She pulled her aching body out of bed, in its silky blue gown, and she made her way to the stone casement of the window. Below was the panorama of distant mountains and green hills and plains. Closer, was the garden with its mix of color and scent, with stone benches all around, so that visitors could sit and admire the scenery. Huge insects, like butterflies, were landing delicately on the blossoms. She sighed with appreciation of the sight.
“You should not be out of bed,” Dtimun commented as he entered.
Her heart hammered, as it always did when he was in the vicinity. His face tautened as the flood of pheromones washed over him. Despite Hahnson’s tranquillizer, he had to fight his instincts.
She grimaced at his taut expression and climbed back into bed, pulling the covers up. She still wasn’t used to a male who saw her in a nonmilitary way. She only wished that she could control her reaction to him.
“Sorry, sir,” she said formally.
He relaxed, but only a little. “You are feeling better?”
“Much,” she said. “I’m still a little weak but most of the damage has already healed.” She frowned. “Something has upset you.”
He glared at her.
“Hey,” she said, holding up both hands, “you walk in and out of my mind all the time. It was my turn.”
His expression changed. “Princess Lyceria has gone missing.”
“What?” she exclaimed, picturing the beautiful Cehn-Tahr she’d first met on Ahkmau.
“She took a flight to the largest of our moons with a complement of kehmatemer, apparently to shop at the duty free market. She did not return, and flashes sent to her module do not reach her.”
“You think she was kidnapped?” she asked.
“With the kehmatemer watching her?” he replied, astounded.
She recalled fighting alongside them on Ondar. They were as formidable as the Holconcom.
“They are more developed,” he said, reading the thought, “and they also have enhancements which we have never revealed to outworlders.”
She recalled their ability to scale walls and move so fast they couldn’t be seen. She’d had a taste of that when the commander had rescued her in the Dibella system.
He nodded. “You begin to understand,” he said. “We have many sorts of tech that we have kept hidden even from the humans who serve with us on the Morcai.” He smiled softly. “The ‘old fellow’ permitted us to travel as we usually do, to let the humans see. He has changed a great deal since the Great Galaxy War. You are responsible for that.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “But I haven’t done anything…”
“You underestimate your gifts for charming stoic and dangerous males.”
She pursed her lips. “Including you? Sir?”
He glowered at her. “The tranquillizer has a finite time limit,” he said deliberately.
She cleared her throat. “Sorry. You were saying?”
“Princess Lyceria eluded her escort in a shop by going out the back door while she was supposed to be conferring with a tailor. She vanished. There is more,” he added grimly. “While Hazheen Kamon made it back to Dacerius, Chacon did not report back to Enmehkmehk, the Rojok capital. He, also, has gone missing.”
Madeline sat up straighter against her pillows. “That is more than a coincidence. They might have arranged a rendezvous,” she added, because she knew how the Rojok felt about Lyceria. It was possible that Lyceria returned his affections.
Dtimun sighed and locked his hands behind his back as he paced. “This thought had also occurred to me.”
“Could they have met on your planet’s moon?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Regardless of my friendship for Chacon, he would have been arrested the moment he was seen. He would not dare risk it, nor would Lyceria. No, if they planned a meeting, it would be far from here, in someplace where neither of our military had jurisdiction.”
“Someplace like Benaski Port,” she suggested thoughtfully.
His lips made a thin line. “An astute conclusion.”
“Thank you, sir. Among my many attributes, I consider my astuteness is my best one.”
“Ruszel…” he muttered.
“Can’t the Dectat track the princess?”
“Yes,” he said. “Unknown to her, she always carries a homing membrane. The thing is, we can find no trace of a signal.”
She gave him a wry look. “Obviously, you don’t give her credit for much intelligent thought.”
He was shocked. “I did not say such a thing.”
“Females are wily, especially when they’re pursuing males. Or so I’m told,” she sighed.
