Jindigar muttered, “I’ll explain tomorrow,” and followed his zunre. Krinata let Fiella make up the sitting room guest bed. Her own room, with its pink rose-petal carpet, violet drapes and mint green bedding seemed to mock her mood. She couldn’t believe the Allegiancy would fall apart in her lifetime. To Dushau, “immediately” might be three hundred years from now.
She heard the water running in the guest bathroom, and muffled Dushau voices while she was bathing. Fiella scolded her on the condition of her formal attire—piol dropping stains, Dushau urine from Dinai’s convulsions. She hadn’t even realized that she hadn’t changed. “I’m sorry, Fiella. It won’t happen again.”
“Never mind,” said Fiella from the bathroom screen. “We haven’t had guests since your mother died. We should do things like this more often, even if it costs a few suits. They are so wonderfully courteous.” She sighed. “Arlai says you were so heroic, rescuing Dinai and all.”
She wasn’t about to argue with the Sentients, so she distracted Fiella by asking for the syntax and vocabulary to retrack that interview and understand it while she slept. Then she snuggled into her bed and turned on the sleep field.
She woke four hours later, when the field went off automatically. Since she’d gotten over her mother’s death, she’d always slept through that abatement, waking naturally at dawn. She tossed fretfully for a while, then tried combing her forearms with her fingernails and pressing her thumbs into the palms of her hands to trigger the sleep reflexes. She felt a mild relaxation from it, but then a vision surfaced of the piol left out on the balcony.
Before she knew it, she was on her feet, grabbing a robe and opening her door. The sitting-room lights were on low, and Jindigar was at the desk terminal, one hand propping his chin, the piol curled on his head and snoring while he scanned old records of the Raichmat expeditions and made new entries with his free hand.
The animal poked its head up, then scrambled down Jindigar and climbed up her robe, leaving claw marks on the delicate fabric. She plucked it off and cradled it in one arm as Jindigar roused to ask, “Did I wake you?”
“No, I just remembered leaving the piol outside.”
Chagrined, Jindigar said, “I’d forgotten him, too. But I couldn’t sleep.”
She settled cross-legged on a nearby ottoman and turned the piol over to look for genitals. “Neither could I. How do you tell it’s a he?”
“Well, you might say we asked him.” He forced a grin onto his ravaged features. “Not very helpful, am I? Here.” He reached for the animal and turned its rear to her, raising its tail. “Females usually have a light patch here. And they smell different, even when immature.”
“Oh, I never had a piol, though I once had a cat. I thought about getting a dog after my mother died.” She hadn’t meant to say that. From there, it took only a few gentle questions by Jindigar to elicit the whole story of her mother’s death from thransaxx and its complications.
”She must have been a fine woman.”
To change the subject, she asked, “Does he have a name?”
“Why, no. There hasn’t been time to think.” He tried to smile, but she could see strained grief behind the facade. “Do you have any ideas?”
The picture of Rantan’s livid face as the piol munched on the prize fish with its festoons of rainbow fins spread about him made Krinata say, “Why not call him Imperial Fisher, Imp for short?”
“Irreverent, but appropriate.”
“You’re not smiling. I thought it was funny.”
“I’m sorry.” He sighed hugely and flicked his fingers over the keypads, sending text and diagrams flowing over the screens in three dimensions.
Abashed, she remembered that his only memory of Imp’s greatest moment was the pain of the deaths of three of his zunre. “Are you planning to finish that report so you can leave in the morning with Trinarvil?”
He turned his head to inspect her with astonishment, then answered, “It’s going to take longer than that to chronicle over four hundred years. When this… grieving is over, I’ll have completely lost touch with those memories, barricaded them behind a kind of emotional scar tissue. So I have to finish this before I…” He shuddered.
“Look, if you’d rather be alone—”
He just looked at her, unable to answer.
“After I saw you had the piol, I came out because I thought you might like to talk. It’s helpful to humans to talk out a grieving. That’s what funerals and wakes are for.” She began to uncurl her legs. “But sometimes it doesn’t work across species lines. Perhaps it’s too soon.”
