Cobra

"We're not going to be able to keep this secret, you know," Mayor Tyler said, shaking his head. His hands were shaking, too. "If nothing else, we—and about a quarter of the towns in Caravel District, for that matter—are going to have to ask the governor-general for new Cobras."

"That's okay," Jonny said, wincing slightly as Eldjarn applied salve to his shoulder, where a near miss had burned him. "No one's going to try and avenge Challinor or pick up where he left off, if that's what you're worried about. All the fence-straddlers he said he had standing by will be moving like crazy to make sure they come down on the right side. The warlord movement is dead." He cocked an eye at the mayor. "You just make sure your report shows that only a very small minority was involved in the plot. We can't have people getting paranoid about us—there's still too much work on Aventine that only Cobras can do."

Tyler nodded and moved toward the door to his private office. "Yeah. I just hope Zhu doesn't take the whole thing wrong. I'd hate for Ariel to get stuck with the blame for Challinor's ambition."

The door closed behind him, and Chrys stood up. "I suppose I'd better go, too—I've got to get busy fixing the phone system."

"Chrys—" Jonny hesitated. "I'm sorry that had to be done at Ken's funeral, and that you had to... to see all of that..."

She smiled wanly. "That extra damage?" She shook her head. "Ken was long gone from that body, Jonny. He couldn't feel those lasers. You were the one I was worried about—I was scared to death you'd be killed, too."

Jonny shook his head. "There wasn't really much danger of that," he assured her. "You, Orrin, and Father Vitkauskas set things up perfectly for me. I just hope Ken's reputation doesn't... I don't know."

"It already has," she sighed. "The rumors are already starting to travel out there, to the effect that Ken was faking death so that he could get in one last shot."

Jonny grimaced. Yes, that would be what they thought—and within a few days and a hundred kilometers that story would probably be bent completely past recognition. The Avenging Cobra, perhaps, who'd returned from the dead to defend his people from oppression? "A legend like that might not be all bad, though—it ought to at least slow down future Challinors," he murmured, thinking out loud. "I don't think that's something Ken would dislike having attached to his name."

Chrys shook her head. "Maybe. I can't think that far in the future right now."

"You sure you really feel like working?" he asked, studying her strained face. "Nedt could start the phone repairs alone."

"I'm all right." She reached for Jonny's hand, squeezed it briefly. "I'll see you later, Jonny—and thank you."

She left, and Jonny sighed. "The real thanks goes to you two," he told Eldjarn. The reaction was beginning to hit him, and he suddenly felt very tired. "I don't think I could have faced having to wire all those sequential relays to Ken's servos, even if I'd known how to do it. It must have been pretty hard on Chrys, especially."

"We all did what we had to," Eldjarn said obliquely. "You know, though, that it's not over yet—not by a long shot. Zhu's going to react to this, all right. If he's smart, part of his reaction will be to start listening to what Cobras have to say on governmental policies and procedures. You'll need to take advantage of the opportunity to offer some good, concrete suggestions."

Jonny shrugged wearily. "I'm like Chrys: I really can't think that far ahead right now."

Eldjarn shook his head. "Chrys can get away with that excuse; you can't. As long as there are Cobras on Aventine, the threat of something like this happening again will always be with us. We have to act now to make sure that possibility stays small."

"Oh, come on, Orrin—you're talking politics now, and that's light-years out of my experience. I wouldn't even know where to start."

"You start by making the Cobras feel that an attack on the government is an attack on them personally," Eldjarn said. "Ken fought Challinor because the rebellion was an attack on his family pride; you probably had similar reasons." He hesitated. "For most of you, I suspect, we'll have to appeal to enlightened self-interest... once your self-interest has been properly linked with the government's."

Jonny frowned as understanding began to come. "You're suggesting we be brought directly into the government somehow?"

"I think it's inevitable," Eldjarn said; and though his voice was firm, his restless hands indicated his uneasiness. "You Cobras have a lot more of the power on this world than the system has taken into account, and one way or another the system has to adjust to reflect that reality. We either give it to you in a controlled, orderly way or risk the chaos of Challinor's method. Like it or not, Jonny, you're an important political force now—and your first political responsibility will be to make sure Zhu understands that."

For just a second Jonny grimaced at the irony. Perhaps, in a small and unexpected way, Challinor had won after all. "Yes," he sighed. "I guess I'll have to."

Interlude

To the trained and observant eye, the signs were all there.

They weren't obvious, of course. An unnecessary phrase in an official Troft message to the Committee, certain small shiftings of both merchant and perimeter guard star ships, comments coming from the Minthisti at obvious Troft prodding—small things, each in itself completely meaningless. But taken as a group, all the tiny pieces pointed unidirectionally to the same conclusion.

After fifteen years of allowing Dominion ships to pass freely through their territory, the Trofts were getting tired of it.

Vanis D'arl scowled blackly as he stared at the nighttime view of Dome visible through his office window. It wasn't exactly a startling development—half the Committee was frankly surprised the Corridor had remained open as long as it had. The Star Force, in fact, had been updating its contingency plans for eleven years now... and unless something was done, it looked like they'd get the chance to test its strategies within the year.

It went without saying that, win or lose, one of the first casualties of a new war would be Aventine and its own two fledgling colonies... precisely the worlds the war would theoretically be fought to defend. Which, in D'arl's opinion, made the looming conflict an exercise in near-perfect futility.

But what were the alternatives? The Committee, which had had to be virtually dragged by the nose to accept the colony plan in the first place, had in recent years done a complete turnaround as rare minerals and new Pharmaceuticals began flowing the other way down the Corridor. With military ships barred by treaty from entering Troft territory, the Dominion had no way to defend Aventine except by the threat of warfare if the colony was attacked—a threat which had been delivered both publicly and privately over the years.

And if there was one universal rule of politics, it was that a threat that wasn't followed through on would always cost more in the long run.

Reaching over, D'arl touched his intercom. "Yes, Committé?" the young man looked up at him from the screen.

"Have you cross-correlated the Aventine botanical data yet?"

"Yes, sir," Jame Moreau nodded. "It's on your desk, marked 'Aventine Bot/Phys III.' I put it in there while you were at your General Policy meeting."

"Thank you." D'arl glanced at his watch. "You might as well go on home, Moreau; the night staff can help me if I need anything more."

"Yes, sir. Let me mention first that there's one item on that magcard I think might be worth following up, if I understand what you're looking for. It's marked with a double star."

"Thank you," D'arl repeated, and broke the connection. If you understood what I was looking for? he thought wryly at the blank screen. If I understood what I was looking for I'd probably have found it years ago. The self-sufficiency studies, the deterrent proposal—it all worked, it all made sense, and D'arl was ready at any time to try implementing it. But something was missing; a political keystone to insure he could sell the package both here and on Aventine. It had to exist... but at this point D'arl had no idea what it might be.

Sifting through the ordered mess on his desk, he located Moreau's magcard and slid it into his comboard, keying for the double star. It turned out to be an analysis of some reedy plant called blussa that apparently thrived in damp lowland regions on Aventine, busily concentrating one of the strategic metals on D'arl's self-sufficiency list. Growth cycle, ecological niche, biochemistry—he skimmed the overview Moreau had copied directly from the master files.

—biochemical response to climatological changes.

He slowed down and read carefully. Backed up and read it again. Called up the last climatological data Aventine had sent, read those, and contacted the dome's night computer staff for a search/simulation with the colony's fauna records. The chief programmer listened carefully, informed D'arl the task would take several hours to complete, and signed off.

And at that point there was nothing for the Committé to do but wait. If he had indeed found his elusive keystone... but even then there would be a long way to go, on both of the affected worlds. And on top of that, the scheme might not work even if he succeeded completely in implementing it.

In his early days on the Committee, he would probably have felt the uncertainties as a crushing weight around his shoulders. Now, after more than a decade, the emotional reaction was more reasonable. He would do what he could, to the best of his ability, and leave the rest to the universe.

