Balance of Terror (6 page)

Only when his door slid shut did Moon breathe a sigh of relief. For the first time, she looked down at what she’d taken from the stranger’s hand and saw a series of numbers cut into the rigid plastic. After tucking the gun away, she wiped her right hand down the side of her shirt and hurried down the steps and out of the building.

She wondered if the itch she felt between her shoulder-blades was the intent gaze of someone watching her from one of the building’s windows or if she was just imagining things.

Either way, she had no wish to linger.

Chapter Four

Only when Moon was back in a familiar part of the city did she look for a public terminal. The foot traffic was jostling and irritating but she kept her mouth shut and kept moving. Occasionally, a Security Force vehicle cruised past, barely above walking speed, its optics scanning the crowd. Was it her imagination or did there seem to be more patrols visible over the past few weeks? As if she needed another reminder that it was past time to move on. Moon pulled a scarf from her bag, draped it over her head and slowed her walk.

Once at the terminal, however, she hesitated. What should she say? There was a queue for use of the devices, so she had time to think while she waited. She needed this Gauder character to know that she was serious. Should she leave her habitat details? What if his line was monitored by the Security Force? Then again, Kad had told her he could be trusted and that they’d known each other for years. Presumably, that meant that Kad’s contact was smart enough to stay well out of the Republic’s range of scrutiny.

She shuffled forward and kept her head lowered, aping the general body language of the people around her. Pause, a quick look at the bank of occupied communication units, then she moved forward again. Moments later, another terminal freed up and she hurried up to its panel, tapping out the card’s number with nervous fingers. There was a short period of silence, then she heard the buzz of a line being contacted. Only a primitive beep finally told her that the machine was ready to receive her message.

“Er, this is Satellite Lace,” she finally said, not trusting to use her real name. “We have a mutual friend and I have a business deal from that friend. He says to tell you that it has to do with,” she hesitated, recalling the code-phrase Kad had given her. “It has to do with castle-communicators. You can reach me,” she paused. Should she provide the habitat number, she wondered again? Did she have a choice?

“You can reach me at Awl Twenty-Three, Habitat Sixty-Four Phi,” she said in a rush, “or, or I will be back at this terminal at this hour tomorrow.”

With nothing left to say, Moon abruptly terminated the call. Then headed home.

She wasn’t used to all this cloak-and-dagger stuff, as they used to call it in the ancient days. All she had wanted from life was a comfortable habitat, a Prime Professorship at a prestigious institute, and her name on a research building. At one time, that goal had seemed so achievable. Fast forward a few years and she barely knew what she was going to eat from day to day!

That thought was uppermost in her mind as she headed back to Srin. It was early afternoon and her stomach was rumbling. What a pity the Republic hadn’t done research into alternative food regimes for humans. She was sure that there was an alien species out there that only required food once a week. Surely it wouldn’t have taken them much to come up with some kind of genetic manipulation that would pass the same kind of benefit to humans?

She opened the front door, sniffed and thought that she was imagining things as the aroma of food drifted through the habitat. Entering, she locked the door behind her.

“Srin?”

He rose from behind the kitchen counter. “Moon, you’re back.” The smile on his face was warming, but what was he doing moving around? “You’re a little early but lunch is almost ready. Why don’t you sit down?”

She dropped her bag on the sofa and walked towards the dining table.

“How are you feeling?” she asked carefully.

“Not bad at all,” he replied in a cheery tone. “I completely crashed for a couple of hours, but now I’m feeling much better. As good as someone half my age.”

“I wonder if it’s the result of your new drug mix,” she wondered aloud. “Could excess energy be a side-effect?”

She frowned. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay? Maybe we should take you off it. I don’t like the idea of—”

“Of what?” He held his arms out to his sides. “Being able to function like a normal person again? Being convulsion-free for an entire day? Cooking for the love of my life?”

That caught her attention. “You cooked?” Though, of course, that should have been obvious from the aromas that drifted from the kitchenette.

“Didn’t you know? I used to cook all the time for,” his movements stilled for a moment, then picked up energy again, “for Yalona.”

Yalona was the woman Srin had been bonded to, before his fateful visit to the science labs at Tor when he was a young man.

He smiled brightly at Moon and turned back to the food preparation unit but she wasn’t fooled. Intellectually, Srin knew that he had lost contact with Yalona twenty years ago, when he had been first subjected to memory-wiping drugs in order to keep him compliant and useful to the Republic. But, in his mind, his last clear memory of Yalona appeared to be only months old.

Moon softened her voice. “Srin, would you like to—”

“No!” His reply was sharp, then he gave her a look over his shoulder. He softened his rebuke with a smile and a shrug. “I know what you’re going to say, but what’s to be gained?”

“You could find out what she’s done with her life,” Moon argued. “Maybe even contact her, to let her know you’re okay. If she’s anything like me, I’m sure she still harbours some worry for you.”

“After twenty years, Moon?” He dished out food and served her first, sitting opposite while he poured them some of what passed for the local wine. “I don’t know what the Republic told her. Maybe that I’d been involved in some shuttle accident while on my way back to Tonia III. Maybe that I died when I contracted some exotic virus. Whatever it was, Yalona was fed that excuse a long time ago. I’m sure she’s moved on by now.

“Twenty years,” he mused. “Time to settle down, raise a family, forget about the man she was bonded to when she was barely out of teenagehood.”

“Even if you don’t want to contact her directly, you could still carry out some enquiries,” Moon persisted. “While her memories of you are old, yours of her are still fresh. This may be the only way you have to get some closure.”

“Who says I need closure?” he asked, digging into his food with force. “Who says closure is always necessary?”

