“Spouse?”
“Oh, I guess that’s a concept you’ve never heard of either, huh? Let me see…well, when two humans get together and decide they love each other—”
“Love?” K interrupted him.
Boone ran a hand over his face. Great, they were going to have to start at the very beginning. K might speak Standard but she was completely ignorant when it came to emotions.
“Okay,” he said carefully. “When you love someone, you want to be with them all the time, touch them, hug them, kiss them—”
“The way you touch me?”
“Well, not exactly.” Boone got out of the rocker and started pacing. “I touch you because if I don’t, you’ll get sick.”
“So you touch me but you don’t love me.”
“No, absolutely not.” Boone tried to laugh but it came out as a cough instead. He thought of saying, I’m getting sort of fond of you in a weird kind of way. But then he would have to explain the concept of fondness and love was already proving difficult enough. And besides, he shouldn’t allow himself to feel anything at all for K. She was still the enemy and she had sworn to kill him. He would do well to remember that. “No,” he said again firmly. “No, I don’t love you.”
“All right.” She nodded. “So loving is when you want to contaminate—I mean touch someone. Is that correct?”
“It is but only partly. Physical affection—touching—is only one part of love,” Boone explained. “Loving someone means putting their needs ahead of your own. Thinking of them first. Caring about what they want and need, listening to their hopes and dreams. Helping them if they get sick or hurt.”
K looked confused. “But you helped me when my stomach went wrong.”
“Yes, but I was just doing what any decent guy would do—helping someone in need. Wouldn’t you do the same thing?”
“If I saw an enemy that was incapacitated I would exploit his weakness—that is how Paladins are trained,” K said thoughtfully. “However I might react differently if it was you. Since I have sworn not to kill you yet.”
“Gee, that’s so sweet. Thanks, darlin’,” Boone said dryly. “But I think we’re getting off the subject. The point is, you killed someone very dear to Loki. Erians need someone to touch so the bond they have with their partner or spouse or whatever you want to call it, is very strong. He cared a great deal for the man your squad shot down and he’s holding you personally responsible.”
“You and your crew killed all of my squad,” K pointed out.
“Yes, we did.” Boone thought of telling her that the pilot had gotten away and decided not to. No point in giving her false hope of escape.
“Yet I am not angry with you. In a combat situation some casualties are always to be expected.” She shrugged, obviously unconcerned.
Boone felt cold. “You really felt so little for them?”
K gave him a level look. “Why does that bother you? I felt almost nothing at all until you took my suit. Now I can’t seem to stop feeling.”
He shook his head. “That damn suit really did a number on you, darlin’. Just think about it—you flew with your squad for how long?”
“Three solar years. I do miss their companionship.” K sounded thoughtful. “They were a good crew—even Six, though he had too many inappropriate feelings.”
Boone arched an eyebrow at her. “A Paladin with feelings? How so?”
“Even Paladins have emotions but we’re trained to crush them and release them to Purity. When our eyes are completely black then our emotions are completely purged.”
“So this Six guy, he couldn’t, uh, crush his emotions?”
“He seemed to struggle with it. He felt for me, I believe.” K frowned. “He actually tried to touch me before we came aboard your ship.” She looked up at Boone. “I still don’t understand how you managed to overcome us and get away. Your ship should have been completely incapacitated—we made a huge hole in it with out pneumodrill.”
“False hull,” Boone explained. “We filled the space between the fake and the real with stun gas capsules. The idea was to put you out and just take one of you. We didn’t count on you getting over the gas so fast.”
“The suit filters and diminishes any and all air born poisons and pathogens,” K explained. “But stun gas…at least that explains why I can’t remember any of what happened.”
“You fought like a tiger,” Boone assured her. “If you hadn’t gotten that nick in your femoral artery and lost consciousness we probably would have had to kill you too.” He smiled. “But I’m glad we didn’t.”
K looked away. “It would have been much better for me if you had.”
“Well we didn’t.” Boone spoke as lightly as he could. “So it looks like you’re stuck here for awhile. Which brings us back to the question of what you can do since you don’t want to sleep anymore.”
“What do you do?” K looked at him curiously.
“Research, mainly. I’m a physician but I’ve also got a degree in genetics. Right now I’m working on a project to map all the different genomes of the various species of humans in the Prometheus system. We’ve all been changed, you know—by the planets we chose to colonize. That’s what I was doing, until my little sister got taken.” Grief and guilt overwhelmed him for a moment but he forced himself to push them away. “Anyway, I can’t do much out here—the equipment I was able to bring is all pretty rudimentary. But I try to keep up with my notes and add anything new I can find.”
“Could I help you with that?” K asked gravely.
Boone smiled. “Thanks for the offer but no, it’s a little too technical, I’m afraid. Unless your third area of expertise is xeno-genetics.”
She frowned. “I am afraid not.”
“You could give me a sample though,” Boone said. “Athena is the one planet I haven’t been able to get genetic specimens from. It’s a closed world.”
“We prefer to keep to ourselves to preserve our Purity,” K said stiffly. “What exactly would giving you a sample entail?”
