A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows

XII

Sickbay was a single compartment, but astonishingly well equipped. Kossara entered with tightness in her gullet and dryness on her tongue. Flandry and Chives stood behind a surgical table. An electronic helmet, swiveled out above the pillow, crouched like an ugly arachnoid. The faint hum of driving energies, ventilation, service and life-support devices, seemed to her to have taken on a shrill note.

Flandry had left flamboyancy outside. Tall in a plain green coverall, he spoke unsmiling: “Your decision isn’t final yet. Before we go any further, let me explain. Chives and I have done this sort of thing before, and we aren’t a bad team, but we’re no professionals.”

This sort of thing—Muhammad Snell must lately have lain on that mattress, in the dream-bewildered helplessness of narco, while yonder man pumped him dry and injected the swift poison. Shouldn’t I fear the Imperialist? Dare I risk becoming the ally of one who treated a sentient being as we do a meat animal?

I ought to feel indignation. I don’t, though. Nor do I feel guilty that I don’t.

Well, I’m not revengeful, either. At least, not very much. I do remember how Trohdwyr died because he was an inconvenience; I remember how Mihail Svetich died, in a war Flandry says our enemies want to kindle anew.

Flandry says—She heard him from afar, fast and pedantic. Had he rehearsed his speech?

“This is not a hypnoprobe here, of course. It puts a human straight into quasisleep and stimulates memory activity, after a drug has damped inhibitions and emotions. In effect, everything the organism has permanently recorded becomes accessible to a questioner—assuming no deep conditioning against it. The process takes more time and skill than an ordinary quiz, where all that’s wanted is something the subject consciously knows but isn’t willing to tell. Psychiatrists use it to dig out key, repressed experiences in severely disturbed patients. I’ve mainly used it to get total accounts, generally from cooperative witnesses—significant items they may have noticed but forgotten. In your case, we’d best go in several fairly brief sessions, spaced three or four watches apart. That way you can assimilate your regained knowledge and avoid a crisis. The sessions will give you no pain and leave no recollection of themselves.”

She brought her whole attention to him. “Do you play the tapes for me when I wake?” she asked.

“I could,” he replied, “but wouldn’t you prefer I wiped them? You see, when our questions have brought out a coherent framework of what was buried, a simple command will fix it in your normal memory. By association, that will recover everything else. You’ll come to with full recall of whatever episode we concentrated on.”

His eyes dwelt gravely upon her. “You must realize,” he continued, “your whole life will be open to us. We’ll try hard to direct our questioning so we don’t intrude. However, there’s no avoiding all related and heavily charged items. You’ll blurt many of them out. Besides, we’ll have to feel our way. Is such-and-such a scrap of information from your recent, bad past—or is it earlier, irrelevant? Often we’ll need to develop a line of investigation for some distance before we can be sure.

“We’re bound to learn things you’ll wish we didn’t. You’ll simply have to take our word that we’ll keep silence ever afterward … and, yes, pass no judgment, lest we be judged by ourselves.

“Do you really want that, Kossara?”

She nodded with a stiff neck. “I want the truth.”

“You can doubtless learn enough for practical purposes by talking to the Gospodar, if he’s alive and available when we reach Dennitza. And I make no bones: one hope of mine is gaining insight into the modus operandi of Merseian Intelligence, a few clear identifications of their agents among us … for the benefit of the Empire.

“I won’t compel you,” Flandry finished. “Please think again before you decide.”

She squared her shoulders. “I have thought.” Holding out her hand: “Give me the medicine.”

The first eventide, her feet dragged her into the saloon. Flandry saw her disheveled, drably clad, signs of weeping upon her, against the stars. She had long been in her own room behind a closed door.

“You needn’t eat here, you know,” he said in his gentlest tone.

“Thank you, but I will,” she answered.

“I admire your courage more than I have words to tell, dear. Come, sit down, take a drink or three before dinner.” Since he feared she might refuse, lest that seem to herself like running away from what was in her, he added, “Trohdwyr would like a toast to his manes, wouldn’t he?”

She followed the suggestion in a numb way. “Will the whole job be this bad?” she asked.

