Lauren found herself unexpectedly touched by the oblique compliment. Up until a little while ago Xairn had claimed to have no sexual urges at all toward her or anyone else. Even now, when he had admitted to her that she had woken new and unfamiliar emotions inside him, he still seemed hesitant and uncertain about expressing those emotions. Lauren thought it was because he’d never been given any love as a child—how could he learn to show affection for anyone else when he’d never received any himself? She was determined to work on that, to try and help him as much as she could. But now wasn’t the time for a therapy session.
“That’s very sweet of you, Xairn,” she said. “But I’d still like to go with you.”
He shook his head. “You don’t understand. Your beauty makes you priceless here in O’ah. Any splicer would give his left hand for a chance to replicate your flawless skin and lovely eyes. I am only one male and there are gangs that search for exotics. If they set on us all at once, I don’t know that I could protect you.” He lifted his chin. “I would die trying, of course. But that would be of little comfort to you if they killed me and took you away to a stripping shed.”
“A stripping shed?” That sounded bad to Lauren.
“A laboratory where candidates with good or unusual DNA are rendered into their component parts for maximum cloning potential.”
Lauren felt sick. “So they kill you and cut you into little pieces?”
Xairn nodded. “Essentially. But that’s only in the splicing district. Not here in the main part of O’ah.”
“But how do you know this…this splicer person you’re looking for won’t want to do the same thing?” Lauren demanded. “How do you know he won’t just kill me and strip me down for parts like a stolen car?” She shivered at the thought.
“Because the DNA specialist I am searching for is one I have had dealings with before. His name is Vrr and he will not betray me.” Xairn reached out one large hand awkwardly as though he wanted to comfort her somehow.
Lauren leaned toward him— after hearing about the grisly things they did on this planet she needed all the comfort she could get. “Xairn,” she whispered.
His long fingers almost brushed her cheek, but then he drew back without touching her. His hand flexed into a fist at his side. “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, Lauren,” he said in a low voice. “Planning it. I’ve wanted to get away from my father almost my entire life. This is the only way to get away from him forever—for either one of us. Only by changing our DNA will we make it impossible for him to lock onto either of us with the molecular transfer beam.”
Lauren shivered. “Was that the way he kidnapped me in the first place?” She well remembered the way it had felt to be turned into a million tiny pieces and sent flying through the air. It was not a pleasant sensation at all.
Xairn nodded. “We have to alter ourselves enough that he can never transport either of us again.”
“And you can do that?”
“The Alteration house can. I built the beam for my father—I know exactly which sequences have to be altered in order to make us untraceable and untransportable.”
She sighed. If Xairn really had been planning his escape for as long as he said, then he must know what he was doing. “All right,” she said at last. “I told you before that I trusted you, Xairn, and I still do. But please…don’t take too long.”
“No more than one of your Earth standard days,” he promised, nodding. “Two at the very most.”
That had been three days ago…
Lauren frowned moodily and looked out the front viewscreen at the busy alien marketplace. Though she didn’t want to admit it to herself, it wasn’t boredom that was really bothering her.
It was fear.
What if something happened to him? What if he’s dead or hurt somewhere with no one to help him? What if he never comes back?
She tried to push the troubling questions to the back of her mind, but she could no longer manage it. Xairn was gone and she was all alone on an alien planet a hundred lightyears from home.
What was she going to do?
There was plenty of food, at least. The Kindred ship was stocked with tiny food cubes which expanded into a full sized meal when they were put in the rehydrator. Xairn had showed her how to work the microwave-like machine before he left and Lauren estimated there were hundreds of the sugar-cube sized meals stored neatly in a cabinet at the back of the ship.
True, some of them were pretty strange—she’d rehydrated one which contained what looked like a writhing nest of worms. Lauren had thrown it away—she didn’t like to waste food but there was no way she was eating anything alive. Just thinking of it made her feel queasy. But the other meals seemed edible enough and the portions were so large she could often eat an entire day off a single cube—probably because they were intended for huge Kindred warriors and not Earth females.