Carpe Diem by Steve Miller, Sharon Lee Page B

she had twisted away from the old woman's grasp and run, screen door slamming behind her.

    Flinging herself to the ground beside the scruffy little flower patch that marked the edge of Zhena Trelu's property, Miri scrubbed her hands over her face and tried to calm her jangling nerves.

    "This ain't like you, Robertson," she muttered. But that didn't help at all.

    Her head hurt. She reached up and pulled the braid loose; unweaving it slowly, she ran shaking fingers through the crackling mass, mightily resisting the urge to yank it out in handfuls, and hunched over, staring at her hands and just breathing.

    She found she was staring at her calloused trigger finger. What business did her hands have baking sweet things? Why should she have to sit and listen to endless repetitions of the names of the powders, granules, and dried leaves that went into food? She did not intend to be a bake-cook.

    Worse was all that zhena-and-zamir stuff. Why should Miri be asked first whenever Zhena Trelu wanted Val Con to do something? Since when was he Miri's trooper? But no, there were rules, and one of them was that a zhena—wife? mistress? lady? lover?—could tell her zamir what to do, and he, perforce, would do it. What kind of partner was that?

    They had figured out that Zhena Trelu owned the house and lived zamirless. They had gotten across that they were looking for a place to stay, and she had supplied some story for herself that Val Con was slowly getting down. But there! Barely a week had passed and Val Con could hold a conversation with the zhena while Miri's head hurt more and more . . .

    She wanted to shoot, dammit—a little plinking would calm her down. But Val Con had not seemed to think too much of that and after some thought she could see why: They were guests here, wherever here was, and it just wouldn't be good form to fill somebody's sacred tree all full of pellet holes.

    "Hello, Meri," he murmured from her side.

    "My name," she gritted out, not lifting her head, "is Miri."

    There was a small pause. "So it is."

    She took one more deep breath and managed to raise her head and face him. "Sorry. Bad mood."

    "I heard." He smiled slightly. "Zhena Trelu tells me you are a 'bad-tempered brat.' What is that, I wonder?"

    She tried to smile back and was fairly certain that the effort was a failure. "Whatever it is, it ain't nice. I messed up something she was teaching me to bake. Told me to put in pickles and I put in milk. Or the other way around. I don't know . . ."

    He frowned. "It must have been milk and not pickles. Milk is the white liquid we drink, isn't it?"

    "I don't know. Told you I didn't know. Every time I think I know what something means, got it all lined up in my head with what it means in Terran, she hits me with forty-seven more—" She flung her hands out in exasperation. "I ain't never gonna catch up at this rate!"

    "Cha'trez . . ." He tipped his head. "Why are you trying to match these words and Terran words? Surely that will only confuse matters. Perhaps if you waited until you have this language firmly before attempting to compile a lexicon, it would go better. For now, it might be best to simply learn the tongue, as you were taught in school."

    "I didn't go to school!" she snapped, hearing the rising edge to her own voice.

    Val Con frowned. "What?"

    "I said," she repeated with awful clarity, "that I didn't go to school. Ever. In my whole life. Accazi?" Her head was throbbing; she bent her face down and jammed her fingers through her hair.

    "No." His hands were on her wrists, insisting that she lower her hands. She allowed it, but kept her head bent, eyes on the ground, and heard him sigh.

    "Miri, don't run from me. Please. I don't understand, and I would like you to explain."

    "You don't understand?" She was on her feet, wrists yanked free—and he was up, too, hands loose, face wary and watchful.

    "You don't understand? Ain't anything to understand—it's all real simple. On