Festina never showed up at my cabin door last thing at night; she had willpower. Prope, on the other hand — she held herself back two days, then arrived late the third evening "to make sure I was doing all right."
The funny thing is I’d never hit Prope with that lust-for-me pheromone — not since that first night, when the pheromone must have flooded off me like flop-sweat and I was just too dense to notice. But Prope came visiting anyway… with a kind of confused look in her eye, as if she didn’t understand it either. Maybe she wanted to recapture whatever crazy abandon she’d felt that other night; or maybe she wanted to prove to herself it hadn’t been real, that she could bed me in cold blood without getting all dizzy and lost in emotion.
Either way, she seemed pretty determined to spend another night with me — even if she had to force herself against her own instincts. That was the part that got me: like she was scared out of her wits, but had decided this was a thing that must be done. It brought out all these weird fatherly feelings in me, as if Prope was just a little girl trying to be brave.
(Edward, going all paternal. I guess it was condescending, me thinking of an adult woman that way… but lately, I seemed to see everybody as a poor innocent I needed to protect.)
So what to do with Prope? I certainly couldn’t sleep with her again; I shouldn’t have done it the first time. It’d be easy to produce some horrible gagging smell that would drive her away — all I had to do was think what I wanted, and my body would pump out the stink of rotten eggs, or gangrene, or worse — but that was pretty darned crude. I didn’t want to overpower the woman; I just wanted her to give up on getting me into the sack.
Meanwhile, Prope sat herself on the edge of my bed. Started talking about some minor something that’d gone wrong with a piece of equipment I’d never heard of, and it’d taken two hours to fix when it was only supposed to take an hour forty-five, and why didn’t the fleet train technicians properly anymore…
All the time she spoke, her hand kept lifting up to the fastener strap on her blouse then shying away again — as if she’d promised herself she’d start undressing the second she got inside my room, but now couldn’t quite go through with it. It was almost endearing; but she’d pretty soon find the nerve to rip off her clothes, and I really really wanted to think of some brilliant strategy before that happened.
Oddly enough, I did. While she was going on and on about lazy crewfolk, I wondered, What would happen if I smelled frost green?
Thirty seconds later, that’s exactly how I smelled. I didn’t have to squinch up my brow and concentrate, it just kind of happened — like my body knew what to do, without me having to think. Very weird and amazing and scary… but I smelled like a precise duplicate of Prope herself, only stronger: glossier.
As if I were her brother, or sister, or mother, or father. People were supposed to have instincts to avoid inbreeding, right? With Prope, there was a risk she’d be turned on by the chance to sleep with herself… but I crossed my fingers and hoped pheromones were stronger than vanity.
The captain’s voice faltered. She looked up at me, a tiny look of pain on her face. For ten full seconds, she just stared into my eyes. Then she muttered, "Well, I’ve got an early morning tomorrow," and barreled out of the cabin like she was going to throw up.
Maybe she was. It kind of made me wonder about Prope’s family.
That wasn’t the end of it. In the days that followed, Prope tried several times more… as if she hated herself for chickening out and desperately needed to prove I hadn’t got to her. Usually I smelled her coming and got my own frost green up fast enough to send her bolting away; but once she caught me by surprise, and with a sudden burst of resolve, shoved me up against the nearest bulkhead. She planted a kiss hard on my mouth, and ground her hips tight on my groin, back and forth, one, two. Then she heard people’s voices coming out of a doorway not far off, so she let me go. "Later," she whispered, and strode off cockily, like she was finally pleased with herself.
After that, I decided maybe just to keep smelling frost green morning, noon, and night, till I left the ship. But Festina got really grouchy at me, and that soapy Lieutenant Harque started following me around. When I met the Mandasars that afternoon, Counselor gave me a pained look. "Oh, Teelu… must you?"
So I turned off the Prope perfume and toughed out the flight as best I could.
29
JOINING THE SYSTEM
No sign of Willow or the black ship as we entered the Troyen system. That didn’t mean a thing — starships can hide just by powering down. Put them in orbit around a gas giant, and they pass for bits of space rock.
Nothing shot at Jacaranda as we settled into planetary orbit. Dade claimed that was a good sign. Over the past few days, he’d repeatedly stated his opinion that no one on Troyen had any surface-to-space missiles left; the Fasskisters’ nanites had taken care of that. He admitted it was possible some missile bases had escaped the Swarm — if they were sealed off well enough and protected with huge clouds of defense nano — but in that case, the missiles would have been used, wouldn’t they? When everybody else was fighting with swords and spears, an aerial bombardment would be so valuable, no army would have kept the missiles on ice for twenty whole years. Especially when the Swarm nanites were a constant threat. Any commander with common sense would use the bombs while they were still good.
"And what about the missile that nearly hit the moon-base?" Tobit had asked. "Was that a figment of York’s imagination?"
Benjamin shrugged. "It didn’t hit the moonbase, did it? It was an absolutely perfect miss — close enough to scare people into evacuating, but not to hurt anyone. Then surprise, surprise, as soon as the base personnel scurry away, Willow shows up on its secret mission."
"Oh boy," Festina said, whacking her forehead lightly with her palm. "Ouch."
I wasn’t quite sure what Dade meant. "Um… are you saying maybe Willow shot at us? To make everybody clear out?"
Dade nodded. "They could have modified a standard probe missile once they came in-system. That way they wouldn’t have any lethal weapons aboard while they were still in deep space — keep the League of Peoples happy. Willow lobbed the missile at your base, but made sure it didn’t come close enough to do real damage. No sentients were truly at risk, so the League wouldn’t give a damn."
"I hate to say it," Tobit growled, "but the kid makes sense."
"So I can come with you after all?" Dade said.
He looked back and forth between Tobit and Festina. The two of them exchanged looks but didn’t speak.
"I know what you’ve been thinking," Dade told them. "You don’t want me down on Troyen with you because I’m not a real Explorer."
Festina and Tobit had never said that to him… not in so many words. But in all their planning for the mission, there’d been sort of a kind of a subtext that maybe he’d be left behind. It was always, "Tobit, you could do this," and "Edward, you can carry that," with no, "Benjamin, here’s what you’ll do."
Now Festina answered Dade in a quiet voice. "You’re a cadet," she said. "Just here on training rotation. It would be irresponsible of us to jeopardize your life, taking you down to a planet at war, when Phylar, Edward, and I are fully qualified Explorers."
"You aren’t an Explorer, you’re an admiral," Dade replied. He ignored Festina’s steely glare. "And York isn’t a qualified Explorer, you know he isn’t — he’s never stepped foot into the Academy. That just leaves Tobit, and a landing party has to have at least two Explorers if they’re available."