Then Kamoj realized one of the stagmen was a stagwoman. Massive and muscled, she stood taller than most men of Balumil. How did Vyrl’s people grow so big?
Both guards were watching her. From their intrigued looks, one would have thought she was some rare, exotic flower instead of an ordinary farm girl.
The man spoke in accented Iotaca. “Can we help you, Governor Argali?”
“I need to go to the kitchen,” Kamoj said.
He smiled down at her. “Tell Morlin what you need. Then you won’t have to walk down there in this cold.”
“Isn’t Morlin gone?”
“Most of the system is down. But you can use the intercom to page someone in the kitchen.”
“I don’t wish to bother anyone. But thank you.” Self-conscious, Kamoj nodded to them as she would to her uncle’s stagmen. Then she started down the stairs. To her relief, neither of the giants tried to accompany her.
No lamps or candles lit the stairwell, but moonlight slanted in through the window slits-white light, which meant more than one moon was up, and probably the aurora as well. She reached the Long Hall on the first floor without seeing anyone. A few lamps burned on the walls, but the corridor was empty. Further down, light slanted out of rooms here and there, on either side.
The first of the lit rooms was empty. In the second, a housemaid was cleaning the floor. Kamoj found Dazza in the third. The colonel was sitting on a sofa, reading an odd book with glowing hieroglyphic symbols on its surface.
Dazza looked up as she entered. “Good evening.”
Kamoj hesitated just inside the doorway. “My greetings, Colonel Pacal.”
“Did you want to talk to me?” When Kamoj nodded, Dazza closed her book and motioned to a chair by the sofa. “Please. Be comfortable.”
Kamoj came in and sat on the edge of the chair.
The colonel smiled. “What is it, child?”
Child? Kamoj stiffened and said nothing.
After a moment Dazza asked, “Have I offended you?”
Kamoj made herself relax. She hadn’t come here to bristle at people. “I need your help, ma’am.”
“What can I do for you?”
“It’s about rum.”
Dazza pushed her hand through her hair, mussing the grey curls. “Is it rum? Or someone who drinks it?”
Kamoj twisted her hands in her lap. “He wants me to bring him more.”
“Don’t do it. Please.”
“He will send me away.”
“He won’t.”
“He says he will.”
“He doesn’t mean it.”
“How can you know?”
Dazza’s face gentled. “I do believe he’s already in love with you.”
“He can’t be,” Kamoj said matter-of-factly. “We don’t know each other.”
“Apparently it happens this way sometimes, with telepaths.”
“Happens?”
“Falling in love.”
“Everyone falls in love.”
“Not like Vyrl.”
“Why is he different?”
Dazza set her book on the couch. “Psions have more neural structures in their brain than other people. Vyrl, especially. He feels everything more. Add in that emotional artistic temperament of his and you get real fire.”
Her words surprised Kamoj. Vyrl didn’t strike her as emotional, but as capable of deep emotions, which she wouldn’t have called the same thing. She liked the way he expressed himself, open and warm, full of dash. She wondered, too, what Dazza meant by artistic temperament.
“Fire?” she asked.
The colonel smiled. “They used to call it ‘love at first sight.’ That turned out to be a misnomer, though. It’s more ‘at first thought.’”
Wryly Kamoj said, “We have such a saying. ‘Love under the Wild Moon.’ It is because this love makes your life chaos.”
Dazza gave a rueful laugh. “Yes, I can see that.”
“But why ‘at first thought?’”
“The fields produced by his brain couple to an unusually large degree with yours. His mind interprets that interaction in a pleasant way.” When Kamoj shook her head, Dazza tried again. “The process of thinking creates fields in your brain. You can’t see them, but they can affect what is nearby.”
“Like a magnet?”
Dazza gave her a surprised look. “Well, yes, actually, in a sense. The various fields your cerebrum produces are more complicated and less intense, but the basic idea is the same.”
“And Vyrl reacts to mine?”
The doctor nodded. “When people are near each another, the fields interact. Usually the effect is minor, even negligible. But every now and then two people hit a resonance. Combine that with a strong physical attraction and you can get intense emotion in a remarkably short time. Over the long term, it can create an exceptional bond.” Dryly she said, “Poets call it a love ‘deeper than the sea’ or ‘wider than the sky.’ ‘Quantum resonance’ may sound less romantic, but it’s more accurate.”
Kamoj blinked. It sounded like Dazza meant Vyrl’s actions were more than a drunken whim, that something special about she, Kamoj, had drawn him to her. It unsettled her to discover just how much she wanted that to be true.
Feeling awkward, she said, “He is also important to me. But each time it seems he will be all right, he wants to drink again. I had thought he would stop.”
Softly Dazza said, “I wish it worked that way.”
“Can you help?”
“I can treat his withdrawal symptoms. And his craving. But I can’t make him want to quit.” She spoke in a quiet voice. “I’m trying to reach him. But in the end it must be his choice.”
“Can’t you give him something to make him stop?”
Dazza shook her head. “I don’t think so. I could inject nanomeds that would interact with alcohol to make him sick every time he drinks. But if I force him to quit that way, it won’t stick. In the end all I would probably achieve is to earn more of his resentment.” She grimaced. “Besides which, if I did it without his consent, I would be breaking the law and endangering ISC relations with the Ruby Dynasty.”
Kamoj nodded. She and Maxard had often had to juggle politics with expediency for the sake of Argali. “Vyrl doesn’t seem like someone who would drink so much.”
“Apparently he never had much interest in it prior to—” The colonel stopped, then said, “to a sickness he suffered.”
“He told me about the coffin.”
Dazza stared at her. “He told you?” When Kamoj nodded, the doctor said, “He’s refused to speak of it with anyone else.”
“If he can talk to me, can’t he stop drinking too?”
“It’s not that easy. His body expects it now. Stopping will make him sick.”
“You can help him with that.”
She nodded. “Yes. But mentally he also depends on it. He thinks he can’t survive without it.”
“He can.”
“Vyrl doesn’t believe it.” Dazza exhaled. “I wish I could make him see. Few people could survive what happened as well as he has. It’s even more remarkable because his being a psion amplified the experience, gods only know how much. Something had to give. I hate what the alcohol is doing to him, but it could have been a lot worse. He hasn’t tried to commit suicide. And incredibly, despite everything, he came through it with his mind and personality intact.”
“He thinks the rum does that for him.”
“Please, Kamoj. Don’t give it to him.”
She twisted her hands together. “He gets so angry.”
“I know. But you must refuse.”
“This is easy for you to say. You don’t share his bed.”