But after all the shit Mac had just laid on them, she figured she’d be too terrified to fall asleep. Aliens made of pure energy? A starship filled with creatures out to destroy the earth? Hell, she could have just stayed home and watched monster movies if she wanted to scare herself half to death.
Except, in spite of his story, Mac wasn’t a nut. His excitement over the project and his fear felt all too real.
She pulled her head out of the gazillion scary scenarios she’d been formulating and concentrated on what Mac was explaining. How the hell would she ever remember all this stuff?
He handed a headset to her—a fine mesh of silken wires with tiny disks all around. “This one is yours, Rodie.”
She shot him a quick glance. “Do we each have our own?”
Nodding, he turned it so that the light caught the small disks. “Remember all those measurements we took at one of those final meetings? This one is designed to fit perfectly against the various transmission points in your brain. There’s a cap here for each of you in the drawer.” He flipped a little tag on the mesh with Rodie’s name on it as she took it from him.
“This really is amazing.” She lifted the headset and slipped it over her head. It stretched over her hair and then formed itself perfectly to the shape of her skull. Dials on the console suddenly came to life. “Do I have to speak aloud, or does it pick up my thoughts?”
Mac grinned like a kid showing off a new toy, and in a way, Rodie figured that was how he must feel. “Either. If you’re comfortable speaking your thoughts aloud, feel free. There’s no recording device to pick up what you say, though it will all go out via the array, but if you’d rather just imagine stuff, it can grab your thoughts as easily as vocalizations.”
Okay. Even though she’d never heard of technology like that, Rodie figured she’d accept his word, which was just weird, because she’d been doing a lot of that tonight. Generally she was more of a skeptic. Smoothing the netting over her hair, Rodie studied the various LED screens in front of her. “Do I need to do anything with these?”
“No. As I explained, they’re each tied to an individual dish and will be recording any incoming signals. This gauge here will measure your output, as far as the telepathic strength of your personal signal, but that’s merely to let you know if you need to push harder with your thoughts.”
He pointed to a small dial in front of her. The needle hovered at just about two o’clock. “You’ll want to keep your mental signal in the mid-range at least—down around six o’clock. If you’re having a problem with that, let me know and I’ll see what adjustments we need to make. If you feel anything unusual, any contact at all, press that button. It’s a direct link to me.”
He pointed to a red button, larger than the others, within easy reach.
Rodie laughed. “Why do I want to refer to that as a panic button?”
This time Mac chuckled. “You don’t think you’ll panic if you’re sending out sexual fantasies and someone answers?”
The others standing behind her laughed. Rodie’d totally forgotten they were in the room, but she turned and stared at Mac. Shit. She hadn’t thought of that at all. “You believe that’s going to happen, don’t you? That we’re going to make contact.”
Mac leaned against the bank of screens, folded his arms across his chest, and raised one eyebrow as he gazed steadily at her. She felt like squirming in her chair. Of course he believed it. He’d sunk almost sixty million dollars and twenty years of his life into the fucking project.
“Guess that’s kind of a stupid thing to say, huh?” Chagrined, she settled back in the chair.
Smiling, Mac shook his head. “Not stupid at all. To be honest, I’m surprised at how well all of you have taken my story. I hesitated to tell you all the details because I was afraid you’d think I was totally nuts, but I fully expect at least some of you will make contact within the first week. Maybe even tonight.”
With that mind-boggling comment, Mac shoved away from the panel. “You’re on your own, Rodie. I want you to feel free to let your thoughts go in as many kinky sexual directions as you can, and it’ll be a lot easier if you know you’re here by yourself.”
She laughed. “Yep, just me and however many Nyrians are listening in, right?”
“Well, there is that.” He straightened up and looked around the small room, and she wondered what he was thinking. She couldn’t imagine working on a project for twenty years without any guarantees that anything would ever come of it. “Good luck, Rodie. Restroom facilities are in the back and there’s a small refrigerator with cold drinks and bottled water. Granola bars and other snacks in the overhead cabinet. If there’s anything else you’d like to have in here, let me know as soon as you think of it. Meg or Ralph will be making a trip to town at least once a week for supplies.”
