Captain Prope smelled of a light frost green: the color itself. A kind of glossy shade, like freshly licked lipstick. I can’t tell you how someone could smell of a color — my brain must have got really scrambled. But every time Prope started watching me behind my back, that smell of misty muted green filled the air.
Festina smelled like a thunderstorm: not the storm’s scent, but its sound. The rushing wind and the pouring rain, the rumble of coming thunder. Sometimes, she even smelled of the rainbow after. It didn’t make sense… but I’d smell the sound of thunder, and Festina Ramos would walk into the room.
Tobit smelled like the gnarled surface of a walnut — the texture of it, not the scent. And Benjamin… Benjamin was a feeling through my whole body that I wanted to yawn and stretch, but yawning and stretching wouldn’t make the feeling go away. For some reason, that made me nervous; I didn’t mind people smelling like frost green or thunderclaps or walnuts, but Benjamin got me real edgy. No matter how I yawned and stretched, I couldn’t make the edginess go away either.
After mornings with the Explorers, I’d pass the afternoons teaching the Mandasars about their own culture — so they could pass as natives if the mission absolutely required it. Counselor and the workers took my word as gospel, no matter how it conflicted with their previous ideas about home. Zeeleepull was more stubborn, arguing that Willa and Walda had explicitly told him Queen Prudence had pronounced the Continental Edict in response to the threat of the Greenstriders trying to colonize…
But his arguments never lasted long. Thirty seconds in, he would suddenly clamp his mouth shut and whisper, "Apologies, Teelu. Knowledge you, ignorance me. Apologies. Apologies."
The first time he did that, my jaw fell open. Warriors don’t suddenly turn meek and yield to an opponent, except…
I sniffed the air. My newly more-sensitive nose caught a powerful whiff of an indescribable something oozing off my own skin. The scent was as sharp and strong as ether.
I had a scary suspicion it was royal pheromone.
Pheromones — now that I could smell them, I realized they were everywhere. Not just coming from the Mandasars, but from the crew and everybody.
And from me. Every second of every day. They were like fanatic servants, leaping to carry out my least little whim… even when I desperately didn’t want them to.
I didn’t want to win arguments with Zeeleepull by whacking him with a chemical hammer; but I couldn’t help it. If he opposed me more than a few seconds, the pheromone gusted out on its own. Even worse, he accepted it without question, as if I had a perfect right to make him change his mind.
Was that any different from brainwashing? Dosing him with drugs till he abandoned his old beliefs and swallowed whatever I told him?
It made me sick. But it was worse with humans.
Those mornings in the briefing room with Festina, Kaisho and the others — they’d all get caught up in discussing Explorer stuff, contingency plans, what to do if they couldn’t find the people from Willow… and I’d let my mind wander wherever it wanted. Sometimes I’d find myself looking at Festina, thinking how pretty she was even with that blotch on her face: thinking about her talk of judo mats, and how maybe I’d been crazy to go to Prope’s room instead, taking a substitute for the woman I was really dreaming about.
Next thing you know, I’d be smelling a pheromone coming off me as strong as spring fever: pure undiluted sex, like a lust lasso trying to rope me a conquest. Festina’s face would flush so deep red her cheeks would almost match color, and she’d start shifting her weight back and forth from one foot to the other like she couldn’t stand still. I’d have to excuse myself and go to the head, where I’d splash myself with cold water till the pheromone backed off. Then, when I returned to the briefing room, Kaisho always asked, "Better, Your Majesty?" with a big smug smirk in her voice. I guess the Balrog could read my mind and "taste" the pheromones. As for humans, they never realized they smelled anything, but they melted like butter when the scent soaked into their brains.
Festina never showed up at my cabin door last thing at night; she had willpower. Prope, on the other hand — she held herself back two days, then arrived late the third evening "to make sure I was doing all right."
