The Gentle Seduction (10 page)

She squirmed away. "I don't think we should, uh . . ."

Veddin rolled his eyes in disbelief. What had the Seekers told her about him? Did they think he was a sex maniac? "Child, I've had more than my share of women. I don't need to add you to the collection. But it's getting cold out here, and I'm damn well going to hold you warm until morning. Now, if you want to kick and thrash with a man who just plans to conserve your energy, that's fine by me, because it'll surely keep you warm enough. But you don't have to."

She snuggled up next to him. "Okay."

She was a warm glow in his arms. Veddin chuckled. "On the other hand, if you want to be added to the collection, that'll keep you warm, too, and—" Veddin swallowed hard as Autumn jabbed him in the stomach.

They eventually dozed into fitful slumber.

As he rolled away from the sunshine, he choked on a dew-laden clump of grass. With a moan, Veddin extricated himself from Autumn's death grip. He stretched.

It was a mistake. He was cold, damp, and very very stiff. His stomach was hungry. And his brain was dead tired.

He turned to his companion, shook her gently. "Hm?" she mumbled. Veddin pulled her to her feet, ran his hand through her hair in a futile attempt to remove the worst tangles. Still she was beautiful in the morning light.

"Leave me alone," she yawned.

Chuckling, Veddin shook her.

"Cretin. I've committed mass murder on a dozen planets for lesser offences," Autumn mumbled, her eyes closed. "It's unhealthy to get up when you're asleep."

"Arise, arise," Veddin told her as he slung her right arm over his shoulders and half guided, half carried her down the road. "Kill me later. At the moment, we have a planet to save."

Her mumblings subsided. The sun rose, the people warmed, and soon Veddin could again see the spires of spacecraft in the distance. "Hail the miracle! We've been going in the right direction!"

"Great. When do we eat?"

"As soon as we arrive. As soon as we get within shiplink range of the
DareDrop
, I'll tell her to start cooking breakfast. I suppose there'll be enough food for two. Of course, the ship's awfully small, so you'll have to eat outside." Veddin wisely told her this from an adequate distance; when Autumn lunged at him, he dodged easily.

"You're an evil man," she told him, though it was her joy that flashed, not her anger.

As they came within broadcast range of Veddin's shiplink, Veddin told Autumn what news the ship had to offer. "Nothing's changed, Autumn. Your parents are still half way to the control tower, out of control."

"Have they eaten yet?"

"No."

"Let's get them aboard your ship and take them with us."

Veddin pursed his lips. "There isn't room."

"Well, it would be kinda crowded, but—"

"No! If we have to fight, they'd die without acceleration couches."

"What fighting?! Who could you possibly wind up fighting?"

He looked at her quizzically. "Don't you remember? You were going to kill the jammer."

"I was joking."

"You may think so now, but you were serious then. Think, lady. How did this happen? It's sure not a natural phenomenon. You said yourself that plenty of species hate us."

"Nobody'd dare attack us!"

"The Squishies dared to attack me, even though I was on my way here."

"What?!"

Veddin told her about the ambush. "This jamming would be a brilliant
coup de grace
for them. I'd swear this was their doing, if I knew how they could have done it." He shrugged. "I don't know how anybody else could have done it, either. I still bet it's the Squishies."

Autumn was silent.

The
DareDrop
was clearly visible now. "I'll race you to the ship," Veddin offered as he began trotting. Autumn passed him in a flurry of blonde hair, and he was surprised to find himself gasping for breath when he caught up with her. "Men are so weak," she sniffed as they climbed aboard.

As Veddin plunked down into his chair, he glanced up at Autumn. "I'll bet we don't know how to get to your research island, do we?"

Autumn groaned. "No, you're right."

"Um. Fortunately I have given this matter some thought. You say the machines here know how to get around?"

"Yes, but they all use transmitted power. They're all shut down."

Veddin laughed. "Not all. Just the ones in this island cluster, that are powered by the deactivated reactor. Which reminds me." He closed his eyes for a few seconds. "There. I've called some of my senships into planet orbit, to watch for exploding reactors. And I've sent a message shuttle back to Kaylanx, to tell them that the Couples of Hydra are out of commission, and they'd better get the warfleet back in shape before the Squishies show up." He closed his eyes again, to concentrate on the
DareDrop
. "Back to current events. What's the name of the island we're looking for?"

