to flesh. The blue-green eyes turned arctic. "Sir Dominic, you were
right in what you did to Snell. Nobody in that gang was--is--fit to
live."
"Well, we're in a war, we and they, the nastier for being undeclared,"
he said carefully. "What you and I must do, if we can, is keep the
sickness from infecting your planet. Or to the extent it has, if I may
continue the metaphor, we've got to supply an antibiotic before the high
fever takes hold and the eruptions begin."
His brutal practicality worked as he had hoped, to divert her from both
sorrow and rage. "What do you plan?" The question held some of the
crispness which ordinarily was hers.
"Before leaving Diomedes," he said, "I contacted Lagard's field office
on Lannach, transmitted a coded message for him to record, and showed
him my authority to command immediate courier service. The message is
directly to the Emperor. The code will bypass channels. In summary, it
says, 'Hold off at Dennitza, no matter what you hear, till I've
collected full information'--followed by a synopsis of all I've learned
thus far."
She began faintly to glow in her exhaustion. "Why, wonderful."
"M-m-m, not altogether, I'm afraid." Flandry let the telloch savage his
throat. "Remember, by now his Majesty's barbarian-quelling on the Spican
frontier. He'll move around a lot. The courier may not track him down
for a while. Meantime--the Admiralty on Terra may get word which
provokes it to emergency action, without consulting Emperor or Policy
Board. It has that right, subject to a later court of inquiry. And I've
no direct line there. Probably make no difference if I did. Maybe not
even any difference what I counsel Hans. I'm a lone agent. They could
easily decide I must be wrong."
He forced a level look at her. "Or Dennitza could in fact have exploded,
giving Emperor and Admiralty no choice," he declared. "The Merseians are
surely working that side of the street too."
"You hope I--we can get my uncle and the Skupshtina to stay their
hands?" she asked.
"Yes," Flandry said. "This is a fast boat. However ... we'll be a month
in transit, and Aycharaych & Co. have a long jump on us."
{The resident and his lady made her welcome at Thursday Landing. They
advised her against taking her research to the Sea of Achan countries.
Unrest was particularly bad there. Indeed, she and her Merseian--pardon,
her xenosophont companion--would do best to avoid migratory societies in
general. Could they not gather sufficient data among the sedentary and
maritime Diomedeans? Those were more intimate with modern civilization,
more accustomed to dealing with offworlders, therefore doubtless more
relevant to the problem which had caused her planetary government to
send her here.
Striving to mask her nervousness, she met Commander Maspes and a few
junior officers of the Imperial Naval Intelligence team that was
investigating the disturbances. He was polite but curt. His attitude
evidently influenced the younger men, who must settle for stock words
and sidelong stares. Yes, Maspes said, it was common knowledge that
humans were partly responsible for the revolutionary agitation and
organization on this planet. Most Diomedeans believed they were
Avalonians, working for Ythri. Some native rebels, caught and
interrogated, said they had actually been told so by the agents
themselves. And indeed the Alatanist mystique was a potent recruiter ...
Yet how could a naive native distinguish one kind of human from another?
Maybe Ythri was being maligned ... He should say no more at the present
stage. Had Donna Vymezal had a pleasant journey? What was the news at
her home?
Lagard apologized that he must bar her from a wing of the Residency. "A
team member, his work's confidential and--well, you are a civilian, you
will be in the outback, and he's a xeno, distinctive appearance--"
Kossara smiled. "I can dog my hatch," she said; "but since you wish,
everything else.}
Flandry greeted her at breakfast: "Dobar yutro, Dama."
Startled, she asked, "You are learning Serbic?"
"As fast as operant conditioning, electronics, and the pharmacopoeia can
cram it into me." He joined her at table. Orange juice shone above the
cloth. Coffee made the air fragrant. He drank fast. She saw he was
tired.
"I wondered why you are so seldom here when off duty," she said.
"That's the reason."
He gazed out at the stars. She considered him. After a while, during
which her pulse accelerated, she said, "No. I mean, if you're studying,
there is no need. You must know most of us speak Anglic. You need an
excuse to avoid me."
It was his turn for surprise. "Eh? Why in cosmos would I that?"
She drew breath, feeling cheeks, throat, breasts redden. "You think I'm
embarrassed at what you've learned of me."
"No--" He swung his look to her. "Yes. Not that I--Well, I try not to,
and what comes out regardless shows you clean as a ... knife blade--But
of course you're full of life, you've been in love and--" Abruptly he
flung his head back and laughed. "Oh, hellflash! I was afraid you would
make me stammer like a schoolboy."