And in this instance, the universe was kind. Six hours later, when he awoke from a short night's sleep, the results of the simulation were waiting.

Positive.

He read the entire report through carefully. Yes, the keystone was there. Unexpected; unlooked for, really—but there... and now it was time to see if the other pieces he'd assembled would indeed fit together. And if so—

If so, the Dominion was about to see just how the Trofts reacted to a change in the game's rules.

Politician: 2421

Jonny shook his head. "I'm sorry, Tam, but you'll just have to make do without me. I'm starting my vacation in exactly—" he consulted his watch "—four minutes."

Peering out through the phone's screen, Tamis Dyon's face had already finished the plunge from excitement to shock and was beginning to edge back toward disbelief. "You're what? Jonny, that's a Dominion Committé out there!"

"I heard you. So what does Zhu want to do, hold a full military inspection of the planet? If the guy wanted pomp, he should've given us more than six hours' notice he was coming."

"Jonny, I realize you and I are new to this politics business, but don't you think it'll be expected that we'll at least be on hand in Capitalia to greet the Committé's ship?"

Jonny shrugged, suppressing a smile. Watching Dyon try to operate in "patient" mode was always an amusing sight. "I doubt seriously that all the syndics are going to make it in," he pointed out. "And if it's not going to be unanimous, what difference does one more make?"

"What makes the difference," Dyon ground out, "is that we have the honor of the Cobras to uphold."

"So you uphold our honor. Seriously, Tam, what's the big deal whether one, both, or neither of us shows up? Unless Zhu's planning a laser light show or something."

Dyon snorted, but even he had to crack a smile at the image of the dignified governor-general pulling a stunt like that. "He's going to be furious, you know, if you're not there. What's so important about this vacation, anyway? Chrys threatening to leave you if you don't take some time off?"

"Don't be absurd," Jonny snorted in turn. Though there had been small problems in that area in the past.... "In point of fact, the ship that's making orbit just about now has someone more important than a mere Committé aboard: my sister Gwen. I want to give her a tour of the bright lights and then help her settle in with the Molada Mountain geological group in Paleen."

Dyon made a face. "Dawa District, right? Grumf. You're right; she does deserve something approaching civilization before disappearing into the cultural depths." He exhaled loudly, shaking his head. "You win. Get out of there and forget your phone. You've got half an hour's head start before I notify Zhu's office that you're gone."

"Thanks—I owe you one. And tell Zhu to relax—I'll be back in a week, and the Committé's hardly likely to be gone by then. He'll have plenty of formal dinners left to inflict on me."

"I'll quote you exactly. So long." Dyon disappeared from the screen.

Grinning, Jonny got to his feet, fingering the portable field phone in his belt. He could leave it behind, as Dyon had suggested... but even though he was no longer on round-the-clock call, he was still a Cobra. He compromised, switching the phone off but leaving it in his belt, and left his office.

Chrys was already in the anteroom, chatting with Jonny's assistant. "All set?" she asked as he entered.

"All set," he nodded. "I'm officially off-duty, leaving the fate of Caravel District in Theron's capable hands."

Theron Yutu grinned. "With any luck the district'll still be here when you come back, Syndic," he said. "How off-duty are you?"

"I'm taking my phone, but it's going to be off," Jonny told him. "You reveal the override code to anyone short of a genuine emergency and I'll take you to Dawa District and let the gantuas walk on you."

"A fate worse than debt," Yutu agreed solemnly. "Have a good time, sir; Mrs. Moreau."

Chrys had left the car poised for a quick getaway, and a minute later they were driving through the moderate Rankin traffic, heading for the local aircar field. "Any problem with Corwin I should know about?" he asked Chrys.

She shook her head. "Tym and Sue said they can keep him overnight if we don't make it back by then. How about you? Any problems because of the other ship out there?"

He glanced at her. "You never cease to amaze me, Hon—I just heard about that a few minutes ago myself."

She smiled. "That is all I know, though—the bare fact of a second incoming ship was coming through on Theron's net as I got to the office. Is it bad news?"

"Not as far as I know. There's a member of the Central Committee aboard who I gather wants to tour the Dominion's colonies out here. I've included myself out of any ceremonies for this next week."

"I wonder if the Dominion's planning to cut our supply shipments," Chrys mused. "Or whether the Trofts are making trouble."

"If there's anything I need to know, Theron can find me," Jonny shrugged. "Until then, let's assume the visit is just political and act accordingly."

They reached the airfield a few minutes later, and a few minutes after that they were heading for Capitalia at a shade under Mach Two. There had been times—a lot of them, in fact—when Jonny had regretted accepting the position of syndic, of having exchanged the day-to-day problems of a single village for the executive headaches of an entire district. But having an aircar on permanent call was one of the spangles of the job that occasionally made it worthwhile.

Not having to risk his life fighting spine leopards and falx, of course, was another big plus.

The last of the star ship's passengers had been down for some time when Jonny and Chrys arrived at the starfield, but with processing and all the first of them were only then beginning to emerge from the entrypoint building. Taking up a position off to the side, they waited.

But not for long. Suddenly, Gwen Moreau was there... and Jonny, a corner of his mind still expecting the ten-year-old girl he'd left back on Horizon, nearly tripped over his tongue calling to her. "Gwen! Over here!"

"Jonny!" she smiled, bounding over with an echo of the high spirits he'd always associated with her. For an instant he was tempted to respond by tossing her into the air, as he'd always done back home. Fortunately, probably, he resisted the urge.

The introductions and greetings were a flurry of smiles, hugs, and general giddiness. Chrys and Gwen had known each other well enough through tapes back and forth that the awkwardness Jonny had half feared never materialized. Gwen asked about her nephew, was assured he was like any other two-year-old—except smarter, of course—and Jonny was just turning to lead the way out when she stopped him with a hand on his arm and a mischievous grin. "Before we go, Jonny, I've got a little surprise for you," she said. "Someone I met on the ship who's going to be working in the same town I am." Her eyes flicked over his shoulder.

A ship-met fiancé? Jonny thought. He turned, expecting a stranger... and felt his mouth drop open. "Cally!"

Cally Halloran's grin was a thing of truly massive proportions. "Hi, Jonny. Damn, but it's good to see you."

"Same to you with spangles," Jonny grinned. "Chrys, this is Cally Halloran, one of my teammates in the Adirondack war. I thought you and Imel were planning to stay in the Army for the rest of your natural lives."

"Imel's still there," Halloran nodded, "but you clowns out here gave the brass too many ideas of what Cobras could be used for. I finally had one Iberiand forest-patrol mission too many and put in for a transfer here."

"If you're expecting palace guard duty work in Dawa District, you can forget it," Jonny warned. "Chances are you'll be doing jungle duty and heavy manual labor besides."

"Yeah, but here I'll at least be working more on my own, without some middle-level Army officer looking over my shoulder." He waved a hand skyward. "Or maybe even get to help open up a new world like you did."

"Palatine and Caelian?" Jonny shook his head in mild disgust. "You want Army thinking, there it is in spades. We've barely got a third of Aventine even surveyed, let alone settled, and they open up beachheads on two other worlds. Talk about straining resources and manpower—especially Cobra manpower—"

"Jonny," Chrys interrupted smoothly, "you promised you wouldn't plunge us into Aventine's politics for at least the first hour. Remember?"

They all laughed. Jonny had not, in fact, made any such promise, but the hint was well taken. "Chrys is right—I do tend to go overboard sometimes," he admitted, pointing them all toward the door. "If you're all adequately tired of standing around here, let's go get some dinner. Chrys and I don't get to Capitalia too often, but we know where the best restaurant is."

The meal was a resounding success, the food and atmosphere of the restaurant as good as Jonny had remembered. They spent some time catching up on Halloran's and the Moreau family's recent histories, the conversation then shifting to Aventine in general and Dawa District in particular. Jonny knew relatively little about the latter, Dawa being one of the most recently incorporated parts of the planet, and he was rather surprised to find that he and Chrys still knew far more than the supposedly up-to-date information the colonists had been given.

