To Storm Heaven - Esther Friesner [25]
He never knew what possessed him to race after her, he only knew that he couldn’t let her escape him.
Her robes were long and voluminous, hardly the best thing to wear for efficient running. He caught up with her easily. As soon as his hand fell on her shoulder, she hit the ground again, alternately imploring mercy of the starlord and declaring her unworthiness to receive it.
Geordi leaned back against a pillar and slid down it until he was seated cross-legged beside her. Very patiently he said, “I think there’s been a mistake. I told you, I’m not a starlord, whatever that is. I’m Geordi La Forge, chief engineer of the U.S.S.
Enterprise. You don’t have to tell me your name if you don’t want to. I’m sorry, maybe I was out of place asking that. I don’t know the customs here on Ne’elat. I’m here on shore leave, just visiting your planet, and there’s supposed to be a concert taking place in the palace gardens. I’d like to hear it. Would it be all right for you to take me there?” He felt odd, talking to the back of the young woman’s head, but she was so tightly curled up into a protective ball that it didn’t look as if he would ever get to see her face again.
Pity, he thought. It’s a very beautiful face. He settled his shoulders more comfortably against the pillar, ready to wait as long as it took for a reply.
His patience was rewarded. After a time, the young woman tilted her head sideways and looked up at him out of the comer of one eye. He tried his luck at luring her back into the open with another smile. This time she raised her head and slowly uncurled her body until she was seated on her heels, facing him with a look no longer fearful, but merely uncertain.
“Ne’elat?” she asked. “Why do you call this place Ne’elat?” Her question took him aback. He’d never had to explain the name of a planet to one of its own inhabitants, especially not when he knew that it was the same name the inhabitants had given that planet in the first place.
Maybe she thinks I’m talking about the palace itself he reasoned. They might have an official name for it, like the House Adorning Peace on Canis H or the Talking Lodge on Lamech K She probably thinks I’ve confused the name of the government palace with the name of her planet.
“I’m not calling this building Ne’elat; I’m talking about this whole world, “he said. He accompanied his words with an expansive gesture and hoped he had set things straight between them.
“World?” She shrank into herself as she echoed the word, panic edging back into her voice. “How great is your realm, stafford, if you can call boundless Evramur no more than a world?” Now it was his turn to be bewildered. “What are you talking about? Evramur? I’ve heard you use that name a couple of times already. What’s Evramur?” She bowed her head reverently and folded her hands on her bosom in much the same dove-shaped sign that Meeran Okosa had used when he recited the saga of lost Ashkaar. “Holy Evramur, blessed Evramur, realm of untold sanctification, Evramur who shows herself robed in beauty on the evening horizon, Evramur from whose mouth the breath of life bathes us, her unworthy children. Here in her bosom our spirits never hunger, here our lips never thirst, here we find rest from all labor and know the peace that all pilgrims seek.” “You make it sound like… paradise,” Geordi said, and when she shyly asked the meaning of that alien word, he explained it for her as best he could.
When he was done, she smiled. “But that is Evramur, your paradise: refuge and rest of the deserving spirits who have left the flesh, haven to those less worthy, whose flesh still anchors the spirit, such as I.” “You—?” Geordi wasn’t exactly sure of whether or not he wanted to ask the next question. He was a little afraid of the answer he