Moon reached forward and covered his free hand with one of her own. “Srin, what the Republic did to you was unconscionable, repeatedly violating a sentient being for year upon year. We’re not talking about owning up to jacking a book from your professor’s office, or forgetting about ten credits you might have owed a childhood friend.”

“So you know about that too, do you?” he asked in a bluff tone.

She ignored the poor excuse for a joke. “This isn’t trivial and I wouldn’t suggest it to you if I thought it was. At some point, you’re going to have to confront the consequences of what was done when the Republic lied to the people you loved. It’s the only way you’re going to get any semblance of peace.”

He sighed, turned his hand so he was gripping hers. The pressure on Moon’s fingers was tight, bordering on pain, but she kept quiet.

“I know,” he said. “Everything you’re saying makes sense. But I can’t do it yet, Moon. You’re expecting me to formulate a plan for the rest of my life when I’ve only just re-discovered it? When I’m not sure from day to day whether we’ll be back in Republic hands again? If I’m going to confront what was done to my life, I need to be in a more secure place. I need to be at some point of equilibrium. I don’t want to think about my past life right now because, to be honest, I can’t afford to.” His grip tightened. “And neither can you.”

It was the perfect introduction to what she had been doing for the past several hours and Moon took it. Gently, she disengaged her hand and began eating, filling him in on news in between mouthfuls.

“I went to Gauder’s office but he wasn’t there. I was half-expecting that,” she added quickly, “because Kad warned me that he moves around a lot. (This is delicious, by the way. I think I’ll get you to do all the cooking from now on!) A, um, business associate I met in his building, gave me a contact number and I left a message. Tomorrow, I’ll head back to the public terminal where I logged the message. If we’re lucky, Gauder will leave a message for us.”

“I don’t like it,” Srin remarked. “It all sounds so vague. You don’t know what the guy looks like, you get some mysterious number where all you can do is leave a message, you need to go back tomorrow.”

“It’s not quite as clear-cut as having a pirate shuttle boost 5
g
to get us off Lunar Fifteen in a hurry,” Moon agreed, “but I suppose running away from one’s government is not all rocket blasts and drama.”

“No. I suppose a lot of it is just sitting someplace, wondering who reaches you first.”

They were quiet for many moments after that, concentrating on their meal so they didn’t have to think of other things.

Despite the threat of discovery still hanging over them, Moon watched Srin as he cleared the dishes away and wiped down the counters.

“You still seem to be quite alert,” she finally observed, after they cleared the kitchen. “Are you sure you haven’t even felt the beginnings of a muscular spasm?”

“I’m sure. As I said, your new mix seems to be working. Sure, it knocks me out for an hour when I first take it but then it gets a bit easier to think and move around for the rest of the day. The hyperpyrexia medication that doctor gave you seems to compound the effects though. I feel much more exhausted when I combine those medications. I don’t know, I suppose I’m just muddling through as best I can.”

“If it works so well, you could – theoretically – stay on a regime like this for the rest of your life,” Moon muttered, then she straightened. “But, if you did, I would feel no better a creature than Hen Savic.”

Her voice became brisk. “What we really need is to get you to a top-flight laboratory and have them run you through a cellular analysis. The kind of laboratory,” she grimaced, “that I doubt exists on Marentim.”

Srin seemed to pick up on something in her tone.

“You’re wondering what this Gauder character is going to do, aren’t you?” he asked. “Whether he’ll take us to the rendezvous point or…do something else?”

“I hate having my fate decided by strangers,” she replied, bite in her voice. “It seems to me that the last four years of my life have been nothing but being bounced from one horrible fate to another, without the ability to do anything about it.”

“You rescued us,” Srin objected.

“Well okay,” she conceded, “although we had a lot of help with that.
And
we did a lot of the actual work ourselves.”

“You put your research beyond the Republic’s reach forever, when you detonated those scramble-bombs along all your nets.”

He moved up to her, enfolding her in his arms in a loose grip.

Moon put a hand up to her mouth and choked out a laugh. “Do you remember that? The time to detonation ticking away and Drue stopping us just before we could board the shuttle for Slater’s End? If it wasn’t for that obnoxious Consul Moises throwing her weight around by allowing us to leave, we might be in a maximum-security detention facility right now. Or even on Bliss.”

Srin sobered. “No Moon, I don’t remember that at all.”

Her eyes widened and she lifted a hand to his cheek.

“No you don’t do you,” she whispered. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am. Sorry I had to use that hideous memory-swipe on you again, but we had no choice. We had to get off the planet…you were convulsing…a Republic sweep-team was about to come on board….”

“I don’t regret it,” he answered fiercely, his voice low. “Not for a second. And it doesn’t matter what happens to me, what they do to me, I will always love you, Moon Thadin. You told me that I was attracted to you every two days for all the months we were aboard the
Differential
. You might call it attraction but, to me, it seems more likely that I was falling in love with you. Every two days. It was a compulsion greater than anything the Republic tried throwing at me, a compulsion that needed no artificial means of delivery.”

Tears trickled down Moon’s cheeks. “Oh Srin.”

She rested her head on his chest and felt the reassuring thump of his chest beneath her cheek. A few minutes later, she let herself be led to the bedroom.

This would be the first time. The first time on Marentim. The first time since they’d escaped from Lunar Fifteen. The first time for a Srin who now had recent memories spanning more than one month.

They peeled the clothes reverently off each other, savouring each moment that revealed a slice more of flesh, warm and quivering with want. Srin wasn’t much taller than her, and Moon liked the fact that she didn’t need to stand on tiptoes to kiss him. She admired his stocky build and the hardness of muscle beneath her questing fingers.