He hesitated. “Komak has knowledge of the future. In this timeline, he says, Chacon may die. So may Lyceria. Komak has proposed a way that you and I can go to Benaski Port to save them both,” he added slowly. “He has concocted a chemical DNA catalyst that could do for you what Rojok tech did for Stern when he was cloned.”
“You mean,” she said, her heart racing, “the tech that made his bones so strong that they’re like steel. So that even Komak can’t best him in a fight.”
“Yes.” He frowned. “Komak is not what he seems,” he began.
“No, he isn’t,” she agreed, diverted from the subject at hand. “When I was operating on you, at Ahkmau, I thought I saw traces of human DNA in his matrix…why do you look like that?” she stopped, puzzled.
Incredible possibilities claimed his mind, but only for an instant. Anyone looking at Komak could see that he had no human attributes.
“Human DNA,” he said hesitantly. “It is unlikely.”
She nodded. “It wasn’t there when I rechecked. He does have some very human characteristics, though. And he knows things. Things he shouldn’t.” She met his eyes. “I think he travels in time.”
He laughed. “You are more perceptive than I realized. Yes,” he answered the unasked question. “I think the same. He lives as if he is living through a period of history that he has researched. Yet he does not know the intricacies of events, only the general perception of them.”
She nodded. “That’s what I thought.” She hesitated. “Do you think he’s a descendant of someone in the Holconcom?”
“I think this very possible.”
“He couldn’t really have human DNA. And he doesn’t look human.”
“If he did, it is possible that he disguises himself in some way. With a sensor net that distorts his true image, perhaps. Yet I agree—he does not look human.”
“If we could get one hair from his head,” she murmured thoughtfully.
He chuckled. “I will make that a priority, before he leaves.”
“He’s leaving?” she exclaimed. “But when? Why?”
“He says little,” he replied. “I do not know. But soon.”
She frowned. “Everything is changing so quickly,” she said.
Dtimun was still thinking about Komak. He shielded his mind far too well for a regular Cehn-Tahr, and he was a telepath. But human DNA? A child born of a Cehn-Tahr and a human would be put to death instantly, with its parents, if it were even possible.
“Why wouldn’t Chan Ho just have Chacon killed?” Madeline wondered aloud.
He moved closer. “If he were to be assassinated, his death would be laid at the door of Chan Ho, who has a precarious hold on his power,” he replied. “The Rojok commoners love Chacon. They do not love Chan Ho, who lacks the ability because of Chacon’s opposition, to create terror as his late uncle, Mangus Lo, did. If Chacon simply disappears, people will wonder, but there will be no proof. Certainly, there will be no body.” His lips compressed. “Chacon and I attended the military academy on Dacerius together. We were friends. It has been a great sorrow to me that we found ourselves adversaries in this conflict.”
“He is a noble adversary,” she agreed. “I owe him my life.”
“I owe him mine, as well.”
She tried to imagine Chacon in the same position she and Dtimun and the Holconcom had been in at
Ahkmau. It was distasteful.
“Komak believes that Lyceria’s spies found out something about the kidnapping and that she has gone in person to warn him,” he said grimly. “Chacon would not have dared meet her near Memcache, but if they decided to meet at Benaski Port…that den of thieves is far removed from here. It would take at least two or three standard weeks for them to arrive there, and they would have to travel covertly, which would also take more time.” He seemed unusually worried. “They say that the emperor is frantic.”
“Well, of course he is. She’s his only surviving child.”
He nodded, but he didn’t meet her eyes.
“You and I would go to Benaski Port and warn him?” Madeline asked.
Dtimun’s eyes flashed green. “As you are now, your own life would be in greater danger than Chacon’s.”
She flushed. “Oops.”
He frowned. “I mentioned that Komak has a way to alter your DNA, to make you far stronger than you are. But the process is dangerous. Any DNA manipulation has consequences. As you have already seen,” he added bitterly, alluding to his own negative qualities.
