by Diane Duane
That stopped her laughing, and an instant later persuaded her to let the flitter’s onboards take over. “Very amusing, tr’AAnikh,” she said quietly. “Why shouldn’t I be proud and haughty and throw you out right now?”
“Because you want to hear me.”
“Then talk to me, man, and hope I don’t throw you out anyway….”
“I doubt it.” Nveid looked confident enough, almost too confident for Arrhae’s liking, though she pushed that thought back until it became important again. “I told you before: it concerns my brother Nniol, and mnhei’sahe, and Dr. McCoy of the Federation vessel Enterprise.” He paused as a thought struck him. “That is the man held at H’daen tr’Khellian’s mansion? Not some other of the same name?”
“McCoy of the Enterprise,” Arrhae confirmed. “So?”
“My brother Nniol served aboard Ael t’Rllaillieu’s Bloodwing, and my sister aboard Javelin under LLunih tr’Raedheol. I don’t know all the details—nobody does outside High Command—but there was some treason involving Bloodwing and Enterprise and…Javelin was destroyed.”
“Your brother killed his own sister…?”
“Who knows? Bloodwing will never return to ch’Rihan, and Javelin’s dust can tell no tale. But my family decided. They formally disowned Nniol. His name was written and burned…. I displease them because I speak about him still and because I say that mnhei’sahe required him to do what…what he did.”
“Oh. That one. All duty and obligation goes to your commander, not to your family?”
“Always. We are an honorable house, and my sister would have done the same. As would I. On board ship the commander becomes hru’hfirh, although some are more deserving of the courtesy than others. Ael t’Rllaillieu may be a traitor now, but in her time she was the best captain that my brother had the honor to obey.”
“And McCoy? Where does he fit in? Do you want to kill him in requital for your brother and sister…?” Nveid stared at her, shocked. “Isn’t that what your honor requires?” Arrhae was beginning to doubt it somehow; this man wasn’t like tr’Annhwi, or, if he was, he hid it well.
“No, it isn’t.” He sat back in the seat, relaxing a little. “Hru’hfe, there are entire Houses who think that way—but there are also entire Houses who think as I do, that their bloodkin acted with mnhei’sahe in this sad business. One of them would have spoken with you—maybe s’Khnialmnae—except that every one of them is under close observation by Fleet Intelligence. I need only worry about my immediate family….”
“Then what do you and these other Houses want to do with McCoy?” The impatient edge in Arrhae’s voice—adopted from one of the Fleet officers who visited House Khellian—cut through Nveid’s reminiscing and brought him bolt upright. He blinked and stared at her with the injured air of a man who’d heard that tone from his superiors and hadn’t thought to get it here as well.
“We want to help him escape.”
Arrhae knew that this youngster had been quite right to insist she put the flitter back on automatics before surprising her like that—otherwise she would probably have crashed it into the side of a hill right here and now. At least she managed not to show it this time. Practice, probably. Why did people keep saying things like this to her? Why couldn’t she just go back to being a full-time servants’ manager and a very part-time deep-cover spy? What had gone wrong with her life? “Oh, is that all?” she said, very controlled. “Nothing else? Why not the Sword from the Empty Chair as a parting gift, perhaps?”
Nveid laughed softly. “You’re as cool as a Vulcan,” he said. “I hadn’t expected it—but then, that’s why Fleet put McCoy in your hands, I suppose. We’ll make it worthwhile, of course, and nobody will know you were ever involved.”
“You do know the Senate punishment for treason?”
“Of course.” Nveid’s voice went harsh. “The Justiciary Praetor read sentence on Nniol’s name. If he’s ever caught, they’ll carry it out. All of it. The penalty for espionage is much the same, except they start with eyes and ears instead of tongue and hands. And that they’ve planned for McCoy, sometime in the next tenday. The Houses I represent aren’t going to allow it. There is still such a thing as—”
“—honor on ch’Rihan, yes. How did I guess you’d say something like that? And Nveid, I don’t know what value you and your friends put on ‘worthwhile,’ but there isn’t enough money on ch’Rihan to match the value I put on my skin.”
