sanity and wondered if
I
had
tossed back all the Crynishan Dawns and Zyran Kickers instead of Matt. Perhaps
I was stuck inside a mad dream of my own devising. My despairing stare raked
over the room and encountered a small bouquet of ivory and bright red blossoms
on a nearby table, accompanied by a small card engraved
with
a simple
Congratulations
!
in
large
silver script. Only then did my distracted senses detect their lingering, sweet
fragrance drifting on the air. A small, dark green wine bottle stood perspiring
in an ice-filled silver bucket, with two sparkling crystal goblets close by.