Lena shrugged. “He was always talking about gov conspiracy. I knew he hated them, and with good reason. But I thought that was all it was. I mean, it just didn’t make sense to me. The Prez doesn’t have that kind of power anymore, not since just before the downfall, the one back in the early part of the century that abused his office so badly and ruined the economy and the environment that they changed the laws to keep anyone from holding that much power again. Even the congress, because they were either ineffectual against him, or a part of his agenda, doesn’t have that much power anymore. Of course, he never talked to me about the cloning, not until toward the last, but the only way anyone in the gov could benefit would be if they could remain in power, and they can’t. The Prez can’t. The congress can’t, because they can’t serve more than two consecutive terms either anymore. It’s not like it was in the way back when a lot of them ended up serving in congress for life, getting elected over and over. If it was, then it might make sense.”
She frowned, thinking about it for several moments. “I suppose,” she added slowly, “it could be like a hereditary agenda, programs hidden beneath other programs until most of them don’t even know it’s there, but if that’s the case, there’d be no stopping it short of overthrowing the entire gov and starting from scratch because there wouldn’t be one target, or even a handful. It would be policy that would have to be attacked and changed, not people.”
Dax and the tino man exchanged a speaking glance. “So, that’s your theory?” Dax asked.
Lena looked at him in surprise. “I don’t have a theory. I don’t have a clue. I thought all this was just rumors--the cloning. I didn’t even realize the rebels were as organized as this,” she said, gesturing toward the room at large. “The gov’s broke. How could they afford a project like this?”
Dax’s lips twisted in disgust. “The gov isn’t broke. That’s a rumor. They’re not too broke to live well while the common man suffers, not too broke to keep a standing army to keep everybody in line, just too damned broke to provide any of the services they’re paid for and too busy looking the other way while the wealthy in this country turn the citizens into slave labor for themselves and the gov. There’s no life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for any of the people anymore, just the pursuit of survival. And no justice when the home guard is judge, jury, and executioner.”
“The head of one of the mega corps, you think?” Lena asked tentatively.
Dax shrugged. “It’s beginning to look like the only way to stop this, the only way to be sure, is to take them all out and let God sort them.”
* * * *
Lena encountered a dilemma she’d never expected to have to deal with--how to behave as an innocent around people who obviously thought she wasn’t. It seemed to her that there was nothing she could do that would change the way they looked at her. If she was friendly, they were suspicious. If she avoided them, she was behaving suspiciously. If she did neither, but merely lingered in the areas where they spent their time off duty, then she was probably just hanging around in hopes that she would overhear something.
No one said anything, but they didn’t have to. It was the way they looked at her, the way conversations died whenever she approached and then picked up again in an entirely different vein.
With no way of knowing how long she might have to remain with them, she made an effort to try to behave as if she was comfortable around the ship’s crew, as if she felt like one of them. It wouldn’t have been easy if she hadn’t felt that every move she made and every word out of her mouth was being monitored and judged. She was a historian. She spent most of her time alone with books and artifacts. She had never learned how to be sociable, which hadn’t mattered before because her work didn’t require it and she was satisfied with being a loner.
Mel was the only member of the entire crew who seemed to actually try to make friends, but Lena wanted nothing to do with her after the things she’d told her that day in the med lab. Maybe Mel honestly had been trying to be helpful, but she’d only succeeded in making it impossible for Lena to set aside her paranoia.
To make matters worse, Dax was increasingly irritable, even though she tried to be as unobtrusive as possible, knowing it couldn’t be easy sharing space he was accustomed to having to himself. He spent more and more time on the bridge and less in his cabin all the time.
She might have been relieved that he spent so little time around her since it was becoming harder and harder for her to ignore the fact that Dax was dangerous to her in more ways than she could count. Because there was no getting around the fact that she had passed well beyond merely being attracted to him. She’d begun to feel like a she-cat in heat any time he was in her vicinity, so jittery, so keenly sensitive and on edge that it grated on her nerves, tempting her almost beyond bearing even though she knew becoming intimate with him would be disastrous for her.
