“I think—I’m suddenly more hungry than tired,” I found myself being forced to say, the decision having been made almost on its own. Something told me I would not be too pleased to hear what I’d been doing during the time that was blank to me, but I discovered I had to know. I didn’t want to know but I did want to know, and since I would remember eventually anyway there was no sense in putting it off. “You don’t happen to have something I can wear, do you?”
“That uniform you had on when we found you is hanging in the closet over there,” the woman Ashton said, nodding her head toward the wall to my left. “The bloodstains have been cleaned out of it, and the rips and tears aren’t so bad that it can’t be worn. Would you like us to wait while you dress, or would you prefer bringing the uniform out to the common area and getting into it there?”
“Ashton and I will go on ahead and get the food ordered,” Murdock said as he began to struggle out of his chair, the words so quick and smooth I barely had time to glare at the woman. “There’s no need of your hurrying, Terrilian, take what time you require and join us at your leisure. Come, Ashton, I find I’ve an appetite of my own to see to.”
I was ready to swear Murdock had never accepted as much help from anyone as he did from the woman right then, forcing her to pay more attention to him than to me. It seemed fairly clear she was spoiling for a fight as much as I was, and although I didn’t know the details of what was motivating her, I was more than ready to oblige. The only thing that had held me back until then was the difference in the strength of our minds, a difference the woman had no real idea about as yet. If she pushed me one more time she would learn about the difference, though, no matter how unfair it was. Enough is enough, but with her it was too much.
Once the door closed behind my two visitors, I was faced with the need to get out of bed. Doing it wasn’t as easy as deciding on it, and although I didn’t have to use pain control, I did have to move a lot more slowly than I wanted to. Getting into the uniform first meant sitting back down, and if the boots hadn’t been flexible enough to more or less step into I would have had a problem. By the time I was dressed I knew the beating I’d taken hadn’t broken anything on me, not even the ribs I’d first thought it had, but that didn’t mean it didn’t still hurt.
It wasn’t unreasonably long before I left the cabin for the common area, but even before I reached the single, round table set up in it I could see that plates of food had already been brought. Murdock was settled into a special chair that both supported and comforted his body, a cup of kimla in his hands, for the most part ignoring what he’d said he was developing an appetite for. The woman Prime was still his companion, sitting in a standard chair and sipping from her own cup of kimla, her gaze more inward than on her surroundings. Murdock’s mind was still under its usual calm control, but hers, as unshielded as it was in the cabin, was a whirlwind blend of annoyance and confusion and frustration and anger. As I neared the table, heading for the last unoccupied chair, she looked up and purposely smoothed the turning in her mind, but didn’t say anything.
“Ah, Terrilian, happily sooner than I had expected,” Murdock said, touching a stud that raised the back of his chair just a little. “The ship’s doctor informs me that you’re doing very well, considering the fact that you might have been seriously hurt by so vicious an attack. Whatever possessed those people to hurt you like that?”
“Those people,” I echoed looking at him as I carefully lowered myself into a chair that was usually very comfortable. “Am I mistaken, Murdock, or are you under the impression this was done to me by those of the complex?”
, , Why-of course I’m under that impression,” he said, exchanging faint frowns with the woman Ashton. “Who else might there be on that world, a world noted on the charts as having no higher life forms of its own?”
“Murdock, they’re breeding for Primes,” I said, leaning back slowly enough so that what pain I felt increased only a small amount. “When empaths mate you may always get more empaths, but you don’t necessarily get Primes even from Prime parents. I was attacked by one group of those who didn’t happen to be born Primes.”
“You can’t mean they simply-kick out—the ones who aren’t Primes?” the woman Ashton demanded, her body straightened by the same outrage filling her mind. “Empaths are empaths, some stronger, some weaker, but all the same! How can they do such a barbaric thing, such a—a-! ”
“They do it as easily as they do all the rest,” Murdock interrupted, his thoughts as cold as his .face was devoid of expression. “Clearly, I should be unsurprised by anything I hear of them, and yet just as clearly—”
His voice stopped for a moment while he fought with the urge to do something useless but violent, and then his normal self-control reasserted itself. “I refuse to waste my strength on rage,” he stated, possibly more to himself than to us. “As we may now begin to finalize our plans against them, I shall content myself with the knowledge that they will soon be made to pay for everything they’ve done. At the same time their wrongdoing will be righted, as quickly and as thoroughly as we find it possible to see to. And I believe we would do well to speak of other things now.”
He paused while a steward stopped beside me to supply a cup of kimla like those my companions held, and I found I was more than happy to have it. The kimla was warm and smooth and properly sweetened, the first sip of it showing me how badly I needed something like that in my stomach. I felt as though my insides were just about empty, which meant it was time for one of the questions I hadn’t yet asked.
“How long ago did you people find me?” I put to Murdock, leaning forward carefully to check the contents of a tureen already on the table. It held a creamed soup that positively beckoned to me, and when the steward saw I wanted some of it he took over the job of filling a bowl.
“We’ve had you aboard almost a full day now,” Murdock replied, nodding with absent approval over the bowl being filled for me. “Our doctor treated your cuts and bruises while muttering things best not repeated under his breath, then put you to bed with orders that you weren’t to be disturbed by anyone. He felt that it would likely be quite some time before you regained consciousness, but it wasn’t that long at all before the empath assigned by Ashton to watch you told us you were beginning to come awake. The doctor also thought you would be bedridden for quite a while, but he seems to have been in error on that score as well. Once you’ve eaten and we’ve talked, we’ll let him know you’re up and about again.”
With a bowl of soup in front of me and a small scoop in my hand I didn’t feel the need to comment on that, most especially since I wasn’t terribly anxious to see his doctor. It was true that I still hurt, but if the doctor could have changed that he would have, which meant seeing him would be a waste of time for both of us. Right then I preferred wasting my time in other ways, and Murdock shifted in his chair before beginning on one of them.
“Perhaps it would be best if I tell Ashton what’s been happening to you, with you simply listening in,” he said, apparently aware of the upset still felt by the woman and wanting to distract her. “If you happen to hear something that strikes you as wrong or partially inaccurate, don’t hesitate to speak up. It will mean your memory is beginning to return, an occurrence I would like to see completed as soon -as possible. We will all need to be in our clearest minds before this thing is over and done with.