"Green,.Sharon.-.Diana.Santee.2.-.Gateway.To.Xanadu" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Sharon)

"You've lost your mind, girl," Dameron interrupted my ranging thoughts, hauling me back to where we were standing. He was looking straight at me, and his expression couldn't be interpreted as anything but ridiculing. "I thought you said you knew Valdon," he demanded. "If you think he'll stand still for being a flower boy in the background while you run around drawing fire from the enemy, you're out of your mind! What do you think he is?"

"I thought he was the one you were so worried about," I retorted, staring at the base commander. "Have you suddenly changed your mind, or am I going senile in my old age? I thought you wanted him out of the line of fire-or haven't you decided yet what you want?"

"I do know what I want," he muttered. "But what I want isn't necessarily what he'll want. Or what either of us would consider acceptable. Maybe I don't know what I want after all." He pulled his hand through his hair with a harried gesture, then turned to me. "What exactly do you think of Valdon?"

"What's to think about him?" I asked with a shrug,-privately wondering if Dameron had started to lose the marble game. "He's big, good-looking, has a talent I intend making use of- Hell, Dameron, I barely know him. The only things we've really done together so far are argue and fight. I'll be able to do a better job of giving an opinion if we ever manage to exchange more than a dozen words before the fur starts flying. "

"But you've still let him bed you," the Commander pointed out, a flatness in the words. "That doesn't jibe with the lack of opinion you claim to have. Or not have. Do you make a habit of spending bed time with men you scarcely know?"

"Usually," I answered with a slow nod, now almost convinced the leash was slipping. "How many men do you think I get to know well in my line of work? And what difference can a little sex make? Just because a man's good in bed doesn't mean you'd trust your back to him. Sex is nothing more than an exercise for two-or three, or five, or however your tastes run. Haven't you learned that yet?"

"That particular outlook doesn't necessarily come about through mature experience," he said, a gentleness and something that seemed to be pain looking out of his eyes. "Some people are raised to consider it a good deal more than casual exercise, more than something to be indulged in even between virtual strangers. If you ever get to the point of gaining true mature experience, you might learn that."

"Do you mean I'll learn that some men consider a roll in the hay the equivalent of a life commitment?" I asked, letting most of the friendliness drain out of my tone. "I've already learned that, friend, and also learned to stay away from that sort. The only thing I'm interested in commiting to is what I've already committed to, and there's no room in that sort of life for distractions. The-`level I operate on' makes other commitments impractical, especially long-term ones. My body has certain needs, and I see to them whenever I like the looks of available partners; if you're thinking about telling me that Val has kept himself pure waiting for his one true lady love, you have a shock coming. No man ever got to his level of expertise by abstaining, and please note that we're not discussing opinion. I've had to acquire a certain level of expertise myself to satisfy certain of my job requirements, and I can assure you that I know what I'm talking about."

"I don't doubt that," he answered, amused now. "And I didn't mean to imply that Valdon was a sheltered innocent. The reactions of the field team girls he paired with made that clear enough."

"Then what were you implying?" I asked, genuinely curious. If there was a point to the conversation I'd been a part of for the last few minutes, it would have been nice knowing what it was.

"What makes you think I was implying anything?" he countered, more amused, calmly folding his arms again. "I just happened to be taking the opportunity to voice a couple of my own opinions. I didn't say they had anything to do with Valdon. You'll see to it, then, that your people don't let him get in over his head?"

"Cross my heart and hope to spit wooden nickels," I promised, holding up my free hand. "Was that all you were looking for, a promise to protect your delicate little former second, and a true, unvarnished declaration on my philosophy of life'? No sworn blood oaths that I return him as sweet and untarnished as I'm getting him?"

"Your penchant for sarcasm must find you almost as much trouble as your line of work," Dameron remarked, looking down at me with seeming annoyance, and then the twinkle came back. "No, I don't need an oath like that from you about Valdon; I already have one from Valdon about you. Some of us still believe in the basic premise that women are there to be looked after and protected."

I stared at him in a disbelieving way for a minute, then burst out laughing. His dark brows lowered over his eyes in a frown that showed lack of understanding, causing me to laugh even harder, then shake my head at him.

"That's a hell of a sentiment to be coming from the man who deliberately set me up to be attacked by sword-swinging baddies," I pointed out when I could, still chuckling. "Not to mention the enslavement part. Are you sure you're not talking about Val this time?"

"Maybe I am," he agreed very quietly, with a small, sad smile, his dark eyes now unreadable. I cursed myself for an idiot and for having such a big mouth, but, the damage was already done. I'd been well-enough aware. of the guilt Dameron had felt over what had happened to me down on Tildor, but I'd thought he'd managed to put it behind him. Telling him I didn't blame him would probably only have made it worse, but I was about to try exactly that when he threw off the dark mood and straightened again.

