4
“Take it easy, Terry,” a voice came through the thinning fog, supposedly calm and soothing but laced with enough worry and fretting to make my head throb. I motioned at the voice behind the fog, trying to wave it away; the gesture didn’t work, but at least the worry eased up. “Tammad, she’s coming to,” the voice persisted. “You can tell that doctor he can take his time now.”
“I have told him how close he stands to the end of his life,” a second voice growled, farther away but suddenly coming closer. “Should he not appear in the next moment, be will learn that my words were not idle.”
The first voice, Garth’s voice, muttered something that was half agreement, half deep-throated snarl, and I opened my eyes to see the two of them standing over raze, staring down at where I lay on the bed. Tammad was furious with what was mostly self-directed anger, and Garth was puzzled.
“You two are giving me a headache,” I muttered, trying to smooth the pain creases out of my forehead. “If you can’t turn that off, you’ll have to leave.”
“Turn what off?” Garth demanded, increasing instead of decreasing the puzzlement. “And what’s going on here? What happened to you?”
“Nothing,” I muttered, starting to sit up, and then I winced at the soreness of my ribs. Nothing was cracked or even close to being seriously damaged, but Garth saw me flinch and whirled angrily on Tammad.
“What have, you done to her now?” he demanded. “Another mere nothing to be overlooked?”
“It would be useless to deny the guilt,” the big barbarian answered, his voice calm but his mind in a turmoil. “I have once again done the opposite of what I wished to do with this woman, though the why of it is beyond me. I have never before had such difficulty with wendaa.”
“What’s going on here?” another voice demanded before Garth could say anything. The voice belonged to a portly man of middle years, who was breathing hard from the pace he had been moving at when he came in. He wore the uniform of a ship’s officer, but I had never seen him before. The two men turned to him, and Garth looked him up and down.
“Well, I’m glad to see you’ve finally made it,” he said grimly. “Do you think you might examine this woman before going back to your collection of dip-reals?”
The man flushed, guilt flaring in his mind, and I just couldn’t take any more. I lay back on the bed again and tried to see what I could do about blocking them all out. Tammad was angry at himself for hurting me, Garth was angry because things weren’t going quite the way he had expected, and the man, who was undoubtedly the ship’s doctor they had sent for, was smarting under Garth’s accusation. So-called dip-reals were made only for men, supplying highly erotic fantasy females for men who couldn’t or didn’t care to pair up with real women. Accusing a man of using dip-reals was an insult, but Garth had very little to worry about. The portly man couldn’t have stood up to the Kabra even if he’d wanted to.
The doctor stood glaring at Garth for a minute, then turned away from him and walked over to the bed I was on. His anger grew clearer the closer he came, pushing at the thin shield I had somehow formed in my mind. I say I had formed the shield, but that isn’t entirely accurate. In some manner the shield had formed itself, needing only my lack of active resistance to grow immediately where it was needed. As the doctor’s anger touched it it thickened, taking up the burden of his emotions without passing it on to me. I knew I could release it any time I cared to, but I would also have enjoyed knowing where it came from. I had never been able to do that before, and had never beard of anyone else able to do it.
“What’s bothering you, young lady?” the man asked, his expression working to be concerned. It felt strange not to be experiencing his thoughts directly, but my mind needed time to come back from the buffeting it had taken.
“Nothing’s bothering me,” I told him. “All I need is to be left alone for a while.”
“That isn’t true,” Garth insisted, coming to stand closer to the bed. “When she tried to move a minute ago, I could see she was in pain. Pain from what I don’t know, but there was definitely pain.”
“The fault was mine,” Tammad put in, coming to stand next to Garth. His tone and expression were calm, but I doubted that his mind matched them. “I embraced the woman, forgetting how slight she is. I may have done her serious harm.”
“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” the doctor sighed, turning his bead toward the other men. “If you two will step outside, I’ll examine her.”
Garth nodded and began to turn away, but it was immediately evident that Tammad had no intentions of going with him.
“I will remain during this examination,” the barbarian announced, his light eyes openly mistrusting the doctor’s intentions. “The woman is mine, and I do not care to leave her with strangers.”
“Then I won’t examine her,” the doctor shrugged, seemingly unimpressed with his antagonist. “I won’t make any woman take her clothes off in front of an audience.”
“The man’s right, Tammad,” Garth put in, coming back to where he’d been. “You don’t want to embarrass Terry, do you? If you insist on staying when she has to undress, she’ll be embarrassed.”
“I see no need for the removal of her clothing,” the barbarian maintained, folding his arms across his chest as be continued to look at the doctor. “You may see to her as she is.”
“Is that so?” the doctor came back, his belligerence evident in the thrust of his fleshy chin. “That’s not the way I conduct an examination. If you know so much about it, do it yourself.”
“Come on, Tammad, let the man do his job,” Garth urged, moving closer to put a hand on the barbarian’s shoulder. “If we stayed, we’d just be in the way. This way we’ll find out what’s wrong with Terry, and we’ll still be right outside the door. You have my word he won’t do anything you’d find unacceptable.”
“You are willing to give your word on the matter?” Tammad asked, turning to look at the Kabra. When Garth nodded he nodded. as well, and added, “I know little of the doings of the men of your worlds. Perhaps, in this way, I shall learn the sooner. Very well.”
He turned then and led the way out of the cabin, Garth following along and talking to him in low tones. When the door closed behind them, the doctor turned back to me.
“About time,” he muttered, his eyes on me. “If you’ll remove that blouse-like garment, we’ll be able to begin.”
“There’s nothing to begin,” I told him, moving myself carefully into a sitting position. The shield made me feel as if I were wrapped in layer after layer of transparent cloth, but it didn’t stop me from noticing that the soreness in my ribs was already fading. In another few minutes it should be gone completely. The major damage had been done to my mind, and even that wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The headache was already gone, and I had to smother the urge to peek out from behind the shield.
“Now what’s the problem?” the doctor demanded in exasperation, the frown on his round face making him look severe. “Did you people get me down here just to give me a hard time?”
“I wasn’t the one who called you,” I pointed out. “I told you earlier I wasn’t interested in your services. If you’re still here it isn’t my fault.”