“But I told you, nobody will know—”
“Until somebody does, and where would that leave me? Being slowly shredded on the public-broadcast channel, like they did to Vaebn tr’Lhoell. I’m sure he thought nobody would ever know about him, either.”
“You could consider our proposal, at least.”
Arrhae brought the flitter onto a course back to i’Ramnau and locked into the traffic-grid before she turned to look at Nveid. “You heard me consider. You heard my conclusion. Listen to me. You found out where McCoy was being held, and I—doubtless to my regret, if it ever comes out—confirmed that the man in House Khellian was indeed the one that you and your friends suspected. I want nothing more to do with it. You will get out of this flitter when I get back to the park, and you will go away, and you will leave me alone or I swear that I’ll report the lot of you just to make sure that I’m safe!”
Her voice had risen to a near-shriek during the tirade, so that Nveid was watching her now with wide, shocked eyes and a plainly visible doubt that this woman would have been of any use at all. That was as Arrhae wished. She had no desire to be made use of again; it was already happening far too much for her liking. The flitter settled into its recently vacated bay with a jarring thump that almost certainly took paint off the A-G housings, but she was past caring about such details, and past worrying whether H’daen saw the damage and forbade her to go anywhere near i’Ramnau ever again. The way she felt now, that wouldn’t be a punishment.
She hit the canopy control-tab and watched as Nveid tr’AAnikh climbed out. He moved more slowly than she had seen him do before, and the look he directed back at her was more regretful than anything else. “Reconsider,” he said.
“No. What do you expect from a servant, man? We leave the concerns of honor to those with free time to worry about them.”
“Then that’s your last—”
“I said, yes!” Arrhae snapped the canopy shut on whatever else he was trying to say, and lifted the flitter clear with enough violence to trigger a stress-warning alarm. Last time you’ll get clearance for this, she thought grimly. And I think it’s time I had another talk with the good doctor. Otherwise things are going to get right out of hand. If they haven’t already…
Outside, it began to rain.
Arrhae disabled the autos and took the flitter into its garage on manual. It was a simple test; either she was back in control of herself and could handle the vehicle safely, or she would crash it and kill herself. Sometimes that seemed preferable. Certainly it would be less complicated. She sat for a long while in the quiet, after the engine noise had died away, and listened to the pattering of rain on the roof, wondering what to do next. Unload the shopping, she thought. And then go see McCoy.
S’anra met her in the corridor as she left the garage area, summoned most likely by the door-chime as the flitter came in. “You’re back!” she began excitedly. “There’s someone here to see you, and—”
“Take these to the kitchen and store them.” Arrhae pushed the parcels into S’anra’s arms. They were caught by no more than automatic reflex, and a bundle of vegetable tubers fell off the unstable pile. She picked it off the floor and slapped it emphatically back on top of the heap of packages. “And tell whoever it is that I’m busy.”
“But Arrhae…”
That drew a disapproving glare. Junior servants and slaves were not permitted to call their superiors by name, only by rank or title. “Mind your manners—and don’t contradict me. I have work to do, so I’ll be along in a while. Go say so.”
&nb
sp; S’anra gaped like a landed fish for a second or two—because of her mistake maybe, or because Arrhae was being unusually tetchy, or for some other reason restricted to scullery slaves—then scurried away with the groceries. Arrhae watched her go, thinking back to when she had been no more than a slave herself, with a slave’s small concerns and worries. And with only the problems of learning several thousand years of cultural history hanging overhead. She smiled thinly, and went to find McCoy.
He wasn’t in his room, and Arrhae had a momentary fit of the horrors while she imagined all the things that might have happened while she was away. While you were away—as if your being here would have made any difference if a squad of Fleet troopers came for him…. Then she began thinking, more sensibly again, of all the places that McCoy had grown fond of during the past tenday.
First and foremost was the garden. In this downpour? Arrhae thought dubiously, looking out at the lowering gray sky. Well, why not. The quicker you go out to see, the quicker you can get back indoors….