"Pyrta."

Veddin relaxed in his chair, working with his ship to communicate with Hydras network of automatons. "Strap yourself in. We're gonna make this a short ride."

The blastoff was less than gentle. Veddin had pangs of sympathy for Autumn, listening to her gasp for breath, but he could no longer suppress the sense of urgency he'd felt since they were stranded in the city. Pyrta was near the equator; he could just see the two of them arriving in time to watch a hurricane smash whatever useful equipment there might be to bits.

Once in free fall, Veddin asked more questions about Hydrans. "Autumn,
why
are humans so different from other species? What makes human psis so much more powerful—and so much more rare?"

Autumn looked a bit wan from the acceleration and now the weightlessness, but she answered nevertheless. "There are a lot of arguments about that; it may be the hottest question the biologists have." She untangled her arms from the webbing, tried to get comfortable. "One part of the answer is pretty straightforward. As the . . . complexity, I guess, of an organism increases, the probability of resonant psibond formation decreases: There are so many more links required to form the resonance. The flip side of that, though, is once those linkages form, the resonance is much more powerful." Her expression turned perplexed. "What we don't really understand yet is how we could have evolved so far before developing psychic powers. Everywhere else, psi develops before intelligence does. Psychic ability usually serves as the bridge from muscle-oriented evolution to intelligence-oriented evolution. 'Course, the evolution of intelligence doesn't go too far. It always plateaus before the beings get too complex for near-one-hundred-percent pair formation. An average alien Couple isn't quite as smart as an average human in isolation."

Veddin nodded. "How related are complexity and intelligence? Are more intelligent Couples more powerful as well?"

"Not necessarily. Psi power and intelligence are related statistically, but not directly. My parents, for example, have a normal, single-resonance bond. But they're very intelligent, or they wouldn't be the Commissioners." She shook her head. "On the other hand, there are some really
dumb
Couples out there that are awfully powerful."

Veddin chuckled. "I see." He thought for a moment. "But you still haven't told me why man developed so much intelligence without developing any psychic powers along the way."

"Nobody knows. We think early man must have had psychic abilities; marginal pre-men wouldn't stand a chance without it." She shrugged. "But then the psychic abilities disappeared, somehow. The pre-men had developed just enough so that continued evolution of intelligence worked better than reverting to animals."

Veddin closed his eyes as the
DareDrop
interrupted. "Get ready. Were going back down." Just before the acceleration hit, he wondered, "You know, maybe the same thing happened to those pre-men that's happening here."

"What?"

"Wouldn't that explain it? Suppose somebody started jamming the psifields on Earth, way back when?"

Before Autumn could reply, the breath was squeezed from their bodies.

They stepped out of the
DareDrop
into a large circle of scorched earth. The stench from the crisped wildlife caused them both to gag.

"You practically destroyed the place we were coming to visit," Autumn complained. "Even our biggest ships don't wreck the landscape this way."

They hurried from the area. "The
DareDrop
is a warship, woman. It is not a sightseeing bus. You need power in a warship, not pretty baffling." They were out of the ring of destruction, and the air was laden with the smell of flowers of all kinds. Veddin sneezed, powerfully, and stifled a second attempt by his nose to protect itself.

"Are you all right?"

He straightened up, gritted his teeth. "Sure." He was allergic to flowers, but he'd survive. "I just hope the buildings are air conditioned."

The heart of the university was six six-story buildings hexagonally arranged. Veddin remained in contact with the
DareDrop
via a portable shiplink amplifier. And the
DareDrop
, in turn, stayed in contact with Hydra s automaton network. The ship told him which building contained the Berrens office; he led Autumn at a brisk pace through the doors.

There were two people in the outer hall, one clinging to the left wall, one to the right, dying. Autumn hugged herself closer to Veddin. "What can we do?" she whispered.

"Stop the jammer," Veddin replied, walking past them.

