Gorinthians (60 page)

“
Excusez-moi, êtes-vous
bien?” Sabine asked softly.

The woman stared at her,
trying to focus. “What?” Her voice was rich and melodious, as
inhuman as her beauty.

“
Oh, you are American?”
Sabine asked in barely-accented English.

“
American?” the woman asked
vaguely, still trying to focus. Sabine idly wondered if she was a
junkie. “What is an American?”

“
That answers that
question, I guess,” Sabine said to herself. “My name is Sabine.
What is your name?”

The woman struggled to sit
up, wincing as she did so. “My name is Selindria,” she replied
slowly, looking around at the decaying buildings. “Where am
I?”

“
Rue de Chabrol,” Sabine
answered, watching her closely. The name seemed to mean nothing to
her, so Sabine elaborated. “In Paris, France.”

She still received the blank
look from Selindria. “In Europe.” Sabine stared at her strange eyes
for a moment and a thought occurred to her. “On the planet
Earth.”

The woman was suddenly
standing. Sabine was sure there had been no movement between
sitting and standing. One moment she had been sitting, the next she
was standing. “Earth?” Selindria said disbelievingly. She began
looking around frantically. “Did you see anyone else close by me?”
she asked anxiously. “There may have been a man of my height with
bright, blue eyes?”

Sabine backed up a step so
she did not have to crane her neck to stare up at Selindria. She
had not realized how tall the stranger was when she had been on the
ground. Sabine was tall for a woman, but Selindria towered over her
by a good fifteen millimeters. “No, there was only you,” Sabine
assured her. She was not sure if Selindria was afraid of the man,
or worried for him. “Was he a friend?”

Selindria nodded mutely. She
stared around with an almost hopeless air of someone that had no
idea of where she was, what she was doing or where she was
going.

“
Why don’t you come home
with me for now?” Sabine offered with a tentative smile. “You can
work out what you want to do from there.”

Selindria stared at her,
considering. Her eyes seemed much older than she looked. “Thank
you, Sabine.”

“
We should probably hurry,
though,” Sabine suggested. “I did not mean to come this way. This
is a bad part of the city.”

Selindria just nodded,
looking unconcerned. She wondered if Selindria knew what she meant
when she said bad part of the city. Who knew what things were like
where she was from?

Sabine began leading her
back the way she had come, since the way she had been going was
making less sense the further she went. Most of it did not look
very familiar because she had been watching the black cat instead
of where she was going. She could hear the sound of a church bell
tolling, meaning she was not too far from the restaurant where she
worked. She focused on moving toward the mournful gongs.

“
Excusez-moi,” a man’s
voice suddenly said behind them, “où êtes-vous
allez-vous?”

Sabine turned to see three
rough-looking men approaching quickly from behind. She tugged on
Selindria to try to get her moving faster, but the taller woman
stopped and turned to face the three men.

“
Would you care to repeat
that?” Selindria asked, rather politely Sabine thought.

“
Américain,” the leader of
the three said, “mon favori. You are not bad-looking,
non?”

He began advancing toward
them, with his two companions moving to the side of them. Selindria
just watched him dispassionately as he closed the distance. He
seemed slightly put-off by her obvious lack of concern. He glanced
to either side at his two companions before looking back at
Selindria with an evil grin. His hand shot up to grab a handful of
her hair, at the same time that one of his companions made a grab
at Sabine’s hair. There was a sudden blur where Selindria had been
standing, followed by the sound of sharp cracks. Sabine stared at
the three men laying on the ground around her in amazement. No one
moved that fast. It was impossible, yet the evidence lay in the
street in front of her.

Selindria turned back to her
expectantly, waiting to continue their walk to Sabine’s home as if
nothing had happened. Sabine stared at the three men that had
accosted them; they were all unconscious. Selindria had twisted all
of their elbows backward so they looked as if they were
double-jointed. That had been what the cracking sound had
been.

Giving herself a shake,
Sabine began walking toward Rue du Faubourg Saint Denis in a daze.
“Was that karate?” Sabine felt foolish as soon as the words left
her mouth. If Selindria was not even from this planet, the word
karate would certainly have no meaning to her.

“
We just call it
hand-to-hand combat where I am from,” Selindria explained, as if
she knew what Sabine was thinking.

As they walked, Sabine tried
to watch Selindria without appearing to. Selindria moved
differently than other people, more fluidly. There was a liquid
grace to the way she moved that Sabine had never seen before. There
was also a strong sense of presence radiating from the other woman.
Sabine was certain that she could close her eyes, spin around in a
circle several times and still be able to point straight at
Selindria. The tall, black-garbed woman stood out like a beacon
with all of her oddities put together.

The two of them wound their
way through the maze of streets for another quarter hour before
Sabine finally found the restaurant where she worked. She had lost
her sense of danger after their encounter with the three ruffians.
In truth, she had devoutly hoped they did not run into any trouble
with more of the local inhabitants, knowing full well what the
outcome would be.

“
This is where I work,”
Sabine gestured at the restaurant as they walked past. “We are
famous for our 330-seat belle époque dining room. If you like the
atmosphere of France in the late Nineteenth-Century, you would
enjoy this restaurant.”

Selindria was studying the
cars that were driving down the street with a frown on her
beautiful features. “What are those?”

Sabine looked at a bus
passing them in surprise. “They are called automobiles, or cars for
short.” Sabine watched Selindria gaze at the self-propelled
vehicles in wonder. “How do you move around where you come
from?”

“
We walk,” Selindria
answered distractedly, “or ride a horse. I have been told that we
used to have other modes of transportation, but that was thousands
of years before my time.”

