Season Of Strangers

She felt churlish and silly. She and Patrick were friends, after all. Of course she’d be happy to pick him up. “I’m not that busy. What time are you being released?”

“Sometime after two. They didn’t exactly say.”

“All right, I’ll be there at two.”

“It might be later. I can call you after the paperwork’s done and I’m ready to leave. It won’t take long for you to get here.”

“I’ll be there at two. I can imagine how eager you are to get out of there. Maybe I can hurry things along.” If it hadn’t seemed so foolish, she would have sworn she could feel him smile as she hung up the phone.

As Patrick had predicted, the paperwork wasn’t finished when she arrived at the hospital at two-fifteen. Patrick was still in bed, fidgeting nervously, ringing the bell for the nurse for at least the tenth time since noon.

“Sorry,” he said, “I should have insisted you wait for my call.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll speak to the nurse and see if I can’t get them to hurry.”

A few minutes later, she returned with the news that Dr. Manley had just come in and signed the release forms. The nurse would be there in a few more minutes to help him get dressed. As soon as he was ready, he could leave.

“I don’t need the woman’s help,” Patrick grumbled, swinging his long, suntanned legs to the side of the bed. The sheet slid away. Julie noticed the white cotton hospital gown had bunched midthigh and that his bare legs were muscled and covered with a dusting of fine black hair. “She’s more overbearing than a…than a…”

“Drill sergeant?” Julie supplied.

He seemed to ponder that. Then he smiled. “Exactly. I’d rather do it on my own.” But when he tried to stand up, his legs turned suddenly unsteady and a shaft of weakness rippled through him.

“Here, let me help you.”

Patrick swayed precariously as she drew near and only the arm she slid beneath his shoulders kept him from sprawling on the floor.

“Thanks,” he said softly.

He was staring at her oddly, studying her with those striking blue eyes. Something fluttered in her stomach, sent a thread of heat spiraling through her. It made her notice how handsome he was, even with his hair slightly mussed and the ugly white hospital gown sliding off a wide, tanned shoulder. It was ridiculous and yet she couldn’t deny that physically, she had always been attracted to Patrick.

His glance shifted, came to rest on the place where their two bodies touched. She could feel the heat shimmering between them and apparently so could he. His whole body stiffened and impulsively he jerked away, nearly knocking them both to the ground.

“For heaven’s sake, Patrick, take it easy. If you keep that up, you’re going to land us both in a heap. Why don’t you just stand still and I’ll get your clothes. You can sit in the chair and put them on.”

He simply nodded. His face looked flushed and even his ears were red. She couldn’t imagine Patrick Donovan being embarrassed in front of a woman, but it certainly looked as though he was. She took her time removing his shirt, shoes, and pants from the tiny closet, giving him a chance to collect himself. The items were freshly laundered, she saw, not the clothes he had been wearing when he’d been brought in. Anna or Charlotte or one of his whoevers must have brought clean clothes from his apartment. She wondered why he hadn’t asked the woman to pick him up.

Setting his garments on a table beside the chair, she pulled open the door. “I’ll be right outside if you need me. All you have to do is call out.”

“I’ll be fine,” he said stiffly, and began to rifle through the clothes.

Outside the room, Julie sat down on a narrow gray vinyl bench. Watching patients and nurses, doctors and visitors making their way down the hall, she toyed with the strap of her purse and hoped Patrick was truly all right.

A few minutes later, the door opened up and he walked out into the corridor, smiling as if he was pleased with himself for simply getting dressed, though she couldn’t imagine why he would be.

“I’m ready if you are,” he said.

Julie came to her feet. “I’m afraid you still can’t leave. You’ll have to go out in a wheelchair. The nurse says that’s hospital policy.” It occurred to her that for a man recovering from a heart attack, he certainly looked good.

In navy blue slacks and a short-sleeved, knit pullover sweater, he could have just stepped off of a billboard.

Patrick stared at her and frowned. “A wheelchair? Why would I have to do that?”

“Because they don’t want to get sued if you should fall.”

The nurse walked up just then, a big beefy woman in her fifties. “That’s right, Mr. Donovan, that’s the way it’s got to be, and if you want to blame somebody for it, blame the shyster lawyer who sued us for damages and won.”

