“You can take the bed,” he said, his voice soft in the silence. “I’ll make do on the lounge.”
“It’s your bed and your room,” I answered, moving my head around on my arm. “I’m fine where I am.”
He came over and sat down on the floor near me before he spoke again.
“Diana, we’re not barbarians here,” he murmured. “You don’t have to sleep on the floor.” When I didn’t say anything he put his hand on my arm and added, “You’re not wearing anything, and you feel cold. Take the bed and don’t worry about what will happen. I gave you my word that Phalsyn won’t give you trouble, and I’ll see that my word is kept.”
“How nice that you can speak for Phalsyn,” I murmured back. “Where I come from, bigwigs usually speak for themselves.”
“I’m speaking only for me,” he said, anger in his voice as he pulled me closer to him. “I couldn’t keep you from being hurt on Tildor, but this base is another story.”
I couldn’t see his features in the darkness, but his hand was warm on my arm. I was far away from the area of space I considered home, and there was only me against a group of very determined strangers. I still had no real idea what they were determined about, but it has been my experience that some of the nicest people you’d want to know are often ruled by the most ruthless of governments. If you deal just with the people themselves you’re all right, but if you happen to tangle with their government, it isn’t wise to plan on being home for the holidays. I felt his warm hand on my arm and didn’t say any of that.
“I know how you must feel,” he said softly, drawing me up against him. “But you’re not really alone. I’m here, too.” His hand caressed my hair and moved farther down to my back. “I saved you from that fever on Tildor, and now I feel responsible for you. You don’t think I tended you just to turn you over to Phalsyn for dissection or something, do you? Besides, Phalsyn isn’t so old that he wouldn’t be more interested in your outsides than your insides. You have mighty attractive outsides.”
I leaned my head on his chest, and couldn’t help grinning while my eyes blinked.
“You’re not so bad yourself,” I whispered, really feeling his presence for the first time. “Don’t go away for a while.”
He didn’t go away, and for a lot longer than a while. Neither one of us slept in the bed, and the lounge was ignored, too. I still don’t know how they manage to produce tiles that are so warm and resilient.
It’s just a good thing they do.
The next day Val refused to let me sit around in his room. He dragged me to the refectory against my will, and then had the nerve to say mixing with other people would he good for me. When he left our table for a minute to speak privately with someone, I casually leaned over to the next table and asked the people there if they’d heard anything about the rumor that the base was slowly losing air from an unidentified breach. They hadn’t heard a thing, but by the time those particular people had left, everyone else in the room had heard about it. Val looked around at the buzzing knots of conversation, and wondered what was going on.
After we were through eating, Val stopped in to see Dameron, and I waited in Nelixan’s office. She’d always been too uncertain to try Val, and was curious to know if I had. She listened carefully to my evaluation of him with a big grin, and when Val came in she looked at him with a good deal of interest.
“All set,” Val said to me as he came up. “Dameron thinks that Phalsyn will be here in the next couple of days, so we have some interim time to waste. Is there something in particular you’d like to do?”
“Ah, Valdon,” Nelixan interrupted in a very warm voice. “I have no plans at all for my off hours. Why don’t you and I spend them together – in my room?”
“In your room?” Val repeated blankly, staring at her. “What would we do in your room?”
“Oh, I’m sure we could find something.” She grinned, and Val finally understood what she was talking about.
“What brought this on?” he asked, curiosity in the dark gaze he sent to her. “I always had the impression I wasn’t your type.”
“I thought you weren’t, but in the light of the latest reports, I’ve had to change my mind,” she answered, still grinning. “How about it?”
“Sorry, Nelixan, but I’ll be busy,” he said with a growl, turning to give me that look again. “I have a date to strangle someone.”
“What did I do?” I demanded plaintively. “I’ve been sitting here quietly, not even thinking about my…”
“Sitting there quietly?” he exploded, taking a step toward me. “You consider discussing me sitting there quietly?”
“Why not?” I shrugged. “Are you ashamed of your abilities?”
The look in his eyes darkened as he stared at me, but he couldn’t seem to think of an answer to that one.
