“I can pay for your service---maybe not as much as you might make otherwise, but room and board are included,” Calan said. “Once we get things started, you can decide if it’s going to work for you or not.”
Just then, Calan’s com bleeped. It was Jamerin.
“Hey, kid. Our passengers have arrived a day early, and they’re anxious to get off world. I don’t want to rush you, I just want to give them an approximate time for liftoff,” Jamerin said.
“No problem. The droids are almost done unloading. Give me a half hour. Have the droids start taking the cargo to the loading dock, and I will be there to pick it up.”
After he finished chatting with his brother, Calan turned to Rax. “The droids are putting the modules for the housing units at the locations I designated. Can you start unpacking them and start the assembly routines?”
“It will be done,” Rax said. “I’ll get started right away.” The cyborg turned and strode directly to the first module that had been unloaded.
Calan waited for the droids to finish unloading then headed back to the starport to pick up the rest of his cargo. He almost wished he could send the hover tram back on autopilot. Saying goodbye to his brother would be hard now that they had finally become close.
But it wasn’t goodbye forever. It might be six months, or it might be six years, but Jamerin would be back again.
Ajha woke just before sunset as dusk was falling over Farringay. She had picked well. The neighborhood had been quiet. No gunfire or shouting had disturbed her sleep, and she woke rested and refreshed. She had dreamed of him again, and now she knew where to find him. It would take her most of the night to get there.
First, she needed to eat, have something to drink and find a place to relieve herself. She had one small piece of yesterday’s rat she’d cooked and a plastic bottle partly filled with water. It was fully dark when she finished eating and drinking.
She left the cellar and found some bushes to squat behind and urinate. Then she started the walk under a waning full moon. The direction she was to go had come to her in her sleep fromhim. It was as if his soul had reached out to her, pulling her toward him, calling her.Mate!
He was the one she had been waiting for, and she was partly the reason Calan Narcaza set his ambitions for the future on Earth.
Ajha had felt him now for a few years. It started sometime after she hit puberty. Mikki told her it was probably wishful thinking. It was not like there was a handsome prince out there waiting to take her away to his castle. Ajha was smart enough to know those were just pretty little stories people told their children to get them to sleep.
Although they’d met in their dreams many times over the last few years, it was always a gentle beckoning, a whispered promise of whatcouldbe when they found each other at last.
Calan could only think she was the offspring of psion mates as he was. He couldn’t see how else they could have connected through time and space were they not dominant psions.
Like Calan’s mother, Ajha lost her mother at an early age, left to survive on the streets of Farringay alone. She needed him now, partly because she was alone but mainly because he was her soul mate. She needed him also to help her to understand and control her abilities.
Unlike his father, Calan was never traumatized as a boy being sent to a far-off world to escape the barbaric Aledan psi laws. He may have been conceived in vitro for scientific research, but they loved him and each other for his whole life. He couldn’t have asked for a better childhood. It was precisely the kind of life he wanted for his own children when they finally came into his life.
But there was much to accomplish before that could happen. Coming to Earth and meeting Ajha was just the beginning.
Chapter Four
The sun was coming up when Ajha walked the crumbled road that led to the industrial building where Calan had taken up residence. He wakened, sensing her approach and came out to meet her as she walked toward the entrance.
When she saw him, she stopped about twenty feet away and openly stared at him. Her snarled brown hair was dirty as were her clothes and her body. She was underweight for her height, and her clothes were little better than rags.
Calan sensed that she was uncertain and tempted to bolt if she felt at all threatened. “Welcome, Ajha. I was wondering when I would finally meet you,” he said in ancient English still spoken on this part of Earth.
“You! You were in my dreams. You told me to come. Why?” she asked, frowning suspiciously.
Calan took a few steps closer. “I think you know. We’ve been in each other’s dreams for a long time now. You are a psion like me. The voices in your head are not a sign of madness. They are other people’s thoughts that you haven’t learned to block.”
“But I don’t hear yours,” she said looking into his eyes.
“I’m holding them back. I don’t want to overwhelm you.”
“I feel we’re connected. It’s why I came,” Ajha said.
Calan moved closer one step at a time. “We are connected, Ajha---and you know I would never hurt you. We are psion mates.” He held out his hands to her as she looked up at him, her eyes bright with unshed tears. Calan felt his own throat tighten with emotion.
Instead of taking his hands, Ajha stepped into his arms and hugged him, pressing her cheek against his shoulder. She wept softly, flooding him with her emotions as her memories tumbled into his mind like a waterfall.
He was her dream come true, and she was his.