They were working on dessert and the Aventine version of cahve when Chrys casually mentioned the mysterious Dominion craft coming in fast on the colony ship's wake. "No mystery there," Halloran shook his head. "I heard about it back on Asgard; I assumed you'd been told, too. That's Committé Vanis D'arl and some sort of special Cobra project that the Army and Central Committee have cooked up."

"D'arl?" Gwen's eyes were wide. "Jonny—that's the Committé Jame's working for."

"You're right." The name hadn't immediately registered, but now he remembered. Jame had been with D'arl's staff for, what, twelve years now? "Any idea who D'arl brought with him, Cally?"

"Boy, you Moreaus really get around," Halloran said, shaking his head in amazement. "No, I don't know who else is aboard—I only know it involves Cobras because Mendro and Bai had Freyr Complex tied up in knots for a month while Committee people crawled all over the place."

"Doing what?"

"All I heard were rumors. But they had a lot of trucks moving in and out... and parking by the surgery wing."

"Sounds like they're updating the Cobra equipment," Jonny frowned. "Have the Trofts and Minthisti been behaving themselves?"

"Far as I know. Maybe the Dominion's thinking about really pushing the colonization effort out here and wants to have more Cobras available."

"With D'arl coming here for a final assessment?" Jonny suggested. "Could be."

"Ah-ah," Gwen put in warningly. "That's politics, you guys. Technical foul; Chrys gets a free change of topic."

They all smiled, and the conversation shifted to the sorts of geological and tectonic utilization work Gwen hoped to be doing on her new world. But for Jonny, the relaxed mood of a few minutes earlier proved impossible to totally recapture. Tors Challinor's attempted rebellion seven years ago hadn't been repeated, but Jonny had lived those years waiting for that other shoe to drop, knowing that if Aventine could survive another few decades, the Cobras would all be dead and the society could at last get back to normal. But if the Dominion was planning to send them a new batch...

But the evening, if no longer scintillating, nevertheless remained pleasant as Jonny and Chrys gave the others a brief tour of Capitalia's night life. It was odd, though perhaps inevitable, that Jonny found himself mentally comparing everything to their hazily remembered counterparts on Asgard and Horizon; but if Gwen and Halloran found it all quaint and primitive, they were far too polite to say so.

It was after midnight when they finally called it quits, and as there was no point in returning to Rankin at such an hour, they checked into one of Capitalia's small selection of hotels. Gwen and Halloran had disappeared to their rooms, and Jonny was just starting to undress when he noticed the red "message waiting" light on his phone was glowing. "Uh-oh," he muttered.

Chrys followed his gaze. "Ignore it," she advised. "At least until morning. Theron would've risked waking you up if it was urgent."

"Ye-e-e-s," Jonny agreed, almost unwillingly picking up the instrument. "But he wouldn't have bothered us at all if it wasn't at least important. Might as well get it over with."

The message, as he'd expected, was simply to phone his assistant whenever convenient. Jonny looked at his watch, shrugged, and made the call.

Yutu answered promptly, without any of the grogginess that would have indicated a sound sleep. "Sorry to bother you, Syndic," he apologized, "but something came in on the net a half hour ago that I thought you should know about. Late this afternoon a dead spine leopard was found in the plains a couple of kilometers west of Paleen in Dawa District. It had been mauled pretty badly... and apparently not by scavengers."

Jonny looked up to see Chrys's suddenly tense eyes, felt his own jaw tighten. The elusive predator that even spine leopards needed defenses against had finally made its long-overdue appearance. So to speak.... "Any sign of what had killed it?" he asked Yutu.

"There's nothing more yet than what I've told you, sir. The carcass has been taken to Niparin, where I gather they're going to bring some experts in to study it. I just thought you might want to issue some orders immediately."

"Yeah." Caravel District was getting more built up every day, but there were still vast tracts of forest area surrounding the towns... and if the new predator migrated like the spine leopards did, the region could have unwelcome company at any time. "Put all the Cobras on alert, and have them keep an eye out for any unusual tracks or signs if business takes them into the forest," he instructed Yutu. "Everyone else is to stay out of the forest, period, and farmers working near the edges are to keep their cabs sealed."

"Yes, sir; I'll have these on the public net in half an hour. Uh—Governor-General Zhu also called this evening. He wants all the syndics at a special meeting at the Dominion Building tomorrow morning at eleven."

Jonny snorted. "A ceremonial brunch for the visiting Committé, no doubt."

"I don't think so, actually," Yutu said. "Committé D'arl will be there, but it sounded a lot more important than that. The governor-general seemed preoccupied, for one thing. Anyway, I told him I'd try to get in touch with you, but I didn't promise anything."

"Thanks." Jonny glanced at Chrys, mindful of his promise of a vacation. But her eyes were worried, and she nodded fractionally. "All right, I'll try to show up. Start collecting everything that comes through on that dead spine leopard for me—we're going to want to ID its killer as fast as possible."

"Understood, sir."

"Thanks for calling. Good-night." Jonny broke the connection and again shut off the phone. Looking up at Chrys, he opened his mouth to apologize... but she got in the first word.

"Gwen and Cally are both going to Paleen," she said quietly. "If something that dangerous is in the vicinity..." She shuddered. "Should I go ahead and take them back to Rankin in the morning?"

Jonny sighed. "Yeah, probably. No telling how long that meeting will take. Though on second thought... if I was running Dawa District, I'd probably cancel Cally's orientation week and hustle him right down to Paleen for guard duty. Maybe you'd better just take Gwen and leave Cally here. If he gets his orders, I can run him down there and get a firsthand look at the spine leopard while I'm at it."

"And maybe join in the hunt?" She held up a hand against his protests. "No, I understand. I don't have to like your risking your life to know that you have to do it. Even middle-aged Cobras are safer out there than younger men."

"Thanks a raft," he snorted. "Thirty-nine is hardly middle-aged."

She smiled. "Why don't you quit protesting, then, and come to bed... and show me just how young you are."

Afterward, they lay side by side in the dark, and Jonny's thoughts drifted back to Adirondack. There, the people he cared for had always drawn back when they feared they might never see him again. Chrys's response to the same situation was far more pleasant... though the underlying reality wasn't any easier to face. Still, he'd faced danger a thousand times before. Even Chrys should know by now that he was too lucky to get himself killed.

But his dreams that night were frightening things, centering around a giant creature that walked in haze, killing spine leopards and Cobras and disappearing without a trace.

Seated beside Governor-General Zhu at the conference room table, Committé Vanis D'arl could at first glance have passed for any other Aventine citizen. Middle-aged and reasonably fit, his dark hair cut in a conservative pattern, he gave no immediate sense of his awesome power. But his name labeled his home planet as Asgard, and to Jonny's eyes there were disturbing similarities between him and the failed rebel Cobra Simmon L'est. There was a quiet hardness about his face, the feeling that he would stop at nothing to get his own way. And underlying it all was an odd sense of urgency.

Zhu's introduction was a subtle underscoring to the latter, lasting only a fraction of the time the occasion should have dictated. "Thank you, Governor-General Zhu," D'arl said, rising to his feet as Zhu reseated himself. His voice was heavy with the subtle accents of Asgard. "I would first of all like to congratulate you on behalf of the Central Committee on your truly outstanding accomplishment in the development of this new Dominion world. In barely fifteen years, you've achieved a solid foothold on Aventine and are even looking ahead to the future colonization of Caelian and Palatine. The natural resources for these endeavors are, of course, readily available, and it is obvious as well that you are not lacking in spirit. As the Committee has studied your progress, in fact, it has become apparent that the limiting factor in your expansion has been—and continues to be—the lack of Cobras to spearhead your efforts."

Jonny felt his breath catch. D'arl's eyes, sweeping the table, shifted to him, and for an instant the two men locked gazes. "Your reports," D'arl continued coolly, "have from almost the beginning contained requests for more Cobras, and the Committee has done its best to accommodate you. We've encouraged Cobra transfers to this colony, to the point where the Army has barely two companies left for general Dominion defense. Obviously, this drain cannot continue indefinitely; and the Committee has therefore come up with the following solution."