“It’s hard to remember that some men are shy about such things,”
Nelixan said with a laugh. “Maybe we shouldn’t have mentioned it to him.”
“I’ll remember that for next time,” I said, which for some reason forced a wordless growl from’ him. He grabbed me by the neck, pushed me out into the corridor, then directed me by hand to the solar room.
We sat in artificial sunshine for a couple of hours without talking, and he made sure I stayed away from anyone else who came in. I sat back and relaxed completely, and made sure that no sign showed of the grin I should have sported.
I had almost decided to take off the ship’s suit when someone came over saying that Dameron was looking for Val and me. We went back to Dameron’s office, noticing the knots of excitedly whispering people on the way, and were gestured right in. I had on my most innocent of expressions, and Val was genuinely in the dark, but Dameron didn’t leave him there for long. The rumor about the base’s “air loss” had finally reached the base commander, and though no one could actually trace it back to me, Dameron had no doubts. He must have ranted and yelled for an hour, but Val got the brunt of it. Val had been made responsible for me, so anything I did was his fault, and Dameron kept repeating the point so it wouldn’t be lost on Val. Val caught on real quick, and spent most Of his time just looking at me. After a few minutes, I wanted to scrunch down in my seat.
When the tirade was finally over, Val rose from his chair without a word and stood next to the open door, waiting for me to go through first. I wasn’t sure about trusting him behind my back, but I didn’t have much choice in the matter. He followed me down the corridor and back to his room, and we spent the rest of the day with Val staring straight at me, not saying a single word. Our food was delivered by cart again, and no one came to call.
By the time I was ready to call it a day, I still hadn’t heard anything from tall, dark and awesome, but I was too sleepy to still be bothered by it. I hadn’t had much sleep the night before, and the safe passage of time tends to wear off most sharp edges. I used the facilities to wash as best I could-I hadn’t found any equivalent of a shower or bath then got out of the ship’s Suit and into bed. Val was still staring at me, but I discovered that his stare was on a different level, so I smiled to myself as I got comfortable, wondering if he would forgive me enough to join me in bed. The chances were still 50-50 when he went into the bathroom, but the scales tipped all the way in my favor once he came out. He got into bed next to me, waved the light out, then pulled me to him.
“I thought you were mad at me,” I said with a small laugh, rubbing my cheek on his chest.
“No, I was more disgusted with me,” he murmured, already touching me with hands and lips. “It was my own fault for taking my eyes off you.
It won’t happen again.”
After that we were too preoccupied to say anything else, but I clearly remember laughing at what he’d said. I hadn’t yet learned he was a man of his word.
The next two days started off badly and got steadily worse. When Val had said he would not take his eyes off me again, he hadn’t been kidding. We went to the refectory to eat once. All I did was wonder aloud what the Tildorian barbarians could have put in their herb mixture that was able to get around base inoculations, and pow! Right back to that crummy room. And I hadn’t even had the chance to suggest it might be something contagious! We stayed in the room every minute of the two base days and nights, having our meals delivered to us, with no one being allowed to listen or talk to me. I considered getting violent, decided that that would be stupid, then tried it anyway. Even with the limited number of non-lethal things I could do Val ended up bruised, but I ended up flat on the floor, face down, with him sitting on top of me. He refused to let me up unless I gave my word not to make any more trouble, but I’m not often that easy to convince; we stayed that way a ridiculously long time before the delivery of our next meal broke it up. I hadn’t given my word, but I needed some help in standing up.
By the time the confinement was over I was nearly insane. Val had ignored all the frozen silence coming from me, and had calmly chattered away almost without stop. I was bored to the point of wanting to start a fight just for something to do, but he refused to argue and I was in no mood to spend more time being mashed into the floor. I flatly refused to be friendly in bed, but that didn’t bother him either. He just laughed and said he could wait.