And, of course, that was where he was. She found McCoy as she had seen him so many times before, sitting on top of the rocks in the garden, talking to himself. Arrhae could hear the soft mumble of his voice as she approached, and he most certainly heard her splashy footfalls, for he climbed down and came to meet her. “Do you really like this weather so much?” she demanded, feeling a rivulet of chilly water starting to wander down inside her supposedly rainproof overrobe. “Look at you, man; why didn’t you ask for a coat! You’re soaked to the skin!”
McCoy shook raindrops from his hair. “Yes, in fact I do like it. I can’t see the house through the rain, and that way I don’t have to think about being locked up all night. And I couldn’t ask for a coat because nobody here speaks Anglish and the only translator in the area had been taken shopping. But I wanted some fresh air, so I came out anyway. I knew you wouldn’t mind.”
“Dammit, McCoy, you’re impossible!” she yelled. And then realized that the words were idiomatic Anglish and had come out in a voice untainted by any trace of a Rihannsu accent.
Oh, no. O Elements. I am betrayed. And by myself…
“Good,” McCoy said, exactly as Nveid tr’AAnikh had done. Then he smiled the small smile of someone whose theories have been conclusively proven. “But you’re right. I am impossible. And it’s getting wetter out here than even I like, so shouldn’t we go indoors now?” Since McCoy’s clothing was already so waterlogged that it had stopped soaking up the rain, his remark was more to give her an out than because he was concerned.
Arrhae took it as gracefully as she could, though she pointedly refused to say anything to him either in Anglish or translated Rihannsu. She had an unpleasant feeling, justified or not, that he had laid a trap for her—and the even more unpleasant feeling of having walked right into it. After eight years of cautiously avoiding the attention of Imperial Intelligence, it irked her to realize that this drowned rat of a medical officer had maneuvered her into a position that would mean unpleasant death if anyone else had overheard her words. All her intentions of talking to him were evaporating fast, and yet there were things he had to be told.
“Be more careful in future,” she said at last, speaking low and letting her accent do whatever it wanted to—which in this instance was to slur and jump most alarmingly. “Not that you have much of it. Your trial’s been set for sometime soon, and the sentence has already been agreed.”
“Death, of course.”
“Of course. But it seems, Doctor, that you’re very popular among…certain groups. That popularity spread to me, briefly, and I didn’t like it—but I think you can expect visitors after dark.”
“Oh, wonderful.” McCoy didn’t sound impressed. “It should relieve the boredom of being locked in all night.” He passed her, squelching, rather, on the wet ground, and looked back briefly. This time he wasn’t smiling. “And Arrhae, I think we should have some sort of talk soon, about languages, and history, and people who aren’t what they seem.” McCoy waited for a reaction, saw none, shrugged, and walked back toward the house, leaving Arrhae to the rain and to her own thoughts.
“Where were you, hru’hfe?” Ekkhae pounced on her as she stamped irritably into the house, quailed from the glower that the question provoked, but continued determinedly for all that. “Mister H’daen has been waiting for you since you came back from the city. In the antechamber. He has a guest….”
“Another one? Who is it this time?”
“A visitor.” Ekkhae came down hard on the word, as if it had some special significance, and smiled oddly as she said it.
Arrhae took off the sopping overrobe and tossed it at the little slave. Despite being suddenly encumbered by a swathe of clammy fabric, Ekkhae’s smile grew wider and more peculiar. “What’s wrong with you?” Arrhae snapped. “Your teeth hurt?”
“No, hru’hfe.”
“Then put that away—and drape it properly; I don’t want creases.”
“No, hru’hfe. I mean yes, hru’hfe. That is, I—”
“Just do it,” said Arrhae wearily, thinking yes, hru’hfe, and saying it under her breath as Ekkhae bustled away. She wasn’t ready for an afternoon of fending off Lhaesl tr’Khev, and by the sound of it, that was who awaited her. She could almost feel sorry for H’daen, being forced to play the host until she arrived to rescue him. Lhaesl was an amiable fool—with the emphasis on fool.
Except that it was tr’Annhwi instead.