Here it comes, Jonny thought, his stomach tensing. A steady stream of Cobras through the Corridor, maybe forever.

But even he was unprepared for D'arl's next words. "Since it seems inefficient for the Dominion to equip and train Cobras only to send them here, we've decided to shift the entire operation to Aventine instead."

Jonny's jaw dropped. No! he shouted... though the word never made it past his frozen tongue. But D'arl nevertheless noticed, and his eyes were steady on Jonny's face as he continued. "Aboard my ship is all the necessary surgical and implant equipment, as well as specialists trained in its use. The procedure takes from two to six weeks, depending on how much discomfort you deem acceptable, and training by your own Cobras will probably take no more than four weeks more. This is far better than the seven to nine month response time for getting new Cobras from Asgard, and will in addition put the operation entirely under your control. I could continue... but I sense there is a comment waiting impatiently to be made, so I'd like to pause now for at least a brief discussion."

Jonny was on his feet almost before the last word was out of D'arl's mouth. "With all due respect and gratitude, Committé D'arl," he said carefully, "I feel that perpetuating the line of Cobras would be detrimental to the social and political development of Aventine."

D'arl's eyebrows rose politely. "How so, Syndic Moreau? It seems to me your government has adapted remarkably well to the presence of a disproportionate number of Cobras among its citizens. Your own position here would seem evidence of that."

"If you're referring to the Challinor rebellion, yes, we've managed to avoid a repeat of that," Jonny said. "But the cost has been an unnatural distortion of basic Dominion political theory."

"You speak, I presume, of the fact that at all levels of government Cobras have more than the single vote given to ordinary citizens." D'arl's face was expressionless, his voice giving no hint as to his opinion of that practice. "I believe a study of history will show, Syndic, that numerous adjustments of ideal theory have been made when circumstances required it."

Across the table, Brom Stiggur of Maro District rose slowly to his feet. "Perhaps then, Committé, a more concrete objection should be raised," he said. "You speak of perpetuating the Cobra presence on Aventine, and of putting the selection of Cobra candidates under our control. Under whose control, though, would it be? The governor-general's? A syndic majority's? Direct vote of the citizens? How do we guarantee, for obvious example, that this Cobra factory doesn't come under the influence of another Challinor?"

"You seem to have a pretty low opinion of the sort of man who'd volunteer to be a Cobra in the first place," Tamis Dyon said stiffly from a few seats down. "You'll notice that the psychological screening methods were perfectly successful with most of us—and as to Challinor, you might remember it was Syndic Moreau and his companions who defeated him, not official paranoia." He shifted his eyes to D'arl. "I, for one, would be delighted to have another dozen Cobras available to station in my outlying villages."

"You're oversolving the problem," Jonny spoke up as murmurs of both agreement and disagreement rippled across the table. "We simply don't need full-fledged Cobras for most of the work that's being done. Fitting the lasers Committé D'arl has brought into hand weapons would do perfectly well against falx or wheat snakes. Spine leopards are trickier, I'll admit, but they're a problem only on the very edges of human territory, and the Cobras we have now can control them well enough."

"And how about the spine leopard killers?" Jor Hemner spoke up quietly. "Can you handle them, as well?"

All eyes turned to him. "What are you talking about?" Zhu demanded.

"My office put the bulletin on the net late last night," Hemner said. "We found a spine leopard dead yesterday near Paleen, mauled by something as big as a gantua but obviously far more aggressive. The leopard's foreleg spines, incidentally, were rigored into their extended, defensive, position."

From the shocked looks around the table Jonny gathered the report was news to nearly all the other syndics. "We certainly don't want to make any decisions on the basis of a single unexplained event," he said quickly, hoping to diminish the shock effect of the incident. "For all we know, the spine leopard might have been poisoned by some kind of snake and killed by extra-bold scavengers."

"The evidence—" Hemner broke off suddenly, and Jonny turned to see D'arl standing with hand raised for silence.

"I must point out that Syndic Moreau is perfectly correct in warning against a hasty decision," the Committé said. "I've given you some of the reasons the Committee is offering you this equipment; there are others which are listed in the complete report I've brought. But the decision is yours, and I expect you to give this issue the careful consideration the Dominion expects from its leaders. I will be here for another few weeks, and you will have that long, if necessary, to determine what course to take." Looking down, he murmured something to Zhu, who nodded and got to his feet.

"I'm declaring a short recess so that we can all have time to examine the information Committé D'arl mentioned," the governor-general announced. "The relevant magcards are down the hall in your offices. Please take some time to study them, and we'll continue this discussion in two hours."

Jonny joined the general exodus to the building's office wing, but unlike the other syndics, he didn't stay there long. Picking up his copy of D'arl's magcard, he made two quick calls and then left.

Twenty minutes later he and Cally Halloran were on an aircar, heading southeast for Dawa District.

The last page flicked from the screen of Jonny's comboard, and with a snort he flicked off the instrument and tossed it onto the next seat. Across from him, Halloran looked up from his own comboard. "Well?"

"Not a single argument that could hold vacuum in space," Jonny growled. "We can answer all the problems D'arl raises without resorting to a Cobra assembly line."

"But your solutions come from an Aventine syndic, while his come from a Dominion Committé?"

"You got it." Sighing, Jonny gazed out the aircar window at the lush Aventine landscape below. "I don't think I've got a hope in hell of pushing a no-vote through unless we can identify this spine leopard killer fast."

"I'm not sure what that'll accomplish, actually," Halloran said, tapping his comboard. "If the stuff in here on spine leopards isn't exaggerated, you may well need a Cobra assembly line to fight its killer."

Jonny remained silent a long moment, wondering whether he should give Halloran the rest of it. At best his suspicions were slanderous; at worst they could possibly be construed as treason. "Has it occurred to you," he said at last, "how remarkably handy the timing has worked out for D'arl? Here he is, pushing us to accept a permanent Cobra presence here, and he's barely landed when this mysterious super-predator suddenly decides to pop up. He couldn't have found a better argument for his side if he'd manufactured it himself."

Halloran's eyebrows rose. "Are you implying he did manufacture it?"

Jonny shook his head slowly. "No, of course not. Probably not. But I still can't get over the timing."

Halloran shrugged. "That part of Dawa District's undergoing a pretty severe drought right now, with the Kaskia branch of the Ojaante River dried up and all. Could that have hurt the gantuas' food supply to the point where they'd risk taking on a spine leopard?"

"Not a chance. Gantuas are pure herbivores, with no meat-eating capability at all. There are a couple of that type of pseudo-omnivore here, but they're far too small to bother even a sick spine leopard."

"Then maybe the drought drove some other creature down from the mountains," Halloran persisted. "I'm keying on the drought, you see, because that's also an unusual occurrence, at least in the occupied areas of Aventine."

"And you think D'arl's visit just happened to coincide with our first drought?" Jonny said almost reluctantly. "Well... maybe. But I still don't like it."

Again Halloran shrugged. "I'll be happy to keep the possibility of foul play in mind," he said. "But until and unless we come up with something approaching hard evidence, we ought to keep such thoughts to ourselves."

In other words, he thought Jonny was making a dangerously big deal out of nothing. And he was probably right. Still...

Fifteen minutes later, they landed at the village of Paleen.

A visiting syndic generally called for a minor official fuss, or at the very least the welcoming presence of the local mayor. But Jonny had called ahead with explicit instructions to the contrary, and as he and Halloran left the aircar they found a lone man waiting. "Syndic Moreau?" he said. "I'm Niles Kier, resident Cobra."

Jonny nodded acknowledgment and indicated Halloran. "This is Cally Halloran, your soon-to-be teammate here. What have you got on the dead spine leopard?"

"Not much more than we had yesterday," Kier admitted, leading them toward an open car parked at the edge of the field. "The experts are still studying it up at Niparin, but haven't come to any conclusions yet."