He had nothing to say to that, just sat down quietly and let the woman wheel him away. Julie was a little amazed. Patrick was anything but meek, especially when he didn’t get his way. Then again, maybe the heart attack had left him weaker than he looked.

Val let the woman push him into the elevator and the stainless steel doors slid closed. Beside him in a soft peach suit, Julie Ferris fidgeted with the strap of her over-the-shoulder purse.

He tried not to look at her. When he did, he thought of the way Patrick Donovan’s body—his body now—had behaved when she had unwittingly pressed against him to steady his wobbly legs.

He understood what had happened. He understood an erection—theoretically.

The soft feel of her breasts had triggered a memory of her naked, thrashing on the blue-veined curlon examination table, her small, well-formed body fighting the invisible force that had held her in place.

The meshing of that memory with those Patrick Donovan carried, heightened by the close physical contact, had caused his reproductive organ to grow momentarily hard. He knew it meant the male of the species was physically aroused, that he wanted to mate with the female and deposit his sperm.

He just hadn’t understood the way the sensation would make him feel.

He said nothing as the nurse wheeled him silently down the hall, but soon his thoughts of Julie Ferris were swamped by more pressing sensations. The noise of footfalls in the corridor, the soft thud of rubber-soled shoes mixed with the crisp slap of leather. The dull roar of mingling voices, some of them low and speaking in whispers, others raised in heated debate as they hurried through the halls. The odors he had noticed in his room earlier were magnified a thousand times out here, some of them so strong they made his nostrils burn.

As they approached the front doors, sunlight streamed into the reception area. Val blinked several times, wincing as the bright rays stabbed painfully behind his eyes.

“Take care of him, Ms. Ferris,” the nurse said, pushing the wheelchair out through the automatic doors and onto the wide cement steps in front of the building. A strong female arm helped him stand up. “I guarantee he’ll be a handful.” She winked and Julie smiled.

He watched the woman walk away, saying nothing, too caught up in the sights and sounds pressing in on him.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Julie asked, her expression worried, her eyes fixed on his face. She linked an arm through his, helping to steady him. “All of a sudden, you look kind of pale.”

Val ran his tongue across lips that felt rubbery and numb. Even if he could tell her what he was feeling, he couldn’t possibly begin to describe it. There was no way to express the riot of colors—the bright green of the lawns and trees, the azure blue of the sky, the stunningly vivid red of a sports car roaring past them on the street.

“I’m fine, Julie. I’ll just be glad to get home.”

She studied him with concern. “The car’s right out front in the passenger loading zone. We don’t have far to go.”

She said nothing more and neither did he. He could barely function for the jagged sensations ripping through his head. Toril was a planet of peace and serenity. There were no bright colors, no loud noises, no pungent smells. It was a pastel world, a world of grays and browns and a few muted blues, a palette of shaded colors that seemed amazingly washed out in comparison to the splashy, vibrant hues that enlivened the world of Earth.

Aside from the clothes he had seen on the subjects they had been studying, and what they had observed of the planet through their surveillance devices, he had never experienced anything to compare with the rich display spread before him like a banquet for the eyes. On Toril, the sky was a nondescript white, the plant life, even in blossom, brightened to no more than shades of weak pastel. People dressed in solid colors of those same watered shades, the styles varying little between social orders, the three different races, or male and female gender.

Here it seemed as though each individual tried to carve out his own identity by the color and style of his clothes. It gave the place an atmosphere of constant festivity, a parade of vibrant stripes, prints, and plaids all run together in a mishmash of design and color that splashed against the inner wall of the eye.

They had nearly reached the curb when a car horn blared and he stumbled backward. Another horn answered then another and another, driving the cacophony straight into his head. His hands came up to cover his ears, and beside him he felt Julie stiffen.

“Get in the car,” she commanded, opening the door and easing him in. Noticing his growing pallor, she moved the seat back a little and helped him settle his long legs inside.

The car was small, a Mercedes, Patrick’s memory said. But the top was up and so were the windows. When Julie closed the door, some of the loud noise abated. As she eased herself into the driver’s seat, snapped her seat belt then his, Val leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

“You don’t look good. Maybe it’s too soon for you to leave. Maybe I should take you back inside.”

