Текст книги "Heat"

Автор книги: R. Lee Smith

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 54 страниц)

She seemed to be waiting for something. “I brought you iced tea,” she said finally.

Tagen reached out automatically and picked up the glass. It was cool, refreshing even just to hold. “Thank you,” he said. He risked a glance in her direction. She was examining him almost as intently as he’d pretended to be watching the tee-vee, and his spine seemed to straighten and his chest to swell of its own accord, making himself as impressive a specimen as possible. Displaying again, damn it all. He growled low in his throat and sipped at the sweet beverage she had brought him. He was taking his suppressants, for the gods’ sakes, what was the matter with him?

“Is it okay?” She looked unsettled by his expression, and was already reaching to take back the drink. “I could make some juice if you’d rather—”

“It is fine,” he said, and drank deeply to prove it. The scent of it filled his nostrils, a blend of subtle herbs that took away the scent of her musky sweat. He could feel himself relaxing. “Very fine,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Well, I figure you’ve been watching Law & Order for days on end, and your strength might need some shoring up by now.”

He gave her a narrow look, killing her slight, teasing smile.

“Sorry.” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Your N’Glish has gotten better.”

Tagen searched the words for sarcasm and found none. “Thank you,” he said cautiously.

She exhaled in a short rush and then said, “I never was any good at small talk,” while casting an irritated glance at the ceiling.

He felt himself straightening again, and the smell of her suddenly seemed very strong. But when she met his eyes, the sketchy thought that she might be making an overture evaporated (which was good, he insisted sourly. Which was very damned good.). Her face was set for a grim undertaking, and he was right in the scope of her sights.

“Don’t you think it’s about time you told me the whole story about why you’re here?”

She said it like she thought there was so much more than what he’d already told her. Tagen directed his gaze to the tee-vee screen, sighed, and shut it off. He stood up to face her and she promptly (but not unexpectedly) backed up a step.

“I am a police,” he said. He paused. “A police officer. I am…investigating the disappearance of a criminal who has escaped us. He may have come to Earth.”

“What did he do?” Daria asked. “I mean, ‘criminal’ covers a lot.”

This was dangerous ground to be traveling with such an unstable opponent. It was all too easy to imagine that Daria could think him capable of the same evils as E’Var. If he did not go carefully, he would undo much of the tentative connection he had forged with her. And if he said nothing at all, he would shatter it.

It would have to be the truth, but he would be vigilant about the quantities in which he offered it. “He has killed many people,” he said. “Your kind and mine.”

It was an answer she had clearly anticipated, but having her suspicions confirmed did not silence her. She came into the room and sat beside him on the sofa, clasping her hands too tightly and staring at the dark face of the tee-vee. “Why did he come to Earth this time?” she asked. “Is it just because of…because he thinks your army won’t follow him here, or is there another reason?”

“There is,” he said slowly. But he did not want to tell her. That look was in her eyes already, the look of one who expects the worst and has never been disappointed. He wondered again what could have happened to her to make her believe so fervently in the evils of others.

For now, he said, “E’Var comes to Earth to hunt your kind.”

“To—?” She stared at him and shook her head. “Why?”

“He takes something from those he kills,” Tagen told her. “And sells it to other criminals.”

She said nothing, but she had heard him well enough. Her face was pale. The decorations on her left cheek stood out like fine filaments of circuitry.

“We have been pursuing the ship E’Var and his…his…” He gave her a helpless glance. “Those who pilot and work on a ship.”

“His crew.” She looked away, rubbing at her arm as if she were cold. “You’d know that if you watched more Star Trek and less Law & Order.”

“Crew. Thank you.” Tagen ignored the comment on his tee-vee preferences. “The ship belonged to Uraktus E’Var, his…father, you would say, and perhaps the most notorious of all criminals of his kind. Our forces had pursued him…ha, nearly all my life. And at last, he was found.”

“You caught him,” Daria guessed.

“We killed him.”

Her features sobered alarmingly.

He shook his head in answer to the question unfolding in her eyes. “If it was vengeance he wanted, he would have gone to Jota to hunt,” he told her, and she frowned, considering that. “E’Var’s ship was taken and all his crew captured. Only Kanetus E’Var escaped us.”

“And he came here, of all places.”

“As you say, he no doubt believed no one would follow.”

“And as you say, he can hunt here.” She raised her head and looked at him sharply. “How much are his…his trophies…worth? Enough to buy a new ship, maybe?”