"You're the one who found it, right?"

Kier nodded. "I was out doing a water survey when I spotted the carcass lying in a small hollow."

"Water survey?" Halloran put in. "You were hauling a sounder around by yourself?"

"Here you just measure the diameters of the gluevines that climb around some of the trees," Jonny explained absently. "It gives you a direct reading of the soil moisture and an indirect indication of where the water table is. Any tracks around it?"

"The ground was pretty badly torn up," Kier said as they got into the car. "I spotted some marks nearby that looked like gantua tracks, but if they were the thing was either huge or running faster than any I've ever heard of."

"From the tapes I've seen I can't see any reason a gantua should ever bother to run," Halloran commented.

Jonny nodded. As big as elephants, their bodies armored with snake-patterned horny plates, gantuas were the closest thing to living tanks he'd ever seen. "A dignified trot is about as close as they get," he told Halloran uneasily. "If this thing scared a gantua enough to make it run, we are in trouble. Let's go to the spot, Niles, and poke around a little. I gather you didn't do much exploring at the time."

"No," Kier said as he turned the car and headed west. His tone sounded more than a little defensive. "I thought my immediate duty lay in sounding the alarm... and in not leaving Paleen defenseless."

Jonny nodded grimly. It was a rationale he well remembered—and logical though it was, he knew how cowardly it could make a Cobra feel. Perhaps Kier would get the chance later to redeem himself.

They left the car at a section of reasonably dense forest at village's edge and headed into the trees on foot. The forest gave way barely a hundred meters later into a tree-dotted grassland which was the norm for the Kaskia Valley as a whole. Jonny looked around, feeling strangely more exposed and vulnerable than he ever had in the thicker woods back at Ariel. "Which way?" he asked Kier, fighting the urge to whisper.

"Uh... over there, I think. It's near a—"

"Shh!" Halloran hissed suddenly. All three men went instantly rigid... and in the silence, Jonny's auditory enhancers picked up a strange rustling of grass and a quiet snuffling snort. Turning his head slowly, he located the sound: beyond a wide stand of blussa reeds. Kier had placed it, too. Catching Jonny's eye, he pointed and gave a thumbs-up sign. Jonny nodded; gesturing to Halloran, he moved a few meters to the side and raised his hands in laser-ready position. Halloran did likewise... and Kier jumped.

The twenty-meter reconnaissance jump had usually been considered too dangerous to use during the war, leaving the Cobra as it did in a helpless ballistic trajectory for a shade over four seconds. On Aventine, with no Troft gunners around, the trick was often more useful.

"Gantua," Kier said as he hit the ground, knee servos taking the impact. "Looked sort of sick—"

And with a crash of breaking blussa, the brown-gray monster appeared across the plain... and charged.

"Scatter!" Jonny snapped, his own feet digging into the ground as he sprinted in the general direction of a tall cyprene. He would never have believed a gantua could move so fast—

Veering like a hill on legs, the creature shifted to an intercept course.

Jonny picked up his own speed, raising his hands as he did so to send twin bursts of laser fire at the gantua's head. Other flickers of light, he noted, were playing about its side, but if the creature was bothered it gave no sign. Jonny's target tree was seeming less and less likely to be a place of real safety; but on the other hand, if he could get the gantua to blast full tilt into it, the impact should at least stun the beast. Shifting his attention back and forth, he adjusted his speed... and a bare instant ahead of his pursuer he leaped high into the cyprene's branches—

And lost his grip completely as the tree swayed violently in time with the thunderous crash from below.

The programmed Cobra reflexes included a catlike maneuver for righting oneself in midair, but Jonny was far too close to the ground for it to be effective. He landed off-balance, crashing down onto his left shoulderblade, the impact driving most of the air out of his lungs.

For several seconds he just lay there, fighting to clear away the spots twinkling in front of his eyes. By the time he was able to force himself to his knees, the gantua had managed to halt its charge and was wheeling around for a second try. From behind Jonny two spears of light lanced out to catch the beast's head—the other Cobras' antiarmor lasers—and this time the gantua noticed the attack enough to emit a bellow in response. But it kept coming. Jonny climbed shakily to his feet, still struggling to get his wind back. He was still too weak to move... but somewhere along here his nanocomputer should recognize the danger and get him out of the way—

And abruptly he was hurled in a flat dive to the side. Rolling back to his feet, he turned just in time to see Halloran and Kier launch their attack.

For something that spur-of-the-moment, it was as tight a maneuver as Jonny had ever seen. Halloran, waving his arms and shouting to attract the gantua, waited until the last second before leaping to the right, his raised left leg raking the gantua's side with antiarmor laser fire as it swept past. At the same moment, Kier leaped over the beast, directing his own antiarmor blast at the juncture of head and body. Again the creature bellowed, and this time Jonny could see a line of blackened plates when it turned. But even as it paused, he could see its sides pumping rhythmically as it regained its wind, and the barely visible eyes sweeping the three Cobras showed no sign of either fear or imminent death.

Pulling his phone from his belt, Jonny keyed for local broadcast. "Hold your fire," he murmured into it as, across the plain, Halloran and Kier fumbled out their own phones. "We're not going to kill it by brute force alone."

"What the hell is that thing made of?" Halloran asked tightly. "That blast would've taken out a Troft APC."

"Gantua plates are highly ablative," Kier told him. "The cloud of vaporized material scatters all but the first couple of milliseconds of beam—and the damn things are thick, too. Jonny—Syndic—we're going to have to call Capitalia and see if anyone up there's got a rocket launcher."

"Even if they did, it'd take too long to get it here," Jonny shook his head. "If the gantua bolts, we could lose it for good."

"We go for head shots, then?" Halloran asked.

"Take a long time to kill it that way," Kier said doubtfully. "Gantua central nervous systems are a lot more decentralized than anything you're probably used to. Underbelly and heart-lung would be a better target."

"Only if we can get it to roll over," Jonny pointed out. The gantua's panting, he noticed uneasily, was already slowing down. Another minute or two and it would be ready to either attack or flee. His eyes flicked around the plain, looking for inspiration... fell on a gluevine-wrapped cyprene. "Niles, that tree to your left has a long gluevine on it. See if you can ease over and cut us a good length of it."

Moving carefully, attention on the gantua, Kier glided toward the tree. "Cally," Jonny continued, "when Niles gets the gluevine free, he's going to toss you one end. Don't touch the cut part; it'll stick like crazy to you. You two will hold it stretched between you at about knee height and I'll try and attract the gantua into it. Clear?"

"Clear," Halloran acknowledged. "Do we slice the vine open in the middle with fingertip lasers?"

"If we have time," Kier told him. "Otherwise we'll just have to hope the impact will open enough of the skin to release the glue."

Kier was at the tree now, judging with his hands the best places to cut the vine. "What happens if it charges one of us instead of you?" Halloran asked.

Jonny was almost in position now, between the other Cobras and perhaps fifty meters behind them. "Wait as long as you can, then throw your end of the vine at its legs and jump," he said. "Niles?"

"Ready." Kier took an audible breath. "Okay, Cally—look sharp."

And with twin flashes of laser fire the vine came loose.

The light, or Kier's sudden movements, triggered the gantua. With a hoarse roar it lumbered forward. Jonny yelled at it, waving his arms, and the creature changed direction toward him. At the bottom of his peripheral vision, Jonny saw the vine snake over to Halloran... erupt with laser sparkle along much of its length... go rigid just above the grass—

The gantua hit it full tilt, and with a crash that shook the area like a minor earthquake, it slammed headlong to the ground.

Down, but not out. Even as Jonny raced toward it, the creature rolled to its side, treetrunk legs straining against the vine wrapped around them. Lousy leverage or not, the vine was already showing signs of strain. This would have to be done fast....

And as he raised his antiarmor laser, Jonny abruptly realized the gantua's legs were blocking his intended target.

"Uh-oh," Kier muttered as he and Halloran joined Jonny. "We may have outsmarted ourselves on that one."

