She looked at him more directly than she had in a long time, her green eyes radiant in the darkness like the eyes of some wild animal. “Vocal communication allows deception,” she began.
“You know I don't want to deceive you.”
She ignored him and went on. “Vocal speech permits a distance between communicants, permits lies and evasions and the reserve of self. Telepathy, on the other hand, soon requires complete communion of the soul as well as of the mind. It allows no secrets, no lies, no evasions. It forces a giving of the self and an intimacy that, once experienced, makes all other relationships seem silly and undesirable by comparison.”
“Fine!” he said. “Have your soul-sharing relationships. I'm not against that. But be civilized enough to extend me a little kindness, a little companionship.”
“You are the uncivilized one,” she said.
“Oh?”
“You're damned lucky to be one of the new breed of mankind, but you reject your powers and continue to act as a primitive.” Her voice was full of scorn.
Shocked, he said, “You consider your telepathic talents to be a blessing — not a curse?”
“Of course.”
“How wrong you are!”
“Really?”
“Don't you see how your power has made you a fugitive, a hunted animal, how it's taken away your dignity, your peace of mind, how it's denied you the company of other people?”
She turned away from him.
He said, “If we're a new breed of men, a step up the evolutionary scale, why have our powers showed up at different points in each of our lives, so suddenly, like magic? If we were meant to be a new breed, why weren't we born with our powers?”
She said nothing.
He shook his head sadly as the wagon bumped down a long slope and shook them like dice in a cup. When they reached the bottom of the hill and were on more hospitable land, he said, “We aren't some new species, nothing as glamorous as that. We're merely tainted creatures, jokes perpetrated by the Ruiner, a sorry lot of—”
Oh, shut up! she 'pathed with particular violence.
Jask rubbed his temples to ease the headache she'd given him, and he didn't attempt to start another conversation.
On the sixth day they parked the wagon under a grove of tall trees that were abundantly thatched with yellow leaves, certain it would be out of sight of anyone lurking in the higher hills, and they bathed in the cool, vital creek that lay a hundred and fifty meters below the ancient roadway. Tedesco, Chaney and Kiera went down the stone path first, soon out of sight, leaving Jask and Melopina to stand watch. It was an uneventful watch; they were not approached by any strangers, villainous or otherwise, and they did not approach each other.
Tedesco and the wolf-people were gone nearly an hour. When they returned, their pelts glistened, bright and healthy and clean. They were laughing as they took over the watch and sent Jask and Melopina away.
The path down the embankment from the grove had been laid centuries ago, by hand. The stones were so closely fitted that no mortar had been necessary, and the years had done only moderate damage to their patterns. At the bottom of the stairs they came out on a paved ledge, which, at its water end, was stepped to feed into the creek. A few hundred meters up the creek a dam forced the water to back up to a depth of three or four meters, creating a pleasant enough swimming pool.
There was so little communication between him and Melopina that, as he undressed, Jask felt no actual embarrassment in being nude before her. It was really almost as if she were not even there. He had made a sort of breechcloth from fragments of his tattered jumpsuit, which was all that he was wearing in that summer heat; he was nude and in the water in short order.
He was treading water in the middle of the pool, looking around to see what had become of the girl, when she suddenly surfaced like a fish, rose part way out of the water, then sliced back into it, diving deep, leaving only a bubbly froth in her wake. When she came up again, she swam on the surface to the small dam, rolled onto her back and returned, smoothly, making very little noise.
“You're a very good swimmer!” he called to her.
Thank you. I sometimes feel my ancestors were born to water and that I should have a set of gills.
She dived.
She rose in a bright splash.
She cartwheeled through the water, swimming first on her stomach, then on her side, her back, her other side, finally returning to her stomach again, going through this routine again and again so that she seemed like the screw of an invisible ship.
“Beautiful!” he called, delighted with her sporting.
She dived.
When she came up, it was in front of him, showering him with water.
Her neck membranes repelled the water and flowed, still, like air-blown silk, a startling contrast to her soaked black hair, which hung straight from her head.
“That was bad manners,” he said, splashing her with his hands.
She laughed, turned and swam off, forcing him to give chase, letting him catch her, then flipping water in his face and whirling out of reach.
Once, by pretending to give up and then launching after her with even greater fervor, he caught her in his arms and tried to draw her toward him. His hands slid over heavy breasts, along slick skin, then lost her.
“Over here!” she shouted.
He turned and saw her at the other side of the pool.
“Slippery eel!” he called.
He went after her.
She dived out of sight.
A moment later she grabbed his feet and pulled him under, let him go when he began to fight back.
He surfaced, spluttering, listening to her delighted laughter.
“You'll pay, “he said.
This time he caught her more easily, drew her in until her hard nipples poked against his chest and her pelvis was glued to his, their legs brushing provocatively beneath the crystal water. Without realizing that he had intended to do this all along, he bent and kissed her, licked her lips and accepted her tongue in return.
Her arms went around him.
He nuzzled her neck membranes, smelled the tangy odor of her flesh, aware that she was tainted, that she was daughter to the Ruiner, but not caring in the least, not at that moment.
“I want you,'' he said. His voice sounded as if it belonged to someone else, throaty and ready to crack. He heard himself say, amazedly, “I think I love you, Mellie.”
Tell me again, she 'pathed.
Suddenly all of their brief conversations flashed through his mind. The countless hours, in only six days, in which they had been together became more than hours, stretched until they seemed like years. This time, without any qualifications, he said, “I love you.”
Her hand strayed between his legs, encircled his erection. She 'pathed, Again, Jask. Tell me again.
“I love you, Melopina.”
Again!
“I love you!”
Tell me with your power. Don't use your voice. Tell me again.
He hesitated and…
… lost her.
She jerked away from him as she sensed his reluctance to make the commitment, rolled onto her back and swam away. At the steps, she pulled herself from the water and stood on the paved patio, squeezing the water out of her hair. Her nipples were dark blue, her pubic bush black. She was the most desirable creature he had ever seen.
He stepped onto the patio and said, “Doesn't it mean anything…? I thought you felt something too, that you—”
She tossed her hair back.
Her neck membranes wavered, shone with droplets of water like tiny spheres of mercury.
She said, ''I can't give my body to you if you won't have my mind as well. I couldn't be half a wife to you.”