His eyes snapped open. He sat up a little straighter in the seat. “I’m fine. I just want to go home.”

“Are you sure, Patrick—and don’t lie to me. I’d feel terrible if something else happened to you.”

He turned his head in her direction, an odd tingling warmth in the pit of his stomach. “Would you?”

The color rushed into her cheeks. He knew the surge of blood was caused by feelings of embarrassment. He understood the sensation, since it had already happened to him.

“Of course, I’d care. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

“Yes…friends.” But in his head, something said friendship wasn’t all that Patrick had felt for Julie Ferris and it was never what he’d wanted.

Val lay back against the seat as the car rumbled to life, the funny vibrations running up his back and shoulders. In the confines of the car, a faint, sweet fragrance drifted over from Julie’s side of the car, a smell so subtle he hadn’t noticed it before.

“I like the…perfume…you’re wearing,” he said, testing the word on his tongue.

“It’s Michael Kors. Your father bought it for me last year for my birthday. It’s expensive, but it’s definitely my favorite.”

“Mine, too,” he said, inhaling deeply. There were no vile smells on Toril, not like the ones he’d noticed in the hospital, or those drifting up from the gutter he had whiffed as he’d slid into the car. But there was also nothing like the soft sweet fragrance of Michael Kors, either. He liked the way it mingled with Julie’s own special scent, giving her a softly feminine fragrance all her own.

The small car hummed along. Val settled back in the seat, stretching his long legs out as best he could. Outside the window, the landscape of Beverly Hills slid past in a blur of sound and color. Automobiles of every design and hue crammed the streets to overflowing. People crowded along the sidewalks, hurrying to destinations he couldn’t begin to guess. Buildings rose up from the pavement, their storefronts shaded by bright canvas awnings, the windows glowing with vibrant signs made of…neon…yes, that was the word.

“We’re almost there,” Julie said, turning the car off Wilshire onto Oakhurst Drive. Just past Burton Way, she slowed the engine, turned, and pulled off the road, stopping in front of the heavy metal fence that enclosed the parking garage. “I found this with your clothes.”

She held up a small square box Patrick’s memory said opened the door to the underground parking. “One of your lady friends must have come by and picked it up along with the rest of your things.”

The woman called Anna, he recalled. A tall, slenderly built blond female who had come to see him several times in the hospital. She had kissed him, he recalled, not an unpleasant sensation, but when she had reached beneath the covers to stroke his sex, he’d nearly had a second heart attack.

Patrick’s memory had kicked in, enlightening him on their recent acquaintance—and the fact the woman was a great deal of the reason that, aside from the part of Patrick that Val had absorbed, the living, reasoning essence of Patrick Donovan was gone.

Still, the transformation was not as he’d expected. With each passing hour, he felt a subtle shifting, a reaching out, a melding of consciousness as new information, more of Patrick’s being was fully absorbed. He had expected to be solidly in control, less vulnerable to the thoughts Patrick once had, the emotions he had experienced.

Instead it was if he and Patrick had merged, begun to form a third, distinctly different being. It frightened him. Made him worry what residue those changes might leave inside him.

Fear. Val could taste it in his mouth.

It was an emotion unknown to the people of Toril.

Six

“But I don’t want to come out for the weekend, Julie. I’d rather stay here.”

“Come on, honey,” Julie coaxed her sister over the phone, “it’s my birthday. Babs is coming for dinner on Saturday night. Owen’s in town. He’s promised he’ll stop by. We’ll have ourselves a party.”

“I-I don’t know….”

Julie rubbed her temple, trying to ignore the headache that had built behind her eyes. “Come on, Laura, please? The weather’s going to be clear. We can lie out in the cove and no one will bother us. You can tell me how your sessions with Dr. Heraldson are going.”

“He wants to hypnotize me.”

“So?”

“I don’t want him to, Julie.”

“Why not?”

“I-I don’t know. I just don’t like the idea.”

Julie took a steadying breath and slowly released it. “We’ll talk about it when you get here.”

