Alien's Concubine, The (22 page)

She closed her eyes when he came up
behind her and she felt his hands settle on her arms, pulling her
back against him. She resisted, resting stiffly against him and
fighting the urge to just turn around and burrow against
him.

She wanted to, but she couldn’t
pretend anymore that everything was going to work out all right.
She couldn’t continue to delude herself that he would stay with
her.

Why would he? She was nothing special.
She couldn’t even give him the child he wanted.

And where would they live? How would
they live? She had a good income, but it wasn’t enough for two, and
there weren’t many people in the market for fertility gods, she
thought a little hysterically.

Anka stared down at the top of her
head and the little of her face that he could see, feeling things
he had never felt, pain like nothing else. She was right, he
realized, feeling ill. They could not go on as they had. He had
willfully ignored the possible consequences to her because of his
own desires and because of that he had nearly lost her.

Coldness swept through him as he
recalled how close it had been, how nearly he had failed her
completely. For all his powers, the fight to keep her spirit within
her body had nearly depleted him.

If she remembered, would she despise
him as he despised himself for it?

He did not know, but he did know that
he was not willing to take more risks with her. She was too
fragile, too precious.

There was only one thing that he could
do that might make him worthy of her regard, but he would be
risking all and he was not certain that he could do it.

Regardless, he had to try, but he
could not even do that until he had gained the strength to confront
the task.

He released her after a moment, much
to Gaby’s sorrow/relief. She stood perfectly still where he’d left
her, listening to his tread as he walked away, listening as the
door to her apartment opened and then closed again.

Her shoulders slumped when he’d gone.
“That was easy,” she muttered, swallowing with an effort around the
hard knot of misery in her throat. She stared dully at the shirt
she held in her hands for several moments and finally knelt down
and dragged everything out of her bag again to see what she’d
packed.

* * * *

She’d forgotten how ungodly humid the
place was, Gaby reflected as she wearily climbed down from the
plane on the landing strip. A truck, of the type generally used by
the military, moved off the grass that verged the narrow landing
strip and shot toward the plane. Gaby’s heart clenched
uncomfortably in her chest when she saw the military uniforms and
guns of the men stationed at each of the four corners of the back
of the vehicle. It didn’t settle much even when she recognized the
man seated on the passenger side of the cab.

Mark climbed down when the truck
skidded to a halt that shot dirt and small rocks into the air. “Dr.
LaPlante!” he called by way of greeting as he started toward her.
“Glad to have you back!”

Gaby nodded uncertainly. “It’s good to
be back,” she lied automatically because it seemed appropriate, not
because she really was.

“
The government’s taken a
keen interest in the dig, as you see,” he murmured when he reached
her. “Officially, they’re here to protect us and the site from
looters and/or guerrilla’s who might take the notion that some of
the artifacts could finance their cause.”

Gaby nodded again, averting her gaze
from the soldiers as they leapt down from the truck and hurried to
collect her baggage and stow it in the truck. The implication from
those comments, she realized, was that, unofficially, the
government didn’t trust the Americans not to make off with
something valuable.

She wished that someone had thought to
mention the situation to her before she’d agreed to return,
although she supposed it wouldn’t have changed anything. Her
position wouldn’t have allowed her to make any other decision but
the one she had, but she would’ve liked to have prepared
herself.

Mark helped her into the cab of the
truck and she settled uneasily between the soldier driving and
Mark, who’d taken the window seat. She hoped the show of military
strength didn’t indicate the possibility of snipers, or attack by
rebels, but she didn’t like to pump Mark for that sort of
information within their hearing. Chances were none of them spoke
English, but she’d rather not find out the hard way that they
did.

Instead, as they headed out along the
narrow jungle track, Mark focused the conversation on generalities.
She struggled for a while to keep the polite conversation going but
she wasn’t sorry when Mark finally gave up the effort and she was
allowed to retreat into her thoughts.

Not that they were pleasant by any
means, but the jouncing progress of the four wheel drive along the
horribly pitted road made it pretty impossible to focus on anything
beyond trying to stay in her seat. At that, she could see some work
had been done at improving the track. The first time she’d come the
jungle had encroached so closely upon it that anyone outside the
vehicle ran the risk of being slapped from the vehicle by limbs and
fronds, and that time she’d been picked up by an open jeep. This
truck was far larger, indicating the narrow track had been widened
considerably, and it looked like the pits in the track had been
formed by a good number of similar vehicles where before it had
only been exposed roots and washouts from the rain that had made
riding along it an exercise in torture.

Her first trip had been miserably
uncomfortable and unnerving because she wasn’t accustomed to
sleeping on the ground in a sleeping bag or the sounds of the
jungle at night, and her awareness of the wildlife hadn’t helped
one iota. This trip retained all the same elements but added to
that was the anxiety that they could be attacked by rebels or the
soldiers with them might take it into their head to take advantage
of her since she was completely at their mercy. She tried not to
think about the fact that Mark, who probably didn’t weigh any more
than she did and was only about twenty six, was all that stood
between her and the men. It would be all too easy to gang rape her
and then dispose of both of them and report them as casualties
along the way if they felt the inclination.

She didn’t like the looks she
encountered from time to time. She was acutely conscious of the
fact that men in most countries outside the US, particularly the
predominately Catholic South American countries, viewed American
women as whores because they actually had civil rights. And the
looks and that knowledge together combined to make for sleepless
nights.

The only bright side was that she
couldn’t spare the time to wallow in her misery over Anka, but she
discovered once they reached the dig site that that was no longer
the case.

