by neetha Napew
In addition, FSP regulations changed to allow heavy-
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worlder migration to any world open to humans. But that did not include Ireta: the Thek would not change their earlier decision. Aygar had been consoled, finally, by the knowledge that he would have a chance to see many equally fascinating worlds. And enough money to enjoy them.
Now the original team relaxed in Sassinak’s office, with most of the tales untold and a long night ahead for telling them. Restored by a couple of sessions in the tank to heal his bums, Ford crunched another of the crispy fries. Sassinak met his eyes and felt indecently smug. They had private plans when the party broke up. He had told her just enough about Auntie Q and the Ryxi tailfeathers to whet her appetite.
Dupaynil, though, had lost some of his polish. Specldessly clean, as usual, perfectly groomed, he still had a hangdog tentative quality that she found almost as irritating as his former blithe certainty.
Lunzie, always tactful, had put aside her grief for Coromell to try to cheer Dupaynil up, but so tar it hadn’t worked. Timran, on the other hand, was indecently gleeful. He had taken the mild commendation she’d given him as if he’d been awarded the Federation’s highest honor in front of the Grand Council. Now he sat stiffly in the corner of her office as if he would burst if he moved. She’d better rescue the lad.
“Ensign, there’s an errand ... a fairly special one ...”
“Yes, ma’am”
“We’re having guests; I’d like you to escort a lady from the Flight Deck in here.”
If anyone could settle a young man like Tim, it would be Fleur. He’d enjoy Aygar’s student friend, too, and Erdra. Sassinak grinned wickedly at the thought of Erdra coming face to face with the reality behind her daydreams. She was no Carin Coldae and the sooner she quit playing games and went back to finish that advanced degree in analytical systems, the better. The riot had cured her of any thought that violence and glamor coexisted, and a visit to a working warship ought to clear out the rest of her nonsense.
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Lunzie would want to meet her relative-of-sorts, from the Chinese family. It had been extravagant, in several ways, to send her own shuttle down for them, but she felt it important to build respect for Fleet. No more restrictions on the movement of Fleet personnel, and no civilian weapons monitors, either. The Zaid-Dayan was, as it always should be, ready for action. Now, while Tim was gone, she could try to penetrate DupayniTs gloom again.
“I wanted to apologize to you,” she began, “for pulling that trick ...”
“It was a trick, then, with the orders?” He brightened a moment. “I was sure of it. You used the Ssli, right?”
“Right. But it was flat stupid of me not to know more about the ship I tossed you onto. I had no idea ...”
“I know.” He looked glum again.
“You said something about charges?”
“Well, the Exec of the escort and I had to overpower the crew, put ‘em in custody ...”
“On an escort? Where?”
“In the escape pod in coldsleep. They were going to space me.”
Sassinak stared at him. He said it in a tone of flat misery entirely out of character for someone who had run a successful mutiny.
“I’m sure we can get the charges dropped. If anyone’s dared filed them,” she said. “Especially now. I’ve had contact with Admiral Vannoy, back at Sector, and he’s rooting out the traitors around Fleet.”
But that didn’t cheer him up as it should have. Clearly impending charges weren’t the burden he carried. Lunzie caught her eye and made a significant glance at Ford, at Dupaynil, then at Aygar. Sassinak let one eyelid droop in a near-wink.
“Ford, if you don’t mind, I think I’d like a grownup to supervise that reception. Aygar, you might want to be there to greet your friends.”
Aygar leaped up while Ford stood more slowly, grinning at Sassinak in a way that almost made her blush.
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“You ladies take care,” he said, with his own significant glance at Dupaynil. “No squabbling.”
Then he left, shepherding Aygar ahead of him.
“Now, then,” said Sassinak. “You’ve been brooding about as if you were about to be stuck in Administration forever. So, what’s the problem?” She thought for a long moment he would not answer, then it burst out of him.
“It’s ridiculous, and I don’t want to talk about it.”
Lunzie and Sassinak waited, saying nothing. Dupaynil looked up and met Sassinak’s eyes squarely.
“I was so jurious with you for pulling that trick. For getting atvay with that trick. I dreamed of outfoxing you again, coming back with what you needed, but making you pay for it. Then I had to escape those . . . those pirates on Claw, and realized that 1 didn’t know one tbing about actually running a ship. Panis had to train me as if I were a raw recruit. But I still thought, with what I’d found, that I’d have a chance of returning in triumph. A good story to tell, all that. But then the Seti . . .”He stopped, shaking his head, and Sassinak and Lunzie stared at each other over his bent head.
