Tolstoy Read online

  9

  Anna

  Anna watched as Leo gave up on the door after no more than a perfunctory attempt to open it.

  “I guess we’ll keep going,” he said. “What are the chances the first mate had a baby stashed here?”

  Anna moved to the door and pressed the lever.

  Something sharp pierced the skin of her index finger and she cried out.

  The door popped partially open with a hiss. Lights inside flashed on and off.

  “Must be a genetic lock,” Leo said.

  “What’s that?” Anna asked, examining the small droplet of blood on her finger.

  “It confirms that you’re human before you can gain entry without a chip,” he said. “I must not have held the handle long enough to engage it.”

  Anna nodded and tried pushing the door the rest of the way open.

  It wouldn’t budge.

  “Something must be off with the electrical circuits in here,” Leo said. “The door’s jammed, the lights are flickering.”

  “Electrical drives for this floor would be near the engine room,” BFF19 said.

  “The baby’s in here,” Anna said. “We can’t leave.”

  “How do you know?” Leo asked.

  “The lights are flashing, just like on the video feed,” she said, pressing her shoulder into the door.

  “Please allow me,” Leo said.

  She stepped back.

  He rammed the door and it popped open with a groaning crack.

  God, he was strong.

  Anna dashed through the opening and into the room. It was a sleeping chamber about twice the size of the one she had just come from. Her gaze took in a bed, a dresser, a desk and chair.

  No baby.

  “Hmm,” Leo said.

  But BFF19 was sailing excitedly around in loops next to what looked like a closet door.

  “There’s a temperature controlled chamber in here,” the drone chirped.

  Anna opened the door, this time preparing herself for a prick. But this lever opened the usual way. Behind the door was a tiny room. A small stasis pod hung on the wall opposite the door, the soft light giving the liquid inside an amber glow.

  Behind the clear glass of the pod, the baby slept on.

  It was a boy. One chubby fist rested against his mouth, the other near his ear. His blond curls drifted gently in the liquid as if moved by an unseen current.

  Anna placed her hand against the glass of the pod.

  “Tolstoy,” BFF19 said.

  “What?” Anna asked.

  The little drone was fluttering around the top of the pod, where a bronze plate had been welded.

  TOLSTOY

  “My God,” Anna murmured, looking down at the baby again.

  “What is it?” Leo asked. “What does it mean?”

  “This baby has been so carefully preserved,” Anna said. “He’s got his own hidden chamber, protected by the first mate.”

  Leo nodded.

  “He isn’t just a baby,” Anna said. “He’s a treasure.”

  “What do you mean?” Leo asked.

  “This is a clone,” Anna said reverently. “A clone of the classic Russian author, Lev Tolstoy. That must have been what the medical equipment was for.”

  “Why would someone clone an author?” Leo asked.

  “I heard whispers about this kind of thing back on Earth,” Anna said. “They talked about the need for art and music in the new world. And how the only space cadet recruits were engineers and computer geeks.”

  “Not you,” Leo pointed out.

  “Not me,” Anna allowed. “But I’m not exactly an artist either. This guy on the other hand…”

  “Do you really think that baby is going to write books?” Leo asked.

  “Well, I guess it depends on how he’s raised,” Anna said. “But the potential is there. Think what amazing works he could produce about the marvels of this new world.”

  The lights flickered again.

  “Is he safe in there?” Anna wondered.

  If the pod were connected to the same power supply, he might be in trouble. Though the light on the pod didn’t flicker the way the room lights did.

  “There appears to be a direct power source in the panel behind him,” BFF19 pointed out. “He should be fine.”

  “I wonder what’s going on with the power in this room,” Anna wondered out loud.

  “I have an idea,” Leo said.

  His expression was dark and he didn’t make eye contact with her.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “The monster you bumped into before, I wonder if it was trying to get in,” he said.

  Anna thought about it and her heart went cold with terror for the helpless baby in the pod.

  “It probably tried to damage the wiring so it could get past the genetic lock on the door,” Leo continued.

  “We broke the door to get in here,” Anna said in horror. “There’s no way to lock it again.”

  He nodded, his jaw tight.

  “We have to get him out of here now,” Anna said. “BFF19, please check your comms.”

  The drone hummed quietly.

  “No comms,” she announced a moment later.

  “What am I supposed to do?” Anna worried out loud.

  “Sleep,” BFF19 replied immediately. “Humans require an average of seven point five hours of rest out of each twenty-four hour cycle. Humans operate optimally when resting during hours of darkness and wakeful during hours of light.”

  Leo laughed. It was a rusty, barking sound, but warm nonetheless.

  Anna smiled in spite of herself.

  “We’ll rest here,” he told her. “We removed the genetic lock but that thing would have to get through both of us to get to the baby. It’s the best we can do for him. Tomorrow maybe your captain will be back in range of communication. We can use the items in the room to barricade the entrance until then.”