The subcommander set his winecup down and stood up as she came into the room, smiling as pleasantly as he was able—which wasn’t very. “I told you that I would come to visit you,” he said, making his usual theatrical bow.
Arrhae groaned inwardly. There was only one way out of this, and with H’daen sitting on the other side of the table, that way would make a fool out of him and a liar out of her. “I…I hadn’t thought my lord H’daen would have granted permission after—”
“After what happened? Your lord forgave me. He is a generous man.” Again the smile. “You will find me generous too.”
“But Lhaesl…”
“What?” H’daen’s winecup thumped against the surface of the table and, overfull as usual, immediately spilled. Elements alone knew what he had said about their conversation of last week, but by the sound of it he had said enough to wish that Arrhae had kept her mouth tight shut. It was too late now; the damage had plainly been done and all H’daen could do was try to extricate himself with as much dignity—and as much speed—as he could muster. The look on his face boded ill for the next conversation with his hru’hfe, but Arrhae felt that she could weather that storm more easily than spending an evening with tr’Annhwi.
Who was looking remarkably unconcerned. “I regret this misunderstanding, hru’hfirh,” he said without the anger Arrhae might have expected from a man whose passions seemed to run so high. When he looked at her, there was no longer any more interest in his face than when anyone looked at a servant. “Your lord’s wine is spilled, woman.” Tr’Annhwi’s voice was cold now, drained of the warmth that she guessed had been false all along. “Clean up this mess and refill his cup.”
H’daen said nothing to confirm or deny that she should obey. He didn’t even look in her direction. Instead, he inclined his head to tr’Annhwi, as if inviting him to continue with something he had been saying before Arrhae came in. “You mentioned something about Mak’khoi, Subcommander,” he said, ignoring Arrhae’s efforts to tidy his desk as he might ignore a piece of furniture, and thus not seeing the brief glance of shock she directed at him. “About handing him over to you. You said that you would make it worth my while. Tell me: what amount of money are we talking about…?”
Chapter Ten
FLOWERING
“Rihannsu are conservatives,” Lai tr’Ehhelih said once in another of his more unpopular books, “though they would die rather than admit it. No revolutionary who has come many light-years through terrible privation and suffering would want to admit in public that he secretly misse
s the conditions he left behind. It makes fascinating viewing, from the sociological standpoint, to watch them decrying the ‘corrupt customs’ of the Old World, and then settling into just slightly different versions of those customs, with the greatest self-congratulation and smugness. When change happens on ch’Rihan, it happens by chance, or the boredom of the Elements. No one here ever set out to change anything, not on purpose.”
Tr’Ehhelih was being bitter, as usual, but also as usual there were elements of truth in his words. There were areas in which the Rihannsu were truly innovative—some sciences and arts—but somehow the energy always seemed to start seeping out of those areas after a while. Innovation would slowly drop off, the whole matter would fall gradually into tradition, and a generation later no one would ever know that there had been invention or different ways of doing something. There would be one way, and that way “the way it’s always been done.”
Spaceflight was one of these areas of accomplishment, and perhaps the most tragic. The body of engineering talent that built the ships was one of the most astonishing collections of determined genius ever gathered on Vulcan, and the travelers tried hard to preserve the fruits of that genius. All the ships’ libraries were crammed full of technical information in every field known to the Vulcans. The ships’ librarians were aware that they were stocking “time capsules.” Each of the ships duplicated information found in all the others, and no one grudged the redundancy, which, considering the history of the journey, was wise.
But the one thing they could not stock the ships with, with any certainty, was talent and incentive to use the information preserved there. The brilliant minds that designed the ships’ systems, for the most part, went along on the journey. But many of them died, in the various tragedies that befell the travelers, or later on of old age. More specialists in navigations, space science, and astronautical engineering were trained in the process of the journey, of course, but there is no forcing a person to be brilliant at a science—especially one that the children of the time tended to think of (in the early years) as something of a nuisance. They either remembered Vulcan, and were ambivalent about having been forced to leave it, or they were born on the journey and were full of stories about the wonders of living on a planet, in the open air. Some of them were understandably bored or annoyed with the whole issue of ships.
