Maker - Michael Jan Friedman [42]
Why would Brakmaktin torture him again when he should have been grateful to the human for his help? Unless…it wasn’t torture after all. Was it possible that Gerda Idun was a reward this time? The Nuyyad’s way of saying thank you?
“Andreas?” said Gerda Idun, her voice sounding small and tentative in the transformed corridor.
“It’s me,” he assured her, and dodged mineral projections to get to her.
Before Nikolas knew it, he was holding Gerda Idun in his arms, crushing her to him. She’s real, he thought, every bit as amazed as before, as real as she can be.
She looked up at him. “Is this another dream?”
“Another?” he asked.
“Yes. I dreamed this before, the other night. I was on the bridge of a ship, and you were standing there with me. You touched my hand,” she said, and intertwined her fingers with his, “just like this. And then you brushed my cheek—”
He did it again, her skin soft to his touch. “Like this?”
Gerda Idun closed her eyes as if to feel it more deeply. “Yes. Like that.”
Nikolas didn’t want to let go of her, afraid that he would lose her again. So he stood there for a long time, holding her, clinging to a reality he didn’t understand.
But he didn’t have to understand it. He just had to embrace it, and feel it embrace him back.
Chapter Ten
PARIS HAD BEEN PRESSED into service in engineering, where Simenon was working on upgrades for their encounter with Brakmaktin, so the ensign didn’t have much time to eat.
He had just gotten his food from the replicator and pulled out a chair to wolf it all down when he heard a commotion behind him—some joking remarks and then some laughter, louder than what he usually heard in the mess hall. He glanced over his shoulder to see what it was about.
What he saw was a bunch of Magnians—four of them, to be exact—and one was Stave, the character Paris had met in Jiterica’s quarters. They looked sweaty, as if they had just come from a training session.
But if they were tired, they didn’t show it. In fact, they seemed chipper enough to endure a second session without any problem.
The ensign turned back to his food. The last person he wanted to see was Stave. If he hadn’t shown up, things would still have been perfect between Paris and Jiterica.
Not that the two of them were at odds. They were still speaking, still seeing each other as often as before.
But the effortless give-and-take they had enjoyed wasn’t that way anymore. Jiterica seemed hesitant to say or do things, as if she were wondering if Paris would approve.
What happened with Stave seemed always to be looming in the background, coloring everything that went on between them. Paris believed he knew now how Adam must have felt after the serpent showed up in the Garden.
As he thought that, he realized that someone was coming his way. And as luck would have it, it was his pal Stave.
Paris straightened, wondering what the Magnian wanted. Hadn’t he done enough already?
“Ensign Paris,” said Stave, smiling as he always did. “I was hoping I’d run into you.”
“What can I do for you?” Paris asked.
Stave put his hand on the table and spoke confidentially in the ensign’s ear. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “I wasn’t trying to move in on your girlfriend.”
Paris didn’t know what to say to that. He looked around, concerned that someone might have overheard, but no one had.
Stave laughed softly. “Though it’s not as if I didn’t want to. There’s definitely something…sexy about her.”
The ensign’s jaw clenched. Still, he didn’t say anything.
“You’re a lucky guy,” said Stave, apparently in earnest. Then he withdrew and joined his comrades.
As Paris watched them go over to the replicator, he could hear Stave’s words echoing in his ear: “You’re a lucky guy.” The ensign had thought so too.
Until a few days ago.
As Nikolas woke in the hard Ubarrak bed, he reached for Gerda Idun. But she wasn’t in bed with him any longer.
With a pang of concern, he sat up—and saw her standing by the room’s only observation port, wearing only her