“No.” He joined her, pouring Merseian telloch for them both though he really wanted a Mars-dry martini. “I was afraid things might go as they went, the first time, but couldn’t see any road around. You did witness Trohdwyr’s murder, he suffered hideously, and he’d been your beloved mentor your whole life. The pain wasn’t annulled just because your thalamus was temporarily anesthetized. Being your strongest lost memory, already half in consciousness, it came out ahead of any others. And it’s still so isolated it feels like yesterday.”

She settled wearily back. “Yes,” she said. “Before, everything was blurred, even that. Now … the faces, the whole betrayal—”

{Nobody died in the cave except Trohdwyr. The rest stood by when a mere couple of marines arrived to arrest her. “You called them!” she screamed to the one who bore the name Steve Johnson, surely not his own. He grinned. Trohdwyr lunged, trying to get her free, win her a chance to scramble down the slope and vanish. The lieutenant blasted him. The life in his tough old body had not ebbed out, under the red moons, when they pulled her away from him.

Afterward she overheard Johnson: “Why’d you kill the servant? Why not take him along?”

And the lieutenant: “He’d only be a nuisance. As is, when the Diomedeans find him, they won’t get suspicious at your disappearance. They’ll suppose the Terrans caught you. Which should make them handier material. For instance, if we want any of those who met you here to go guerrilla, our contact men can warn them they’ve been identified through data pulled out of you prisoners.”

“Hm, what about us four?”

“They’ll decide at headquarters. I daresay they’ll reassign you to a different region. Come on, now, let’s haul mass.” The lieutenant’s boot nudged Kossara, where she slumped wrist-bound against the cold cave wall. “On your feet, bitch!”}

“His death happened many weeks ago,” Flandry said. “Once you get more memories back, you’ll see it, feel it in perspective—including time perspective. You’ll have done your grieving … which you did, down underneath; and you’re too healthy to mourn forever.”

“I will always miss him,” she whispered.

Flandry regarded ghosts of his own. “Yes, I know.”

She straightened. He saw her features harden, as if bones lent strength 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, I’ll leash my curiosity.” She gave the matter scant thought, amidst 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 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 people 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 you’re puzzled. Please come inside where it’s warmer and we’ll tell you.” The rest behaved in equally friendly wise.

Their story was simple in outline. They too were Imperial subjects, from Esperance. That planet wasn’t immensely remote from here. True to its pacifistic tradition, it had stayed neutral during the succession fight, declaring it would pledge allegiance to whoever gave the Empire peace and law again. (Kossara nodded. She had heard of Esperance.) But this policy required a certain amount of armed might and a great deal of politicking and intriguing abroad, to prevent forcible recruitment by some or other pretender. The Esperancians thus got into the habit of taking a more active role than hitherto. Conditions remained sufficiently turbulent after Hans was crowned to keep the habit in tune.

When their Intelligence heard rumors of Ythrian attempts to foment revolution on Diomedes, their government was immediately concerned. Esperance was near the border of Empire and Domain. Agents were smuggled onto Diomedes to spy out the truth—discreetly, since God alone knew what the effect of premature revelations might be. Johnson’s party was such a band.

“Predecessors of ours learned Dennitzans were responsible,” he said. “Not Avalonian humans serving Ythri, but Dennitzan humans serving their war lord!”

“No!” Kossara interrupted, horrified. “That isn’t true! And he’s not a war lord!”

“It was what the natives claimed, Mademoiselle Vymezal,” the Asian-looking woman said mildly. “We decided to try posing as Dennitzans. Our project had learned enough about the underground—names of various members, for instance—that it seemed possible, granted the autochthons couldn’t spot the difference. Their reaction to us does indicate they … well, they have reason to believe Dennitzans are sparking their movement. We’ve been, ah, leading them on, collecting information without actually helping them develop paramilitary capabilities. When Eonan told us an important Dennitzan had arrived, openly but with hints she could be more than a straightforward scientist—naturally, we grew interested.”

“Well, you’ve been fooled,” burst from Kossara. “I’m here to, to disprove those exact same charges against us. The Gospodar, our head of state, he’s my uncle and he sent me as his personal agent. I should know, shouldn’t I? And I tell you, he’s loyal. We are!”

“Why doesn’t he proclaim it?” Johnson asked.

“Oh, he is making official representations. But what are they worth? Across four hundred light-years—We need proof. We need to learn who’s been blackening us and why.” Kossara paused for a sad smile. “I don’t pretend I can find out much. I’m here as a, a forerunner, a scout. Maybe that special Navy team working out of Thursday Landing—have you heard about them?—maybe they’ll exonerate us without our doing anything. Maybe they already have. The commander didn’t act suspicious of me.”