They stopped as they reached the center well of the building. "Great," Veddin muttered, "now what?" They looked around together. "Don't they have a directory or something on the wall, to tell you how to get to different offices?"

Autumn pointed at a booth with two chairs. "Usually, there's a receptionist who—"

"Who puts you in Touch with the people you're looking for. I should have guessed." Veddin snorted. "Why is nothing ever easy here?"

Just then, a Couple came to the rail on the second floor. "Who are you?" the man croaked. He had obviously not used language for years.

"We're looking for Couple Berrens," Veddin called out. He saw a staircase and, grabbing Autumn's hand, hurried for the second floor. "Don't go away, we'll be up in a second."

"Where is there worth going?" the woman said with cold amusement. "There is, of course, our office, which is at least comfortable. Follow us."

Cursing under his breath, Veddin reached the second floor just in time to watch the Couple disappear down a corridor. He and Autumn caught up as they turned right through a glasscene door with the inscription
Couple Shayloh
above it.

Still holding hands, the Couple wrenched the curtains apart to let in some light. "Who are you? What did you come here for?" the man asked.

"I'm Autumn Westfall, and this is Veddin Zhukpokrovsk."

Veddin gave them a Kaylanxian salute.

"We're here to see Drs. Berrens, to see if they have any machines we can use to track down the jammer."

"Really," the woman said, with the same cold amusement she'd shown earlier. The Couple took a couch in one corner of the room; Autumn led Veddin to a couch across from them.

The woman continued. "I'm intrigued. Imagine using a machine to locate a source of psi power."

The man chuckled; at least, that's what Veddin took his gagging sound to mean. "Yes, my dear, a machine." He looked at Autumn. "Unfortunately, Drs. Berrens are dead. The shock of separation was too much for them."

Veddin had seen too much death to be shocked; he was more intrigued by the Shaylohs. "What about you two? Why haven't
you
died?"

"Because we are class 9 resonants," the woman began haughtily.

"Not even the most powerful jamming could possibly break our bond," the man ended.

"Can you locate the jammer for us?" Veddin demanded.

"No." The man wheezed. "We can't even transmit to you across the room." His wheeze turned into a sigh. "It hardly seems worth living."

The woman spoke again. "You're isolates, aren't you? That's why you're not affected."

Autumn blushed. "No, we're a Couple, but we had just met each other when the jamming started, so we really didn't get a chance to, well . . ."

"We haven't lost our souls, like everybody else on this planet," Veddin said in disgust.

The Couple stared at Veddin long and hard. "Don't mock us, isolate," the man said.

"You have no idea how great the gift of psi resonance is," the woman said.

Veddin started to lose control of his temper. "But I do know how great the price is, half-creature. Are you even now too blind to see how much you've lost?" Veddin shook his head. "No matter. Tell us, how do we find the Berrens laboratory?"

"I don't know how to explain in words," the man said in anger.

"Then lead us," Veddin demanded.

The man just glared at him. Suddenly Veddin was aware of the time ticking by, while people all over the planet drew closer to death in many hideous ways, and his patience disappeared. With two swift strides he was between the paired ones, and he wrenched them apart. "Tell us," he spat.

The man shrieked; the woman whimpered. "Please," they begged as one.

Autumn started to speak, but Veddin broke her off. "Tell me," he repeated.

"Hemten!" the man choked out. A wide slab of metal rolled around the corner. "Our research robot will show you," he explained.

Still Veddin held the Couple apart while the robot whirred into the room, until they had explained to the robot what was wanted.

"Release them," Autumn begged.

"Of course," Veddin replied, doing so.

Huddled in each other's arms, the Shaylohs glared at Veddin. "On another day, we would have destroyed a barbaric creature who dared to keep us apart," the woman said.

Veddin turned to them with a hot reply, but he took a deep breath and willed himself to remember the warm welcome he'd received in approaching Hydra, and the gentle power of those who had come to Kaylanx to stop the war. "On another day, you would be a noble and generous Couple, and we would be friends."

As they followed the robot down the hall, Veddin noticed Autumn pondering him reflectively. "You were barbaric in there," she said, "but you were right. And, at the end . . . You're not a barbarian." She held out her hand, and they moved together into the room through which the robot disappeared.