Gulliver's Fugitives - Keith Sharee [59]
Troi hazarded a guess as to its cause.
“I’m sorry you lost some of your people back at Alastor.”
“Well … the way I see it,” said Rhiannon, “they aren’t really gone. No one can kill Caliban, or Maui, or Isis. Isis is already five thousand years old. See what I mean?”
Troi understood the literal meaning. But the words seemed to have a special significance Troi couldn’t pinpoint.
“Do you like Odysseus?” asked the long-haired girl.
“Why do you ask?”
“I was hoping you did, so maybe you’d decide to stay with us. Like, if you married him.”
Troi laughed.
“I like all of your people, especially you, Rhiannon, but I can’t possibly stay.”
Below, the Dissenters were entering a narrow cleft in a rock wall.
“We’re here,” said Rhiannon.
“Come in,” said Gunabibi. Troi entered the little cave and sat against the wall.
Odysseus was lying on his back, his head on a crude pillow made from rags. Gunabibi was applying a wet cloth to his forehead.
Troi checked to see if he was near waking up. He seemed quite unconscious, but as Troi leaned over to peer at him closely, his eyes moved beneath their lids.
She studied his sleeping face. A very masculine face, weathered but handsome, framed by a gray -flecked beard. He looked like a man on a hegira, a penitent.
Sitting so close to his sleeping form, she had to acknowledge that she felt an attraction to him. Maybe it was just a bodily feeling, an instinct. She couldn’t picture any kind of real-life intimacy between them.
Still, his tactics, and his Dissenter group, had been more effectual against the CS soldiers than she had expected. They’d saved her from the CS, just as he’d promised. She wasn’t going to let that draw her into the conflict emotionally and derail her from her own mission, but as an outside observer she wished the Dissenters victory and freedom.
Gunabibi took the wet cloth away from Odysseus’ forehead.
“He should be waking soon,” she told Troi.
Troi wondered about the effects from the stun he’d received. When he awoke, would he be in any kind of shape to talk?
She put her hand on his cheek. It was warm but not feverish.
She decided to see if she could read his feelings while he dreamed.
Averting her gaze, Troi unshrouded her consciousness and let in his feelings. He was indeed dreaming. She expected to find that in his dream he would not be Odysseus, he would be that defeated, shamed man that hid underneath the fictional character.
But she was surprised, because he was still Odysseus, even in his dream. The fictional character he worked so hard to sustain had pervaded his mind even to the stratum of dreams. She let the feeling of his dream wash over her, the feeling of an odyssey across a vast place full of adventures, both dark and bright, across the limits of the known and the unknown, and how he survived it through his resourcefulness …
She felt there was a woman in the dream, just out of his reach, and she felt his wanting—
She quickly brought her gaze back to Odysseus’ face. His eyes were open. He was looking at her. Her hand was still on his face; she had forgotten it was there. Withdrawing it with a jerk, she felt herself blush and silently cursed the involuntary response.
“Beautiful way to wake up,” he said. He shifted his attention from Troi to Gunabibi.
“Welcome back,” said Gunabibi, laughing with joy. She gave Odysseus a motherly hug and helped him sit up.
The sitting position was obviously painful for him. He held his head in his hands for several moments, breathing through clenched teeth.
“Where are the others?” he asked Gunabibi.
“Getting food.”
“Did we lose anyone at Alastor?”
“Isis and Maui were arrested. Caliban is dead.”
He said nothing. With his hands still covering his face, he slowly let himself sink back down to the rock floor. He put his head on the pillow and turned away from the two women.
Troi sensed quite clearly that he wanted to be alone. The Odysseus character was faltering, and, underneath, that other man, the old, failed one, was hurting.
She went outside.
The Dissenters had bedded down.
Troi had no way of