Chapter 5

Dothan was snoring in the back seat as Jorie piloted the FAD homeward. A creeping numbness was welling up within him even as he tried to ignore his findings of the day. He recognized the sensation, having experienced it before at the beginning of his PhD studies. While he was conducting a literature search to frame his research, his favorite topic had run into unforeseen difficulties. He had been forced to abandon the subject matter and, facing that dead end, had to go through a period of mourning and loss. He spent time battling against a sense of failure.

"You seem pensive, Jorie," Mista said. "Did something happen this afternoon? Did Dothan or I offend you in some manner?"

"No, ma'am," Jorie said.

"Ma'am? That is a bit formal for someone with whom you have spent days in the wilderness," she said.

"I meant no offense, ma'am, ah, Mista. I explored a nearby mound this afternoon that I was certain was a ruin, but it was stone through and through. Every likely site is the same way. From the air and from the ground, each site looks like an artificial construct created by an intelligence. Then I drill into it and the structure turns out to be natural sandstone."

"You have a real puzzle on your plate. I presume you get more formal the more distracted you become?"

Jorie nodded. "My problems are outside the scope of my present duty to you and Dothan. I apologize for the distraction."

"We all have our problems, Jorie, especially royals," Mista said. "Dothan and I did want to see some of these possible archeological sites. Why don't we plan on visiting one tomorrow? Sometimes an outsider's eyes may see details that someone up close misses."

"It would be my pleasure to take you to my latest excavation," Jorie said with caution. "Pardon me again if I don't get my hopes up. The betting pool is leaning pretty heavily against my success at this point."

Mista gave him a little smile and nodded her head.

"You should talk to Dothan about the odds being against you. He is a champion of such circumstances. Yet, he is still standing and still fighting. Even the emperor fears him."

"I wouldn't think that being the subject of the emperor's fears would be a good thing," Jorie said.

"You're not Volentin," Mista said. "They live by different rules than you or I. Fear is a compliment in their world."

The nav computer signaled that it had located and latched onto the homing beacon from the base camp. Following base protocol, Jorie concentrated on switching the FAD to autopilot, interrupting the conversation. They flew the rest of the way home in silence, listening to the raspy snores from the back seat.

A soft knock on Jorie's door later that evening brought him to his feet. No one had come to his door in weeks and he was startled.

"It's open," he called out as he started picking up the datasheets that he had knocked off of his lap by accident.

The door opened and Kita slipped in, immediately shutting the door behind her. Jorie thought she looked agitated.

"Am I disturbing you? I mean, are you doing anything important right now?"

Jorie sank back down into the crappy composite chair with the unsorted papers in his hand. He needed many things at the moment and Kita wasn't one of them. Although he was tempted to tell her he was busy, he hated lying. She was the one who told him about the betting pool; she was the one who spurned him. It just wasn't worth the energy or the later regret.

"Nope, I'm just prepping for tomorrow's excursion with the royals," he said, lying, aware that he was a hypocrite to his own principle and integrity. He hated himself at the moment, why not invite in a little more self inflicted pain? Jorie knew that he was in a self destructive frame of mind and didn't have any ideas of what to do about it.

The room was small and his bed piled with boxes, samples and tools. The only open space was directly in front of Jorie where he had been resting with his feet up. The two of them in the same space had to practically touch knees if both were sitting. Kita sat on his bed with her hands on her knees, facing Jorie. He noticed that she hadn't bothered to clear another space and seemed comfortable being that close.

"The newest rumor is that the man royal is a crazy SOB," Kita said.

"He isn't crazy. He is extremely dangerous however," Jorie said.

Kita wasn't a rumormonger, which meant she probably had something else on her mind. Jorie was uncomfortable. Kita was leaning forward and he couldn't sit any further back in his chair. Although it was too late to say anything, Jorie wasn't sure he wanted her to sit so close; it was more personal than he expected.

"You've told me many times that you don't like to spread rumors, Kita. What do you want?"

"You're all business, tonight," she said. "Very well, I need to talk to someone and you're the only one I can trust."

Jorie looked like he was about to explode with sudden rage. Out of all the people on this backwater, she trusts him - but they can't have sex. She trusts him - but they can't be a couple. Mention of the word "trust" from her was like adding petrol to a fire. He felt like a teenage boy who was told when he asked out a girl he really liked on a date, "I don't really think of you in that way." She wasn't being malicious, but it made him feel impotent. Even more, they were clueless how much they hurt him.

"Hear me out before you get all huffy and puffy, Jorie. Vantis is acting out and he is becoming quite violent. Before I had no doubt that I could handle him; now, I'm afraid to be around him."

Jorie backed away from the precipice of his anger. Maybe he was being played for a fool, but she was playing the damsel-in-distress card and he knew he was a sucker for it. He took a deep breath.

"Okay, I'll bite, Kita. How is Vantis acting out?"

"Ever since the royals arrived, he hasn't wanted to do anything," Kita said.