Boone shrugged. “A few drops of blood and a swab of the inside of your cheek. Epithelial cells tell a lot.”
“Well, if that’s all I don’t mind.”
“Great.” Boone went across the room to his makeshift desk and grabbed some equipment. K didn’t flinch when he pricked her finger and she opened her mouth obligingly for the sani-swab. “This is good,” Boone told her as he finished up. “I’ll be able to give you a little more information about your own DNA too. We can find out if you’re all Erian or if the Purists mixed something else into the baby batter too.”
K frowned. “Baby batter? No, never mind,” she said as Boone was opening his mouth to explain. “Why didn’t you simply take your samples when I was incapacitated—before I first woke up?”
“It didn’t occur to me then. I was trying too hard to save your life.” He grinned at her. “You know how long it’s been since I had to do any kind of emergency surgery? It took me back to my resident days.”
K raised an eyebrow. “And now that you’ve saved my life you plan on killing me with boredom?”
“Oh right, what to do with you…” Boone’s eyes traveled around the room looking for inspiration. Suddenly they lit on something and he had an idea. “Here,” he said, going back to his desk and grabbing a small square box that fit easily into his palm.
“What’s that?” K looked doubtfully at the cube in his hands.
“My little sister’s old reader.” Boone pressed a button on one side and a holographic screen sprang to life from inside the cube. “It’s kind of old fashioned,” he said apologetically. “It only holds about five thousand books and most of these are classics from Earth-that-was.” He felt a lump in his throat and swallowed it. “She…it was what Shayla was getting her degree in. Old Earth literature.”
“I can see that you feel for your sister,” K said neutrally. “But do you really expect me to read to pass the time?”
“Sure, why not? You can read
what we read and study—that’ll give you an insight into my culture.”
She raised an eyebrow. “And why would I want that?”
“You have to know your enemy to effectively exploit their weaknesses, right? Besides, it’s easier on your stomach and your stitches than lifting more weights.” Boone shook his head. “Still don’t know what I was thinking letting you do that.”
“I was thinking that I needed to stay strong,” K remarked. “I am used to doing a two hour fitness routine daily. I would not like to lose my physical agility just because I find myself your prisoner.”
Boone sighed. “I’ll make you a deal—you can work out two hours for every book you read. That’ll exercise your mind and your body.”
She nodded at the holo-screen. “How do you know that I’ll actually read the books?”
Boone grinned at her. “Besides the fact that you’re too honorable to lie? You can give me a mini book report on each one. Tell me what it’s about—the plot, the characters and their motivations. That kind of thing.”
K frowned. “It sounds tedious.”
“Reading? No way, darlin’. A good book can really take you out of yourself—make you explore new worlds and ideas. Haven’t you ever read anything that did that for you before?”
“I have never read for pleasure, no. Most of my reading was studying technical manuals and strategy guides.”
Boone made a face. “Okay, now that’s tedious. I think maybe you’ll find you like this kind of reading more if you can just let yourself get into it.” He nodded at the cube still in her hand. “Get to it. I’m going to do a little research, starting with your sample.”
“All right,” K said grudgingly. “Can I sit in the swaying chair while I read?”
He frowned. “The swaying chair?”
“The one you held me in after I, uh, threw up.”
“Oh, you mean the rocking chair.” Boone laughed. “Sure, darlin’, go ahead. If you need any help with the controls on the reader just let me know.”
K frowned at the small device. “They appear to be exceedingly simple. I don’t think I’ll have a problem.”
“Good.” She had turned to go but Boone put his hand on her arm to stop her. “One more thing, K.”
“Yes?” She looked up from the reader and met his eyes.
“If—no—when you need to be touched, come tell me. I tend to get wrapped up in my work and I don’t want you suffering because I’m too absorbed in what I’m doing to notice. Okay?”
For a moment he thought she would refuse him outright but finally, after a long pause, she nodded. “I’ll…consider it.”
Boone sighed. “I guess that’s the best I’m going to get from you, huh?”
K just looked at him.
“Okay, then, it’s your choice.” It didn’t make him happy but he couldn’t make her tell him when she was hurting. He would just have to check on her every hour or so and see how she was getting along. “Just don’t blame me if you’re in pain,” he told her.
K raised her chin. “I would rather endure pain than shame.”
“There’s no shame in getting what you need to keep from hurting, K,” Boone said quietly.
“There is when what I need is something I was taught to avoid my entire life. Something my own people would kill me for if they knew.”
“They don’t have to know,” he reminded her.
“It doesn’t matter. I know.”
Boone didn’t have an answer for that. K held his gaze for a long moment of silence and then went to settle herself in the chair with the reader. He sighed to himself and went back to his desk to study her samples.
For the first time he wondered at the innate cruelty of the geneticist who had mixed her DNA. How could anyone be so pitiless as to engineer a being who craved human touch and then allow them to be raised in a society that completely forbid it?
