Shockball by S. L. Viehl Page B

experiences were for the most part unpleasant, mentally and physically.”
    “Okay.” He was serious. “What changed your mind?”
    “Establishing telepathic links with other species. Sometimes their emotions filtered through. They were all different, and often confusing. Only one thing did they all seem to have in common. A desire to love, and to be loved. I didn’t understand it, until I met you.”
    “This is the part I don’t get. What’s so special about me? Other than the fact I’m a genetic construct being hunted by everyone on this side of the galaxy.”
    “I wasn’t sure myself at first. You are physically attractive for a Terran, I suppose—”
    I sat back in my chair. “You suppose !”
    “And you are a skilled physician and surgeon. But it was more than that. I have spent most of my adult life living among and communicating with thousands of other species. Yet all I had to do was see you, hear your voice, and I knew I had encountered someone more unique than any life-form I’ve ever known.”
    I was still burning over that he-supposed part. “And you got this from just seeing me at the Trading Center on K-2?”
    “It was not limited to that. I watched you. I could feel the emotions emanating from you, more clearly than anyone I’d ever met before. You immerse yourself in what you do for others. Yet you rarely if ever give a thought to what will benefit you personally.”
    I shifted, uncomfortable with the picture he was painting of me. “Don’t make me out to be a saint, Duncan. I’m not.”
    “No. You are completely dedicated to your work. You devote yourself to healing the sick and the injured, no matter who they are or what they have done to you, when others would simply let them die.”
    I thought of SrrokVar, the Hsktskt physician who had tortured me and dozens of other slaves on Catopsa as part of his research into xenobiology. I’d mutilated and nearly killed him with a pair of bonesetters. “Not always.”
    “You fight for freedom, for yourself and others like you. Alunthri, the slaves on Catopsa. Even a Hsktskt OverSeer.”
    I didn’t want to think about FurreVa. After fighting so hard to give her a normal face and learning to become friends in spite of our differences, losing her had been agonizing.
    “That’s just doing the right thing,” I said. “Any decent person tries to live their life like that.”
    “Then decent persons are rarities indeed, for you are the only one I know.”
    “I keep telling you, you need to get out more.”
    He reached for my hand, and the light fell on the terrible scars crisscrossing the back of his. “All of this drew me to you, but when we linked for the first time, I felt your emotions through you, as if they were my own. I began to understand how empty my life was. How meaningless it had always been, until I met you. I had finally found the reason to live.”
    “So, that’s when you fell in love with me?”
    He shook his head. “No. That was when I decided I was going to have you as my mate.”
    I made a face at him. “And love just happened to get in the way later?”
    “I knew I loved you the day you limped into the medical bay on the Sunlace , your hands broken and torn, your leg bleeding from an open artery. And still you went over to the cleansing unit to scrub for surgery.”
    That seemed a pretty gruesome moment to pick. “What, the sight of all those compound fractures and third-degree burns dragged you completely under my spell?”
    “No.” He looked away for a moment. “Before I came to Medical, I had been told a Healer had been blown out into space when the buffer on level seven reformed. I thought it was you.” He paused. “A few minutes later I came to Medical and saw you there. Alive.”
    He’d never told me that. “God, Duncan.” I started to shake as I remembered that day. That moment. The same moment I’d finished reading the list of the injured and dead, and hadn’t found his name on it. The exact moment