He glanced at the others. “Well, I guess that’s it. I’m going back to the lodge. You guys can come with me or take the time to get settled in to your cabins. Cam, you’ll relieve Rodie at midnight, right? Good. Rodie, remember, if you have any problems, questions, anything at all that is not of an emergency nature, that green switch connects directly to the main lodge and to my room. Anything scary, the red switch next to it will bring security. We’ll have someone on duty twenty-four seven—don’t hesitate to use it if you feel at all threatened by anything. And if you want me here without security, any time, day or night, that large red button I showed you will light a fire under my butt. I’ll come immediately.”
Then he leaned over and kissed her. His lips were soft and warm, the contact terribly brief, but Rodie felt the connection all the way to her toes. Before she could think about responding, he’d ended the kiss and pulled away. “Thank you, Rodie. I know you’re here with your mind wide open and more questions than answers, but I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciate what you ...” He glanced up at the others in the room. “What all of you have committed to. This project means more to me than anyone can possibly comprehend.”
He turned away, but paused once again. With his hand on the door he added, “But I promise you, if this works the way I expect it to, it won’t be long before all of you understand why I’ve devoted my life to this. I promise you that you will believe, every bit as strongly as I do.”
He held the door as the others filed out. Then he closed it behind him. It took Rodie a moment to gather her thoughts, to turn around in her comfortable seat, and get past the sense that she’d just spoken aloud to a man who was communicating on more than one level. Her mind had picked up something beyond his words, a longing that went beyond pain.
Needs, memories, and a sense of loss that left her shaken and wondering what she’d just missed. His comments had been so positive, so filled with hope, but there was more going on than she’d realized. He’d admitted to a sexual relationship with Zianne, but she hadn’t really thought about the implications. Had Zianne been more than just a partner? Did he love her?
Could a human fall in love with a creature from another world? If so, she and the other members of Mac’s dream team were part of what could end tragically for Mac, should they not succeed in rescuing his Nyrians or the woman he loved.
And that was only one of her concerns. If what he’d told them was true, this was more than a search for extraterrestrials. This was an opening salvo against an alien race out to rape and pillage their world.
If they rescued the Nyrians, they were essentially stealing the power supply to an alien starship. Would the ship crash if the Nyrians left it? Could this get any more bizarre? She wondered about Mac’s hidden thoughts, the way he seemed to carry an extra layer of something around the stuff he was projecting.
Was she getting better at reading his thoughts, or was this silken net linking her to the array somehow strengthening her abilities? She leaned back and stared at the stars through the skylight overhead. Crap, how the hell was she supposed to fantasize when there was so much going on inside her head?
A crystal-clear tempered glass dome covered a large part of the roof of the dream shack. She stared through the glass, at the stars spread across the sky like diamonds scattered over black velvet, and tried to settle her mind. Mesmerized by the beauty, still a bit unsettled by the connection she’d felt with Mac, and more than a little bit overwhelmed by the events of the past day—including the link she still felt with Morgan—Rodie set her thoughts free.
Images of Mac were quickly supplanted by a likeness of Morgan Black. She brought back the sensation of his mental caresses on the way up the mountain today and took them a few steps farther.
If there were any aliens listening in, she fully intended to give them something to think about.
Mac walked slowly across the yard to the lodge. The others had headed back to their cabins to finish unpacking and most likely to think about what he’d told them tonight. They probably wanted to make up their minds whether or not he was a total psych case.
He didn’t blame them. There had been times over the past twenty years when he’d wondered the same thing, but memories of Zianne kept him going. Memories and a love that seemed to grow stronger over the years. It hadn’t faded in the least.
He stared at the huge log structure that he’d had built before anything else. It had housed his workmen over the years and provided a place to stay when he wanted to be on site during construction. Some nights it had rocked with loud parties, too much drinking, and more testosterone and bad jokes than was probably healthy, but those days had ended just a week ago when the final work had been completed.
