Gulliver's Fugitives - Keith Sharee [60]
Most of the light-stones that the group had carried were covered with clothes or bundles of books. In the insufficient orange glow of the remaining few, the cave the group had chosen for a rest site looked like the stone-ribbed gut of a sinuous animal.
Troi picked her way around the stalagmites, pools, and recumbent forms of the Dissenters. She sensed clearly that some were joined in the act of love. She gave them a wide berth, but admitted to herself some curiosity about who was with whom. There were so many interesting possible pairings.
She found Odysseus sitting awake, apart from the others, on a ledge that gave him a view of the entrances and exits to the cave.
He acknowledged her with a nod, and offered her a cloak as she sat next to him. She accepted it gladly, since the cave air was mercilessly cold.
Troi immediately perceived that he had recovered from the losses in his group, and regained his confidence and strength. He was once again the much-enduring mythical Odysseus.
“I was hoping you could tell me how to get into CephCom from these caves,” she said. “Or am I still a suspected CS spy?”
“No. We’ve decided you’re no more CS than any of us.”
“So you’ll tell me?”
“You can’t get in by yourself.”
“I have to at least try.”
“No, you don’t. You can come in with us. We have a mission to accomplish while there are still enough left in our group: a last try at putting CephCom out of commission. We’ve been planning it for a while. You don’t have to be part of it. You can just sneak in with us and go your own way.”
“You’re going to take on the entire facility?”
He nodded.
Troi was incredulous. This seemed too farfetched to be real. Had the recent battle pushed him off the deep end?
“Do you want to come with us?” he asked, watching her closely.
“Are you sure you aren’t being unrealistic …”
“Why would I be unrealistic? When have you seen me make a misjudgment?”
She was momentarily at a loss.
“You are no more infallible than anyone else,” she said finally. “You’ve suffered some big losses in your past.”
“Not true.”
“Yes it is. It’s your wife and son isn’t it? You lost them, you feel that you failed them somehow.”
Troi felt she’d stabbed into a deep wound and winced. But his Odysseus persona wasn’t too badly shaken this time. In fact, he seemed to have been expecting her remark.
“I knew it,” he said.
“Knew what?”
“I knew it from the beginning. You can read my feelings, like a seer—like one who sees into the mind. You aren’t of this world at all. More like someone out of a myth. You don’t even look like other women—your eyes are different. Why is it you’ve never said a word about where you come from? Why is everything about Rampart new to you?”
She was astonished at how he’d led her into this trap. Wily Odysseus. She wanted to terminate the conversation before her cover was blown. But he kept right on.
“You’re the most mysterious, beautiful woman I’ve ever met. But either you deny your own feelings or you don’t have any feelings.”
“That’s absurd. You know nothing about my feelings. What you don’t seem to remember is that I have friends in trouble, and it’s going to take everything I’ve got to help them. I don’t have time for anything else. I don’t have time for an affair with you, and I know that’s what you want. I may decide to go with you into CephCom, but that’s it.”
“What I have to do is at least as hard as what you have to do,” he replied, “but I don’t turn myself into a stone to accomplish it.”
She thought it was a ridiculous statement. Troi wanted to tell him why he was wrong, but stopped herself. How had the conversation become an analysis of her? She was supposed to be analyzing him.
Odysseus put his hand on her arm.
“Don’t,” she said, and moved out of his reach. “That’s out of the question.”
Troi took off the borrowed cloak and stood up to leave.
Then she paused and examined the