by Timothy Zahn
Thrr-gilag felt his tail twitch. "So that one's gotten around, too."
"You weren't expecting it to?" his father countered. "That was not a wise thing for you to talk about, Thrr-gilag."
"I know," Thrr-gilag sighed. "Certain members of the Overclan Seating were none too happy about it, either."
"More unhappy than you know," Thrr't-rokik said darkly. "I'm starting to hear rumors that the leaders and Elders of the Dhaa'rr are beginning to reconsider their approval of your bond-engagement to Klnn-dawan-a."
Thrr-gilag stared at him, his midlight pupils contracting to slits. "They can't do that," he protested. "They've already agreed to it."
"I know," Thrr't-rokik said. "But between your trouble on Base World Twelve and your brother Thrr-mezaz's role in the loss of Prr't-zevisti, the Dhaa'rr are furious with the whole Thrr family. And considering how unenthusiastic most of the Elders were about allowing a Dhaa'rr and Kee'rr to bond in the first place..." He flicked his tongue in a negative.
Thrr-gilag pressed his tongue hard against the inside of his mouth. He'd suspected from the start that it was his mishandling of things that had kept the Dhaa'rr leaders from assigning Klnn-dawan-a to the Mrachani study group, settling on the vastly less competent Gll-borgiv instead. But this was a blow he had somehow never anticipated. "Has there been any official action yet?" he asked.
"Not that I've heard of," Thrr't-rokik said. "I take it you're going to try to head it off?"
"You take it right," Thrr-gilag said, the shock of betrayal beginning to give way to an icy anger. He and Klnn-dawan-a had had to fight uphill once already against the Elders - from both their clans - and these stupid antiquated prejudices against interclan bonding. Now, it seemed, they were going to have to do it all over again. "I have to get in touch with Klnn-dawan-a right away. Let her know what's going on."
"I suggest you speak with her in person," Thrr't-rokik warned. "If the Dhaa'rr Elders find out you know, they're likely to push the clan leaders all the harder."
"Yes, I know," Thrr-gilag said. "The problem is, she's out on Gree with a group studying the Chig. That's a two-fullarc round trip right there."
"Is your timing that tight?"
"It's reasonably tight, yes," Thrr-gilag said. "But it's what I've got, and I'll just have to make do." He hesitated. "You haven't said what the response of Klnn-dawan-a's immediate family has been."
"I haven't heard anything one way or the other about them," Thrr't-rokik said. "But unless you hear otherwise, I'd suggest you assume they're still behind you. Klnn-dawan-a's family are good people." He paused. "And of course it goes without saying that your own immediate family will support you."
"Thank you," Thrr-gilag said. "That helps."
"It supplies some emotional support, at any rate," his father said. "I only wish one of our two families had more political pull with our respective clans. A lifetime of work in ceramics design does not exactly heap up huge piles of favors. Especially with - "
He broke off, flicking his tongue in an oddly impatient gesture. "You'd better get moving if you're going to make it to Gree and back," he said, his voice suddenly brisk. "If you have time, stop back and see me before you go off to whatever the Overclan Seating has scheduled next for you. I presume you know that you don't have to come all the way out here to speak with me, by the way. As long as you're within a hundred thoustrides of the shrine, you can call Thrr-tulkoj or one of the other protectors on the direct-link and they can send me to wherever you are."
"I know," Thrr-gilag assured him. "And one way or the other, I promise I'll talk to you after I get back from Gree."
"Good. In the meantime I have friends with access to Unity City. I'll see what other information I can dig up."
"All right," Thrr-gilag said. "You know, you really ought to consider having a cutting taken. You could get yourself a niche in a pyramid near Unity City and watch all this political stuff directly instead of having to sift through rumors."
Again his father's tongue flicked oddly. "No, I don't think so," he said. "Not now. Tell me, are you going to see your mother before you go?"
"I'd planned to," Thrr-gilag said, frowning at the abrupt change of topic. "Thrr-mezaz told me she'd moved out to Reeds Village?"
"Yes," Thrr't-rokik said. "About thirty fullarcs ago. You were out on Study World Fifteen during the preparations; and then this whole Human-Conqueror thing came up, and you were rushed out to Base World Twelve."
