Immram: Fascination

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Flying solo at a perfectly ordinary charity function, Nathan makes a new acquaintance. The problem is, she has the advantage of him.


This would have been far more enjoyable had Moira not decided that she really had to go back to Muir. Because spending two whole weeks in the same place as your husband is just not to be tolerated. That wasn't fair. He knew that wasn't fair.

Nathan played moodily with his salad, the African music and the cleverly designed ambiance almost entirely lost on him. On another day, he would have been more appreciative. And it was a good cause, rainforest preservation. He liked rainforests. Even more so when he wasn't being shot at in them.

There were four seats at his table. One was empty and should have been Moira's. A small, balding man in a poorly-fitting tux sat in another, and had been playing with his Blackberry the whole time. Which was fine, really, as Nathan didn't feel like making conversation with strangers.

He had to wonder about the occupant of the fourth chair, though.

The fourth chair contained a woman with long, loose hair and a gown that would have looked perfectly modest if it had not been exactly the same color as her skin. And while she had not spoken beyond minimal pleasantries, she also had been looking intently at him every. Single. Time. That he looked up. Not as if she were flirting. More as if she might be trying to decode him.

She is beginning to creep me out. He looked up again, met intent dark eyes, and decided that he had to say something. "Uh. Nice music, no?"

She practically lit up, as if he had run a current through her and found lightbulb filaments. Her voice remained strangely level. "I find music extremely fascinating."

Okay then. He gazed at her for a moment, resisting the urge to poke at what he was beginning to realize were oddly patterned thoughts. She had a very unusual mind. "Nathan," he said. "Nathan Morrow. I'm sorry, I'm being rude." He didn't offer his hand.

"Not at all. I'm Tara Trask." She ducked her head slightly -- without dropping eye contact. "I've heard of you. Your work."

He was going to have to start getting used to hearing people tell him that. "Oh... well." Good? "I forget sometimes how much press Elpis has gotten since the bombings." The balding man looked up for a moment, but dropped his eyes immediately back to his Blackberry. "It takes a little getting used to. I haven't led much of a public life before this."

"I was first made aware of you by a mutual acquaintance." She reached over without looking to pick up her wine glass for a sip. "I'm pleased to meet you. At last."

"A mutual acquaintance?" He managed a faint, crooked smile that was more than a little uncertain. "Should I ask?"

"Amazing woman. Very wise, you might almost say prescient." Her eyes glittered; she dabbed delicately at the corner of one with a fingertip. "Gone now, I'm afraid."

The feeling of slight unease he'd had earlier was multiplied by a factor of... oh, ten. "You know what's odd?" Nathan asked, his light tone rather obviously forced. "Meeting strangers who aren't at random charity balls. It's a very small world."

"It is." Her gaze turned earnest. "They say it's getting smaller all the time."

He was saved from having to respond to that by the arrival of the entrees. Decent enough food, although he'd been expecting that given the nature of the event. You didn't charge this much for tickets and serve reheated chicken. He turned his attention to his lamb, his eyes flickering up towards his companion several times. She wasn't precisely ignoring her meal. Neither did she appear to be taking her eyes off him.

"You have the advantage of me, Ms. Trask," he said after a few minutes. "Knowing my work, and so forth. What do you do?"

She smiled brightly, and for once her eyes seemed to hold interest in something other than analyzing him. "Nothing so high-profile. I teach. Gender studies, at Bryn Mawr."

"It should be Doctor Trask, then? My apologies." He raised his wine glass, took a sip. "New York is a ways to come for a charity dinner. Although I suppose the term's over, isn't it?"

"Just barely. But both the cause and the company looked... very interesting." She arched her eyebrows. "You are also associated with a school, I believe? Do you teach?"

She knew rather a lot. "Yes, I do," he said briefly. "Languages, occasionally international relations. I'm going to have to cut back on it next term, however. Elpis is demanding more and more of my attention."

"I imagine it would be very time-consuming. What languages?"

"Well, over the last few years... let's see. Mandarin, Arabic, Hindi, Russian in terms of full classes or reading groups. I've done individual tutoring in Farsi and a few others." Talking shop was good. You could kill all kids of time, talking shop. And the lamb was very good.

