Analog SFF, April 2003 by Dell Magazine Authors

Author:Dell Magazine Authors [Authors, Dell Magazine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Magazine, 2012
Publisher: www.Fictionwise.com
Published: 2001-07-03T04:00:00+00:00

III—Cavern of Ladders

Jess drifted awake, warm but unaccountably stiff. Why did her quarters have a musky scent? Silver Tide usually smelled sanitized. She stretched—and pain shot through her body.

“Ah!” She snapped awake. Oh, hell. She wasn't on Silver Tide. She was about to be hefted into a canyon.

Opening her eyes, she stared across a dimly lit room; no cliff, just a polished stone chamber. The tables and desks were double-tiered, designed for two pairs of arms, and a few feet taller than what humans would build. She was lying on a stone floor, on a rug, with her back against a padded wall. Another rug covered her, soft on her skin. Jess recognized the furs. Cepheans made them from a silken material they sheared off an animal called the abryr, one of the few Cephean words humans could pronounce, said with a growl in the throat.

Despite the cushion of blankets, the ground was rough beneath her. A ridge ran under her waist and another under her torso. She wore nothing except a shift and two bandages, one around her waist and the other around her thigh.

Memory returned: cats, the attack, Ghar. She had lost so much blood; then she had lost consciousness.

The wall behind her shifted.

For an instant Jess was too startled to move. Then she rolled onto her back, carefully, favoring her injuries. The “wall” behind her was alive.

Oh, Lord. She was staring at the chest of a Cephean sleeping on his side. A large Cephean. The “ridges” she had felt under her body were his arms; he was holding her around her waist and torso. She lay in a cage of limbs, four to be exact. It was so strange, and so unexpected, that she couldn't even react at first.

Finally she said, “Ghar?” Her voice rasped.

He continued to sleep.

She tried again. “Ghar? Can you hear me?”

His lashes lifted, revealing two brown eyes, dark and liquid. He blinked as if trying to fathom her presence. Then his hands shifted, his claws retracted so he didn't jab her. He moved them against her back, signing in the language used by the deaf. It was the method of conversing they had tried before, a playful experiment that had ended up communicating far more than they had intended, or at least more than they had been willing to admit.

Do you hurt? he asked.

Jess was too self-conscious to think how she felt about his touching her, beyond her confusion at the situation and his presence. She signed against his chest, her fingers buried in his fur. I'm all right. Where is this?

You came here the last time you visited. His fingers stilled. Then, carefully, he added, Maybe you forgot.

Oh. Now she recognized the place. His rooms. They had spent the night here, on this pile of blankets in fact. He had just offered her a chance to pretend it never happened. She wondered how he would explain, if she chose to develop amnesia, why she was in bed with him now.

I remember, she signed.

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