The funny thing is I’d never hit Prope with that lust-for-me pheromone — not since that first night, when the pheromone must have flooded off me like flop-sweat and I was just too dense to notice. But Prope came visiting anyway… with a kind of confused look in her eye, as if she didn’t understand it either. Maybe she wanted to recapture whatever crazy abandon she’d felt that other night; or maybe she wanted to prove to herself it hadn’t been real, that she could bed me in cold blood without getting all dizzy and lost in emotion.
Either way, she seemed pretty determined to spend another night with me — even if she had to force herself against her own instincts. That was the part that got me: like she was scared out of her wits, but had decided this was a thing that must be done. It brought out all these weird fatherly feelings in me, as if Prope was just a little girl trying to be brave.
(Edward, going all paternal. I guess it was condescending, me thinking of an adult woman that way… but lately, I seemed to see everybody as a poor innocent I needed to protect.)
So what to do with Prope? I certainly couldn’t sleep with her again; I shouldn’t have done it the first time. It’d be easy to produce some horrible gagging smell that would drive her away — all I had to do was think what I wanted, and my body would pump out the stink of rotten eggs, or gangrene, or worse — but that was pretty darned crude. I didn’t want to overpower the woman; I just wanted her to give up on getting me into the sack.
Meanwhile, Prope sat herself on the edge of my bed. Started talking about some minor something that’d gone wrong with a piece of equipment I’d never heard of, and it’d taken two hours to fix when it was only supposed to take an hour forty-five, and why didn’t the fleet train technicians properly anymore…
All the time she spoke, her hand kept lifting up to the fastener strap on her blouse then shying away again — as if she’d promised herself she’d start undressing the second she got inside my room, but now couldn’t quite go through with it. It was almost endearing; but she’d pretty soon find the nerve to rip off her clothes, and I really really wanted to think of some brilliant strategy before that happened.
Oddly enough, I did. While she was going on and on about lazy crewfolk, I wondered, What would happen if I smelled frost green?
Thirty seconds later, that’s exactly how I smelled. I didn’t have to squinch up my brow and concentrate, it just kind of happened — like my body knew what to do, without me having to think. Very weird and amazing and scary… but I smelled like a precise duplicate of Prope herself, only stronger: glossier.
As if I were her brother, or sister, or mother, or father. People were supposed to have instincts to avoid inbreeding, right? With Prope, there was a risk she’d be turned on by the chance to sleep with herself… but I crossed my fingers and hoped pheromones were stronger than vanity.
The captain’s voice faltered. She looked up at me, a tiny look of pain on her face. For ten full seconds, she just stared into my eyes. Then she muttered, "Well, I’ve got an early morning tomorrow," and barreled out of the cabin like she was going to throw up.
Maybe she was. It kind of made me wonder about Prope’s family.
That wasn’t the end of it. In the days that followed, Prope tried several times more… as if she hated herself for chickening out and desperately needed to prove I hadn’t got to her. Usually I smelled her coming and got my own frost green up fast enough to send her bolting away; but once she caught me by surprise, and with a sudden burst of resolve, shoved me up against the nearest bulkhead. She planted a kiss hard on my mouth, and ground her hips tight on my groin, back and forth, one, two. Then she heard people’s voices coming out of a doorway not far off, so she let me go. "Later," she whispered, and strode off cockily, like she was finally pleased with
herself.
After that, I decided maybe just to keep smelling frost green morning, noon, and night, till I left the ship. But Festina got really grouchy at me, and that soapy Lieutenant Harque started following me around. When I met the Mandasars that afternoon, Counselor gave me a pained look. "Oh, Teelu… must you?"
So I turned off the Prope perfume and toughed out the flight as best I could.
29
JOINING THE SYSTEM
No sign of Willow or the black ship as we entered the Troyen system. That didn’t mean a thing — starships can hide just by powering down. Put them in orbit around a gas giant, and they pass for bits of space rock.
Nothing shot at Jacaranda as we settled into planetary orbit. Dade claimed that was a good sign. Over the past few days, he’d repeatedly stated his opinion that no one on Troyen had any surface-to-space missiles left; the Fasskisters’ nanites had taken care of that. He admitted it was possible some missile bases had escaped the Swarm — if they were sealed off well enough and protected with huge clouds of defense nano — but in that case, the missiles would have been used, wouldn’t they? When everybody else was fighting with swords and spears, an aerial bombardment would be so valuable, no army would have kept the missiles on ice for twenty whole years. Especially when the Swarm nanites were a constant threat. Any commander with common sense would use the bombs while they were still good.