"Yes, I've been busy," Thrr-gilag said, studying his father's transparent face. "Hardly out of touch, though. What is it you and Thrr-mezaz aren't telling me?"
Thrr't-rokik looked away. "Perhaps it would be best if you spoke with her for yourself," he said. "If you have time, that is. This matter with Klnn-dawan-a should take precedence."
"My family takes precedence," Thrr-gilag told him firmly. "I'll make the time."
It was only a five-hunbeat walk to the rail stop near the shrine. Three cars were waiting there on the siding; climbing into the first, Thrr-gilag fed in his value number and keyed for the main nexus at Cliffside Dales. The car beeped its acceptance and eased onto the main rail, and they were off.
There was a flicker, and an Elder appeared in front of him. "You are Thrr-gilag; Kee'rr?" he asked.
"Yes," Thrr-gilag said.
"I was told you wanted information on space-flight schedules," the Elder said briskly. "When, and to where?"
"As soon as possible," Thrr-gilag said, wondering what had taken the travel communicator so long to get out there to him. He'd put in the request with Thrr-tulkoj before leaving the shrine. "Destination is the planet Gree."
"Gree?" The Elder seemed taken aback. "That's a Chig world."
"There are indeed large numbers of Chig on it," Thrr-gilag agreed. "Along with a few hundred Zhirrzh in about fifty study groups."
The Elder sniffed. "The proper study of Zhirrzh is Zhirrzh," he said primly. "What anyone thinks they're going to find on a planet full of aliens I'll never know."
"I'm sure you won't," Thrr-gilag said, not trying overly hard to hide his disgust. With Human forces gathering against the Zhirrzh like storm clouds over a field of grain, it should be blindingly obvious that the ability to understand alien cultures was going to be of critical importance in the fullarcs ahead. Obviously, there were still Zhirrzh too stupid to understand that. "Just check the schedule for me, please."
The Elder sniffed again and was gone. Thrr-gilag turned back to the window, running the numbers through his mind. One fullarc each way to Gree; six and a half until he needed to check in again with Nzz-oonaz and the rest of the Mrachani study group. That left barely four and a half fullarcs to try to get all this straightened out.
He gazed at the scenery going past outside, a twinge of guilt tugging at him. He really ought to call the Overclan before he headed off-world this way. The Overclan, or at the very least Nzz-oonaz. Let someone in authority know where he was going and what he was doing.
But if he did that, Speaker Cvv-panav would almost certainly find out about it. And he'd either summarily cancel Thrr-gilag's trip or else push the Dhaa'rr clan leaders to move even more quickly on their repudiation of his bond-engagement to Klnn-dawan-a. Or both.
Besides, there was no reason why anyone in Unity City would need him for the next few fullarcs. The Mrachani bodies weren't going to need any more examination, and Nzz-oonaz surely had the study group's end of the upcoming voyage under control. And if for some reason he needed help, Gll-borgiv and the Dhaa'rr would be more than happy to assist.
And anyway, Thrr-gilag would be back well before the time he'd been told to return. No, best just to keep it quiet.
With a flicker the Elder was back. "A warrior supply flight leaves for the Gree encirclement forces in seven tentharcs," he growled. "It'll be lifting from the warrior field at Pathgate; flight time approximately nine tentharcs. Do you wish a place reserved for you?"
"Please," Thrr-gilag said, holding out his identification card and, for good measure,
his Overclan-complex pass.
"Um," the Elder said, peering at the cards. "The reservation will be made in your name. Payment is due one tentharc before departure."
"I understand," Thrr-gilag said. A hundred cyclics ago, right after the first credit/debit system had been set up, Elders had carried value numbers directly between buyers and sellers. But as the system had expanded, someone had belatedly realized that Elders who could handle whole sections of a conversation should have no trouble at all memorizing a few strings of numbers. A handful of dishonest Elders had been caught proving it - to the tune of nearly half a million in fraudulent purchases and fund transfers - and that had been that. "Thank you."
