The Infinite Sea(29)

            “Good morning.” Her voice was low-pitched, lilting, and vaguely familiar.

            She sat beside him, pulled her knees to her chest, and wrapped her long arms around her legs. Her face was familiar, too. Fair-skinned, blond, Nordic features, like a Viking princess.

            “I know you,” he whispered. His throat burned. She pressed the mouth of her canteen against his raw lips, and he drank for a long time.

            “That’s good,” she said. “You were talking nonsense last night. I was worried you’d suffered something a little more serious than a concussion.”

            She stood up and disappeared from view again. When she came back, she was holding a frying pan. She sat next to him, placing the pan on the ground between them. She was studying him with the same haughty indifference as the crow.

            “I’m not hungry,” he said.

            “You have to eat.” Not pleading. Stating a fact. “Fresh rabbit. I made a stew.”

            “How bad is it?”

            “Not bad. I’m a good cook.”

            He shook his head and forced a smile. She knew what he meant.

            “It’s pretty bad,” she said. “Sixteen broken bones, skull fracture, second-degree burns over most of your body. Not your hair, though. You still have your hair. That’s the good news.”

            The woman dipped a spoon into the stew, brought the spoon to her lips, blew gently, swiped her tongue slowly around the edge.

            “What’s the bad news?” he asked.

            “Your ankle is fractured. Fairly badly. That’s going to take some time. The rest . . .” She shrugged, sipped the stew, pursed her lips. “Needs salt.”

            He watched her dig into her rucksack, searching for the salt. “Grace,” he said softly. “Your name is Grace.”

            “One of them,” the woman said. Then she said her real name, the one she bore for ten thousand years. “I have to be honest. I like Grace better. So much easier to pronounce!”

            She swirled the soup with the spoon. Offered him a sip. His lips tightened. The thought of food . . . She shrugged and took another sip. “I thought it was debris from the explosion,” she went on. “I never expected to find one of the escape pods—or you in it. What happened to the guidance system? Did you disarm it?”

            He thought carefully before he answered. “Malfunction.”

            “Malfunction?”

            “Malfunction,” he said louder. His throat was on fire. She held the canteen for him while he drank.

            “Not too much,” she cautioned him. “You’ll get sick.”

            Water dribbled down his chin. She wiped it for him.

            “The base was compromised,” he said.

            She seemed surprised. “How?”

            He shook his head. “Not sure.”

            “Why were you there? That’s the curious thing.”

            “I followed someone in.” This was not going well. For a person whose entire life had been a lie, lying did not come easily to him. He knew Grace would not hesitate to terminate his current body if she suspected that the “compromise” extended to him. They all understood the risk in donning the human mantle. Sharing a body with a human psyche carried with it the danger of adopting human vices—as well as human virtues. And far more dangerous than greed or lust or envy or any of those things—or anything—was love.