"Let's try wrapping more gluevine around it," Halloran suggested. "Maybe we can take it alive."

"Taking a berserk gantua alive is not my idea of a solution," Jonny told him. "There isn't a facility within a hundred kilometers for a quiet one, let alone this beast." He gritted his teeth. "Okay; there's one more thing we can try. Cally, when I give the word, cut the vine between its front legs. Niles, you and I'll see what we can do in the half second or so we'll have. If it doesn't work, scatter and we'll try to come up with something else. Ready? Okay, Cally; now."

The vine disintegrated in a flicker of light—and the gantua's legs, straining against it, flew wide apart to expose its abdomen.

Afterward, Jonny would shudder at the risk none of them had quite known they were taking. The gantua's underbelly was relatively unprotected, the two antiarmor lasers firing their deadly blasts at point-blank range—and still the creature was able to struggle nearly to its feet before they finally penetrated to a vital spot. Even then, its death convulsions nearly caught Kier, saved only by a combination of luck and programmed reflexes.

Halloran summed it up for all of them when the gantua finally lay still. "Good God, those things are built tough."

"I don't remember ever hearing of anyone killing one before," Jonny said. "Now I know why."

"I sure hope he was a rogue," Kier agreed, rubbing his shin where the creature's death throes had touched it. "If they've all gone crazy, we'll have to evacuate half of Dawa District alone."

"Or get a whole lot of new Cobras," Jonny muttered. Ignoring Halloran's suddenly thoughtful look, he pulled out his phone.

Governor-General Zhu had the pained look of a man caught between two opposing but equally valid requirements. "But the vote has already been taken," he said. "Committé D'arl's people are already unloading their equipment."

"So negate the vote on the grounds of new evidence," Jonny argued, staring hard at the other through the phone screen. He'd borrowed the Niparin mayor's office specifically for the use of the vision attachment, but so far the face-to-face advantage hadn't gained him a thing. "Or on the grounds that neither I nor the syndics of Palatine and Caelian were present. Come on, Zhu—this vote wasn't even supposed to be taken for a week or so."

"The others were ready to vote—what was I supposed to do? Anyway, you and the other two missing syndics wouldn't have made a difference. The vote was eleven to five, and even with your Cobra's double vote, the end result would have wound up the same. And as for new evidence, all you've said so far merely reinforces the decision. If one or more gantuas have gone crazy, we certainly are going to need more Cobras to defend ourselves."

"Doesn't that depend on why they went crazy?"

Zhu's eyes narrowed. "What does that mean?"

"I don't know—yet. The scientific people are just starting a biochemical study of the gantua we killed to see if there are any foreign substances in its system."

" 'Foreign substances'? Moreau, it strikes me you're being unnecessarily mysterious. What, in plain language, are you driving at?"

Jonny took a deep breath. "I'm not being mysterious; I simply don't know anything for certain. I have... suspicions... but I'd rather not air them without proof."

Zhu studied his face for a long minute. "All right," he said at last. "I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll call another council meeting for tomorrow morning at ten. Ostensibly it'll be so you can describe your battle with the gantua and present the scientific team's preliminary data. If you have whatever proof you seem to expect, we'll listen to your accusations or whatever then; and if it seems warranted, I'll call for a new vote. If. Is that satisfactory?"

"Yes, sir," Jonny nodded.

"Good. Ten tomorrow, then. Good-bye."

For a moment Jonny stared at the blank screen, trying to form his strategy for the meeting. But there were still too many unknowns. Giving up, he flicked on the phone again and called home.

Chrys answered on the second ring. "Hi," she said, the slight tension lines leaving her face as she saw him. "How are things going?"

"Slow, at the moment," he told her. "I'm just sitting around Niparin waiting for the scientific types to give us something solid to use. Cally went back to Paleen with Niles for the night in case something else happens there. Though there aren't a lot of approaches to the village even a crazed gantua could get through."

"That helps," Chrys nodded. "Is Niles's leg okay?"

"Oh, sure. Bruised, but I'm sure he's had worse."

She smiled faintly. "Listen, Jonny, about a half hour ago we got a call from Capitalia. It was your brother Jame."

So D'arl had brought him along. "Well! How was he?"

"Fine, he said. He wanted to know if you and Gwen could meet him at about eleven tonight for a late supper."

Jonny grinned. Imagine Jame Moreau, late of Cedar Lake, Horizon, casually inviting relatives to fly two thousand kilometers for a meal! Life on Asgard had affected him, all right. "What did Gwen say?"

"She said sure, made me promise to call you in plenty of time, and hopped an aircar for Capitalia."

"On my syndic's authority, I presume." He looked at his watch: two hours before he'd have to leave. Well, he could always have the gantua data phoned to him at Capitalia if it wasn't ready before then. "Okay," he told Chrys. "You want to try and scare up a short-notice sitter for Corwin and join us?"

She shook her head. "Jame already asked me that, but I think this one should be for Moreaus only. I'll get to meet him before he leaves Aventine. Oh, Gwen suggested you meet at the restaurant we took Cally and her to yesterday."

"Sounds good." He grimaced. "This is some vacation for you, isn't it? I'm sorry."

"Don't worry about me," she said softly. "You just be careful yourself."

"I will. Love you, Chrys."

"Love you, Jonny. Say hi to Jame for me."

He broke the connection and again glanced at his watch. Two hours... and nothing he could do to help with the gantua autopsy. And whatever they found...

Would not in and of itself be proof that D'arl was behind it all.

But at least a part of that proof might still be available. Heading outside, he picked up his aircar and flew back down to Paleen. It was getting dark by the time he and Halloran returned to the place where they'd killed the gantua, but with their vision and auditory enhancers it was unlikely even a spine leopard could sneak up on them. Still, the events of the afternoon had left Jonny a bit jumpy, and he was glad their task took only a few minutes.

An hour and a half later, he was flying over the starlit landscape toward Capitalia... with information that would turn the ill-considered council vote on its ear.

Gwen and Jame were already seated at a table when Jonny arrived at the restaurant. "Jonny!" Jame exclaimed, rising for a firm handshake as he joined them. "It's been more than just a couple of years, but you see we did finally get here to see you."

It took Jonny a few seconds to track down the reference. "Oh—right. The day I left Horizon. You're looking good, Jame."

His brother grinned. "Hard but useful work. Same prescription you've been following. Let's sit down, shall we? Gwen's been trying to translate this menu for me, but I think we're going to need an expert."

They sat down together and the conversation continued... and as they talked, Jonny studied the man his brother had become.

Physically, of course, Jame's transition from nineteen to thirty-five was less of a jolt than Gwen's maturing had been; but like Gwen, there was something about him that all his tapes had left Jonny unprepared for. Jame's teen-aged self-confidence had blossomed into an almost tangible air of authority and competence—an air which, almost paradoxically, had no hint of condescension to it. Accustomed to dealing with the Dominion elite, he had nevertheless not forgotten how to talk with ordinary citizens.

Or else he's gone beyond even arrogance and learned how to fake sociability, he thought, and felt immediately ashamed. This was Jame, after all; the one who'd warned him not to abandon his ethics. No matter who or what D'arl was, he could surely not have corrupted the younger man so thoroughly as to have left not even a trace of the tampering.

From which it followed that Jame didn't really know what kind of man he was working for. And if that was the case...

Jonny waited for an appropriate opening, as a good soldier should, and as the meal drew to a close it presented itself.

"...so when I found out Committé D'arl was going to personally supervise the whole thing here, I naturally made sure to get my bid in early to come with him." Jame took a sip of cahve. "He worked very hard to get the Central Committee to go along with the plan; I'm glad to see you're going to accept it, too."

"So D'arl's got his political reputation on the line here, does he?" Jonny asked casually.

A flicker of uncertainty passed across Jame's face. "He's got some prestige at stake, but nothing quite that crucial."

"As far as you know, you mean."

Jame set his mug down carefully and lowered his voice. "All right, Jonny; you don't have to prod around the edges like that with me. What's on your mind?"