The Elder sniffed one last time and was gone. "You're welcome," Thrr-gilag murmured, settling tiredly back against the railcar couch. Seven tentharcs before lift. Plenty of time to get to Reeds Village first and see his mother.
And to find out what was going on out there that neither his father nor his brother would tell him about.
He sighed. It was unfair. It really was. This looming war against the Humans was enough trouble for anyone to have to handle. To throw in family and personal crises on top of it was asking far too much.
But the crises were there, and they were on his shoulders, and he would just have to deal with them as best he could. Settling back on his couch, he closed his eyes against the light filtering through the postmidarc clouds and tried to get some sleep.
7
The tissue analyzer beeped notice that it had finished its work, the gentle tone almost lost amid the continual snap-flapping of the shelter walls. Laying down her stylus, Klnn-dawan-a got up from her couch and headed over to the analyzer, eying the shaking walls warily as she walked. The wind outside had been increasing steadily for nearly half a tentharc now, with no sign that it was planning to modulate anytime soon. If the storm didn't pass in another tentharc or two, they could say farewell to the latearc's sampling run.
"Getting pretty noisy out there," her assistant Bkar-otpo commented from across the shelter, his tone sounding a little uneasy. "How strong do these winds get, anyway?"
"Don't worry, we'll be all right," Klnn-dawan-a told him, shutting the analyzer back to standby and keying for a datalist. "These shelters can handle anything Gree's likely to throw at us. At least this time of cyclic."
"Yes, I've heard stories about those equinox storms," Bkar-otpo said. "You ever been in one of those?"
"A couple of times," Klnn-dawan-a said. The datalist came up, and she ran a quick eye over the numbers. Promising; definitely promising. Maybe this time they'd finally hit the proper window for the genetic-ring transmutation. "I wouldn't want to be in a field shelter during one, but a perm building stands up to them just fine."
"It must still be pretty impressive - "
"It's wonderful and exhilarating both," she interrupted gently, stepping over to him and holding out the datalist. "File this into the recorder, would you? And then run up a comparison between it and the other samplings."
"I obey, Searcher," he said briskly, all business now as he took the datalist and pulled his couch up to the recorder. "Will we be taking another set of samplings this latearc?"
"Assuming the wind dies down, yes."
"I've been wondering about that," Bkar-otpo said doubtfully. "Even at the best of times, Chigin whelps can be pretty unpredictable. No telling what this storm will do to their dispositions."
"We'll be fine," Klnn-dawan-a assured him, focusing her attention again on the wind. Was it marginally less violent than it had been a few hunbeats ago? Possibly. "I'm going to take a quick look outside, see if I can spot the edge of the storm."
"You want me to go with you?" Bkar-otpo asked, half standing up.
"No, I'll be fine," she said. "I won't be going very far."
"I could call an Elder to go with you," he persisted, his hand hovering near the signaler control.
"I'll be fine," she said firmly. "You just get busy with that comparison, all right?"
He seemed to sigh. "I obey, Searcher," he said again, and turned reluctantly back to the recorder.
Klnn-dawan-a stepped to the shelter door and began unfastening the catches, mentally shaking her head and wondering yet again what exactly she was going to do about Bkar-otpo. Fresh out of school, studious and earnest as all get out, he was the totally stereotypical searcher assistant.
With, unfortunately, what looked like the beginnings of a strong crush on her.
She was holding on to the grips tightly as the door came open, but even so, the wind nearly ripped it out of her hands. Maneuvering out into the blast, she sealed the door behind her. Gree's sun was long gone below the horizon, and for a beat she stayed where she was beside the shelter as her lowlight pupils widened to compensate for the darkness. A few beats later, with the rocky ground now adequately visible, she headed off between the cluster of wind-buffeted shelters toward the edge of the shallow hollow the group had set up in.
The simplest thing to do, of course, would be to arrange for Bkar-otpo to be transferred to one of the other three Dhaa'rr study groups on Gree. It would give him time to forget her and maybe latch on to someone who wasn't ten cyclics older than he was and already bond-engaged. If she did it properly, chances were good that he'd never even guess that she'd been behind the transfer.