Now the lodge was quiet. A few lights illuminated the main room downstairs, but he’d head up to his apartment in a few minutes and hope like hell he could get a decent night’s sleep. He was exhausted from the long drive and the emotions that had been all over the map these past few days, not to mention the night he’d spent with Dink.
Sighing, Mac realized he was grinning, that his mood had lifted immeasurably with merely the thought of his old friend. The fact that Dink had flown all the way from New York to California so Mac wouldn’t have to be alone last night—now that was proof of friendship.
And, if he was perfectly honest, it was proof of Dink’s love as well. Mac had always known Dink loved him. What he hadn’t realized until last night was how much he loved the guy back.
That love would keep him going until he finally contacted Zianne. Dink understood. He’d been there in the very beginning. Had known exactly how it was between Mac and his amazing woman.
He’d shared laughter and love. He knew Zianne. Knew her as a warm and brilliant woman, as the perfect mate for Mac. Just knowing there was someone out there who understood how he felt was more important than Mac had realized. It was the one thing that had given him the strength to bare his soul to the kids tonight.
Kids. He had to stop thinking of them as kids, but they seemed so damned young, while he felt old as the hills. Would Zianne even recognize him, the way he’d aged?
Hell. One more thing to worry about. He was such a fool.
The air had grown cool. Mac gazed at the quiet lodge and then paused near the front steps and stared at the night sky. It was so clear and beautiful up here at elevation. The stars glistened like bits of white fire sparkling with life, filled with promise. The scents of pine and sage and sun-warmed rocks filled his senses, and he could almost imagine Zianne standing beside him, looking up at the sky and talking about a future neither one of them had been sure of.
Damn, but he missed her. Missed her amazing mind, her sense of humor, the way she understood who and what he was, what made him tick. She’d known him inside and out, quite literally, and he shivered, remembering the time she’d become pure energy and had melded her body to his.
He could still feel the crackling energy, the sense of connection as she found a place within his bones and muscles, within his very cells, a living mass of energy with a heart and a soul. He thought of her the one time he’d brought her up here, before the ink had even dried on the papers giving him ownership of this thousand acres of land.
They’d stood here together, just the two of them holding hands and staring at the same sky. It had been late afternoon, maybe a week before she’d disappeared. Over the past few weeks, she’d been worried about getting caught, about not making it back to him. She’d said they needed a plan, something she could hold on to if they were ever separated.
He hadn’t told her he’d already been working on it, that he’d found a piece of property that would be perfect, so he’d brought her up here to look at the land. They’d driven most of the day and she’d loved the trip, the chance to see more of the earth outside of Silicon Valley.
They’d stood in the same spot where he’d eventually built the lodge, holding hands and staring at the rocks and sand and scraggly Jeffrey pines. Zianne had raised her eyes to the heavens. She’d gazed at the sky as the sun slipped behind the mountain and he could still remember the way she’d sighed.
When she’d turned back to him, her eyes had glistened like amethysts. There’d been tears on her cheeks and a smile on those beautiful lips. She’d spoken in his mind, the words as intimate as a kiss.
You’ll do it, Mac. I know you will. You’ll save us all.
God damn, but he hoped she was right.
She should be at her ship now. He tried to imagine what was happening at this moment. He’d known for the past twenty years that she must have been caught or she would have returned, and yet now, on this date, maybe at this very hour, she would be arriving aboard the ship.
Whatever had prevented her return twenty years ago was happening now, possibly at this very second. His heart ached. He worried for Zianne’s safety; he feared for her life should the Gar capture her and choose to make an example of her.
Even worse, he hoped like hell the Gar hadn’t decided to head to another solar system, but he doubted that. This planet was too ripe for the picking, too vulnerable to an attack from space, but if Zianne had returned to find the ship gone, she could be dead. Without her soulstone, he knew she couldn’t survive for long. But if the Gar had gone, somehow she would have returned to Mac, wouldn’t she?