“Such is our fear,” he admitted, impressed no small amount that she had so rapidly come to that conclusion.

“But you don’t know for absolute sure he’s here,” she pressed.

“Little in life is an absolute surety,” he retaliated. “That is why police are employed to investigate the uncertain.”

She smiled with half her mouth. “Touché, spaceman.”

He raised his iced drink to her, supremely pleased with himself. Scoring a point off Daria Cleavon was like getting one off Kolya Pahnee. Tagen could count the number of times that had happened on his hands, and still have fingers to spare.

“But you’ve got me wondering now,” she said, and Tagen braced himself as for physical attack. “E’Var’s been here more often than any of your police have. Do you suppose he might be better equipped than you?”

“No. He escaped from one of our own ships. He could have had access to none of his equipment.”

“Um. I hate to have to burst your happy superior-Jotan-army bubble, but I think maybe you should consider the possibility that he only escaped because he had help aboard your own ship.”

Tagen glowered into his cup. The thought had occurred to him. Frequently. Hearing it now from Daria’s mouth only made it sound more plausible.

“So I’ll ask again,” she continued. “Do you suppose he might be better equipped?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well.” She tipped her head back and considered the corner of the ceiling. “Could he have some device that would tell him if someone followed him here? Maybe the reason you haven’t bumped into him is because he’s deliberately avoiding you.”

Tagen drew back and stared at her. He found himself wondering if such devices even existed. Some cold part of his brain reflected that it would be easy enough to hide a tracer beacon in all the orbiting junk around Earth, one very capable of sending an alert to an individual on the surface if another ship passed close enough to trigger it.

“Give me another example,” he said warily.

“Oh, I don’t know.” She thought about it, one of her bare feet patting at the floor in eerie mirror of a takking talon. “I guess all he’d really need is something that could detect your funny little computer.”

“Detect it how?” he asked, baffled.

“Well, I’m assuming it’s not running on Duracells and fairy kisses,” she said archly. “So it’s a safe bet your batteries are different from anything on Earth. Are they emitting anything?”

“I…” He closed his mouth and merely looked at her. He had no idea.

“I don’t even mean radioactivity or anything like that,” she went on, waving a hand dismissively. “Probably even your fancy alien Geiger counters would still have to get right up close to something before it could pick emissions up. I was thinking more like transmissions. You know, something he could hack into if he had a similar computer.”

“I do not know,” Tagen said, frowning at her. “I only know that I could not.”

“Then he probably can’t either,” she said, looking away. “It was just a thought.”

A damned good thought. Gods, little wonder humans had come so far so fast, if this was the way their minds worked.

As if he didn’t have enough to worry about. This was going to keep him up all night.

“What of Earth’s devices? Earth’s resources?” He reached out to touch her knee and she sprang up as though he’d burned her, but quickly mastered herself and pretended merely to be pacing around the room. He noted she put the low table between them. As benignly as possible, he said, “Do you know of anything you can access to aid my search?”

He watched her closely while she thought, saw her consider and disregard any number of possibilities. At last, she shook her head.

“Watch tee-vee, I suppose,” she said. “See-en-en, as opposed to tee-en-tee. See if anyone out there has seen some psycho stalking people in the woods. Or…” Her jaw worked a moment and she stared out the window at the forest. “Or worse.”

Very tactfully, Tagen said, “I do not think E’Var will allow people to see him.”

“I know he can’t just cut his way through a Wal-Mart,” she said. “But he’s got to carry his trophies around with him until he leaves. So someone is bound to notice him.”

“You underestimate him, forgive me, badly.”

“Well, how many people do you think he’s going to attack before he decides he’s done?” she asked. “How many trophies does he usually take before he fills up?”

Tagen thought of the Yevoa Null, the size of its holding pens and of the chemist’s bay full of Vahst. He thought of the preserves on Jota’s moon, of hundreds upon hundreds of humans recovered with E’Var’s name stamped on their hobbles or collars.

“Five?” Daria pressed. “Ten?”

“Many,” said Tagen. He picked up the tuning controls for the tee-vee and brought the picture on again. His law program was on, but he found it difficult to concentrate. A chemist’s pack with only the most rudimentary supplies would not be much larger than his own supply pack. What would E’Var need but a harvester, an analyzer and extractor module for a chemist’s computer, and a few empty containers for the processed Vahst? “Many.”