“It’ll be too late by then. Tomorrow’s my appointment.”

“Well…if Dr. Heraldson thinks it’s a good idea, maybe you should do it.”

“I suppose so. I guess it couldn’t hurt.” A pause on the phone. “I’d forgotten it was your birthday.”

“Does that mean you’ll come?”

“Of course I will.”

“Great. Can I count on seeing you Friday night? We could go out for a bite of dinner.”

“I can’t, I’ve got a date. I’ll drive out Saturday afternoon.”

A date, Julie thought, praying it wasn’t with that no-good Jimmy Osborn. Her head throbbed even harder. “I guess if that’s the best you can do, it’ll have to be good enough. I’ve got a couple of properties to show on Saturday morning. If I’m not home when you get here, you know where to find the extra key.”

They both said goodbye and Julie rang off thinking about Laura. She was worried about her, but then as Babs had said, she usually was. Walking into the bathroom, she opened the medicine cabinet and searched the shelves, looking for the plastic bottle of painkillers Dr. Marsh had prescribed for her migraines. This one was shaping up to be a doozie.

Her hand shook as she pried off the lid and dumped a couple of capsules into her palm. A third fell out. For a moment she was tempted, then she thought of Patrick’s drug abuse and where it had finally landed him, and slid the third pill back into the bottle.

Thirty minutes later, the medicine had still not kicked in. Pain shot into her skull as the phone beside the bed began to ring. She reached over and lifted the receiver.

“Julie? It’s Patrick.”

The headache was getting so bad it was starting to upset her stomach. She dampened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue, thinking she might throw up. “Hello, Patrick. How are you feeling?” It had been a week since Patrick’s release from the hospital. He had been taking it easy, as the doctors suggested, surprisingly circumspect for Patrick.

“Better than I have a right to. That’s why I’m calling. I’m down at the office. I thought you’d be in. I figured you might want to go over the Rabinoff file.”

“I’m afraid I’m not feeling well, Patrick. But the escrow’s all set to close. I don’t think there’ll be any more unforeseen problems.”

“You’re sick?” He sounded suddenly worried. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Another one of my headaches. This one’s pretty bad and nothing seems to help. I took some of the pills Dr. Marsh prescribed, but—”

“I’m coming over. I’ll be there in just a few minutes. Lie down and take it easy till I get there.”

“Patrick—you can’t drive all the way out here. You probably shouldn’t be driving at all. Besides, there’s nothing you can do the doctor hasn’t already done.”

“Maybe there is. I have hidden talents you wouldn’t believe. Besides, you helped me, didn’t you? I owe you one.” He hung up the receiver before Julie could say any more.

Val knew what was wrong with Julie Ferris. Her resistance to their scanners had been painful and immediate. The brutal headaches that followed were not unexpected, since they had occurred in subjects like Julie before. But the vicious assaults had lasted far longer than they had predicted, perhaps because, unlike the others, she had been taken aboard a second time.

Val felt a shot of guilt, a feeling he had never really known. When he’d made the difficult decision to bring the older sibling back aboard, he had known there might be complications. He wished he could explain, reassure her that the headaches would soon disappear. But he wasn’t exactly certain that would happen. It was one of the things he’d been sent here to observe. Grabbing his coat off the wooden valet in the corner of his office, he started for the door.

In the meantime, he knew the cause and what to do to treat them. At least he could ease some of her pain.

Shoving open the office door, he walked down the sidewalk toward the pudgy young man in front of Spago’s who parked Patrick’s car, and handed him a couple of dollar bills. He had driven the shiny black Porsche for the first time that morning—an antique mode of transportation he found fascinating. He was grateful Patrick knew how to handle the car and had enjoyed every second behind the wheel.

Patrick was a very good driver, he had discovered, with what seemed a natural ability to handle the vehicle on the route through Laurel Canyon. Later he had cruised Mulholland Drive.

All along the way, a fierce blue sky curved above him, brightened by clouds so white and incredibly lovely it made him feel funny inside. At the top of the hill he’d parked the car for a while and simply stared out over the landscape. Wildflowers in vivid purple and saffron gold, poppies in scorching red-orange. A large brown bird, a goshawk, his memory recalled, spiraled down off the mountain, coasting on the currents of the wind.