“What did they do?” asked Lunzie.
Sassinak was thinking that it was a good thing they’d died before she’d had the opportunity to skin their scaly hide off their live bodies.
“Arly didn’t tell you?”
“She said you looked pretty dilapidated when you came aboard, but you wouldn’t go to Medical—“ Her skin crawled as she thought of reasons why he might not, which could explain his present mood. “Dupaynil! They didn’t!”
This time he laughed, a genuine if shaky laugh. “No. No, they didn’t actually do anything. It was just . . . Have you ever seen a Seti shower?”
What did that have to do with anything? “No,” Sassinak said cautiously.
“It sprays you with hot air, grit, and more hot air,” Dupaynil said with more energy than she’d heard from him yet. Bitter, but alive. “I’m sure it’s what keeps their scales so shiny. Probably takes care of itchy little parasites on a Seti. But for a human, day after day . . .
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And then I had to stay in that blasted pressure suit for days.” His expression brought a chuckle to Sassinak; she couldn’t help it. “I’d planned on strolling in, cool and suave, to hand you what you needed. Instead, I was stuck in a stinking pressure suit in a crowded compartment full of terrified aliens where I could do not one damn thing, and had to be rescued like any silly princess in a fairy tale.”
“But you did,” said Sassinak.
“Did what?”
“Did do something. Kipling’s corns, Dupaynil, you got the warning to us. You had evidence the Thek used.”
“They could have got it straight from those slime-buckets* minds.”
“Well, if the Thek hadn’t been there, we’d have needed it. After all, they asked for you at the trial. They needed your evidence, too. I don’t know what more you could want. You escaped one death-trap after another, you got vital information, you saved the world. Did you really think anyone could do that without getting dirty?” She thought of herself in the tunnels, even before Fleur’s disguise.
“I wanted to impress you,” he said softly, looking at his linked hands.
“Well, you did.” Sassinak cocked her head at him. “Impress me? Was that all?”
“No.” She would never have suspected that Dupaynil could blush, but what else were those red patched on his cheeks. “When I was on Claw, when I realized what you’d done, and I was so mad ... I also realized I wanted ...”
It was clear enough, though he couldn’t say it.
“I’m sorry.” That was genuine. He had earned it. She couldn’t offer more. Her joyful reunion with Ford had revealed too much to both of them.
“Sorry!” Lunzie fairly exploded, her eyes sparkling. “You nearly get the man killed, he has to take over a whole ship, and then he saves us all from a Seti invasion, and you’re just sorry!” She looked at Dupaynil.
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“She may be my desc
endant, but that doesn’t mean we agree. I think she ought to give you a medal.”
“Lunzie!”
“You wouldn’t think so if you’d seen me getting off that shuttle.” Dupaynil said. “Ask Arly.”
“I don’t have to ask Arly. I can see for myself.” That came out in a sensuous purr. Under Lunzie’s bright gaze, Dupaynil’s grin began to revive.
Sassinak regarded her great-great-great with affectionate disdain. “Lunzie, I know where I inherited some of my propensities.” If Lunzie stayed interested, she gave Dupaynil only a few more hours of freedom.
“Meow!” Lunzie stuck out her tongue, then leaned closer to Dupaynil.
Whatever else she might have said was interrupted by the arrival of the others: Fleur, who had worn one of her own creations in lavender and silver, Aygar and Timran in die midst of the students. Erdra, Sassinak noticed, wore the same land of colorful shirt and leggings as the others. Perhaps she had grown out of her wishful thinking already.
“Have you?” Fleur asked, drifting close a little later, as the conversation rose and fell around them.
^What?”
“Grown out of your past?”
Sassinak snorted. “I grew out of Carin Coldae a long way back.”
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
Sassinak thought of Randy Paraden’s face, the instant before the Weft killed him, and of the faces of the other conspirators in the Thek cathedral. She had looked long in her mirror when she came back aboard, hoping not to find any of the marks of that kind of character.
“Yes,” she said slowly. “I think I have. I can’t change what they did to me, but I can change what I do about it. It’s time to be more than a pirate-chaser. But not less.”
