Dark Space - Marianne de Pierres [42]
Then he heard a strangled cry.
Trin stepped in among the thorn bushes, searching for the source of the sound. In the thickest clump he found a naked sulphur-skinned ragazza with pale blood leaking from a wound on her head. An aqua species, he thought. He had seen them before in Riso’s Bar. This one had pebble-like breasts and layers of external skin-folds covering her pubis. He stared at her madly fluttering neck gills. ‘What has happened?’
Peculiar sounds poured from her mouth. She reached out a finely webbed hand.
Trin had never touched ginko skin before. Instinctively he retreated but the ragazza’s desperate, imploring look filled him with guilt. Still he hesitated, wondering if she were contagious with something—or loco, perhaps.
Before he could decide, the intensity drained from her eyes and she fell back, unconscious.
Dead? He could not tell. She didn’t appear to be breathing. He considered leaving and pretending he had not seen her, but her vulnerability prickled his conscience.
Trin lifted her awkwardly, holding her against him. To his shame, the pressure of her naked body stirred excitement in his groin. He leaned his torso away from the contact and stepped out of the thorn bushes, shouting for help.
The humanesque servant peered from the coldlock along the portico. When she saw Trin’s burden she cried out and beckoned. ‘Come. Carry her to the infirmary.’
He followed the woman inside and up the villa’s central stairs. By the time he laid the ragazza on a bed his arms were shaking with the effort.
‘Her name is Djeserit. Her familia left her behind on Araldis. She had become too difficult to manage is my guess. Miolaquas mature early,’ said the woman. ‘Please, signor—while I examine her wound you must restrain her. If she awakens she will become violent. May I suggest you remove your gloves or they might become stained with blood.’
Trin stared at her. But what of my hands? What of her alien blood on my skin? Yet he could not say the words. The woman’s solicitous care shamed him. ‘Is she alive? I see no breath,’ he said.
‘Si, alive, but not breathing.’ She pointed to the ragazza’s neck gills, which lay firmly shut. ‘She is in shock and her body is using stored oxygen. I must persuade her to land-breathe again.’
‘You know healing . . . er. . .’
‘Istelle. And si, I know a little healing.’ She gave him a gentle smile, which transformed her severe features into something more comely.
The ragazza stirred, her legs suddenly flailing.
Trin stripped off his gloves and held her. Djeserit felt lean and papery under his hands—there was nothing soft about her, unlike the familia women. His body betrayed him again, responding to the touch of her. He pressed himself flat against the bedside to disguise his growing erection but Istelle was in any case distracted by her ministrations — murmuring quiet reassurances while she treated the wound.
Djeserit began to breathe with her lungs again in noisy, carking gulps.
Trin released her in surprise, stepping back.
‘She is crying. Beautiful, isn’t it?’ said Istelle. She stroked the ragazza’s thin hair tenderly ‘Djeserit, it’s Istelle. Don Pellegrini found you and carried you inside,’ she whispered into the ragazza’s smooth ear-bud. ‘Tell me what happened.’
Djeserit opened her flat-lidded eyes and blinked several times, swivelling her head like a confused checclia. Suddenly she seized Trin’s hand and kissed it.
The sensation of her lips on his palm set his blood throbbing.
‘Djeserit, what happened? Why were you outside?’ Istelle urged.
But Trin didn’t wait to hear the answer. He fled the room and the sensation of Djeserit’s mouth, like a fresh burn, on his hand.
* * * *
A squealing sound woke Trin before dawn. At first he thought it was the uuli as he tried to free it from the containment field in Riso’s. Then, heart pounding, he realised it was the emergency shortcast.
‘Fire . . . grain stores…shootin’ up like a twister.’ A man’s voice: guttural—‘esqe but not Latino.
The station relay told Trin that the message was originating from the northern edge of