  She nodded, knowing she wasn’t going to come up with a better plan.

  He began to move anything that wasn’t bolted down into a barrier in front of the door. Anna marveled again at his strength.

  “Permission to run drive maintenance?” BFF19 asked.

  “Granted,” Anna said.

  The drone fluttered to the top of the pod and settled in, reminding Anna of her own baby pictures with Biscuits, the family dog, curled up under her crib.

  Leo rejoined her and gazed at the glass, as if he were transfixed by what he saw there.

  The baby in the pod twirled his fingers in his curls without waking up.

  Anna placed her hand against the glass again.

  “Good night, little Tolstoy,” she murmured softly.

  “Come, Anna, you need your rest,” Leo said. “And there’s something I need to tell you.”

  She allowed him to take her by the hand and lead her back into the bedchamber.

  10

  Leo

  Leo willed his heart rate to slow.

  He felt he might be torn to shreds in the hold of so many emotions at once. But he knew he could not allow his own vulnerability to make him helpless or threatening in the eyes of his mate.

  This would be the most important conversation of his life. There was no room for fear of his dark side, desire for the woman, or the tender tug he felt for the child to thwart his words.

  More than ever, he wished for a better grasp of the humans’ way with words.

  “What do you need to tell me?” Anna asked, sounding slightly suspicious.

  Already he had ruined her pensive mood and he hadn’t spoken yet. This was hopeless.

  “Let’s sit,” he offered, gesturing to the bed.

  She climbed in and he tried not to notice the way his body responded to the curve of hers beneath the skimpy sleeping clothes she wore.

  “There’s something I should tell you too,” she said, looking a bit guilty. “It’s about how long you’ve been asleep.”

  He felt a pang of gratitude.

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nbsp; “Thank you for that, Anna,” he said. “I figured it out after you went to bed.”

  “How?” she asked.

  “I started to put together what you shared of your own life,” he said. “And then I looked out at the stars and learned it from their position.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Anna said, her beautiful eyes glistening with tears of sympathy.

  “Thank you,” he replied.

  “I guess we’re kind of in the same boat,” she offered.

  “Indeed,” he nodded, looking around at the ship.

  “No, I mean in the same situation,” she said.

  “Ah, I see,” he said. “Yes.”

  “It will get easier,” she told him.

  He wondered if that could be true. Right now he felt unmoored. The loss of his world was so at odds with the towering happiness of being close to his mate.

  But there was much to share before he could truly call her his own.

  “Where was your family?” she asked quietly.

  “Nowhere,” he replied, trying to think of how to explain.

  “You don’t have any family at all?” she asked.

  “I do, or at least I did. It’s only that we don’t have a home world anymore,” he said. “We’re travelers. Nomadic, I think you would call us.”

  “What happened to your home world?” Anna asked.

  “We sold it,” he said, not wanting to hurt her by telling her that her kind had tricked his people.

  “Why would you do that?” she asked.

  “It happened a long time ago, I was only a baby,” he said. “But essentially my people didn’t understand what they were doing until it was too late. My grandmother talks about - talked about - how beautiful it was.”

  He was struck with sadness at the idea that he would never see her again.

  “So your family left their home and you travel now,” Anna said thoughtfully.

  “Yes, most of us work in security,” he said, not wanting to tell her about the pit fighting or the mining. Or the pleasure ships. Leo had it easy compared to many of his kind.

  “Wait, you said that you left your home world when you were a baby,” she said. “And you’ve been asleep all this time. Not in some kind of stasis pod.”

  He nodded and waited, watching her work through it.

  “Does that mean… are you not… human?” she asked at last.

  “We share many qualities, but no, I am not human,” he allowed. “Have you ever met a being who wasn’t human?”

  “There is a lady on the Stargazer who isn’t human,” Anna said.

  “What does she look like?” he asked, not daring to hope.

  “She has silvery skin, webbed fingers and a spiny exoskeleton over her shoulders,” Anna said. “But she also walks on two legs and speaks with her mouth. I guess there’s something about that set-up that Mother Nature likes.”

  “Ah, she’s from Brantarch,” Leo said. “Does she need a mask to breathe your air?”

  “She has gills on her wrists, but she seems to breathe just fine,” Anna said. “When I woke up they gave me all kinds of inoculations, a communications chip for languages and a shot in my lungs that I thought would kill me. They said it would make it easier for me to extract oxygen from air that didn’t resemble Earth’s. Maybe she has something like that?”

  “Technology has changed,” Leo mused, thinking that humans were becoming more like his own people, shifting, evolving. Maybe this was the right moment to explain about himself, why he looked so much like one of her people.

  “What was your home world like?” Anna asked before he could bring up his gift.

  “It was beautiful,” he told her. “Full of rich blossoms and shaded ponds and rich soil for farming.”

  Leo could picture the sapphire cliffs, the rolling fields of purple meenflax flowers and the inky black sand around the shimmering mirror ponds as if he had seen them all himself, though he had only his grandmother’s memories to draw on. There were no photographs.