The military was strongly in evidence
at the site, as well, but the American enclave had nearly doubled
since she’d left and now included a half a dozen more specialists
and their assistants.

Her stomach seemed to take a freefall
when she got her first good look at the city that was emerging from
the mountainside like Atlantis rising from the sea. Dwellings, many
of them almost intact, dotted the landscape around the temple, but
it was the temple itself that commanded attention. The government,
apparently impatient to uncover the treasures of the ancient city,
had sent a significant number of soldiers to add to the work force
removing the bulk of the soil, and even some heavy equipment to
hurry things along.

The team must have been thrilled by
that, Gaby thought wryly, wondering how much of the city the
‘helpers’ had damaged or destroyed in their enthusiasm to dig it
up.

One definite improvement was that the
government had brought in a huge diesel generator and set up
floodlights around the perimeter. Of course it was obvious the
objective was to secure the site from possible looters, but it was
welcome as far as Gaby was concerned nevertheless since the light
and increased round the clock activity was bound to discourage the
local wildlife from wandering into camp.

It still had the look of a prison,
which was unnerving.

Gaby arrived at the site near dusk.
She was disappointed on one level since it meant she couldn’t set
to work right away. On another, she was relieved. The trip had
exhausted her physically and the prospect of a decent night’s sleep
was welcome.

The group gathered for dinner, but Dr.
Sheffield refused to discuss the find that had inspired him to
solicit her participation again. She could see that he, all of
them, were struggling to contain their excitement, but as Dr.
Sheffield pointed out, they wanted her to view it with fresh eyes,
unprejudiced by their own speculation.

They had plenty to talk about that
didn’t pertain directly to the find she’d been sent to investigate.
The carbon dating of the mummy’s wrappings had placed the date of
his burial during the age of the Olmec civilization. The team had
discovered a number of other artifacts that substantiated that
finding, but nothing that pointed to the city having been built by
the Olmecs. The only conclusion that could be drawn from that was
that a rival tribe had arisen to build an impressive civilization
at virtually the same time.

The theory that they were working on
was that the people of the city, which was still unnamed, had been
driven out by the Olmecs, who’d prevailed with their own
civilization until the Toltecs had overrun them.

Gaby couldn’t see that there was
anything to substantiate that theory beyond the fact that it was
already established that the Toltecs had reigned supreme until the
Incas had risen to power. None of the artifacts she was shown
showed any influence from the little known Olmec culture. If the
Olmecs had destroyed the culture that had risen to power with this
city, it seemed logical that they would then have taken over it and
left their own mark on it. Instead, everything seemed to point to
the conclusion that the city had simply been abandoned and that
pointed to some natural disaster not a manmade one—famine or
disease most likely, or maybe both. The city was too high for
flooding to be likely besides the fact that they hadn’t uncovered
sediment that pointed to that. There was also no evidence of
volcanic activity or earthquake.

Everyone at least agreed that there
seemed to be a strong ‘old world’ influence in the art and
architecture of this culture, including Egyptian, but it had
emerged with an individuality that made it difficult to pinpoint
any definitive influence from any single group. And, of course,
nothing had been found, beyond that influence in style, that tied
any of the cultures of the Eastern hemisphere to the
west.

Gaby felt, almost from the moment she
arrived, that eerie sense of being watched that had plagued her
almost from the start of her first visit. It wasn’t inconceivable
that Anka had followed her ‘home’ or even that he’d returned when
she’d sent him away, but she decided she was probably just
imagining it.

There seemed no reason for him to
return. He wasn’t bound to the place, obviously, or even bound to
the body that he’d once occupied. That had been returned to the
country of origin long since.

Scientist or not, disbeliever that
she’d thought she was, she realized that she had ‘accepted’ that
Anka was a ghost. What he actually was, was so completely beyond
the realm of her understanding that it was easier to think of him
as a ghost, something she’d never believed in, or thought she
hadn’t, than what he actually was, an alien being. Even now, she
was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, trying to make
him fit some mold, any mold that was even a little
familiar.

If he had been a ghost, maybe he
would’ve been capable of some of the things he’d done anyway. But
there would’ve been rules that applied, unwritten rules, maybe, but
established behavior patterns that were generally held to be
true.

He would have been tied to this place
because this was where he’d died.

He hadn’t actually died, however,
because he’d never really ‘lived’. Only beings of a biological
nature were bound by the cycle of birth and death. Anka simply
existed. It was almost as hard to fully grasp that concept as the
infinity of the universe, and that had always given her a headache.
Everything had a beginning and end. That was the one law of nature
that mankind held as a universal truth, and no one could wrap their
mind around the concept of infinity.

She couldn’t in any event.

She decided, though, that it was
wishful thinking on her part that made her ‘feel’ Anka’s presence.
He was gone, off to find a willing candidate for his current
project, producing off-spring, she didn’t doubt.

He was amazingly single-minded when he
set out to do something, she thought somewhat irritably. She would
have been much better off if he’d only singled her out because he
enjoyed the fucking. Then she would have had him until he’d grown
bored with it and her and moved on. The procreation thing … well,
that had very definite limitations. Even if she had been able to
accept the ‘new’ Anka, even if she’d gotten used to him looking so
radically different than the man she’d fallen for, time was her
enemy in that little game. He didn’t strike her as a man, or being,
of infinite patience. She doubted he would’ve been satisfied to
wait around months and months before he finally had to accept that
he couldn’t get a child on her.