"At any rate," he said as if there had been no interruption, "Valdon has those papers Phalsyn told you about, and the two of you can convert the time measurement in them to something your people will understand. As a final request I'm going to ask you to try to stay out of trouble and to take care of yourself, but I have a feeling that's one request you won't grant. "

"I always take care of myself," I answered, still bothered by the way I had hurt him. "There's rarely anyone else around to do the job for me. As for staying out of trouble, most of the people I know consider the accomplishment in the same category as avoiding death and taxes. Dameron. . . ."

"Don't worry, girl, I'll get it worked out after I see you safely on your way back home," he assured me with a faint smile. "I'll just remind myself that whatever trouble you find with Valdon you asked for, freely and without any pressure from me. You'd better get aboard now, so I can start evacuating the air from this dock. "

"Wait a minute!" I protested as he took my arm to head me toward the airlock. "What are you talking about? What trouble with Val? I don't plan on having any trouble with Val. "

"Then maybe you won't have any," Dameron said with a shrug, his hand moving me right in front of the airlock before leaving my arm. "If you're a good girl and behave yourself with him, Valdon certainly won't start any trouble. Have a good trip home, girl, and be sure to stop by if you're ever in this neighborhood again."

He patted my shoulder a couple of times before he turned and headed for the dock exit, ignoring the "Hey!" I sent after him as though I hadn't uttered a sound. I hefted the monolon bag I still carried, momentarily tempted to drop it and go after him, then said to hell with it and turned back to the airlock. I didn't know what game he was playing, but calling him on it wouldn't have accomplished anything. It was a safe bet even he didn't know what he was talking about, and I had better things to do with my time than waste it trying to find sense where there wasn't any.

Once I had stalked past the double open doors of the lock and hit the switch that closed them, I made my way deeper into the small ship. The two cabins, salon area, shower and exercise area, and galley were all ranged together after the airlock and before the control room, so I stopped briefly to toss my monolon bag into my cabin before continuing on to the pilot's console. I also stopped in the galley to fill a mug with coffee, but obviously made too little noise performing those chores. Val was moving around in the second cabin, probably stowing whatever he'd brought with him, and didn't even stick his nose out to see who had come in. I shrugged a little over such blind trust, still too annoyed with Dameron to be interested in making small talk with Val, and carried my coffee into the control room.

The departure check I started the computer on was longer and more detailed than your average departure check, but I wanted to be sure that everything really was on the green before I kicked off into the deep black. Dameron and Val seemed to be talented in the repairs department, but they still had been working on an alien ship with no more than alien wiring diagrams and inspired guesswork to guide them. An all-systems check is boring only when your life doesn't hinge on that check, and even so it doesn't take forever. I was just finishing up when the wide metal doors of the dock slid invitingly open, showing that Dameron had evacuated the air from the dock, giving me access to the departure tunnels. My course computer clicked contentedly as it waited with infinite patience to be meshed into the drive unit; every light on my board blinked green, and sets of parallel blue lines lit up along the dock wall and extended out into the departure tunnels. I raised the ship on secondary breaking jets, nudged us toward the open door, then followed the pretty blue lines until it was time to leave them and the tunnels behind. Tildor showed briefly in my screens, barely noticed in the midst of the departure question-and-answer routine I was involved in with the computer, and then it was a good distance behind us, its moons no longer even visible. I stayed at the board until the entire solar system was behind us, then got out of the pilot's chair to stretch. Everything from then on until destination-barring emergencies-was automatic, and I was free to play passenger.

I dropped off my empty mug in the galley on my way to the salon, plopped down on the nearer of the two couches, put my feet up as I lay back, then closed my eyes. Although it hadn't seemed like it while it was happening, the departure from Dameron's moon base had taken better than three hours, including the time it took to clear the solar system. Under normal circumstances everything after rising from the surface of the moon would have been handled by the computer, leaving me free to watch, worry, or even walk away, but I'd had a private project that needed programming, that had to be done then or not at all. I'd gone through a lot waiting for Dameron to program my course computer, and even with Phalsyn's papers handed over for delivery, I still hadn't been allowed to watch the course and quadrant data being fed in. To say I'd been annoyed would be to say the sayer didn't know me; I usually prefer getting even to getting mad. I'd asked the main computer to rig up a double-check tape run on its less intelligent cousin the course computer, and had waited and watched to see if the run did what I wanted it to. We were just at the fringes of Tildor's system when the double check clicked in, running a ninety-second-lag playback of where we'd just been. I couldn't copy the set-in course without purging the entire program, but there was nothing to keep me from recording where I'd been-up to and including the time of my arrival at destination. All I'd have to do at that point would be to reverse the run tape, and the breadcrumb trail leading back to Dameron's base would be in my hot little hand. I might never need it, but it never hurts to hedge your