“Then do me a favor and watch the damn news.” She picked up his glass and stalked back toward the hall. He heard her mutter, “Many,” as she retreated.

Tagen watched her go and then scrolled down through the channels until he reached the media programs. He listened as he moved slowly through the different feeds.

“…dead in a Shiite mosque this morning after an attack by a suicide bomber. The official death toll is estimated to be over three hundred…”

“…mysteriously collapsed. Investigators have confirmed foul play…”

“…making him the youngest person ever to be accused of first-degree murder. A spokesperson for the district has said the seven-year-old will be tried as an adult…”

“…shot and killed seven co-workers and injured eighteen others…”

“…the seventh school shooting this year…”

“…stabbed last night…”

“…dead this morning…”

“…no suspects…”

“…no clues as to the victim’s identity…”

After a while, it just all ran together.

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter Twelve

Raven swam in a haze of light, surrounded by invisible colors. She still knew they were there, somehow, but at least they had become invisible, so she knew she had to be coming down. She also knew she was in the hotel and tied to the bed, which was in itself a marked improvement over earlier, when she had honestly believed she was swimming. Breaststroke and everything. Yeah, he was a heavy-handed bastard and a murderer, but give the Devil his due, Kane made some nice shit.

And speak of the Devil…

Kane unlocked the door and came inside, one arm curled around a bucket of Colonel Sanders’ finest. He glanced at her, grunted, and closed the door. “How do you feel?”

The question sparked a strong sense of déjà vu. He must have asked her before.

“Pretty good.” When he only arched a brow at her, she added, “Nothing hurts.”

“Really?” He put the food down, tossed his hat on the table and shrugged out of his coat. “Nothing?”

“Well, okay, my arms hurt, but that’s from being tied up, you jerk.” Oops. Shouldn’t have called him a jerk. She guessed she wasn’t as sober as she thought she was.

“I wouldn’t have to tie you up if you’d behave,” he replied mildly, coming to her side. “You don’t have a wide stripe of self-control.”

And oooh, did she want to answer that.

Kane fingered the metal ornamenting her breasts and belly, then parted her pussy lips and stroked cautiously at her labia. His hands were completely impersonal, his expression merely academically interested. “This doesn’t hurt?”

“A little, but only when you touch ‘em. And it’s not so bad.” Raven nibbled at her lip, debating the wisdom of her next words. “Please untie me.”

He raised his eyes to meet hers.

“Please.”

“I think one more night will do you good,” he told her.

He was serious.

“Kane, please!” Raven cried. “My arms are killing me!”

Kane reached up to enclose her arm in his hands. He rubbed slowly, kneading at her biceps with the rough pads of his fingers. Her strained muscles came unlocked, much as Raven wanted to resist, and in the end, she shut her eyes and just tried to pretend she was somewhere else. It wasn’t hard. Not in the state she was in.

He went to work on the other arm, chuckling. “I don’t know why I do these things to myself,” he said conversationally. “I’d love to have you untied. And grateful. But, damn me, I love to torture you even more.”

His hand strayed down to the crux of her splayed legs and stroked past steel and into secrets. She winced at the bruisy ache his touch awakened, and he growled low in response. “I’d have to be a lot more careful than I know how to be,” he muttered, and then grinned at her. “But you’re healing up fast.”

“Untie me,” she said. “There’s things I could do.”

“Oh, I know.” He laughed softly, his finger driving slow up inside her, teasing her with uncustomary gentleness. “And I want you to do them, that’s the hell of it. Am I hurting you, Raven?”

“A little.” And behind the hurt, there was that glowy good-will that was the echo of his waning drug, a thing that made the pain easy to endure.

He adjusted the angle of his thrusting hand. “And now?”

“No,” she whispered. She closed her eyes.

“You look so unhappy,” he observed. “Your face is a liar, Raven. You know you like what I do to you.”

“When the sun gets hot, you get hard,” she said, and his hand stopped moving. “Do you like it?”

Silence.

Stupid drug-addled thing to say. She didn’t much care. Colors were everywhere.

Then laughter, low and genuinely pleased. His hand resumed its lazy rhythm on and inside her. “Mm, I like that. Kanetus E’Var y tantanka Vahst. Ha.” His fingertip began to rub in tiny, rapid circles as he thrust and Raven ground up at him with that sleepy-brained pleasure before remembering she hated him and trying to pull away.

