Page 12 of Collision!
It hadn’t moved.But it didn’t have to.Between radiation, quantum tunneling, and—he grudgingly admitted—the possibility of more metaphysical tricks like manifestation, it didn’t need to simplymove.
Squinting at the doubled datpad on his wrist, he checked for evidence the anomaly was destabilizing or otherwise transforming.But other than the scintillating light, the readings were unchanged.
At least now therewerereadings to squint at.Before the anomaly had stabilized in Mariah’s knot, it had been all but imperceivable by his sensors.Very aggravating.
Like a certain Earther female.He caught a hint of the sweetness that had been haunting him, and he realized Mariah had sneaked out of the corner and was standing beside him.Too close.
“You are going to impale yourself,” he snapped.
She was gazing at the resonark.“A rainbow won’t hurt me.”
“On me,” he clarified.
Shimmering with the anomaly’s energy, her wide brown gaze flicked to his bristling quill-scales.“Oh.Sorry.”She sidled a half step away.
Sorry?As if he would be the one hurt by her touch?Both he and the anomaly were potentially hazardous to her, andshewas sorry?
Despite her little calluses, she was not tough enough for this universe.
“This chamber should be locked and off-limits,” he said.“We have no idea what effects might result from continued exposure to the anomaly’s shadowlight.”
“Weddings.”
He glared at her.“What?”
“Well, probably starting with datings and matings.At least for some.”She frowned back at him.“Thatiswhat Mr.Evens promised.”
Suvan sputtered.“He can’t make such promises.”
“Not really, I know that.So much of a love match depends on factors that can’t ever be quantified: aspirations and cravings and wishes and dreams and—”
“No,” Suvan growled.“He can’t promise it because the anomaly isn’t love.”
“It just has to be a chance.”When she tilted her head with an Earther smile, her bronze braids also caught the polychromatic glints.
As if the anomaly was touching her all over, fusing with her.
The thought froze him in place.The unique tessellation of the anomaly that he’d identified when it was contained in the capacitorus had escaped via the linkage created by the recital song.That waveform had taken semi-solid shape as the plasmic sphere suspended in Mariah’s woven shroud.
What if it sought another form?Herform.
With its influences extending to the quantum level, there was nothing he could do to stop it.
So he kissed her.
The kiss was not entirely considered, admittedly.There was no time to run analytics or chart projected outcomes.But he’d noticed the captain and Felicity, and then Ikaryo and the Earther songstress, as well as a few of the passengers, had formed pair bonds that seemed to be protective in some ways.
As if kissing initiated a molecular exchange that shifted both energetic bodies into stronger coherence, which might be a defense against the anomaly’s more disruptive wavelengths.
In the heartbeat when he pivoted on his heel to loom over Mariah, blocking the resonark’s shadowlight, her eyes widened even more, the onyx centers expanding like hungry black holes.She made a tiny sound that was a breath slipping backward over her parted lips on an inhalation…
Before he brought his mouth crashing down over hers.
That first contact was electric.
For an instant, there was just the body heat, the pressure, a hint of slick softness.Then the galvanic jolt of it spread in a shockwave from his lips, over his skin, out along every quill-scale.
And deeper too, sparking nerve endings and burning through his bones, as if he might ignite from within.