“Not all tampering is bad,” she argued as a scientist. “I’ve seen lethal viruses displaced by scientific method, genetic malformations cured with gene therapy. It has benefits, as well as consequences.” Her eyes twinkled. “My, my, think of the possibilities, if there’s a breakthrough in nanotech that would make me the equal of a Cehn-Tahr woman in strength and fortitude.” She cocked her head. “I could get into even better brawls with my comrades aboard the Morcai.”
He gave her a speaking look.
“Sorry,” she said. “Just a stray thought.” Her eyes twinkled even more. “I could put Komak over a table,” she considered. “Wouldn’t he be surprised?”
“Very surprised, when I threw him off the roof for touching you,” he returned and he wasn’t smiling.
She let out a breath. “I miss the Holconcom,” she confessed and averted her eyes. “I love duty with the Amazon Division, but I miss the Morcai and her crew.”
“Stern and Hahnson and Komak,” he interpreted coldly.
“And, of course, you, sir,” she added with dry humor. “Nobody dresses me down twice a day for behaving in a nonmilitary fashion.” She sighed sadly. “I’ve become like you, sir, somber and duty-minded. Imagine that.”
His eyes went green for just an instant. “I cannot.”
She studied him curiously. She wanted to ask a question, but she was too wary of him to put it into words.
He anticipated it and changed the subject abruptly. “There is another matter. The Dectat wishes to honor you for the treaty with the Nagaashe. They are debating the means.”
Her heart jumped. “My goodness! But I didn’t really do anything.”
“Your ‘old fellow’ would certainly debate that opinion,” he said, and he laughed gently. “The worst of your enemies in the days before Ondar has become your greatest advocate. The irony is incredible.”
“Irony, sir?”
“The soldier who would gladly have ordered your death in your first days with the Holconcom is the one who suggested the honor.”
She laughed. “The Nagaashe said that he was the worst of all the Cehn-Tahr.” She frowned introspectively. “I don’t understand how they even knew him. Anyway,” she continued, “the Nagaashe were afraid of the Cehn-Tahr. They thought of you as animals. They saw you through my eyes. It changed them.”
He smiled. “For which the Dectat is more delighted than you realize. Our stores of Helium 3 have been greatly diminished during the war, and our supply lines fragmented. The Nagaashe planet is close to us, and they have almost unlimited concentrations of it on their world. Our supplies were dwindling to a critical level because of the war.”
“The Nagaashe were kind to me.”
He looked at her with growing unrest. The sedative was just beginning to wear off. He straightened with regal grace from his perch against the window. “Later, we must let the kehmatemer in to see you, or face a riot…!”
His sudden sharp pause was due to the entrance of a flaming mad Dr. Edris Mallory, soaked in some interesting and colorful substance, with a furious Captain Rhemun of the kehmatemer right on her heels.
She saluted Dtimun at once, dripping on the smooth stone floor. “Sir.”
Rhemun followed suit. Odd, Madeline thought, for an officer of another service to salute Dtimun like that, as if he were Rhemun’s superior. Perhaps it was military protocol here. Dtimun had said that he outranked the kehmatemer.
“Mallory, why are you dripping on the floor?” Dtimun asked curtly.
“Sir, he—” she pointed to Rhemun with her saluting hand and put it quickly back in place “—poured a pot of vegetable soup over my head!”
“I can see that. Why did he pour a pot of vegetable soup over your head?” he asked, glancing toward Rhemun.
“Permission to speak, sir?” Rhemun asked formally.
Dtimun sighed. “Very well.”
“We feel that Ruszel needs protein to mend her body,” Rhemun said curtly.
“She—” he indicated her with his helmeted head “—insisted that a vegetarian concoction would be better for Ruszel. The disagreement became…physical. She threw a serving spoon at me. I…reciprocated.”
“I threw something small!” Edris raged.
“Soup is small,” Rhemun muttered. “At least, parts of it are.”