“No no no,” Kane crooned, leaning over her as he rubbed. “Ge-sa en Vahst. I don’t care. And I don’t let you care. I am Heat. Ahhh.” The sound came from him as he arched against her, his bare chest pressing against hers. He grazed his sharp teeth along her shoulder and then whispered, “You’re wet, Raven. You are. Listen. You don’t have to open your eyes if you don’t want to. You can hear it.”

She could. She could hear the sucking, greedy sounds of her body wanting what he gave her. “So what?” she said. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“No, you’re right, it absolutely does not.”

He took his hand from her suddenly, and Raven’s eyes flashed wide. She bucked her hips, but he was already standing and walking away, leaving her keyed and empty. She stared after him in disbelief and then struggled, really struggled, against the sheet binding her ankles. Kane leaned against the wall, chewing on a piece of chicken. He watched her, smiling.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Since that very first time at the rave on the beach, there had only been two kinds of sex for Raven: either it was good and she came, or it was business and she didn’t. Kane had proved he could make her cum whether she wanted to or not. He was a king and a country all his own, but that didn’t give him the right to do this, to make her hot and then shut her down. It wasn’t fair. It just…wasn’t fair!

But an endless bout of pitching, kicking and pulling got her nothing but a burning sensation where her bindings chafed. Exhausted, she fell back, capable only of writhing in weak futility. Her efforts had sent her heart to racing, and that in turn only stirred up the quasi-intoxication of her brain, loosening her lips even though she was just sober enough to understand the un-wisdom of what she was about to say.

“What are you waiting for?”

“I never know with you,” he replied seriously. “Maybe I’m waiting for you to ask me nicely.”

“You untie me right now, you son of a bitch!” she screamed.

He burst out laughing.

She lost it. With her inhibitions firmly out the window for now, she unleashed a rage of truly volcanic proportions. She bucked and banged the headboard. She cursed him until she ran out of profanities and was reduced to wordless tantrum-screaming. She managed to knock a picture off the hotel wall and tip the lamp on the nightstand over, but that was it. Ultimately, she wore out and sagged into the bedding, choking on the rawness of her throat, sweaty and trembling with strain.

“I hate you,” she said, her voice cracking.

Kane strolled up beside her and set the bucket of chicken on the bedside table. He planted a knee on the mattress and then swung his leg up and over her, straddling her hips. She glared at him, her jaws tightly clenched, and he rocked a little, settling himself with insolent slowness atop her. He took a drumstick from the bucket and pinched off a bite, holding it to her lips.

Without thinking, she lunged up and bit him on the hand.

Kane hissed through his smile and his hips ground down at hers. It brought pain back to her in a sickening bloom, but it woke that druggy pleasure also. Raven gasped, her eyes rolling back with the force of the conflict, and writhed luxuriantly beneath him. Somewhere in the middle of her sensual awakening, he started to feed her. She ate mechanically, but there was something unsatisfying about the way the chicken broke open in her mouth. She kept trying to spit it out, to get her teeth on the hand that fed her, and every now and then, he’d let her.

“You’re still a little under, aren’t you?” he murmured. He tossed the bones indifferently to the floor and leaned forward, pressing his hands to the headboard and bending until his chest just lightly touched hers. His breath came in puffs against her face and she closed her eyes away from the sight of him overwhelming her vision.

He growled, a sound that vibrated through his chest and into her, stiffening her nipples and coarsening her breath. She turned her face into the pillows, not sure whether she were escaping him or offering herself, but she knew he’d take and he did. He nipped at her exposed jaw, lightly at first, and then as deeply and intensely as any kiss. Pain squeezed a sound out of her; he responded by moving his hips back and forth over hers. She could feel him stiffening through his clothes and she pressed up against that hardness, her mind fogging with opiate pleasure.

Kane’s hand pushed between them, feeling carefully at her slick sex. She moaned, trying to impale herself on his searching fingers, but though he ground his palm against her, he wouldn’t give her what she wanted. The pitch of his growl changed from that sensual rumble to one of sharp frustration, and then he pushed himself back to sit on her thighs. He peered at her splayed sex and bared his teeth.

“It’s okay,” Raven heard herself say, speaking fast and pleadingly. “I’m fine, it doesn’t hurt, it really doesn’t. It’ll be fine. Fuck me.”

He muttered one of his hard alien curses, glaring at her pussy. “No.”

“You bastard!” she said, and burst into tears.