The problem was, he might. And if her own experiences when she was nineteen were anything to go by, that would be devastating to him. Klnn-dawan-a had always considered herself a rather plain sort of person when she was growing up: average in appearance and personality, considerably less than average in conversational ability and family status. Her intellect had been sharp enough, certainly, but she'd never found that to have much in the way of appeal to the people around her. It wasn't until she'd discovered her love of alien studies and the close-knit group of people who felt likewise that she'd really begun to feel at home. By the time her friendship with Thrr-gilag had begun to grow into something stronger, she'd been strong enough herself to take the chance of getting hurt.
Bkar-otpo, unfortunately, wasn't anywhere near that stage yet. Nevertheless, it was clear that she was going to have to do something, and soon. The bond-engagement threads she always wore weren't deterring him in the slightest; neither were her attempts to work Thrr-gilag's name into the conversation every chance she got. Apparently, she was just going to have to come out point-blank with it.
And then, maybe, she'd get him transferred.
She'd reached the edge of the hollow now and the predator fence that protected the encampment. The wind was stronger here, with a tangle of eddies and crosscurrents that seemed determined to knock her off her feet. Bracing herself against a shoulder-high rock, she put her hands up to protect her eyes and peered out across the sky.
Good luck was with them. The cloud formations that indicated the edge of the windstorm were clearly visible between the rolling foothills directly ahead and the taller mountains rising beyond them. Ten hunbeats - twenty at the most - and the winds should begin settling down. Should be no problem for her and Bkar-otpo to get out to the Za Mingchma farm and take their tissue samples on schedule.
She shifted her position against the rock, letting her gaze drop to the foothills themselves. The lights of perhaps fifty Chigin houses were visible through the tight mesh of the predator fence, the homes scattered unevenly up and down the slopes of the hills and even part of the way up the sheer face of the mountain behind. Farm families, most of them, working hard to coerce a living from the thin soil and thin air up here. Aloof to the Zhirrzh study group for the most part, but at least not openly hostile the way the valley and city residents always seemed to be.
Klnn-dawan-a frowned, her gaze pausing on one of the plots of land. The fence surrounding the whelp enclosure looked wrong, somehow. She stared hard at it, feeling her lowlight pupils widening to full enlargement. The landscape brightened slightly....
There it was: a thick tree branch, apparently blown there by the wind, leanin
g against the middle of the enclosure fence on one side and holding it partially pinned to the ground.
She fumbled out her caller from the survival pack fastened around her waist, her view of the landscape ahead changing again as her darklight pupils expanded to pull in the heat radiance that surrounded all homoiothermal creatures. The tips of the houses' chimneys and the smoke pouring from them took on a gentle glow; larger, more diffuse images appeared inside the enclosures of the nearest yards: whelps, huddled together against the wind or else prowling their circuits in mindless defiance of the elements.
In the enclosure with the downed fence there was nothing.
"Terrific," Klnn-dawan-a muttered under her breath, half turning to aim the caller at the top of the white cutting pyramid in the center of the Zhirrzh encampment. The brilliant darklight beam lanced out, and over the wind she faintly heard the clang as the alarm mounted to the pyramid's top went off in response. She turned back around again, peering out into the darkness -
An Elder appeared in front of her. "Yes, Searcher?"
"The fence at the Ca Chagba farm has been breached," she shouted over the wind. "The whelps have gotten out. I'm going to go look for them. Tell Director Prr-eddsi, and ask him to send someone to help me."
"Not a good idea, Searcher," the Elder shouted back. "Especially not in a storm like this. They could get vicious."
"I'll be all right," Klnn-dawan-a assured him. "I've been to the Ca Chagba farm several times - the whelps know me as well as they know any Zhirrzh. I don't think they'll bother me."
"They're not going to be able to smell you in this wind," the Elder objected. "It's too big a risk."
"It's not that big a risk," Klnn-dawan-a said firmly. "Regardless, I'm taking it. Oh, and tell Prr-eddsi he should send someone to alert the Ca Chagba family, too. There's a good chance they don't even know their whelps are missing. Go on, get going."
"I obey, Searcher," the Elder said reluctantly. "Don't go far; I'll have an escort for you in a beat."