Dtimun looked as exasperated as he felt. The diminished effect of the tranquillizer didn’t help his temper.
“Get yourself cleaned up, Lieutenant,” he told Mallory sharply. “As for you—” he turned to Rhemun “—another breach of protocol in this house will produce unpleasant consequences. If I report you to the…old fellow,” he used Ruszel’s terminology, “I doubt that he will be pleased to learn that the captain of his guard resorts to physical means to terminate an argument. Especially with a female.”
Rhemun’s lips were tight. “Yes, sir,” he said smartly. He glanced at Madeline and grimaced. “I apologize for the altercation, Ruszel. It was not deliberate…”
Dtimun made a sound that brought Rhemun to instant attention, his eyes elsewhere, rather than on Ruszel. Obviously, he understood immediately what was wrong with his superior officer. “Forgive me, sir,” he said smartly. “I meant no offense.”
Dtimun didn’t excuse him. His eyes were dark and angry. “Dismissed!”
“Yes, sir!”
Rhemun saluted. Mallory shot him a speaking glance as she turned and marched soggily out of the room, with the kehmatemer officer at her heels.
“Just when I thought there was a possibility of peace,” Madeline sighed.
Dtimun shifted uncomfortably. He was still bristling, in a subtle sense of the word.
“He was only being polite, you know,” she said softly. “He thinks of me as a fellow soldier. We fought a battle together, as comrades.”
That didn’t help. He turned, his eyes blazing as they met hers. He didn’t speak.
She studied him with open curiosity. “I don’t understand why it happened like this,” she said. “I mean, with me, a soldier of another species. The women on your planet are lovely, if Princess Lyceria is any example of them. I’m a woman, and she even fascinated me!”
He tried to relax. “Nor do I understand it,” he replied. His eyes slid over her slowly, intently. “I think it has less to do with beauty than with courage and honor and integrity.”
Her breath caught.
“You have qualities which I admired, from the moment I saw you again, as a physician, on Terramer,” he commented. He smiled. “You made an impression the first time we met, when you were a child, and you bit me when I attempted to separate you from a bush during the last battle of the Great Galaxy War.”
“I was frightened,” she confessed. “You and my father made a formidable team.”
“We digress,” he said. “When the Morcai leaves orbit, Mallory must replace you as our Cularian expert fo
r the time being. If we are detached to pursue the princess, I will have to take the kehmatemer along. The antagonism she and Rhemun share will not make for cordial relations aboard ship.” His eyes twinkled green. “She may become the first human to be eaten by a Cehn-Tahr.”
She laughed. The sound was soft and pleasant in the airy room.
“You laugh. But we are carnivores.”
“Similar to carnivores,” she said. “You have bunodont teeth, like humans, not carnassial teeth like the great felines. You do have the micturtating membrane that allows you to see in the dark, but unlike felines, you can see color.” She hesitated. “You also have an odd structure in your esophagus—more striated muscle than humans.”
“Like the great cats, we can eat live prey,” he told her quietly. “The whole prey, and regurgitate the parts that do not digest.”
She was fascinated. “I did wonder, but it seemed impolite to ask.”
His eyes narrowed on her face. “We share many traits with felines. As Caneese told you, they are never shared with outworlders. You may not like what you learn about us if you permit the genetic restructuring of your body,” he added quietly. “But, it will be too late. You will never be able to return to the way you were.”
They were still dancing around the main issue: Dtimun’s uncontrollable response to her.
“If you are…restructured,” he said stiffly, “it would permit us to…bond.”
She narrowed her eyes on his rigid expression. “Would that reduce your aggression?”
He nodded. “But it could also produce a child.”
Her expression fascinated him. She had never thought of a child. Their core DNA was very similar. A child was possible. “There are ways to prevent that,” she began.
“All of which are illegal here,” he said flatly. “We revere the process of creation. We do not allow its inhibition, or any modification of natural processes. A…side effect of the genetic manipulation which morphed us into savages,” he added harshly.
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