Alea caught the emphasis on the word. She repeated it with a hollow sound. “Here?”
“Out there, I can still do some good.” Gar looked up; sweeping a hand to take in all the sky. “There, where humanity has settled on sixty-odd worlds that we know about, and dozens more that we don’t. There are people living in oppression, being ground down so brutally that you would scarcely recognize them as human. There’s nothing more I can do here that you can’t do yourselves, but on another world, under another sun, there is work for me indeed.”
“But what will happen here?” Alea cried.
“The same things that will happen if I stay,” Gar told her. “It will take a hundred years or more with me or without me. I might save a few more lives, speed up the transformation by a dozen years—but I also might not. No, Alea, my work here is done.” The bleakness came to his face again as he said it.
That same emptiness settled in Alea’s heart. “And me?” she demanded. “What will happen to me? Will you leave me to become some bandit’s woman whether I want to or not, or to go to Saret or Garlon and live on their charity for the rest of my life, like a poor relation?”
Gar looked deeply into her eyes and said, “Wherever you go, you will rise to lead your people. You know how to fight now, so no bandit will be able to make you his property without more battle than he is willing to undergo. The dwarves would be glad of your strength, and you know it, and the giants would welcome you as a comrade, now that Gorlan and his kin have done so. You are an exceptional woman, Alea, a rare and remarkable human being, and no matter where you go, people will treasure you.”
His eyes glowed as he said it, and she could almost have believed that his mind was reaching out to touch hers. She stood mute, staring back at him, trying to deny the words he said, but feeling a flood of delight and gratitude to hear them spoken.
Finally she could speak again. “People. Maybe people. But can there be one person, one man alone who could treasure me, delight in my presence, cherish me?”
“It may happen,” Gar told her, “now.”
Her mind screamed, It already has, but she buried the words quickly in the darkest recesses of her heart and masked them with a bitter tone.
“It also may not! If you can’t do any good here, then neither can I! I haven’t belonged here since I turned fifteen and grew taller than the boys! I haven’t felt at home since then, not anywhere but in my parents’ house, and not even there, now that they’re dead!” She remembered the last sight of her old home and shuddered at what Birin Wentod had done to it. In a lower voice, she said, “I have no home anymore.”
Gar stared at her.
But Alea stood, feeling numb, listening to her own words echo inside her, and knew that she had finally acknowledged something that she had known as true for months, but had striven to deny.
Gar saw that recognition in her eyes and reached out a hand, smiling gently. But he didn’t even try to touch, only swept that hand back up toward the interior of the ship and said, “You have a new home, though, if you wish to take it.”
Alea stood frozen, unable to believe the fantastic good fortune that opened out before her. Her soul shied from it, she found that she feared the happiness it offered, the tearing away of all she had ever known and loved…
But that had been torn away already. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I want to go with you.”
Gar’s eyes shone, and he took a step toward her, arms open in welcome.
She still stood like a statue, unable to take the answering step into his arms, the old dread clamoring within her. Be still, she told it furiously. She had nothing to fear that way now, and she knew it. There really was something wrong with him when it came to sex, but it was in his mind, and whatever it was, it kept her safe while she was with him—and she had developed an abhorrence for her own people, strengthened by her awareness that many, many Midgarders would want to use her as a target for revenge, once they knew how she had helped Gar turn their world upside down.
Did she really want to be safe that way? From him? For now, yes—and “for now” was all that mattered.
Still, she stood where she was, didn’t reach out, but said, “I’ll come. No matter where you’re going or what you’re doing, it has to be a better life than this.”
Now it was Gar who was struggling not to show delight, but she saw it in him, and her heart sang.
“I’m going to the stars,” he warned her. “You may not ever be able to come back.”
“I don’t intend to come back,” she said, trembling. “There will be danger,” Gar cautioned, “as great as any you’ve ever known here, possibly greater. There will be hunger and thirst, perhaps even torture. But if we live, we’ll free other people who have been ground down as badly as you were, perhaps worse.”
“It’s worth the chance,” she said, and knew she’d regret it someday. “How can it be worse? This world has become a torment for me already.” Worse, without you in it, she thought, but kept the words from her tongue and hoped he’d meant what he said, that he wouldn’t read her mind. But the thought of freeing other slaves fired her imagination, and she trembled as much with excitement as with fear.
“Don’t you dare,” she whispered, “don’t you dare try to go away and leave me here.”
Magnus grinned widely and said, “Now, that would be very foolish of me indeed.”
“Separate bedrooms,” she said, a touch of her old fear rising.
“Definitely,” Magnus agreed, “and separate sitting rooms, too. But we can meet in the lounge when you want to.”
“And you’ll have to keep teaching me how to fight!” Alea warned him.
“Oh, yes,” Magnus said softly, “I surely will.”
Alea stared at him, her only real friend, and wondered if he would ever be anything more, if she would ever want him to be anything more. He raised his arms again in welcome, and finally she managed to walk.
She walked right around him and on up the ramp, snapping, “What are you waiting for, then? If we’re going to leave this world, let’s leave!”
She was almost to the top of the ramp before she heard his answer, coming up behind her, filled with suppressed delight: “Yes. Let’s go.”
Alea stepped back into the wondrous, luxurious room, Gar stepped in behind her. Something whirred as the ramp slid up to close the doorway. She kicked off her boots, jammed her feet into her slippers, and marched across the thick yielding carpet to sit in her chair as though by right, like a queen on her throne. Gar sat opposite her and said quietly, “Lift off, Herkimer.”
“Lifting,” the disembodied voice said, and Alea stared at the picture before her, scarcely able to believe her eyes, as the trees grew smaller and smaller and the tundra swept in all about them, then shrank away to an expanse of silver in the moonlight with patches of darkness about it that were forest. She was barely able to see little lights that she knew must be villages before mist filled the screen. But it too dwindled, darkness began to show around the edges, darkness that swept in to fill more and more of the picture until the world was only a cloud-streaked ball again, and Alea knew with a certainty she couldn’t have explained that the great golden ship had risen into the sky and beyond it, to bear her away to her dreams.