Jorie blinked a few times as he tried to find something significant in her words.

"Anything? As in: he doesn't want to go out to the vids?"

"Vantis is a ... Jeez, don't make me say this Jorie," Kita said, pleading but Jorie said nothing. "Vantis very energetic about sex, you know ... like ... every day and more than once."

"I'm sorry I asked," Jorie said dryly.

"He's restless and angry. When he isn't just angry, he's also anxious and almost violent. He used to be an ice cold with nerves of steel sort of person. Normally Vantis is an unpleasant person, but he is taking it to an entirely new level. He can't even get it up," Kita said. "It has something to do with the royals and he is skeeving me out, as you like to say."

Jorie wondered why she was there. Why was she telling him about her problem with Vantis's impotence? Processing the connection between people's' actions and their motivations wasn't one of his good skill sets.

He finally connected the fact someone had planted a tracking device on the royal FAD and Vantis may have done it. Was Vantis spying on the royals? Remembering what he had seen with his own eyes about the abilities of Dothan, Jorie could understand why Vantis would be afraid if a tracker was traced back to him.

Yet Vantis was no fool. Did he send Kita as his spy to pry something specific out of Jorie? Why didn't he just send for Jorie? Jorie had one supposition, lots of questions and no evidence.

"Vantis is interested in the royals," Jorie said. "Why?"

"I dunno," Kita said. "He doesn't tell me what he's thinking. He just takes all of his anger out on me."

"I'm sorry about that, but you made your choices knowing who he is. If Vantis is so upset with the royals, why doesn't he just call me in to his office?" Jorie asked. "After all, I'm the one taking them on tour every day."

"Vantis acts funny when your name comes up in conversation. 'Funny' is the wrong word; he doesn't like you, but he also feels sorry for you, for some unstated reason. He calls you 'the patsy, '" Kita said. "This little side deal may be your last days on this planet. Vantis has indicated that when the royals are gone, so are you."

Her words sent a chill down his spine. Jorie had known that Vantis was likely to cancel his contract for failure to produce results, but he had thought he had more time.

"Aren't you afraid of being found here in my room with me?" Jorie said, trying to maneuver Kita into revealing her reasons.

"You're the only one who knows that I'm sleeping with him. I can trust you with this scary stuff," Kita said.

Jorie snorted. "Now who is being naïve? If you are Vantis's personal fuck partner, you can be damn sure that he has made it clear to all the other men-on-the-make that you're off limits. You even chastised me with that little bit of information out the field the morning after."

"I need your help; I need to get away from him," she said, taking a different tack. The pleading look in her eyes almost had him convinced.

He wanted to be her lover, but he wasn't willing to let her in his bed again just because she was afraid of Vantis. If she liked Jorie for who he was, he was fine with that reason. However, to ask for his help because she was afraid of the same man of whom he was afraid - the idea was unpalatable. Maybe she did like him and he was missing her point, but his career was falling apart at this moment. He had to save his own skin first.

"Kita, you made your choice and turned me down. Now you're in trouble and you suddenly change your mind, switching from him to me. 'Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.'"

"You're a prick!"

"No, Kita. I'm no longer so naïve and I have you to thank for that little gift. I'm tired and I need to go to bed because tomorrow is another day of touring. Good night, Kita."

She stared at him for a moment, saying nothing. Then she stood up and straightened her blouse.

"Good night" she said, and she walked out the door.

His dreams kept him tossing and turning through the night. At some point, Jorie threw off the covers that tangled his legs and sat up fully awake in the deep darkness. Tourmaline had two small moons and neither was in the sky at the moment.

When Jorie was an undergraduate, his roommate fell in love with a beautiful woman whose boyfriend of the moment was a hulking burrball player with an anger management problem. Burrball was a fast moving contact sport played with a partial no-gravity ball with spikes; it wasn't a game for sissies. After several weeks of hiding their tryst, the boyfriend was becoming suspicious, not that Jorie's roommate told Jorie about the developments. One Friday, the roommate asked Jorie if he could pick up the girlfriend at the Student Union Building on his way back from class on Friday. Not thinking anything of it, Jorie puttered up to the entrance in his cheap, hydrogen fueled scooter. She put on his extra helmet and hopped on the back, grabbing him around the waist to keep from falling off. Jorie saw something come at him, and then he was flying off of his scooter and across the parking lot. The boyfriend went to jail, the roommate and girl fled college hand in hand, and Jorie was discharged from the hospital after two days of intensive bone growth therapy.

He had felt like a patsy then. The attack had come out of the blue, and left him hurt and bleeding on the pavement. He wondered with a clarity that comes in the quiet of the early morning hour, 'How bad was he bleeding now?'

Stupidest of all, he still liked Kita and he felt guilty for turning her away. He wanted to lie naked with her, kissing away all of her fears. Turning his pillow over and punching it a few times to flatten it, Jorie lay his head back down and tried to turn off his imagination. Finally he fell asleep.