“I know what that means and I had a father,” he replied, cocking a brow at her. “So that isn’t a very nice thing to say. Do you know what happens to people who say unkind things to me?”

For just an instant, lucidity froze over the swirling chaos of Raven’s mind. “You break their heads open,” she whispered.

He smiled faintly. “Besides that.”

Raven frowned, relaxing a little, and let some of that syrup thicken up in her brain again. “You hit them?”

“I do that, too,” he agreed. “But I don’t feel like hitting you right now. Guess again.”

Squarely back in inner-space, Raven scowled at him and said, “You tie them up and molest them, you sadistic fuck!”

“That isn’t very nice either, but I like the way your mind works.”

“I give up,” Raven grumped.

“Too bad, you had some really good ideas.” Kane reached down and stroked all around her pussy without actually touching it. “But no. Do you know what I do to Ravens who aren’t nice to me?”

“What?” she wailed.

He leaned forward, his face right against hers. “Nothing,” he said softly.

And then he got up from the bed.

She couldn’t believe him. She physically could not, and it was a physical inability, leaving behind it a physically cramping pain. The front of his pants bulged with the proof of his readiness and his desire and there he was, walking away from her as she lay spread-eagled on his goddamn bed. She screamed his name, and he reached down off-handedly, picked up her t-shirt, and came back to stuff it in her mouth.

“Tomorrow,” he said, clearing her brow of stray strands of hair. “Tomorrow, you’ll be healed up enough to travel again, and you’re going to look back on this and wonder how much you dreamed. Personally, I hope you remember all of it. Particularly this.” He reached down toward her sex.

She bucked up at him desperately, but he stopped with his open hand just above her. She ground at the empty air, screaming into her gag, and he grinned.

“I would give the blood out of my body to have you remember this,” he told her. “We’ll see. Close your eyes, Raven. Count to a thousand.”

He kept saying it as her struggles waned and finally, she obeyed. She lost count somewhere around two hundred, and slept.

*

“Like sands through the hourglass,” the tee-vee intoned solemnly, “so are the days of our lives.”

The words had a profound impact upon Tagen, as did the imagery of sand slipping through the glass funnel, unstoppable, even unslowable. Not enough to make him watch the program, but enough to make him think about it as he scrolled onward for something to look at.

He had been here four days. No, for today was his fifth rising from the bed in the room of holding, and he didn’t even count that first day when Daria had been drugged. He had been here six days, six! Time, like sand, falling through his fingers faster the harder he tried to grip.

He had seen no recognizable sign of E’Var on the human media shows, but that was evidence of nothing. The media was filled with death and it was impossible to tell how near to Tagen’s location any of it was. His gut told him E’Var was here; for now, he had to trust to that. But time, those cruel sands, was against him. He had only two suppressants left in his supply pack, two more chances to stave off the brutal weather before Heat set in. Heat. Here. On Earth. In Daria Cleavon’s home.

Just for a moment, that thought, which should have produced in him an ominous apprehension, stirred a wholly different effect. And for that moment, that briefest of moments, he imagined freely the sensation of Daria Cleavon’s small body fastened to his.

Tagen growled low in his chest and it was not a sound of irritation at all.

Then he shook his head, breaking the thought into pieces he would not allow to reassemble. Heat was not pleasant. Even in the most ideal of situations—with a female similarly affected and wild to mate—it was at best an act of uncomfortable necessity, with little pleasure to be had. He did not want it and he certainly did not want to inflict it on his human.

He put the thought away for now, knowing even as he did so that it would return. In the late hours, when Daria had taken herself to bed, Tagen’s hand had a way of finding the tuning control for the tee-vee and scrolling down to watch humans mating. Every night, he told himself he wouldn’t. Every night, he did and told himself it had nothing to do with Daria. Every night, he watched and thought of her, wondering how she would move, how she would sound. And every new day, he watched Daria occupy herself with work, studying surreptitiously the curves of her alien body and imagining.

All of this, yes, but at least he was also working. He was learning to hear and speak N’Glish, he was familiarizing himself with human technology, and he was at least trying to find E’Var’s mark amid those of every other human murder. Once Heat came, Heat would be all there was.

“How’s it going?” Daria asked now, bringing him back to himself. She was standing at the edge of the front room, holding a plate of food and a glass of iced drink out to him. Her eyes were on the tee-vee. “This doesn’t look like Law & Order.”