Beyond her tenuous position among the rebels, he was a dangerous man, period. Tenderness of any kind seemed to be beyond his understanding, which was small wonder considering the life he had lived and continued to live. Unfortunately, it was that arid desert that she sensed inside of him that drew her just as surely as it unnerved her, touching off a growing need in her to try to give him what he had never had, or at least could barely remember.
She was inclined to think that desire was almost like having a death wish because not only was she not at all certain that he would welcome it, but she knew in her bones that she would not be able to hold anything back and she would suffer for it because he was what he was and it was too late to change that. He was a rebel and he would be until he died, or terminated his enemy. Nothing, and no one, was going to turn him from the path he’d chosen.
What made the entire situation untenable, though, was that she needed to feel like she had at least one ally and Dax was the only one onboard that she trusted enough even to feel a modicum of security.
When the tension between them began to seem more and more explosive instead of less so, she couldn’t help but wonder and worry that something she’d said had triggered alarms in his head that he might have been hasty in trusting her even enough to allow her to roam the ship at will and to give her the umbrella of his protection. And she was as torn by the fear that he’d decide to withdraw his protection as she was concerned that any overtures she might think to make toward him would either be flatly, and embarrassingly, rejected or looked upon with the same suspicion as everything else she did, that he would think she was trying to seduce him for some evil agenda.
Trying to talk her way into acceptance hadn’t gotten her anywhere. She’d done her best to allay both Dax and Mel’s suspicions and couldn’t see that she’d made any appreciable headway even with the two people who seemed most inclined to believe her.
It seemed to her, in fact, that the harder she tried, the less they believed.
With no idea of what else she could do, she finally decided that the only thing she could do was to try her best to be invisible. Once she was with Nigel, it wouldn’t matter what they thought. Nigel would know her. If Nigel was determined to see his part in this through, then she would try to help him and then they could find somewhere to go where they would be safe both from the rebels and whoever was behind the conspiracy to replace thinking human beings with workers that were more like drones.
It would’ve helped her feelings immensely if she’d just known how long she would have to deal with the situation, but she was afraid even to ask that much. When she’d finally nerved herself to ask Mel where they were going and been told ‘home base’, which she’d known already, she had been so focused on learning some time frame that she’d pressed her for just where home base was located. She didn’t need to be psychic to see that the question had set off alarms. Mel had looked at her as if she’d just grown two heads and informed her that only a handful of people knew the exact location and she wasn’t one of them.
Retribution wasn’t long in coming. She’d barely scurried back to her cave when Dax had arrived. One look at his face was enough to assure her that Mel had lost no time trotting to him to tell him Lena was trying to wheedle top secret information out of her.
“You have some need to know the location of the base?” he growled after staring at her for several moments as if he was contemplating tearing her head off.
Unnerved as she was by the barely leashed violence she sensed in him, Lena’s anger surged to the forefront. “I don’t care where the damned base is!” she shouted at him. “I want my brother and I want to get out of here and away from you. All of you!”
His lips tightened. “If it bothers you that much to share the cabin with me, you can move to the barracks. I’m sure as hell not going to complain about it. I might get some damned sleep!”
The threat struck home, sending Lena’s anger into a tailspin. “It wouldn’t bother me if you didn’t go around like … an old bear all the time! And I do not keep you from sleeping!”
“Like hell you don’t!”
“Fine!” she snapped, realizing she’d painted herself into a corner and only had two options, neither of which was reallypalatable. She could find someplace else to sleep, or she could try to calm the savage beast. She was just mad enough to be stupid, though, and too hard headed for her own good. “I’ll sleep somewhere else.”
“Good!” Dax snarled. Moving to the bed, he plopped down on the edge and began working his boots off.