Johnson patted her hand. “I believe you’re honest, Mademoiselle,” he said. “And you may well be correct, too. Let’s exchange what we’ve discovered—and, in between, give you some outdoor recreation. You look space-worn.”

The next three darkling springtime days were pleasant. Kossara and Trohdwyr stopped wearing weapons in the cave.}

Flandry sighed. “Aycharaych.” He had told her something of his old antagonist. “Who else? Masks within masks, shadows that cast shadows … Merseian operatives posing as Esperancians posing as Dennitzans whose comrades had formerly posed as Avalonians, while other Merseian creatures are in fact the Terran personnel they claim to be. Yes, I’ll bet my chance of a peaceful death that Aycharaych is the engineer of the whole diablerie.”

He drew on a cigarette, rolled acridity over his tongue and streamed it out his nostrils, as if this mordant would give reality a fast hold on him. He and she sat side by side on a saloon bench. Before them was the table, where stood glasses and a bottle of Demerara rum. Beyond was the viewscreen, full of night and stars. They had left the shining nebula behind; an unlit mass of cosmic dust reared thunderhead tall across the Milky Way. The ship’s clocks declared the hour was late. Likewise did the silence around, above the hum which had gone so deep into their bones that they heard it no more.

Kossara wore a housedress whose brevity made him all too aware of long legs, broad bosom, a vein lifting blue from the dearest hollow that her shoulderbones made at the base of her throat. She shivered a trifle and leaned near him, unperfumed now except for a sunny odor of woman. “Monstrous,” she mumbled.

“N-no … well, I can’t say.” Why do I defend him? Flandry wondered, and knew: I see in my mirror the specter of him. Though who of us is flesh and who image? “I’ll admit I can’t hate him, even for what he did to you and will do to your whole people and mine if he can. I’ll kill him the instant I’m able, but—Hm, I suppose you never saw or heard of a coral snake. It’s venomous but very beautiful, and strikes without malice … Not that I really know what drives Aycharaych. Maybe he’s an artist of overriding genius. That’s a kind of monster, isn’t it?”

She reached for her glass, withdrew her hand—she was a light drinker—and gripped the table edge instead, till the ends of her nails turned white. “Can such a labyrinth of a scheme work? Aren’t there hopelessly many chances for something to go wrong?”

Flandry found solace in a return to pragmatics, regardless of what bitterness lay behind. “If the whole thing collapses, Merseia hasn’t lost much. Not Hans nor any Emperor can make the Terran aristocrats give up their luxuries—first and foremost, their credo that eventual accommodation is possible—and go after the root of the menace. He couldn’t manage anything more than a note of protest and perhaps the suspension of a few negotiations about trade and the like. His underlings would depose him before they allowed serious talk about singeing the beard the Roidhun hasn’t got.”

His cigarette butt scorched his fingers. He tossed it away and took a drink of his own. The piratical pungency heartened him till he could speak in detachment, almost amusement: “Any plotter must allow for his machine losing occasional nuts and bolts. You’re an example. Your likely fate as a slave was meant to outrage every man on Dennitza when the news arrived there. By chance, I heard about you in the well-known and deservedly popular nick of time—I, not someone less cautious—”

“Less noble,” She stroked his arm. It shone inside.

Nonetheless he grinned and said, “True, I may lack scruples, but not warm blood. I’m a truncated romantic. A mystery, a lovely girl, an exotic planet—could I resist hallooing off—”

It jarred through him:—off into whatever trap was set by a person who knew me? His tongue went on. “However, prudence, not virtue, was what made me careful to do nothing irrevocable” to you, darling; I praise the Void that nothing irrevocable happened to you. “And we did luck out, we did destroy the main Merseian wart on Diomedes.” Was the luck poor silly Susette and her husband’s convenient absence? Otherwise I’d have stayed longer at Thursday Landing, playing sleuth—long enough to give an assassin, who was expecting me specifically, a chance at me.

No! This is fantastic! Forget it!

“Wasn’t that a disaster to the enemy?” Kossara asked.