"I'm not angry. Haven't you saved me? Aren't you healing me?" She
gathered resolution. "I did have to think hard, till I saw how nothing
about me could surprise you."
"Oh, a lot could. Does." Their eyes met fully.
"Maybe you can equalize us a little," she said through a rising
drumbeat. "Tell me of your own past, what you really are under that
flexmail you always wear." She smiled. "In exchange, I can help you in
your language lessons, and tell you stories about Dennitza that can't be
in your records. The time has been lonely for me, Dominic."
"For us both," he said as though dazed.
Chives brought in an omelet and fresh-baked bread.
{From a dealer in Thursday Landing, Kossara rented an aircamper and
field equipment, bought rations and guidebooks, requested advice. She
needed information for its own sake as well as for cover. On the long
voyage here--three changes of passenger-carrying freighter----she had
absorbed what material on Diomedes the Shkola in Zorkagrad could supply.
That wasn't much. It could well have been zero if the planet weren't
unusual enough to be used as an interest-grabbing example in certain
classes. She learned scraps of astronomy, physics, chemistry, topology,
meteorology, biology, ethnology, history, economics, politics; she
acquired a few phrases in several different languages, no real grasp of
their grammar or semantics; her knowledge was a twig to which she clung
above the windy chasm of her ignorance about an entire world.
After a few days getting the feel of conditions, she and Trohdwyr flew
to Lannach. The resident had not actually forbidden them. In the towns
along Sagna Bay, they went among the gaunt high dwellings of the winged
folk, seeking those who understood Anglic and might talk somewhat
&nbs
p; freely. "We are from a planet called Dennitza. We wish to find out how
to make friends and stay friends with a people who resemble you--"
Eonan the factor proved helpful. Increasingly, Kossara tried to sound
him out, and had an idea he was trying to do likewise to her. Whether or
not he was involved in the subversive movement, he could well fear she
came from Imperial Intelligence to entrap comrades of his. And yet the
name "Dennitza" unmistakably excited more than one individual, quick
though the Diomedeans were to hide that reaction.
How far Dennitza felt, drowned in alien constellations! At night in
their camper, she and Trohdwyr would talk long and long about old days
and future days at home; he would sing his gruff ychan songs to her, and
she would recite the poems of Simich that he loved: until at last an
inner peace came to them both, bearing its gift of sleep.}
Flandry always dressed for dinner. He liked being well turned out; it
helped create an atmosphere which enhanced his appreciation of the food
and wine; and Chives would raise polite hell if he didn't. Kossara
slopped in wearing whatever she'd happened to don when she got out of
bed. Not to mock her mourning, he settled for the blue tunic, red sash,
white trousers, and soft half-boots that were a human officer's ordinary
mess uniform.
When she entered the saloon in evening garb, he nearly dropped the
cocktail pitcher. Amidst the subdued elegance around her, she suddenly
outblazed a great blue star and multitudinously lacy nebula which
dominated the viewscreen. Burgundy-hued velvyl sheathed each curve of
her tautness, from low on the bosom to silvery slippers. A necklace of
jet and turquoise, a bracelet of gold, gleamed against ivory skin.
Diamond-studded tiara and crystal earrings framed the ruddy hair; but a
few freckles across the snub nose redeemed that high-cheeked,
full-mouthed, large-eyed face from queenliness.
"Nom de Dieu!" he gasped, and there sang through him, Yes, God, Whom the
believers say made all triumphant beauty. She breaks on me and takes me
like a wave of sunlit surf. "Woman, that's not fair! You should have
sent a trumpeter to announce you."
She chuckled. "I decided it was past time I do Chives the courtesy of
honoring his cuisine. He fitted me yesterday and promised to exceed
himself in the galley."
Flandry shook head and clicked tongue. "Pity I won't be paying his
dishes much attention." Underneath, he hurt for joy.
"You will. I know you, Dominic. And I will too." She pirouetted. "This
gown is lovely, isn't it? Being a woman again--" The air sent him an
insinuation of her perfume, while it lilted with violins.
"Then you feel recovered?"
"Yes." She sobered. "I felt strength coming back, the strength to be
glad, more and more these past few days." A stride brought her to him.
He had set the pitcher down. She took both his hands--the touch radiated
through him--and said gravely: "Oh, I've not forgotten what happened,
nor what may soon happen. But life is good. I want to celebrate its
goodness ... with you, who brought me home to it. I can never rightly
thank you for that, Dominic."
Nor can I rightly thank you for existing, Kossara. In spite of what she
had let slip beneath the machine, she remained too mysterious for him to
hazard kissing her. He took refuge: "Yes, you can. You can throw off
your frontier steadfastness, foresight, common sense, devotion to
principle, et cetera, and be frivolous. If you don't know how to frivol,
watch me. Later you may disapprove to your heart's contempt, but tonight
let's cast caution to the winds, give three-point-one-four-one-six
cheers, and speak disrespectfully of the Lesser Magellanic Cloud."