He put out a hand to halt her. “The grieving will go on hard and long, Krinata. I must ask you to forgive. Let me tell you what Trinarvil said.”
“I understood most of it, and got the rest from…” Suddenly, the full import of the conversation bit her like a cannon blast. And she knew what had wakened her after the sleeper had turned off. The Dushau really believed the end was at hand, and that Rantan was going to make them his scapegoat. Despite all of that, Jindigar was going to honor his vows of fealty, taken hundreds of years ago to another Emperor. What a beautiful man! How could anyone believe those lies! She didn’t know what Zinzik was trying to accomplish, but it must be that he was so intent on his goal of peace and prosperity among the Allied Species that he had allowed his advisors to lead him into a ghastly blunder. And if it went on much longer, it could be very dangerous indeed.
She asked, “Jindigar, are you sure you’re not staying here out of a need to court danger, from depression over the incredible losses you’ve sustained? As a human might do?”
“Dushau might do such things in the emotional turbulence of the onset of Renewal. But I have quite a few more years. This shock alone wouldn’t trigger Renewal for me, or Dinai or Seum. And what I told Trinarvil is true: I owe it to Kamminth and her Oliat to complete this debriefing. Also, I owe it to the Allegiancy to carry out the Emperor’s orders.”
She was listening with more than her ears. Renewal was the period of about a century every thousand years when Dushau retired to their home planet, took mates, raised families, and became younger day by day. “Kamminth meant a lot to you.”’
“Yes,” he admitted heavily. Again, he put his forehead in his hands as if to soothe a deep ache. “She mated me during Renewal once. We have a son home now—in Renewal. Her last dying concern was for him.”
He looked sharply at her, saw her sympathy and shook his head. “No, you don’t understand. Such a reaction was most unlike Kamminth—until Lelwatha became her Emulator. Lelwatha was more to the Oliat than a sun to its planets. He was like a deep, still pond, clear to the depths of soul; the radiant stillness acquired through ten Renewals. He exemplified the beauty of ultimate attainment, and his mere presence awakened some of that in us. Kamminth was sharp, young, irascible. Her spiky temper and self-absorption, though simply youthful, made it difficult to be with her. But when Lelwatha came, the Oliat steadied in balance. We doubled in perceptivity. And we became open to joy. I learned—I hope I learned—so much from him.
“Krinata, I’m so afraid I’m going to lose his touch, that I will be unable to give meaning to his life because we didn’t have enough time. And Kamminth—oh, Kamminth. She was learning too. Now—”
As he broke off, she was aware that he’d revealed more than he’d intended, but she was fascinated to have glimpsed the spiritual value of the Oliat to its officers. To them, it was a maturing, soul-enriching experience. And that, not money or adventure—or power—was why Dushau worked Oliat for Planetary Survey.
In his silence, she felt the immensity of his loss, and how it could scar and cripple him for life. She said, “I’ll get Fiella to make some tea.”
She went into the dining room and summoned Fiella while he continued to stare at his screen. How does a Dushau cry? She’d made a professional point of learning all she could about them, and still knew nothing important except that he needed a good cry right now. So did Krinata, but with less
cause. She sat at the table waiting for the tea and wiped at her leaking eyes with a furious embarrassment.
When she took the tea in, along with some cakes Fiella had provided, he was totally absorbed in his work. She curled up in her favorite chair, meaning to stay only long enough to drink a cup of tea. She watched him sip his tea and munch distractedly while torrents of data swept across all five of the display screens arrayed around the desk.
As he worked, the strain lines smoothed from his face and he seemed younger. She tried to imagine him a thousand years younger. She didn’t even know how old he was. But Raichmat had Dissolved more than thirteen hundred years ago.