Afterward, he jotted down the experience in the journal he was keeping, filling the pages with words written in Patrick’s bold hand. It was the only way he could think of to capture the unfamiliar feelings, the subtle nuances of his thoughts. He had been making reports to his superiors, of course, communicating with the Ansor team through normal space channels.

But there was just no Torillian way to describe what was actually going on.

The journal would have to do that. When he returned to the ship, the pages could be scanned, translated by computer into words and images far more detailed than his logical, straightforward mind could manage.

Val tipped the valet for the second time that day, vowing to start parking the car himself in the office parking lot, then slid into the deep red leather seat of the softly purring sports car. He stepped on the gas, relaxed his mind, and let Patrick’s well-honed driving skills take over. He knew the way to Julie’s house and the fastest way to get there. Avoiding as much of the traffic as he could, he pulled onto Pacific Coast Highway and roared along the beach to Julie’s batten-board, ranch-style beach house.

He spotted it clinging to the side of a cliff, a two-car garage on the bottom, forming a two-story structure, the walls of the house draped with shocking-pink azaleas. If he hadn’t been so worried, he might have smiled.

Instead he parked the car in the driveway, knocked on the door, and a few minutes later, Julie Ferris let him in.

“This is silly, Patrick. You shouldn’t have come.”

But she looked so pale he was glad he had. He felt responsible for what was happening to her. Was responsible. There was just no way around it. Still, science was all-important. The Ansor’s mission was all-important.

And yet when he looked at Julie, he wished there could have been some other way.

“Why don’t you lie down on the couch?” he said gently. “I give a great massage. Why don’t we see if it will help?”

“I don’t know, Patrick….”

“Come on, Julie, please. Do it for me?”

A hint of uncertainty appeared in her face. She had always been wary of Patrick and yet they were friends of a sort. “All right. What have I got to lose?”

A few minutes later, she was lying on her stomach on the sofa, her pale blue terry-cloth robe covering her primly from neck to ankle. Val knelt beside her, began to massage her shoulders.

“I must be crazy,” she mumbled when his hands moved a little bit lower, kneading the muscles across her back. “If you try anything, Patrick, I swear I’ll never forgive you.”

He flushed a little at that. Partly because he had begun to like the feel of her small woman’s body beneath his hands and partly because the heavy male part of his anatomy was coming to life again.

Val swore something Patrick would have said. “I promise my intentions are completely aboveboard.”

“They’d better be.”

He continued his deep massage, working upward again, toward the muscles in her neck, reaching the area at the base of her skull that had been his objective from the start. His fingers sifted through her hair. He couldn’t believe how soft and silky it felt, while at the same time it was bouncy and vibrant, shimmering with life and substance.

Her skin was soft and smooth to the touch. When he had seen her that night onboard the ship, he had never noticed the satiny texture. But Patrick must have noticed it at least a hundred times, and because he had, now, so did he.

His hand shook, felt a little unsteady. The blood pumping through him seemed to thicken, pool low in his belly. He forced himself to ignore it.

Beneath his hands, a tiny vessel throbbed under an obscure layer of flesh. He searched it out, applied a gentle pressure, and felt the tension begin to ebb from Julie’s body.

“Better?” he asked, feeling a little more in control.

She made a purring sound and nodded. “I can’t believe how much.”

He continued to work on the vessel, knowing exactly how much blood to let flow and when to cut back.

Julie’s body relaxed even more. “How on Earth did you learn to do that?”

It wasn’t on Earth, he thought. But he just smiled and didn’t say it. “I’m just glad it’s working.”

“Uhmmm, it’s working, all right. My headache is almost gone.” She yawned hugely and her eyes drifted closed. Her breathing smoothed out, grew deeper. A few minutes later, she was asleep.

Val eased away from her, oddly reluctant to leave. He crossed the room to a serape-draped chair several paces away and sat down to watch her, taking advantage of the chance to study her unobserved. He made mental notes of her posture, the way she curled up in the robe like some small warm-blooded animal. He studied her breathing, watched the way it caused a strand of dark red hair to float beside her ear.