"And what about the missile that nearly hit the moon-base?" Tobit had asked. "Was that a figment of York’s imagination?"
Benjamin shrugged. "It didn’t hit the moonbase, did it? It was an absolutely perfect miss — close enough to scare people into evacuating, but not to hurt anyone. Then surprise, surprise, as soon as the base personnel scurry away, Willow shows up on its secret mission."
"Oh boy," Festina said, whacking her forehead lightly with her palm. "Ouch."
I wasn’t quite sure what Dade meant. "Um… are you saying maybe Willow shot at us? To make everybody clear out?"
Dade nodded. "They could have modified a standard probe missile once they came in-system. That way they wouldn’t have any lethal weapons aboard while they were still in deep space — keep the League of Peoples happy. Willow lobbed the missile at your base, but made sure it didn’t come close enough to do real damage. No sentients were truly at risk, so the League wouldn’t give a damn."
"I hate to say it," Tobit growled, "but the kid makes sense."
"So I can come with you after all?" Dade said.
He looked back and forth between Tobit and Festina. The two of them exchanged looks but didn’t speak.
"I know what you’ve been thinking," Dade told them. "You don’t want me down on Troyen with you because I’m not a real Explorer."
Festina and Tobit had never said that to him… not in so many words. But in all their planning for the mission, there’d been sort of a kind of a subtext that maybe he’d be left behind. It was always, "Tobit, you could do this," and "Edward, you can carry that," with no, "Benjamin, here’s what you’ll do."
Now Festina answered Dade in a quiet voice. "You’re a cadet," she said. "Just here on training rotation. It would be irresponsible of us to jeopardize your life, taking you down to a planet at war, when Phylar, Edward, and I are fully qualified Explorers."
"You aren’t an Explorer, you’re an admiral," Dade replied. He ignored Festina’s steely glare. "And York isn’t a qualified Explorer, you know he isn’t — he’s never stepped foot into the Academy. That just leaves Tobit, and a landing party has to have at least two Explorers if they’re available."
"Benny…" Tobit began.
"Don’t Benny me," Dade snapped. "The real reason you don’t want me is that I’m not… I don’t look like an Explorer. Isn’t that it? I’m just a normal guy, who never had the rough life you people did, because I don’t have a birthmark or a deformed arm or a…" He just waved in my direction. "Whatever. I’m sorry the navy fucked you folks over, but that’s not my fault. And it’s ancient history. I mean," he said, gesturing toward Festina, "here I am with the very woman who put an end to that crap, and you want to discriminate against me because I don’t have anything wrong with me. Listen, Admiral, you’re the reason I’m here. You’re the reason the navy has to let everyday people into Explorer Academy, and you’re the reason I volunteered for the corps. You managed to fix an old injustice, and I thought, ‘Hey, I could help.’ The sooner people like me get integrated into the corps, the sooner the navy stops thinking of Explorers as totally expendable freaks. But let me tell you, I’ve received nothing but grief ever since I signed up. The teachers at the Academy… the other students… all of you here… you treat me like some annoying embarrassment who might go away if you just marginalize me enough. Well, I’m not going away — I’m going to be an Explorer. I just wish you’d accept that and start treating me as one of the team!"
Silence. I don’t know what anyone else was doing because I’d glued my gaze to my feet. The air was filled with the hot smell of emotions, but everything was all mixed together: anger, guilt, indignation, embarrassment, coming from all directions.
Finally, Festina sighed. "Dade — once upon a time I would have said anyone who wanted to be an Explorer was too fucking insane to be allowed into the corps. But seeing as I am the woman who forced the navy to consider Explorers as more than ‘expendable freaks’… all I’ll say is that you worry me. You might have depths I can’t see, but you sure come across as a starry-eyed kid who’s too gung ho to realize the real world is dangerous. You’ve lived a damned pampered life, no matter what hardships you think you’ve faced, and all the Academy training in the galaxy hasn’t prepared you to take care of yourself.