“ ’Fraid not. I don’t imagine they’ll get their Diomedean insurgency. But that’s a minor disappointment. I’m sure the whole operation was chiefly a means to the end of maneuvering Terra into forcing Dennitza to revolt And those false clues have long since been planted and let sprout; the false authoritative report has been filed; in short, about as much damage has been done on the planet as they could reasonably expect.”

Anguish: “Do you think … we will find civil war?”

He laid an arm around her. She leaned into the curve of it, against his side. “The Empire seldom bumbles fast,” he comforted her. “Remember, Hans himself didn’t want to move without more information. He saw no grounds for doubting the Maspes report—that Dennitzans were involved—but he realized they weren’t necessarily the Gospodar’s Dennitzans. That’s why I got recruited, to check further. In addition, plain old bureaucratic inertia works in our favor. Yes, as far as the problems created on Diomedes are concerned, I’m pretty sure well get you home in time.”

“Thanks to you, Dominic.” Her murmur trembled. “To none but you.”

He did not remind her that Diomedes was not, could never have been the only world on which the enemy had worked, and that events on Dennitza would not have been frozen. This was no moment for reminders, when she kissed him.

Her shyness in it made him afraid to pursue. But they sat together a spell, mute before the stars, until she bade him goodnight.

{On the tundra far north of the Kazan, Bodin Miyatovich kept a hunting lodge. Thence he rode forth on horseback, hounds clamorous around him, in quest of gromatz, yegyupka, or ice troll. At other times he and his guests boated on wild waters, skied on glacier slopes, sat indoors by a giant hearthfire talking, drinking, playing chess, playing music, harking to blizzard winds outside. Since her father bore her cradle from aircar to door, Kossara had loved coming here.

Though this visit was harshly for business, she felt pleasure at what surrounded her. She and her uncle stood on a slate terrace that jutted blue-black from the granite blocks of the house. Zoria wheeled dazzling through cloudless heaven, ringed with sun dogs. Left, right, and rearward the land reached endless, red-purple mahovina turf, widespaced clumps of firebush and stands of windblown plume, here and there a pool ablink. Forward, growth yielded to tumbled boulders where water coursed. In these parts, the barrens were a mere strip; she could see the ice beyond them. Two kilometers high, its cliff stood over the horizon, a worldwall, at its distance not dusty white but shimmering, streaked with blue crevasses. The river which ran from its melting was still swift when it passed near the lodge, a deep brawl beneath the lonesome tone of wind, the remote cries of a sheerwing flock. The air was cold, dry, altogether pure. The fur lining of her parka hood was soft and tickly on her cheeks.

The big man beside her growled, “Yes, too many ears in Zorkagrad. Damnation! I thought if we put Molitor on the throne, we’d again know who was friend and who foe. But things only get more tangled. How many faithful are left? I can’t tell. And that’s fouler than men becoming outright turncoats.”

“You trust me, don’t you?” Kossara answered in pride.

“Yes,” Miyatovich said. “I trust you beyond your fidelity. You’re strong and quick-witted. And your xenological background … qualifies you and gives you a cover story … for a mission I hope you’ll undertake.”

“To Diomedes? My father’s told me rumors.”

“Worse. Accusations. Not public yet. I actually had bloody hard work finding out, myself, why Imperial Intelligence agents have been snooping amongst us in such numbers. I sent men to inquire elsewhere and—Well, the upshot is, the Impies know revolt is brewing on Diomedes and think Dennitzans are the yeast. The natural conclusion is that a cabal of mine sent them, to keep the Imperium amused while we prepare a revolt of our own.”

“You’ve denied it, I’m sure.”

“In a way. Nobody’s overtly charged me. I’ve sent the Emperor a memorandum, deploring the affair and offering to cooperate in a full-dress investigation. But guilty or not, I’d do that. How to prove innocence? As thin as his corps is spread, we could mobilize—on desert planets, for instance, without positive clues for them to find.”

The Gospodar gusted a sigh. “And appearances are against us. There is a lot of sentiment for independence, for turning this sector into a confederacy free of an Empire that failed us and wants to sap the strength we survived by. Those could be Dennitzans yonder, working for a faction who plot to get us committed—who’ll overthrow me if they must—”

“I’m to go search out the truth if I can,” she knew. “Uncle, I’m honored. But me alone? Won’t that be like trying to catch water in a net?”