“No.” He didn’t know what he was watching, actually. He had stopped while scrolling because he had seen a ship in space, but this program’s version of deep-space tours appeared to be more or less all humans, doing everything humans did now, except that they did it in stranger clothes.

“Aha, Scylla Six, I’ve seen this one.” She gave him a knowing sort of smile. “How do you like it so far?”

“I note that it appears all humans are good and all aliens evil.”

“Yep, ‘fraid so. But the cyborgs are evil, too, and they look human.”

Tagen took the food from her—bread and meat flavored with sauce and stacked together to be easily eaten with one hand. It was a more complicated, and tastier, version of line rations that any Fleet recruit would recognize. He ate, raising his glass to her in thanks.

“Cheers,” she said, looking pleased. She walked away without explaining herself.

Tagen watched her go. Her hips had the most fascinating sway…

He sighed and turned his attention to the tee-vee again. On-screen, the aliens, which looked a great deal like slime-coated, grey insects, were slaughtering their way through a roomful of humans for no apparent reason. The male who was clearly the heroic element of the story was battling them off with a sword. And the aliens, who had somehow mastered deep space travel despite the very real handicap of having only one finger on each leg, had not thought to develop a gun at any point. The male’s companion, a female with whom he had been bitterly arguing throughout the program, was fighting bare-handed, by the gods, actually kicking the aliens to death with very little effort. Aliens with exoskeletons, no less.

“Are there other aliens besides you?” Daria asked, returning to the front room with her own food and drink. “Or us, rather. Whoever. Are there other planets with intelligent life, is what I’m saying.”

“Yes,” Tagen said warily. “Two others, that we know of. Two homeworlds, I should say. By now, we have colonized some fifty worlds or moons between us.”

“Wow.” Daria looked skyward, seeking out those worlds through her ceiling.

“There must be others,” Tagen continued, considering the shape of her rounded breasts from the corner of his eyes. “But we are not actively searching any more.”

“Why not?”

“The cost was prohibitive.” The So-Quaal were almost certainly still searching for new life-forms, but Tagen did not elaborate. He could not tell her about the So-Quaal without running the risk that she might recognize them. Tagen had seen images of So-Quaal on the tee-vee already, along with anecdotal evidence that some of the humans had fallen victim to their research and hybridization efforts. Daria did not need to know every truth. He wanted her to be able to sleep once he’d left her.

“So, is Earth the only planet of aliens you don’t…like?”

He looked at her inquiringly.

“Do you talk to the other aliens? Or do you avoid everyone the way you avoid Earth?”

Tagen hesitated. No matter how he answered, it would be easy to take insult. “Earth was…hostile…when it was discovered.”

She smiled faintly. “Not like now, huh?” she said, with just a trace of irony.

He watched the tee-vee. The aliens had managed to give the kicking female an extremely superficial wound in the shoulder, which everyone around her treated as life-threatening. It made Tagen think of his last injury in the field—a five day siege at the docking station for Kevrian cargo raiders, every day on that world equal to three of Jota’s, and every shot fired a threat to the integrity of the hull. Tagen could remember hugging the back of a support pillar as he charged his blaster, watching the shots from either side exchanged in the air before him, and thinking of the total lack of oxygen on the planet’s surface outside. On his first day of that conflict, Tagen had been caught in a crossfire and taken blaster fire to his face, chest, back, and gut. His commander had pulled him from the lines, injected him with pain censors and stimulants and then thrown him bleeding back into the fray.

“You’re smiling,” Daria observed, and looked at the tee-vee dubiously. “It can’t be the movie. What are you thinking?”

“I am thinking about time,” Tagen said.

She nodded, accepting that. “It really flies when you watch tee-vee all day.”

There was no sarcasm in the words. In point of fact, her tone was almost rueful.

“When I first came home,” she said, her hand rising to caress her cheek, “I did nothing but watch tee-vee. Just…just to have a voice in the house, you know? I’d watch for, like, sixteen hours and then not be able to name a single show I’d watched. It was like drowning in sand.”

She seemed about to say more and then she looked at him with mild surprise, as if she’d forgotten he was there. She uttered a nervous laugh, rubbing her face before clasping her hands together. “At least you’re getting something out of your tee-vee time.”

Yes, he was getting further and further behind E’Var. Newly discouraged, Tagen eyed the screen, where the male and female were heavily conversing in a medical bay, all their bickering forgotten.