Chains of Redemption (44 page)

"Don't you understand, Sandra? Everything is pointless; nothing really matters. You help win a battle, and when there's peace . . . You're obsolete and no one needs you. So what have you really done? Nothing."

She sighed, no doubt because she was tired of hearing it, and mostly wanted to hear him say that he'd fallen in love with some ordinary woman and was ready to sit back and hoe the cabbage while she spit out those kids.

Hell, he couldn't stand Sandra's kids; he sure as hell didn't want any of his own.

He took a bath and dressed, then got in his solar powered vehicle with the mind-boggling top end speed of twenty-five miles per hour, and thought it was a good thing they were only ten miles from the Capital. If it had been any further the bronzed hands would have tarnished before he made it to the palace. He flipped some tunes on in the computer and took off. He sang along tunelessly with the music as he drove. For the moment at least, he was just enjoying the fact that he wasn't planting cabbages, and that there might actually be something wrong.

He had a momentary flutter of excitement when he saw the skiff parked outside the palace. Then he sighed.
No sense getting excited, it's most likely a shipment of cloth or some really exciting new fertilizer. If there really is some god living in the generator, please strike me dead right now if Two just wants to share some new agricultural product with me.

He got out of his car and entered the palace without fanfare. He walked right to Taheed's throne room and stopped dead.

"RJ?"

"Hi," she said.

He ran across the room and hugged her as tightly as he could, so glad to see her that he couldn't contain himself. She didn't hug him back, just looked at Taheed and said, "He certainly is a friendly cuss."

RJ looked uncomfortably at the man who held her like she might get away at any minute.

The king coughed, looking embarrassed and said, "He thinks he knows you. Ah, Baldor . . ."

"Baldor?" RJ asked. She looked at the young man and saw her old friend's eyes looking back at her. She smiled. "You're David and Janad's son. He named you after Whitey."

Baldor released her then, stepping back to arm's length. "My gods! You're not her, you're really . . . Well, you."

"You knew?" Taheed asked.

"Yeah, Pete told me." Baldor looked long and hard at her face, no doubt trying to see if she was exactly the same.

Love, that's what she had felt in his embrace. He had loved Kirk. It had felt good to feel love again, even if it hadn't actually been for her.

He looked around her at where Poley and Alan stood and he smiled. "That must be Poley, but this can't be Levits, he would have to be . . ."

"He's dead, and he was human. Alan isn't either." She smiled. "You look so much like your father."

Baldor laughed. "I'm a little darker."

After they'd eaten dinner with the king, Poley and Alan had retired to their quarters and RJ had walked out to the palace gardens. They were even more beautiful than they were when she'd last been there. Of course there'd been all the shooting, bombs, and death then. When she introduced her plants to this world, it would finally really bloom.

She both heard and felt him, so she wasn't too surprised when he started talking.

"So . . . Why did you come here?" Baldor asked from where he'd walked up behind her. "I mean besides to bring us these miracle plants of yours?"

"Truthfully?" she asked turning to face him.

"Yes."

"Because this world was the last place where I was ever truly happy. The last place where I seemed to know just exactly what my role in the universe was."

"Kirk . . . did you . . . is she?" It was obvious what he was trying to ask, by the fact that he was afraid to fully ask the question. He didn't want to hear the answer if it was the wrong one.

She sighed. "We fought, I won, and
no
I didn't kill her. I realized that taking her life away wasn't going to bring mine back. Kirk's halfway to a planet in the Argy quadrant by now, ready to whip a little Argy ass. She seems to know just exactly what she wants to do with her life. If you ask me, I think she just finds peace as boring as I do. I won't lie to you, I really, really wanted to kill her. But when it came right down to it, I just couldn't do it."

Baldor laughed. "She inspires those feelings in people. So, what do these plants of yours do that's so amazing?"

RJ smiled broadly. "Well, they adapt. It's harder than you think."

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four