Laughing, she released him. "Do you truly think we Dennitzans are so
stiff? I'd call us quite jolly. Wait till you've been to a festival, or
till I show you how to dance the luka."
"Why not now? Work up an appetite."
She shook her head. The tiara flung glitter which he noticed only
peripherally because of her eyes. "No, I'd rip this dress, or else pop
out of it like a cork. Our dances are all lively. Some people say they
have to be."
"The prospect of watching you demonstrate makes me admit there's
considerable to be said for an ice age."
Actually, the summers where she lived were warm. Farther south, the
Pustinya desert was often hot. A planet is too big, too many-sided for a
single idea like "glacial era" to encompass.
Through Flandry passed the facts he had read, a parched obbligato to the
vividness breathing before him. He would not truly know her till he knew
the land, sea, sky which had given her to creation; but the data were a
beginning.
Zoria was an F8 sun, a third again as luminous as Sol. Dennitza,
slightly smaller than Terra, orbiting at barely more than Terran
distance from the primary, should have been warmer--and had been for
most of its existence. Loss of water through ultraviolet cracking had
brought about that just half the surface was ocean-covered. This, an
axial tilt of 32.5°, and an 18.8-hour rotation period led to extremes of
weather and climate. Basically terrestroid, organisms adapted as they
evolved in a diversity of environments.
That stood them in good stead when the catastrophe came. Less than a
million years ago, a shower of giant meteoroids struck, or perhaps an
asteroid shattered in the atmosphere. Whirled around the globe by
enormous forces, the stones cratered dry land--devastated by impact,
concussion, radiation, fire which followed--cast up dust which dimmed
the sun for years afterward. Worse were the ocean strikes. The tsunamis
they raised merely ruined every coast on the planet; life soon returned.
But the thousands of cubic kilometers of water they evaporated became a
cloud cover that endured for millennia. The energy balance shifted. Ice
caps formed at the poles, grew, begot glaciers reaching halfway to the
equator. Species, genera, families died; fossil beds left hints that
among them had been a kind starting to make tools. New forms arose,
winter-hardy in the temperate zones, desperately contentious in the
tropics.
Then piece by piece the heavens cleared, sunlight grew brilliant again,
glaciers melted back. The retreat of the ice that men found when they
arrived, six hundred years later was a rout. The Great Spring brought
woes of its own, storms, floods, massive extinctions and migrations to
overthrow whole ecologies. In her own brief lifespan, Kossara had seen
coastal towns abandoned before a rising sea.
Her birth country lay not far inland, though sheltered from northerly
winds and easterly waters--the Kazan, Cauldron, huge astrobleme on the
continent Rodna, a bowl filled with woods, farmlands, rivers, at its
middle Lake Stoyan and the capital Zorkagrad. Her father was voivode of
Dubina Dolyina province, named for the gorge that the Lyubisha River had
cut through the ringwall on its way south from the dying snows. Thus she
grew up child of a lord close to the p
eople he guided, wilderness child
who was often in town, knowing the stars both as other suns and as elven
friends to lead her home after dark ...
Flandry took her arm. "Come, my lady," he said. "Be seated. This evening
we shall not eat, we shall dine."
{At last Eonan told Kossara about a person in the mountain community
Salmenbrok who could give her some useful tidings. If she liked, he
would take her and Trohdwyr on his gravsled--he didn't trust her vehicle
in these airs--and introduce them. More he would not yet say. They
accepted eagerly.
Aloft he shifted course. "I bespoke one in Salmenbrok because I feared
spies overhearing," he explained. "The truth is, they are four in a cave
whom we will visit. I have asked them about you, and they will have you
as guests while you explore each other's intents."
She thought in unease that when the Diomedean went back, she and her
companion would be left flightless, having brought no gravbelts along.
The ychan got the same realization and growled. She plucked up the nerve
to shush him and say, "Fine."
The two men and two women she met were not her kind. Racial types,
accents, manners, their very gaits belied it. Eonan talked to them and
her passionately, as if they really were Dennitzans who had come to
prepare the liberation of his folk. She bided in chill and tension,
speaking little and nothing to contradict, until he departed. Then she
turned on them and cried, "What's this about?" Her hand rested on her
sidearm. Trohdwyr bulked close, ready to attack with pistol, knife,
tail, foot-claws if they threatened her.
Steve Johnson smiled, spread empty fingers, and replied, "Of course