“
How did you get here
then?” Sabine asked curiously. She had just assumed that the other
woman had come from outer space or something.

A haunted look crossed
Selindria’s face for a moment. “There was an accident. I am not
sure what happened.”

Sabine decided not to press
her on it. The subject seemed to upset her. She decided to try from
a different angle. “Do all of the people have eyes like yours where
you come from?”

Selindria turned her head to
stare into Sabine’s eyes with her own lavender, cat-like eyes.
“Only other Zerans; Humans and Talons have eyes like
yours.”

Something about Selindria’s
cat-eyed gaze was disconcerting. Sabine was not sure if it was the
sheer intensity, or if it was the way she walked around obstacles
on the sidewalk while she was looking in the opposite direction. It
was as if she had eyes in the back of her head.

The sun was beginning to set
on the western horizon as they continued down the Rue du Faubourg
Saint Denis toward her apartment on Rue Eugène Varlin. People who
usually ignored everything around them on the busy sidewalk seemed
unable to walk past Selindria without staring at her. Part of it
was her beauty, but Sabine new the main reason was her overwhelming
presence. Sabine had once seen a magnet on the underside of a piece
of paper have the same effect on some metal filings that were on
the top of the paper. The two of them moved through a sea of
swirling heads. All of the attention was beginning to make Sabine
nervous. It was with a great sense of relief that she walked up the
steps to her apartment building and opened the front door. Her
propriétaire, Mme. Blanche, was sweeping off the stairs as the two
of them walked in. She was a widow that was almost as wide as she
was tall. She had a habit of sniffing at people as they walked
past, as if she suspected them of bringing drugs into her
establishment. As Selindria walked past the half-canine
propriétaire, the old woman sniffed at her, then blinked in
surprise, turning to watch her walk past. She wondered what it was
the propriétaire smelled. Sabine was cursed with a permanently
stuffy nose, so she did not smell much.

They moved up the steps to
the second floor and moved down the hall to the door labeled #42.
Sabine felt a tingle run through her skin as she pulled her key out
of her shoe and unlocked her door. Selindria was frowning, peering
up and down the hall.

“
This building only has
eight rooms,” Selindria observed in a puzzled tone. “Why is yours
labeled #42?”

Sabine stared at her tall
companion in surprise. How did she know the building only had eight
rooms? “The propriétaire’s late husband had a sense of humor.
Before he died, he said he discovered the answer to life while he
was in this room, so he named it #42. It’s sort of a pun from a
book he read.” Sabine knew her explanation sounded lame, but she
did not know a way to explain it without getting into a long story.
“If you get bored, I’ll find the book and you can read
it.”

Selindria nodded, following
her into the room. It was a modest studio apartment, with a small
kitchen. There were plants growing in all of the windows, as well
as on all of her small tables. Framed art hung on her whitewashed
walls, mostly oceans with moons and planets hanging beneath them.
Sabine had always been attracted to astronomy, and these pictures
were a perfect representation of places she would want to vacation
if they existed. A two-seated couch sat on one side of the room,
with two cheap, cushioned chairs sitting on the other
side.

Sabine flipped the light
switch and moved over to the refrigerator to find something for the
two of them to eat. The contents of her refrigerator consisted
mostly of take-home meals from the restaurant. “You don’t mind
leftovers, do you?” she asked, pulling out a take-home box
of
Coq au
Vin
and
crème brûlée
.

She turned around to see
Selindria studying the light on the ceiling with a frown. She
reached over and flipped the light switch down, and then up. Sabine
was sure that anyone observing from outside would think a party was
in progress. “How does this work?” Selindria asked curiously. “I
can feel electricity flowing through the walls and into that glass
fitting up there. What causes it to create light like that
though?”

Sabine stared at her for a
moment before answering. “You can feel the electricity moving
through the walls? How?”

Selindria turned to regard
her with those cat-like eyes. “Where I come from, we use what we
call our
yar
to
sense the world around us, as well as affect it to a certain
degree. I have not felt anyone here yet that reaches out
with
yar
. It is
like there is a hard shell that surrounds you, keeping your Spirit
from reaching out. Do you know if there is anyone on this world who
can use their Spirit to sense the world around them?”

Sabine shook her head
slowly, “There are commercials on television about psychics but I
think they are all frauds.”

Sabine turned back to the
oven to start reheating their meal. “The light is caused by the
electricity flowing through a special piece of metal inside the
glass, with some special gas as well. When the electricity flows
through the metal, it excites what are called atoms, which causes
them to release photons, or light.” Sabine laughed. “The only
reason that I know that is because a little boy asked me that once
and I had no idea, so I looked it up.”

Sabine took the food out of
the oven, separated it into two dishes and handed one to Selindria.
“So what are your plans?”

Selindria thanked her for
the food and followed her into the living room where she sat on one
of the cushioned chairs. “There was a man where I came from that
was from this planet,” Selindria explained after she had picked at
her food for a moment. “He was with me during the accident that
brought me here. He ended up on my planet after inventing a device
he called a wormhole while he was trying to discover how to dispel
something called radiation. He said a war had begun just as he and
his partner discovered what their invention did. Since the war
would destroy the world, they decided to go through the wormhole
and ended up on my world.”

Sabine felt her eyebrows
climb. “Someone invented a wormhole? What was his name?”

“
His name is Terrance
Rendrum, but I think he changed his name since arriving on my
planet.”

“
How long ago did he appear
on your planet?” Sabine asked curiously. If they could pinpoint the
time he had disappeared, they might be able to find a news article
regarding a missing scientist.