Part 11 (2/2)

”Good. Look straight ahead. Follow my finger. Don't turn your head.

Follow my finger as it moves. Right.” Dana's eyes turned as Zed moved one finger up, down, in a circle, and sideways. Zed cupped a hand under Dana's chin. The grip, precursor of pain, made Dana's muscles tighten. Softly, Zed said, ”Did I tell you to get out of bed?”

Dana mumbled, ”No, Zed-ka.”

”Say it clearly.” Dana repeated it. ”Don't get up again until I say that you can. My sister wants you healthy. You understand?”

”Yes, Zed-ka.”

Satisfied, Zed rose. By the crater, Rhani was watching him. Dana spoke from the ground. ”Zed-ka?”

”Yes?”

”Thank you for my music.”

Zed half-smiled, thinking of the challenge Dana had presented to him, and the pleasure his subjugation had been. ”Thank Rhani,” he said. ”She asked me to get them.”

The following morning, Rhani and Zed ate breakfast on the terrace. Below them on the lawn, Timithos was planting vines in the crater, which was now a flower bed. Behind them in the bedroom, Amri was whipping bedsheets about. Cara had had to order her to leave Dana's room to get her work done. She had argued. Rhani tried to picture sunny little Amri arguing, and couldn't. She lifted the bowl and drank her egg broth. ”Zed-ka, how is Dana this morning?”

”Getting better,” said Zed. ”He wants to get up.”

”Should he?”

”Not if he gets dizzy when he stands.” Zed smiled. ”Don't look so gloomy, Rhani-ka; he'll be all right.”

”I was thinking about Amri.”

”What's the matter with Amri?”

He hadn't noticed. Rhani decided that for an astute man, Zed could sometimes be oddly blind. ”She's head over heels in love with Dana.”

”Amri?” Zed raised his eyebrows. ”I shouldn't think she'd ever had a s.e.xual thought in her short life.”

”Not body love. The kind of feeling we used to call spun-cotton love.”

Zed said, ”I wonder what Dana thinks of it.”

”Dana says she reminds him of one of his younger brothers.”

Zed said, ”He's more concussed than I thought, if Amri looks to him like anybody's brother.”

”I think,” said Rhani, ”that he meant his feelings for her are purely affectional.”

”How touching,” said Zed sardonically. He said, to the wall, ”Last night, and the night before, I lay awake wondering what it would be like if you had died. I decided it would make life insupportable. But then, my feelings for you have never been purely affectional.”

”Zed-ka.” She reached for him, across the table. He turned his head. His mouth was a line. Love and desolation mingled in his eyes. ”I have no intention of dying, not for fifty or sixty years. I plan a long life. Last night I, too, lay awake. I was thinking about taking a bodyguard.”

”What do you think?”

”I think you and Officer Tsurada are right.”

Zed smiled. The set look left his face.

”But you know how I feel about privacy. I hate to add a stranger to the household.” She picked up a piece of fruit and used her teeth to sc.r.a.pe the pulp from the rind. ”This morning it occurred to me: I don't have to. I already have a bodyguard.”

Zed looked troubled. ”I can guard you when I'm with you, Rhani-ka, but -- ”.

”I didn't mean you.” She laid the rind on her plate. ”I meant Dana. He saved my life once, and he's going to need something to keep him busy while we're in Abanat. He's obedient, and quick on his feet, and not a fool.”

Zed's forehead wrinkled. ”You sound as if you've made up your mind.”

”Don't you think it's a good idea?” Rhani asked.

He frowned thoughtfully. ”I agree with you, Dana's not a fool, and he's had formal training in several fighting arts. He's got good reflexes; he can fight.” Zed grinned. ”If he's not fighting Skellians.”

”What's that supposed to mean?”

Zed flapped a hand. ”Nothing, Rhani-ka. Have you spoken to Dana about this yet?”

”Not yet.”

”Let me do it.”

”As you wish,” Rhani said. In the garden, Timithos was standing beneath a sprinkler's rain, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g a vine. He looked utterly content. ”This means, of course, that I shall have to take Amri with me.”

”Why?” said Zed. Rhani looked at him, exasperated. ”Zed-ka, you don't listen. She's in love! And even if it's only spun-cotton love, she'll be miserable if she's left here while Dana's in Abanat.”

Zed shook his head, smiling. ”I keep telling you, Rhani; you shouldn't coddle slaves.”

Rhani returned the smile. ”I know, Zed-ka. But though in Amri's eyes I'm probably old and gray and doddering, I don't want her thinking that I don't know how it feels to be in love.”

*Chapter Six*

The Abanat Sea, blue-green and flat as a plate, lay sparkling and glittering in the early morning sun. In the water the great peaks of the icebergs sat; Dana glimpsed them for an instant before the trajectory of the bubblecraft cut them from his sight.

”There,” said Zed, ”there's the landingport.” Dana squinted down. He saw wide stone walkways, the green of trees, the silver ribbons of the movalong system, houses with black solar panels on their roofs. He was glad to see the city. Zed's precise directions and the bubble's display maps had brought him across the Chabadese waste over endless, featureless hills. Glaring light reduced visibility; landmarks were few, and subtle, and they s.h.i.+fted with shadow. He could see why it was dangerous to fly over Chabad at noon. You would end up flying in circles over the same humped hillocks unable to see past them, trapped like a fly in a bottle.

The landing field was clear below him; there was no other traffic. He touched the controls, slowing them to descent speed, and put the bubble into its spiral. This small field, Zed had explained, was maintained by the city for the private use of the Four Families. Before the dust from their descent had settled, the landingport manager was on the field bowing, smiling, and shouting orders to the porters. Rhani spoke with the manager. She looked crisp and cool in blue pants and a blue s.h.i.+rt. Zed leaned against a pylon, bored. The little port smelled of grease and hot metal. At one end of it stood a tall shuttle transport, an IS-cla.s.s s.h.i.+p of the type that ferried pa.s.sengers from the moon.

Dana wondered what it was doing here -- and then he realized that he knew it, had ridden in it: it was Zed's shuttle from the Net. Squinting, he could just make out on its side the design of the Yago ”Y.” He stared at it, aching for the feel of weightless flight and a stars.h.i.+p, even a fusion-drive s.h.i.+p, lifting under his palms.

”Dana!”

Zed's voice sliced through Dana's longing cleanly as a knife. Hurriedly, he joined Rhani as she strode to the gate of the port. The gate had no Cage- field, not even a retinal scanner, but a metal bar and a smiling man sitting in a booth pus.h.i.+ng a b.u.t.ton to lift it. Dana wondered why he looked so happy at his task. The bar lifted. They were outside.

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