She woke with a start to find Dinai bent over Jindigar at the desk, one arm around Jindigar’s shoulders, whispering to him. Jindigar finally roused from his communion with the screens and moved vaguely, his eyes dazed, his words slurring. Dinai’s alarm was written plainly in his posture, his tone, even though she couldn’t understand a word he was saying other than zunre, the term for a fellow Oliat member.
She got up, alert as if there were something she could do for Jindigar. But as she moved, Jindigar dragged himself together, and said, “Oh, Krinata, I didn’t know you were still there. Did I wake you?”
“No,” she lied, checking the time. “I’ve got to get to the office.” She pasted on a smile. “I’ve got a heavy debriefing later today!” But he should be in the hospital!
As she went to dress, he said, “We’ll be there.”
She left while they were closeted in the guest room, apparently chanting in unison.
The office was buzzing when she arrived. She marched past the reception counter behind which scores of her subordinates sat at desk terminals. Many of them did most of their work at home, corning into the office only occasionally. Today, however, everyone had come expecting a show. They were in their places, but gossiping, not working.
Clorinda Dover, one of the newest additions to the Survey Base data pool, fresh from Terra with the air of automatic authority that made everyone hate her while envying her pretty face, was regaling the young Lehiroh male, Sharfolk, with fictitious details of Kamminth’s death, as if she had an inside track to the Emperor’s apartments. Krinata strode past and snapped, “There’s work to be done.”
“Yes, Lady Zavaronne,” intoned Clorinda. The worst of it was, she meant it. To her, rank was everything, and she acknowledged Krinata’s status while vying to raise her own.
Krinata stopped, sorry she’d cracked her invisible whip at Sharfolk, who wasn’t impressed by titles. “We do have Kamminth’s debriefing today, and I’m sure the Outreach will be grateful if we can make it as quick as we can for him.”
Clorinda put on a knowing smile that Krinata wanted to wipe off her tastefully made-up face. Three years ago, people like Clorinda wouldn’t have been tolerated in positions of any responsibility. With a bit more rancor than she intended, Krinata said, “And I don’t want to hear a single snicker if he walks in here with a piol on his head. The Emperor didn’t bat an eyelash, neither will you.”
/ shouldn’t be so hard on her. She’s just young. Besides, she’s a member of my team!
Whispers followed her all the way into her private office. She powered up quickly and began shooting questions at her staff. making sure all the queries from the field had been answered, all new data filed and integrated. By the time she’d been on-line five minutes, her department’s Sentient and all his semi-sentients were fully occupied.
Then she checked with Arlai to make sure Jindigar and the others were really as well as they claimed. He answered, “They’re not well, but they’ll heal faster after they get this over with.”
She was planning how to make it easiest on them when her door rattled open as if hit by a tornado. Six Holot guards led by a gilt-carapaced Cassrian trooped into her office in perfect marching step and took up a formation. Feeling smaller than the Cassrian, shock prickling along her skin, she rose to her full height behind her desk.
The Cassrian was gloating at pulling rank on someone technically his superior. “We have orders from the highest to observe this debriefing.”
She roared, “Get out of my office!”
He ignored her, waving toward the full staff outside. “You plan to finish today?”
“The interview part,” she answered. “In privacy! I shall file full formal objections—”
“They will be ignored.”
Hauteur had always been a Zavaronne tool. She turned it on now, meeting the Cassrian’s gaze coldly. “Debriefing must take place in private, or we may lose vital details.”
She won the stare-down. Lowering his eyes, he bowed, joints clicking. He said more humbly, “Of course. We will make ourselves inconspicuous. You are ordered to say no word of our presence to the Dushau. But we must monitor. We have our orders.” He handed her a slim message tube with the imperial seal on it. “Long live the Emperor.”
She broke it and rammed it into the reader. While she folded nervelessly back into her chair, the Cassrian deployed his guards by pairs into Krinata’s two side rooms—one a storeroom, the other a bath and dressing room.
The Cassrian and the other two Holot went out into the common office and appropriated desks in the back among the potted plants someone had brought from home.