"An impressive selection." He was still being stared at. In his peripheral vision, he finally caught her blinking. "Do you stick to ones that are currently in use?"

Nathan managed not to choke on his lamb. "Well," he said guardedly, "I know a little bit of Latin."

She nodded thoughtfully. "It's fascinating the way languages evolve over time, isn't it? The patterns...."

"Right. Fascinating." He wished he had a Blackberry. He did however have herb-crusted lamb, and he applied himself diligently to his dinner, trying to figure out, as he ate, precisely what was unsettling him quite so much about Doctor Trask. He somehow thought that interrogating her wasn't going to go over very well.

Good the food might be, but the portion sizes weren't all that large, and the waiter was back clearing away their dishes, telling them that dessert would be served shortly. Some of the attendees were taking opportunity of the break to move out onto the dance floor, and Nathan gave his perplexing tablemate a sideways look. Not at all surprised that she was still looking at him.

"Would you like to dance?"

"Very much." She rose -- still looking at him. "Much as I enjoy it as part of the ambiance, my favorite way to appreciate music is in motion."

As he took her hand and led her out onto the dance floor, he found himself obsessing over, of all things, her perfume. But he couldn't put his finger on what it was, other than oddly spicey and not quite like anything any of the women he knew wore. Dappled green light played over them, and he glanced up at the shifting lights before he met Doctor Trask's eyes again. They were still locked on his face.

"I'm beginning to wonder if I'm fascinating, too," Nathan said, lightly. "Or whether I have something in my teeth."

"You're fascinating," she assured him without blinking. Of course. "Your teeth, for the record, are fine."

"There's a relief." When in doubt, make jokes? He wished she'd laugh or something, or even smile in a way that wasn't overly bright and knowing. "So this mutual acquaintance of yours... I hope she spoke well of me?" Why don't you just flat-out ask her who it was, idiot? Only he was oddly leery of doing so, for some reason.

"She seemed to think very highly of you indeed."

Nathan thinned out his shields, just a little. To listen. But nothing was slipping out. Hers was a disciplined mind, not merely an unusual one. I don't think she's a telepath. I'd feel that.

"Good to hear that. Most of the women I know have very little patience for my foibles. Especially my wife." Best to cover that particular base, just in case.

"If she married you, they can't have put her off too badly. I'm sure she has some of her own that you also accept. What is, is, after all." She looked away from him for once, off to the side. "Oh, look. Dessert."

"... right," he said a bit edgily. "Dessert."

--

He had been glad when dessert and the various speeches had been finished and he could make his farewells and get out of there. Trask had merely bidden him a good night, smiling slightly. Nathan looked back over his shoulder as he waited for the valet to appear with his car, half-expecting to see her there, still watching him.

What the hell had that all been about? He'd resisted the urge to scan her - it had taken some manful resistance indeed, as the sheer unease she'd provoked had almost been enough to overcome his ethics. Watch, that was just her idea of flirting... But if so, what about the references to a mutual acquaintance?

Nathan hadn't lived this long by ignoring his instincts. He took a deep breath and let it out, reaching into his inside pocket for his cell phone. Hello, I'm on my way home, if I don't show up in an hour it's either traffic or the strange woman I met at dinner...

Something crinkled. Nathan frowned and pulled out a small slip of paper that most decidedly had not been in there before. He unfolded it, smoothing out the crease - and his eyes widened.

It was a single sentence of Askani glyphs, written in a delicate hand.

I know who you are and I know what you've seen.

He stood there, staring at it, his breathing a little more shallow than it should be. Realizing. He'd taken the jacket off, left it on the back of his chair after dancing with Trask - and stepped away to exchange a few words with an acquaintance of Moira's.

Plenty of time.

"Your car, sir?" the valet said to him, in a tone that suggested it wasn't the first time he'd said that. Nathan blinked at him, realizing that yes, it was his car right there and the kid was giving him a rather narrow-eyed look.

"Um. Thanks," he said, pausing to tip him before getting in. He paused for a moment, slightly unsteady hands gripping the steering wheel tightly. Time to go home, he told himself, and drove away.