Mildred leaned back in the chair, listening and watching, almost afraid of what she might learn.
Chapter Five
It wasn’t that Ryan found sleep elusive—he never caught so much as a fleeting glimpse of it.
He lay with Krysty on a narrow bed in one of the bunk rooms. The others had considerately allowed him and Krysty to occupy one room, in case they wanted privacy. Presumably, J.B. and Mildred shared another of the rooms while Doc, Jak and Dean bedded down in the third.
Their consideration, as much as he appreciated it, was wasted. Both he and Krysty slept fully clothed. She murmured and stirred fitfully in her sleep. Ryan knew she was totally drained by calling upon the Earth Mother. Even after all their time together, he still didn’t understand how she tapped into the electromagnetic field of the planet itself. Shortly after they had met, Krysty had offered an unsatisfactory explanation: “It’s sort of like focusing, a concentrating on how I feel. I call on the Earth Mother, and she comes to me.”
Afterward, the strain placed on her metabolism could sometimes result in a slumber so deep it was almost a coma. And though she continued to sleep, she was restless, moving frequently, a thread of spittle at a corner of her mouth.
As tired as he was, he was sore and itchy. Not only did his muscles ache, but the salt residue of his ocean swim had dried upon and irritated his skin. He continued trying to capture sleep, but every time he closed his eye, the image of the grinning, flame-eyed skull bobbed to the surface of his mind like a malevolent cork.
Nightmares were, more often than not, part and parcel of mat-trans jumps. He had trained himself to always expect them and to be pleasantly surprised if he didn’t experience them. Still, his instincts told him he hadn’t had a typical gateway nightmare. There had been no other symptoms of jump sickness, only the overwhelming wave of terror and the sense of a malign intelligence hating him.
Krysty moaned faintly. Ryan turned toward her. In a low, distant voice, she whispered, “Not your queen…not your mother…”
Ryan started up, shaken by an eerie fear. He listened and when all he could hear was Krysty’s slightly labored breathing, he got out of the bed. He stared down at her in the dim light and, when he realized he was scratching at his salt-stiff hair, he cursed and turned away.
Quietly, he left the room, went out into the hallway and entered the shower room. Peeling off his clothes, he placed them on a bench near the door. He chose the farthermost tiled enclosure and turned on the faucet. A spray of water jetted from the nozzle, and he adjusted it until it was a needlelike rain. When the water was hot enough, almost at the tolerance level, he stepped beneath the flow. He used a liquid-soap dispenser affixed to the wall to work a lather all over his bruised and scarred body.
The entire room filled quickly with billowing clouds of steam. As he washed, he thought back to the last time he and Krysty had made love. It had been quite some time ago, in a shower room very much like this one, and she had crept up behind him—
He snorted out a mouthful of water. A repetition of that night wasn’t likely to happen now. Even if he felt up to it, Krysty was in a sleep so deep that nothing could rouse or arouse her. He contented himself with luxuriating beneath the driving jets of hot water, letting them soothe the muscle ache. A hand touched his back and he jumped, whirled, biting back a surprised curse.
Krysty materialized out of the rolling vapors like a wraith, her limbs glistening with droplets of water. She was naked and perfect, with her narrow waist, flaring hips, long legs, full, gem-crested breasts and the seductive scarlet triangle at the juncture of her rounded thighs. Her tumbles of crimson hair fell over her damp shoulders.
Her big, slightly tilted eyes gleamed with a brilliant emerald light. The expression in them was so intensely single-minded that Ryan was startled into speechlessness for a long moment. He had seen passion in those eyes countless times, but always they were misted by love. Now, the hard green glint was unsoftened by any emotion other than a raging desire, a consuming lust,