Krinata stared at the ornately bordered, illuminated, un-forgeable Imperial Order. By her oath and her family’s oath. she was called to serve her Emperor. She was to complete the debriefing in routine fashion, not indicating to the Dushau that the guards were there, for any emotional disturbance might obscure the data even further than the deaths had already. The Empire needed this planet desperately. The guards were there to prevent interference with her work today. She would be justly rewarded.
She sat with her fists clenched in her lap, her jaw bunching, emotions raging back and forth. She had to breathe evenly to regain calm. But this was her department. This intrusion implied a distrust of her professionalism. A cold thought wriggled up to consciousness. Or is it me he doesn’t trust–because I stood with them yesterday?
Maybe it was her department—or the Dushau—who weren’t trusted? Had word of the Dushau withdrawal already reached Rantan? She hadn’t turned on the news this morning, and there was no time now.
Oh, let this be over soon! But something told her it wouldn’t be. Soon the damage the imperial decrees had done would be unforgivable. It could only damage the Allegiancy.
She had to warn Jindigar. Deep intimate details were sometimes revealed during debriefing. Yet she’d been specifically ordered not to alert the Dushau to the spies. Jindigar was doing all this from loyalty to his Emperor. How could she do less? Yet, she felt like a betrayer. On the other hand, there was no way to get word to him without the spies noticing. They were on her data boards out there!
While she dithered, feeling helpless and trapped in her own office and hating herself for it, Tully, her department’s Sentient, came on the screen—a delightfully muscular young human with a frontier planet accent. “The Kamminth Outreach, Formulator and Protector have arrived.”
Jindigar entered as the door opened quietly. He was flanked by Seum and Dinai. all dressed formally. Sure enough, Imp was atop Jindigar’s head. He set the piol down, providing it with a plastic toy fish to play with and asked, waving at the full outer office, “All of that in our honor?”
“We thought we’d be able to finish today. Besides, I think they’re all dying of curiosity. Kamminth’s tale is all over the division. Right now, I expect they’re gossiping about your arrival.” Her cheer sounded strained, and her eyes kept straying to the doors on either side of the room.
Jindigar nodded. “Perhaps we can yet retrieve enough detail to publish a full and attractive prospectus.”
Krinata rose, gesturing to the couches arrayed in the other end of the office behind a filigreed screen.
They entered the debriefing area, stripping off turban and outer robe with businesslike precision. As she powered up the equipment array
ed around her control chair, Jindigar installed Dinai and Seum on an adjacent lounge and made himself at home on the debriefing couch. He hesitated, frowning at her as if he sensed something amiss. “What’s bothering you, Krinata?”
“Uh… nothing,” she lied, hating herself for being weak. Nothing’s going to happen. It’s better he doesn’t know. She could see through the brittle cheer of his facade to the bottomless ache of loss that was gnawing at his vitals. And he was nursing that ache, not attempting to surmount it, because its ceasing would wall him away from the data the Emperor wanted. “Let’s get on with this,” pled Krinata as much for herself as for them.
As if stung, Jindigar turned to his zunre, gathered them with eye contact and then joined hands with them. “We can’t balance anymore, but we will access what mutual contact is left to us. Forgive, please, any clumsy lapses.”
It wasn’t in anything he said, but she got the sudden impression that this was very dangerous for them. Arlai hadn’t warned her about that. But she flung herself into her control chair, forcing all worries from her mind. If they could give so much to the Empire surely the least she could do was support them. She snapped on the cone of green light which signified the detector beams were focused on the debriefing lounge.
Jindigar took his place under that cone as he had hundreds of times before. The other two Dushau settled for the long session, hands joined in some sort of formal configuration. Krinata gave herself with long discipline to the frame of mind of a prospective colonist.
She summoned enthusiasm, curiosity, and determination to make a shrewd choice among the new homes available. The machines responded to her brainwaves, the lights flickering in their proper patterns. In the outer office, she knew from years of work there herself, screens echoed hers, and others drew data forth for comparison. Tully stood by with his semi-sentients ready to integrate the data.
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