Jonny pursed his lips. "I expect you've heard by now that we killed a berserk gantua southeast of here today." The other nodded. "You may also know that in the fifteen years we've been here no gantua has ever shown even the slightest aggressiveness. All right. What would you say, then, if I told you I have proof the gantua we killed had been drugged?"

Gwen inhaled sharply. Jame's eyes narrowed. "Drugged how?"

"A potent hallucinogen-stimulant chemical had been sprayed over the blussa reeds near where it attacked us. That's all the gantuas ever eat, so it was a perfect way to get the stuff into their systems."

"A perfect way for whom?"

Jonny hesitated. "I don't know, specifically. But I'll point out that it gave D'arl a lot of extra push in the vote today. And that it happened right after your ship got in."

Jame leaned back in his seat and regarded Jonny thoughtfully. "I could remind you that I've worked with the Committé and his staff for several years now and that I'm a reasonably good judge of character. I could also point out that unsupported accusations could get you in a lot of trouble. But I'd rather tackle the whole issue logically. Assuming someone aboard our ship sprayed this drug from orbit, why hasn't every other animal in that area gone crazy as well? Even if we dropped a mist bomb or something—and I don't even know if our approach path was anywhere near there—there should've been some dispersion."

Jonny exhaled through clenched teeth. "All right, then. Someone on your ship must have had an agent down here with the stuff all ready to spray."

"You only had a few hours' warning, though, didn't you?" Gwen spoke up. "Could something the size of a gantua ingest enough of the drug that fast?"

"It would probably have needed a massive initial dose," Jame agreed. "And in that case, why coat the blussa plants at all?" He frowned. "Though I'll admit the Committé has been very interested in Aventine flora and fauna recently, and I remember blussa reeds showing up in some of the studies I worked on."

"How were they mentioned, specifically?" Jonny asked, leaning forward.

"Let's see...." Jame stared into his cahve. "If I remember correctly, it was part of a strategic minerals study he was having us do. Something about Aventine becoming self-sufficient in case the Troft Corridor was closed. I dug out the fact that your blussa plant is unusually good at concentrating some metal—I forget which one—especially in late autumn."

"And from this study he almost undoubtedly learned that gantuas are the only things larger than insects that feed on blussa plants," Jonny said grimly. "So his agents inject massive doses of hallucinogen into a few gantuas and spray the blussa nearby to ensure they don't come down from their high until they've attracted our attention."

"Jonny, you're edging very close to sedition here." Jame's voice was barely audible, his hand rigid as it clutched his mug. "Even if what you're saying is true, you haven't got a shred of evidence to point to the Committé himself."

"Not yet. But maybe you can get that evidence for me."

Jame's face seemed to become a mask. "What do you mean?"

"If anyone aboard your ship is involved in this, they'll almost certainly have had communication with their agents here. You can pull the radio log and look for coded transmissions."

For a long moment Jame locked eyes with his brother. "You're asking me to be disloyal now," he said at last.

"Am I? If D'arl's implicated, shouldn't that fact be brought to the attention of the entire Central Committee? And if someone's working behind his back—for whatever reason—shouldn't you find out and let him know?"

"And if the whole thing's some home-grown Aventine plot, wouldn't I be betraying the trust Committé D'arl's placed in me?" Jame retorted.

"Jame, you've got to help me," Jonny said carefully, fighting to keep any hint of his desperation from creeping into his voice. Jame was right: he hadn't any proof that D'arl was manipulating Aventine politics, and unless he could get it, the Committé's plan would go ahead unchecked. "Don't you see how the continual presence of Cobras is going to warp our society? I don't want D'arl's Cobra factory set up on Aventine—and I sure as hell don't want it here for a fraudulent reason."

He stopped abruptly, embarrassed by his outburst. Jame ran his finger absently around the rim of his mug, then looked up at Gwen. "What are your thoughts on this?" he asked her.

She shrugged fractionally. "I've barely been here a day, Jame—I really can't say anything about the benefits versus drawbacks of this so-called Cobra factory. But if Jonny says it'd be bad—" She grinned. "You know how everything Jonny says and does is right."

Jame relaxed, smiling back. "That's only because he wasn't around during those critical formative years when you were busy fighting with me," he said.

"Jonny was doing a lot for the Dominion during those years," she replied softly.

Jame looked down at his cahve again. "He was, wasn't he?" He took a deep breath, pursed his lips. "All right," he said at last, looking Jonny in the eye. "I guess I can risk the Committé's anger for something that's this important to you. But I won't be able to simply give you any logs I find. I'll analyze them myself and let you know if there's anything out of the ordinary. They're all technically confidential, after all."

Jonny nodded. "I understand. And I wouldn't be asking you to do this if there was any other way."

"Sure." Raising his mug, Jame drained the rest of his cahve and stood up. "I'll call you as soon as I have anything." He nodded to them both and left.

Jonny leaned back with a sigh of relief. If this worked...

"I hope you know what you're doing."

He looked over to find Gwen's eyes on him. "If it works, I should have at least enough indirect evidence to get Zhu and the council thinking about what they're doing to Aventine."

"And if it doesn't," she rejoined quietly, "you'll have risked—maybe ruined—Jame's career for nothing."

Jonny closed his eyes. "Don't remind me." He sat like that for a moment, feeling the tension of the day turning to fatigue and soaking into his bones. "Well," he said, opening his eyes and getting to his feet, "what's done is done. Let me get a car to take you to a hotel for the night."

"What about you?" she asked as they headed for the exit.

"I'm staying at the Dominion Building office tonight," he told her grimly. "It occurs to me that I've got information there that someone may think worth stealing. I almost hope they try it."

But the packet from the scientific team in Niparin was untouched when he arrived, and nothing but uncomfortable dreams disturbed his sleep.

It was quickly clear that, whether he'd intended such a result or not, Zhu had given Jonny the best opening he could possibly have come up with. The other syndics listened closely—even raptly—as Jonny described in detail the Cobras' battle with the gantua the previous afternoon. He hadn't had that kind of attention in weeks; and if it emphasized how much Aventine needed Cobra power, it surely also reminded them that Cobra good will and cooperation were equally vital. It was, he decided, a fair psychological trade-off.

"The important question, of course," he said when he'd finished, "is what could cause a gantua to behave like that. As of late yesterday evening we have the answer." He paused, flicking a glance at D'arl. The Committé was as attentive as the others, but if he saw his scheme unraveling, his expression gave no hint of it. "It appears," Jonny continued, "that the gantua was deliberately drugged with a hallucinogenic chemical sprayed directly on its food supply."

He paused again, but the dramatic outburst he'd half expected never materialized. "That's ridiculous," Jor Hemner spoke up into the silence. "Why would anyone do something like that?"

Jonny took a deep breath. This was it. "Perhaps," he said, locking eyes with D'arl, "to persuade us to accept a Cobra presence we don't really need."

D'arl returned his gaze steadily. "Are you accusing me of drugging your gantuas, Syndic?"

"And have you got any proof?" Zhu added tartly before Jonny could answer. "Because you'd damn well better not be even suggesting Committé D'arl has any connection with this unless you do."

The proof is on his ship, Jonny wanted to say... but until and unless Jame contacted him, he didn't dare invite any scrutiny in that direction. "I'm not accusing anyone specifically, gentlemen," he said, shifting his gaze between Zhu and D'arl. "But since it seems obvious a crime has been committed—and since it's unarguable that the drugged gantua's existence had at least an indirect effect on yesterday's vote—I would like to suggest the vote be rescinded and a new vote not be taken until all the facts are in on this case."

"What other facts do you expect to find?" an older syndic put in. "Or should I say hope to find? It seems to me you've got nothing but a soap-bubble of—"

"Gentlemen." D'arl's voice was quiet, but there was an edge to it that cut off the syndic in mid-sentence. "If I may make a suggestion, it seems to me you're putting too much emphasis on guarding my honor and too little on solving the genuine mystery Syndic Moreau's uncovered. If there is indeed clandestine activity underway, it must be stopped, no matter who is involved. If, on the other hand, what we have here is a purely natural phenomenon, you should similarly learn all that you can about it, and as quickly as possible."