"But," she went on, "you aren’t going to figure that out till you see for yourself. So congratulations; you can land with us on Troyen. I’m going to gamble that taking you down to a war-ravaged planet will open your eyes without getting the rest of us killed. The prospect of relying on you to watch my back scares the piss out of me, but I’m going to take the risk. Otherwise, I might start believing the Admiralty had the right idea all along, only picking Explorers from people who know the universe is a cruel and bitter place. People who were born knowing it."
Very pointedly, she tipped her head to give the boy a face-on view of her birthmark. "I grew up knowing something you didn’t, Dade. So did Tobit. So did Kaisho. So did York over there, even if he still doesn’t think he deserves an Explorer’s uniform. York never went to the Academy, but the uniform fits him just fine. As for you, Dade — I’m giving you a chance because in your whole damned life, I don’t think you’ve ever been put to the test. Maybe by some miracle, you’ll find a real Explorer in your heart. If you don’t… well, considering we’ll be landing in a war zone, your future career is the least of your worries."
She waited a moment, then did the most unexpected thing an Explorer could do: lifted her hand, gave Dade a salute, and said crisply, "Dismissed." It took the boy a moment to remember Festina was an admiral; then his face went stony, he returned her salute, and walked stiffly out of the room.
The rest of us stayed where we were a moment, then slowly let out our breaths. In a low voice, Festina asked, "What do you think, Kaish? Any mystic visions of the boy smartening up?"
Kaisho reached both hands up to the hair over her face and suddenly lifted it high… as if her cheeks were hot and in desperate need of air. I caught a glimpse of her handsome crinkled face, just a tiny bit damp with sweat; then she let the hair fall back into place.
"The boy does have hidden depths," she whispered. "But I don’t think you’ll like them."
30
CHECKING IN ON THE NEIGHBORS
Three full orbits of Troyen and we still hadn’t picked up any transmissions from people down on the ground.
"Um," I murmured to Festina. "What if the Explorers’ radios have been eaten by Fasskister nanites?"
Festina shook her head. "As soon as the navy heard about the Fasskisters’ Swarm, our researchers developed equipment
that was immune to the little buggers. Otherwise, the whole fleet would be at the Fasskisters’ mercy."
"Yeah," Tobit put in, "everything we carry should be fine. Of course," he added, "the Fasskisters have probably invented a Swarm that’ll eat our new equipment. But we’ll cross our fingers there isn’t any of that on Troyen."
"There shouldn’t be," Festina said. "If Willow’s Explorers aren’t transmitting, they’re just being careful. In a war zone, it’s dangerous to broadcast continuously, even if your messages are encrypted to look like static. Sooner or later, some army will decide you’re an undercover agent sending intelligence to the enemy; next thing you know, you’re surrounded by a platoon of spycatchers."
Lucky for us, there was a fallback plan for making contact. Whenever an Explorer team is assigned to a ship, they’re given a "transmission second" — one second of the standard twenty-four-hour clock when they should try a burst transmission, if they’re ever on a planet where longer broadcasts are dangerous. It took a bit of calculating, converting Willow time to Jacaranda time and allowing for relativistic slippages in everybody’s clocks… but eventually, Festina and Tobit agreed that the folks down on Troyen would try a single blip of contact at 23:46:22, Jacaranda time. Since it was only ship’s morning, we had most of the day before we’d hear anything.
"So, a whole day to kill," Tobit said. "You folks play poker?"
"Enough to know I don’t want to play with you," Festina told him. "What do you say to a side trip?"
"Where?"
Instead of answering, she turned to me. "Edward, do you know exactly what Willow did its five days in this system? Were you watching the whole time?"
"I wasn’t watching at all. The base’s monitors just had a big display of what navy ships were close by. Willow showed up on the list, and stayed there till they picked me up to go home."
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