Chapter Seven
The days fell into a kind of pattern for K. She woke in the morning with Boone’s arms around her, got dressed as she waited for him to shower, and then cleaned her teeth with the sonic wand he'd provided since she had no suit to help her clean them. Then she went with him to the mess hall. There she would help him make breakfast if it was his turn for kitchen duty or simply sit and chat with Mom if she was doing the cooking.
She was still trying new foods though she hadn’t wanted to at first. With some help from Boone she had managed to get the simulator to make a thick, bland shake that tasted like the nutrition drinks she was used to but it gave her no energy at all. So, very reluctantly, K allowed herself to be “gastronomically educated,” as Boone called it. He was careful to make foods that wouldn’t upset her stomach but K still found the smell of bacon, pancakes, and eggs nauseating. Especially eggs—which, of course, were all Loki would make when it was his turn to cook.
Aside from the eggs, Loki had nothing to say to her and K said nothing to him either. She understood why the man hated her though it still seemed that he was carrying the emotion to the extreme. Still, one couldn’t expect an Erian to be rational. (She still didn’t think of herself as such although she had accepted that she had at least some Erian DNA.)
Regarding Loki, K decided it was better to maintain silence than get into a “pissing match” as Boone called it. She often wondered, though, if the flamboyant Erian really did know something about her biology that might impact her in the future. If so, he would probably rather die than tell her and since K would rather die than ask, they didn’t talk at all.
After breakfast she and Boone would spend some time in his quarters because by then, K generally needed to be touched again. Her need to be contaminated—to feel his skin against hers—continued to irritate her but there was nothing she could do about it. Since she refused to tell him when the touch-cravings were coming on, Boone made a point of spending at least fifteen minutes every hour or so holding her or making some kind of skin-to-skin contact. At K’s insistence they tried simply holding hands or having his hand on her arm but it wasn’t enough. Eventually they worked out that if Boone took off his shirt and she took off hers and sat in his lap with her back to his chest, they made enough contact to back off her cravings.
During what Boone called their “time-outs” K felt small and helpless. She who had once been so strong and self-sufficient was now flawed and weak. She needed Boone’s touch like a drug and if she didn’t get it she went into withdrawal. It made her despise herself—especially when she found she was looking forward to sitting in his lap rather than dreading it.
Boone was the enemy—the man who had ruined her life and condemned her to death—if she could ever find her suit and purge herself. But somehow K forgot that when she was leaning back against him and listening to him murmur something inconsequential and charming in her ear in that deep, drawling voice of his. Her new feelings made her angry at herself and then she felt guilty for being angry and having any emotions at all. It seemed to be an unbreakable cycle and Boone had started it but somehow she couldn’t hate him like she should.
Possibly the source of her traitorous emotions was the fact that Boone was the only reason she found the position she was in even remotely bearable. Despite the fact that the time-outs interrupted his schedule on an almost hourly basis, he was never impatient or angry with her. Though she sometimes sensed his frustration when she was being stubborn, he never raised his voice or lost his temper. Not that she would have cared if he had, K told herself. Emotions meant nothing to her. Just because she was having more and more of them didn’t mean she had to give in to what she was feeling. Still, she couldn’t help the relief that washed over her when Boone cradled her in his arms and drove away the pain of the touch-cravings or the sadness she felt when she thought of her lost way of life.
She could never go back to Athena now, never fulfill the plans that the High Sentinel had made for her. Her squad was gone and so was her reason for living. So why was her determination to purge herself wavering? K told herself it wasn’t true??
?that the minute she found where Boone had hidden her suit she would kill first him and then herself. But as the days passed it became harder and harder to picture actually doing it. She never had enough time away from Boone to search for the skinsuit anyway. They were, as he had warned, “joined at the hip,” and constantly around each other.
She spent the time-outs in Boone’s lap either reading while Boone looked over his notes, talking with him, or giving him what he called “book reports” of the various Old Earth titles she was working her way through. Despite never having read for enjoyment before, K was a fast reader and she had the added incentive of getting several hours of exercise for every book she finished. Consequently, she tended to look for the shorter ones so that she could be sure of getting a work out between breakfast and lunch and again between lunch and supper.
Boone hadn’t been able to fix the grav controls in the gym but K didn’t mind. She worked with lighter weights to compensate for the extra g-forces and felt that she was getting the best work out of her life. Boone had watched her anxiously for awhile and then finally accepted that she was all right. The wound on her inner thigh was healing nicely and according to him, the stitches would soon melt away on their own, becoming part of the flesh they had helped knit together. K looked forward to that day. In her mind, the stitches were an obvious outward reminder of her contamination. If they hadn’t been there she might have been able to pretend, at least to herself, that everything was normal. But the straight black ladder marching up the inside of her thigh said it wasn’t so. Said that nothing in her life was normal and it never would be again.
Between reading, trying new foods, and working out with Boone, K found that her days were fuller than she could have ever supposed. At night she and Boone lay in the darkness and talked. He told her tales of his life on Colossus and asked questions about her childhood and her everyday life on Athena. K was reluctant to share, however. Boone was still the enemy and giving him information, no matter how inconsequential, went against all her training.