  “It sounds lovely,” Anna said.

  “You know, there are picture books of your Earth here on this ship,” Leo told her. “The library was the first room I found when I awoke.”

  “A library,” she said, smiling. “That sounds like a good place to wake up. But they didn’t have any books about your home world?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “The new residents didn’t seem to want a lot of attention to be paid to them. They basically locked it down and closed everyone out.”

  “You can never go home again,” Anna said softly, as if only just realizing their shared burden.

  He took her hand in his.

  “There is no need,” he told her gruffly. “Everything I want is here.”

  She gazed up at him, her eyes luminous, bright hair shining as it framed her lovely face in the soft light of the bedchamber.

  It took everything he had not to claim her immediately.

  “I want to tell you something, but I don’t want to frighten you,” he told her carefully.

  “Okay,” she said.

  He wondered if she trusted him instinctively through their bond or if she could really be so inherently brave.

  “My people’s society is different from yours,” he told her. “And the heart of it is the mating bond.”

  “What is the mating bond?” she asked.

  The mere words coming off her lips sent his blood into a fever of lust. He looked away from her to calm himself.

  “It’s a call from one soul to another,” he told her. “A need that must be answered. Blood mates make each other whole and bring each other joy.”

  She was silent, listening. That was good.

  “My grandmother told me it was hard to describe,” he went on. “And now that I have experienced it, I am finding that to be true as well. But my soul expanded to enfold yours from the moment I first saw you, Anna. Can you feel it?”

  A thousand other words pressed at his mind, begging to be released - that he loved her, existed only to please her. But he held them back. The river of adoration might drown her own newly discovered feelings.

  He felt her pulse quicken slightly where he held her hand.

  “I feel something,” she whispered at last. “A pull, a tug, every time you’re close.”

  Brightness filled his being until he could hardly contain it.

  “That’s it, my love.” His voice was husky with relief.

  “What does it mean?” she asked.

  For the first time he heard trepidation. He would have to go carefully now.

  “It means we can choose to give each other great happiness,” he said. “I know it’s a lot to take in when you - when both of us - are so new to this world. But we can give each other solace and friendship as we face the future. We can be each other’s home.”

  “Is it like a marriage?” she asked. Her voice sounded strained.

  “Marriage is hard for me to understand,” he admitted. “To my understanding, marriage is like a human birthday party, is that right?”

  “A birthday party?” she echoed.

  “There’s a ceremony with cake and presents, but instead of celebrating a year’s survival on your harsh home planet, it’s celebrating a legal agreement regarding sex and property,” he said.

  She gave him a puzzled look.

  “Is that not right?”

  “Wow, I guess it is,” Anna said.

  “A marriage can be canceled though, with proper paperwork,” Leo said.

  “Yes, usually there’s no party for that though,” Anna said.

  “I see,” he said. “Blood mates don’t cancel. The bond is forever.”

  “What happens if they change their minds?” Anna asked.

  Leo tried to imagine such a thing.

  “I’m not sure,” he said at last. “It’s never happened.”

  She blinked, looking shocked.

  “At least, not that I know of,” he added.

  “What if one dies?” she asked.
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  “The bond is still there,” he told her, thinking of his grandmother and the depth of her quiet mourning for the grandfather he had never met. Her love for him was almost visible around her like a halo - the overflow from it was enough to nurture a planet’s worth of wild, nomadic children. “Some blood mates left behind are too sorrowful for life. Others spend their remaining years sharing their untapped love with the community in honor of the mate who passed. That’s what my grandmother did.”

  “She sounds like a very special person,” Anna said.

  His heart swelled and he squeezed her hand, wishing his grandmother could have met her.

  “Anna, I know we don’t know each other well yet,” he told her. “The courtship I’ve read about in your books is very different from this bond. There is no room for coyness or jealousy in our strengthening bond - no taking breaks or reconsidering. We will get to know each other over time and I will love you unconditionally no matter what stories your past holds.”

  “What does happen?” she asked.

  He paused, trying to find a way to explain it that wouldn’t offend her. Humans could be so prim.

  “There’s a period of time at the beginning where the bond takes over and it’s difficult to do anything but… mate,” he told her at last. “After that it’s a little easier to have control.”

  Her pale cheeks flushed and he felt a rush of need.

  “But right now we’re in control, right?” she asked, looking down at her hands.

  Barely, he thought to himself.

  “Our bond is not yet sealed,” he explained.

  “How does it seal?” she asked.

  Leo prayed to the seven stars of the Drax Belt not to frighten her.

  “We will… make love,” he said, using her words. “And then I will bite you. When the first drop of your blood hits my tongue we will be joined for eternity.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “I am told it will not hurt you,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “The, um, the pleasure is so intense that most mates say they didn’t even register any pain,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “How do you feel?” he asked her, wishing he could be inside her mind, know her thoughts.