When we were finally escorted over to Dameron’s office, I was as far from feeling diplomatic as you can get. Dameron was nowhere in sight, but a man sat relaxing in the blocky terminal chair, and I studied him openly. He was a lean, well-preserved man in his apparent sixties, wearing a base uniform in yellow with no insignia, and he had gray hair and sharp, intelligent gray eyes. He moved his head to inspect me as Val and I took seats, but there wasn’t a word out of him. I returned the appraising look and just waited, but he kept up the silent treatment for longer than was wise with me just then, so I decided to make the first move.
I finally asked slowly and clearly, as if he might be hard of hearing or well into senility. Val made an exasperated sound, but Phalsyn just laughed.
“I see why Dameron was so impressed with you,” he said pleasantly.
“Many people in your position would be apprehensive, if not downright frightened. I applaud your self-possession.”
“Thanks,” I answered, not joining his amusement. “Where I come from, people don’t think I’m bright enough to be frightened. Situations have to be spelled out for me. Is there a reason for me to be frightened?”
“Not at all,” he assured me, leaning forward to emphasize his words.
“On the contrary, we have every reason to be grateful to you.”
“Grateful,” I repeated. “For barging in and disrupting one of your outposts?”
“Of course not,” he smiled. “We’re grateful for the help you supplied on Tildor. The planet is of special concern to us, and we like having things go smoothly there. If our assistance comes too noticeable, we may never get to the bottom of the Paldovar Villages question.”
“You probably never will anyway,” I commented. “I had a taste of their methods, and I couldn’t even guess about how they do it.”
“That’s almost our problem,” he agreed with a grimace. “Our people have had more than one taste, are willing to speculate endlessly as to the how of it, but the speculation is useless. We want to know, but precipitous action won’t gain us the knowledge.” Then he flashed a quick grin. “Perhaps a fresh outlook is what’s needed. When you return to us, you may well find yourself back on Tudor.”
“I can live without the honor,” I assured him. “Am I supposed to notice that ‘when you return to us’ phrase, or ignore it and go on discussing Tildor?”
“Notice it, by all means,” he laughed, leaning back in his chair.
“It’s the introduction into the second reason as to why we’re so pleased to have you here. We’ve been hoping for a go-between for some time now.”
“And since I’m anything but a private citizen, I’m it,” I summed up.
“I can understand your pleasure, but I can’t understand why you neglected to mention it. It would have made the last few days slightly more enjoyable.”
“Call it-an experiment,” he said with something of a smile behind his eyes. “We still don’t know as much about your people as we would like to, and it was an opportunity for observing you. For someone who handled a weapon on Tildor with such lack of concern, you showed remarkable restraint with our base people. It’s an encouraging sign.”
“That’s me,” I muttered, remembering what I’d gone through the last few days. “Encouraging. We’re all lucky I happen to be fond of certain of your base personnel. I take it the proposed partnership now has official approval?”
“It certainly does.” Phalsyn smiled, picking up a cube marking rod to play with. “It’s an excellent chance for one of our people to look around your Federation without causing a stir. When the two of you return here, you’ll have a similar opportunity to study our Confederacy. That combined with the formal talks should go far toward establishing an atmosphere for friendly negotiation.”
A previously unnoticed tension seemed to have melted Out of me by then, so I was able to get more comfortable in my lump chair.
“Formal talks,” I mused. “You sound as though you have something specific in mind.”
“Something very specific,” he nodded. “We would like to have a delegation of your people meet with a delegation of ours-in our sector of space. Do you think they’d be willing to agree to that?”
“I have no idea,” I answered honestly. “It all depends on how they take the news of your existence. The only thing I can suggest is that the approach to my government be made through the chief of my department. He has some fairly intelligent contacts who might be able to keep the flap down to a minimum.”
Phalsyn considered that for a minute, and then nodded again. “Very well. It would be foolish not to take your advice on the matter. I’ll supply you with a set of coordinates and a date far enough in advance so that there will be ample time for adjustment to the situation.” he hesitated very briefly, looked at me with casual friendliness, then began, “About the report you’ll be making to your people…”
I laughed. I threw my head back and laughed with more sheer enjoyment than I’d felt in too long a time. When I finally ran down, Phalsyn smiled politely.