derivative of those two people and perhaps find an equivalent magic to their relationship. Short of violence and a risky medical procedure, she had no idea how she could make it happen.
"I would ask you also to wait," she said, beginning the First Diversion. "I do have a task you might do for me, a very dangerous task, and perhaps suited to your current abilities."
"I'll do it, whatever it is! Tell me about it."
"It may be an impossible task," she said. "It's still very early in the planning stages. It may never come about. But the mere idea of it should make you reconsider your entire reason for existing in your state of war against barbarians."
"Intriguing," Alex said. "Go on."
"Are you hungry? I've prepared a meal for us."
"I am! I haven't had time to think about food. I like the way you are raising my interest and my expectations. Frankly, I dreaded coming here."
"You seem to have lost your dread. You used to do the cooking." She started to set the table.
"I probably used to do a lot of things I can't remember doing."
"You would be surprised. Has Koji told you why everyone stares at you?"
"I assumed it was because I was your husband. What other reason would they have?"
"I won't tell you." It seemed too strange and too inappropriate to try to explain to him how he was a very live fictional hero.
"It would help if I had an active shiplink," he mentioned too obviously.
She brought the meals to the kitchen table and they sat down. She poured more tea from a pitcher. "In a few days you can use your shiplink. We will, of course, be watching what you do with it."
"I think Patrick has given you much reason to beware of us," he said. "It's understandable. We haven't always treated him well. His motivation is correct. I hope we don't rise to the level of threat he accords us. Truthfully, there may be no limit to what we could attempt, except the limit of death."
She almost shivered at his words. Even though it was a terrible truth, it was true. Perhaps in some deeply psychological way, his warning was a cry for help. Or was it? She was so full of clashing thoughts and leaking memories and hardly-suppressed emotions that it was difficult to guide a fork between her lips, much less analyze a stranger who meant too much to her. She ate half her meal before she lost her appetite. She sipped tea as she watched and waited for Alex to finish eating. There was nothing in his manner, in his voice, in his words that would match some remembrance of the man she once loved. This was somebody else. But it was still a man she could not stray from, could not give up on.
"What do you know about our captains?" she asked, starting Diversion Two. She wondered if he knew who Jamie was.
"I met Jon Horss," he answered. "Seems a bit eccentric but he must be competent. Direk is impressive, but how could he not be? I wasn't able to meet Captain Jones. The Marines think highly of her. She used to command them."
"I can bring her here for you to meet, if you like."
"If you think I should."
"Koji hasn't told you who she is?"
"That makes me wonder," Alex said. "I trust Koji with my life, but I don't trust him to play a game fairly with me. Is he playing another game? Why should I want to know this captain?"
"She's going to feel awkward and perhaps apprehensive meeting you, Alex. I hope you can be kind to her, but you don't need to pretend to be fatherly."
"Fatherly?"
"She's your daughter."
"I'm a father?"
She wondered if his obvious reaction was honest and accurate. The news seemed to disturb him, perhaps even shock him. "Not too many years after you left me," she explained, "I impregnated myself with sperm you had stored for me. I had already given up ever seeing you again. I was lonely, and for a few years I got to be a mother. Then I had to give her up. But I found her again! She is a very fine person. We're still trying to find some of what we lost."
"I have a daughter? This is going to be harder than impossible!"
"You don't want to meet Jamie?"
"I certainly do! It's just that mere existence is a challenge for me! A daughter would be... As Patrick has often said: Just take the next breath and the next step. It's bloody easy."
Alex helped Zakiya clear away the kitchen. He touched her several times, apparently by casual accident, but she hoped it was intentional. She wished he would put his arms around... She made a call to her daughter as an act of personal emergency, then tried to use Rafael's artworks to dispel her need to be inside Alex's arms.
Jamie arrived and chose to salute Zakiya as though she was reporting for duty.
"Jamie, he knows who you are. He says he's afraid to meet you. I think he's lying. Take a close look at him. You may not have him around very long."
"Mom and Dad! This is damned strange!" Jamie put out her hand for Alex to take.
"It's going to take a while to get used to being a father," Alex said. He gently squeezed her hand, frowning at her in good humor.