“Maybe. Though at the bare least, you can bring me back … um … a feel of what’s going on, better than anybody else. And you may well do more. I’ve watched you from babyhood. You’re abler than you think, Kossara.”

Miyatovich took her by the shoulders. Breath smoked white from his mouth, leaving frost in his beard, as he spoke: “I’ve never had a harder task than this, asking you to put your life on the line. You’re like a daughter to me. I sorrowed nearly as much as you did when Mihail died, but told myself you’d find another good man who’d give you sound children. Now I can only say—go in Mihail’s name, that your next man needn’t die in another war.”

“Than you think we should stay in the Empire?”

“Yes. I’ve made remarks that suggested different. But you know me, how I talk rashly in anger but try to act in calm. The Empire would have to get so bad that chaos was better, before Fd willingly break it. Terra, the Troubles, or the tyranny of Merseia—and those racists wouldn’t just subject us, they’d tame us—I don’t believe we have a fourth choice, and I’ll pick Terra.”

She felt he was right.}

A part of the Hooligan’s hold had been converted to a gymnasium. Outbound, and at first on the flight from Diomedes, Flandry and Kossara used it at separate hours. Soon after her therapy commenced, she proposed they exercise together. “Absolutely!” he caroled. “It’ll make calisthenics themselves fun, whether or not that violates the second law of thermodynamics.”

In truth, it wasn’t fun—when she was there in shorts and halter, sweat, laughter, herself—it was glory.

Halfway to Dennitza, he told her: “Let’s end our psychosessions. You’ve regained everything you need. The rest would be detail, not worth further invasion of your privacy.”

“No invasion,” she said low. Her eyes dropped, her blood mounted. “You were welcome.”

“Chives!” Flandry bellowed. “Get busy! Tonight we do not dine, we feast!”

“Very good, sir,” the Shalmuan replied, appearing in the saloon as if his master had rubbed a lamp. “I suggest luncheon consist of a small salad and tea to drink.”

“You’re the boss,” Flandry said. “Me, I can’t sit still. How about a game of tennis, Kossara? Then after our rabbit repast we can snooze, in preparation for sitting up the whole nightwatch popping champagne.”

She agreed eagerly. They changed into gym briefs and met below. The room was elastic matting, sunlamp fluorescence, gray-painted metal sides. In its bareness, she flamed.

The ball thudded back and forth, caromed, bounced, made them leap, for half an hour. At last, panting, they called time out and sought a water tap.

“Do you feel well?” She sounded anxious. “You missed an awful lot of serves.” They were closely matched, her youth against his muscles.

“If I felt any better, you could turn off the ship’s powerplant and hook me into the circuits,” he replied. “But why—?”

“I was distracted.” He wiped the back of a hand across the salt dampness in his mustache, ran those fingers through his hair and recalled how it was turning gray. Decision came. He prepared a light tone before going on: “Kossara, you’re a beautiful woman, and not just because you’re the only woman for quite a few light-years around. Never fear, I can mind my manners. But I hope it won’t bother you overmuch if I keep looking your way.”

She stood quiet awhile, except for the rise and fall of her breasts. Her skin gleamed. A lock of hair clung bronzy to her right cheekbone. The beryl eyes gazed beyond him. Suddenly they returned, focused, met his as sabers meet in a fencing match between near friends. Her husky voice grew hoarse and, without her noticing, stammered Serbic: “Do you mean—Dominic, do you mean you never learned, while I was under … I love you?”

Meteorstruck, he heard himself croak, “No. I did try to avoid—as far as possible, I let Chives question you, in my absence—”

“I resisted,” she said in wonder, “because I knew you would be kind but dared not imagine you might be for always.”

“I’d lost hope of getting anybody who’d make me want to be.”

She came to him.

Presently: “Dominic, darling, please, no. Not yet.”

“—Do you want a marriage ceremony first?”

“Yes. If you don’t mind too much. I know you don’t care, but, well, did you know I still say my prayers every night? Does that make you laugh?”

“Never. All right, we’ll be married, and in style!”

“Could we really be? In St. Clement’s Cathedral, by Father Smed who christened and confirmed me—?”

“If he’s game, I am. It won’t be easy, waiting, but how can I refuse a wish of yours? Forgive these hands. They’re not used to holding something sacred.”

“Dominic, you star-fool, stop babbling! Do you think it will be easy for me?”