"I've got time. What did she mean about you not being around very long?"
"I presume she means a special mission she is planning for me."
"What special mission?" Jamie looked to her mother.
"I'm going to ask him to rescue someone," Zakiya replied.
"That's... cruel," Jamie said. "Does he know who it is?"
"You are part of my introduction to the target. Do you want to stay and watch?"
"I wouldn't miss it for anything!"
"Sit down," Zakiya instructed them, taking a seat in her living room. Alex and Jamie sat at opposite ends of a sofa and Jamie was not shy about staring at Alex. The three of them were silent for a few moments as Zakiya paused to calm herself and collect the thread of her intentions. She watched Jamie, who looked at Alex with strong and mixed emotions. When Jamie finally glanced back at her, Zakiya started to speak again. "Alex?" she queried, seeing that he had closed his eyes. He opened them. "Is something wrong?" she asked.
"Somewhere there is happiness," he said softly. "I can smell it on the breeze from the lake. I hope it comes your way," he added.
"But not to you?" Jamie asked.
"I fear it! I run from it! Don't listen to me. It's just a feeble attempt to subvert your antipathy for me."
"Why would I hate you?" Jamie asked. "I don't know how I feel about you, but I want it to become positive."
"Thank you! Listen to yourself. I'm already succeeding."
They both turned to look at Zakiya, as though she had called for their attention. Zakiya was content to let them converse, so that she could imagine the potential father-daughter relationship. And keep from throwing herself into his arms! "Would you like to come live with me?" Zakiya asked Alex, shocked she had done so.
"I would live with you if you wished," he replied easily. "But it would be improper."
"How so? You're my husband."
"Our wedding vows terminated at death. Your husband died a long time ago."
"And if I ask you to marry me?"
"You fight unfairly! I like that. Would the vows mean anything if spoken by a dead man?"
"So you make me a widow?"
"I'm a cruel person. I've tried to warn you."
"I deserve no better. We're more alike than you know, Ghost."
"I await your decision," he said.
"As do I," she said. "I'm apt to make poor decisions when haunted."
"What, then, is this dangerous task that you have long delayed explaining to me?"
Zakiya paused to catch her breath. She had nearly lost her way with Alex! "I want you to rescue a Navy admiral named Etrhnk. He is the Commander of the Navy."
"Tell me more!"
"He was our spy among the barbarians, Alex. He learned everything about them by becoming one of them. But at the sacrifice of his own identity. He doesn't know who he is."
"And now he's in trouble," Alex surmised.
"We stole this ship from him. He seemed to let us, even though he couldn't have remembered who I was, or who Aylis was."
"The greatest feat of courage I can imagine! And he was so adept that he rose to be Commander of the Navy? Who was he? How did you recruit him?"
"His name was Petros. Aylis recruited him."
"Petros? A Greek name?"
"Petros Gerakis. Our son. Jamie's brother."
2-36 Last Tango
Aylis watched Setek by shiplink through the eyes of her son. No closer than that did she feel safe from him. Setek had shown not the slightest interest in her. She was, of course, not the last woman to whom he had been married. Still, she was able to fret over what he might do in a sudden shift of his attention onto her. He was not the Setek she remembered in any aspect of his character. What was more upsetting was that he was the Setek she remembered she always wanted him to be: superficial. She never thought of it as superficial; she called it human, or Earthian. Now her auxiliary memory abused her with detail she hadn't seen then as important. The original Setek was in fact everything she should have wanted in a mate. She had been too full of herself, too blind, too deafened by too many distractions to appreciate Setek's quiet kindness. Even his patience she had misinterpreted as mere tolerance, and now she saw it could have been love. There was no excuse for such poor judgment, when a little more patience on her part could have provided more clarity to their relationship. She had only needed to ask Setek what was wrong. She had only needed to understand that Essiin people did feel emotions to their fullest, because they were human. She had only needed to realize that her own career, after Deep Space Fleet, was not in competition with Setek's. It was only that growing older had placed a deadline on her efforts to revolutionize age-reversal treatments.
Setek now spent much of
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