"Natural phenomenon?" Jonny snorted. "If the Committé will excuse my skepticism—"

"Skepticism is a natural part of science," D'arl interrupted him calmly. "But before you announce your disbelief too loudly, I suggest you check on the following: one, are all the blussa plants in the Kaskia Valley coated by this drug; two, is there any trace of it on the surrounding foliage; three, are there any conditions under which the plants could themselves naturally produce such a drug; and four, are such conditions currently present. The answers to these questions might prove interesting." He stood up and nodded to Zhu. "With your permission, I will continue the equipment setup begun yesterday. If a later vote requires its removal, it can be done easily enough."

"Of course, Committé," Zhu agreed quickly. "Thank you for coming today. Syndics: the meeting is adjourned."

And that was it. In half a minute, D'arl had completely blunted his attack. An attack the Committé had been remarkably well prepared for....

Tight-lipped, Jonny collected his magcards and left the room.

Halloran, still in Niparin, listened quietly as Jonny described the fiasco over the phone. "He sound awfully sure of himself," he commented thoughtfully. "What chance that he's right about this being a natural phenomenon?"

Jonny exhaled loudly. "It's hard to imagine him going that far out on a purely speculative limb," he admitted. "But if that's what's happening, how come he knew about it and we didn't?"

Halloran shrugged. "You've been sending samples and data back to Asgard for a long time, and they've got far better test and computer simulation equipment than you'll ever see here. Or maybe it was something even simpler; maybe some of the live plants got dehydrated during the trip."

"Dehydrated. So you think it's the drought?"

"I don't know what other condition he could have been referring to. It's the only environmental factor that's new to you."

Jonny gnawed the inside of his cheek. "The drought. All right, then. If that's the problem, we'll just have to eliminate it."

Halloran cocked an eyebrow. "You know a rainmaker who specializes in getting clouds over mountains?"

"Actually, I can do better than that. Hang on." He pressed the lock key on the phone and got a connection to Rankin. Chrys answered, the screen splitting to include her image. "Hi, Hon," he greeted her. "Is Gwen there?"

"Hi, Jonny; Cally. Yes, she's in the kitchen. Gwen?"

A moment later Gwen's face replaced Chrys's. "Hi, guys. What's up?"

"Your vacation," Jonny told her. "I've got a little job for you and Cally."

Describing what he had in mind took only a few minutes... and it turned out to be the easy part.

"Jonny, that's crazy," Gwen told him flatly. "Do you have any idea of what you're asking?"

"Syndic Hemner will be furious if he catches them," Chrys put in from off-camera.

"Why?" Jonny countered. "They're both supposed to be in his district, remember?"

"But under his authority, not yours," Halloran said.

"So you leave your field phones off and plead ignorance," Jonny shrugged. "What's he going to do, bust me back to cee-five?"

"Probably have you arrested and sent to the Palatine beachhead," Halloran said bluntly. "Especially if it doesn't work."

"But if it does work he won't be able to do a thing without looking like a petty legalist," Jonny said. "And I have confidence in you two."

"Well, I don't," Gwen admitted. "Jonny, you can't do something like this on ten minutes' notice. It takes time—time for studies, time for mapping and emplacement—"

"Maps we've got—the Molada mountain range has been extensively studied. As to the rest, we can surely risk a little environmental damage."

"Jonny, there's still one major point you're missing." Chrys moved back into camera range, and Jonny was struck by the odd intensity in her face. "What you're doing," she continued softly, "is planning to bypass legal channels, to take a major policy decision away from Zhu and the other syndics and handle it yourself. Don't you see?—that's exactly what you and Ken fought to keep Challinor from doing seven years ago."

Jonny's mouth felt suddenly dry. "No. No, it's different, Chrys. He was trying to take over the whole planet, to totally eliminate the Dominion authority."

"It's different only in degree," she shook her head minutely. "You'll still be setting a precedent that a syndic—or a Cobra—who doesn't like a legal governmental decision can simply ignore it and go his own way."

But it's not the same, the words echoed through Jonny's mind. The government's doing something stupid just because an important outsider wants them to. My responsibility is to the people of Aventine—

To the people of Aventine.

Challinor's old argument.

The three faces crowded together in the phone screen were watching him closely. "All right," he said with a sigh. "Gwen, you and Cally will head out for the Kaskia Valley, but to do feasibility studies only. I'll bring it up with the whole council before we take any real action, but I want to be able to at least show them a solid alternative."

Chrys seemed to sag as the tension left her. "Thank you," she murmured.

He smiled tightly. "Don't thank me. You're the one who was right." He focused on Gwen. "Chrys'll get you in touch with Theron Yutu, my assistant, who'll find you an aircar and pilot and whatever else you'll need. Check with Chrys for anything electronic—if she can't find it, she can probably build it. You can rendezvous with Cally in Niparin and go from there. As for you, Cally—" He held up a finger for emphasis. "No matter what Theron or Gwen tell you, any equipment you take is replaceable. If you run into a crazed gantua up there, don't hesitate to grab Gwen and run for it. Got it?"

"Got it." Halloran hesitated. "If it helps any, I think you're making the right decision."

"Not really, but thanks anyway. Chrys?"

"I'll call Theron right away," she nodded, all business now. "We can probably have Gwen down to Niparin in three hours or less."

"Good. Well... keep me posted, everyone, and I'll let you know when you're needed here. And be careful."

They all signed off, and for several minutes Jonny just sat there, feeling oddly alone in the quiet office. As if his own career and Jame's weren't enough, he'd now put Gwen's and Cally's on the target range, too. Could he really be that sure he was right about all this?

There wasn't any answer for that... but at the moment there was something he needed more than answers, anyway. Flipping on the phone, he called D'arl's ship. "Jame Moreau," he told the young ensign who answered. "Tell him it's his brother."

The other nodded and faded; a minute later the screen lit up with Jame's image. "Yes, Jonny?" he said. His voice was casually friendly, but there was an edge of wariness to his expression.

"I'd like to get together with you later," Jonny said. "Dinner tonight, maybe, whenever you get off duty?"

The wariness deepened. "Well..."

"No inquisitions, no favors, no politics," Jonny promised. "I'd just like to be with family for a while. If you've got the time."

Jame smiled faintly, the tension easing from his face. "There's always time for the important stuff," he said quietly. "Let's make it lunch—that same restaurant in half an hour?"

Jonny smiled back. Already the weight around his shoulders was lifting a little. "I'll be there."

It took a week, but at last the results of the various blussa reed tests began to coalesce... and they were indeed just as D'arl had suggested.

"It seems to be a response to severe lack of available ground water," the senior botanist told the council, his hand trembling noticeably as he shifted graphs, complex formulas, and photos on the syndics' comboards. He'd probably never before addressed even a single syndic before, Jonny thought, let alone a group of them plus a Dominion Committé. "One of the components in the cutin—that's the layer that protects against water loss—alters chemically from this form to this one." The two molecular diagrams appeared on the comboards. "It turns out that this makes good biological sense in two complementary ways," the botanist continued. "Not only is the new cutin fifteen to twenty percent better at controlling transpiration, but the chemical reaction involved actually releases two molecules of water, which are then available for the plant to use."

"In other words, the drier it gets, the crazier the gantuas become?" Syndic Hemner asked.

"Basically, yes," the scientist nodded. "There may be a cutoff somewhere where the gantuas switch to a different plant species for food, but if there is, we don't seem to have reached it yet."

Seated beside Gwen against the side wall, Halloran caught Jonny's eye and wrinkled his nose. Jonny nodded fractionally in agreement: if the gantua they'd fought wasn't fully berserk, he had no wish to meet one that was.

"Well, then, our alternatives seem pretty clear," Hemner said grimly. "We either get Committé D'arl's new Cobras into service as quickly as possible or pull completely out of the Kaskia Valley until the drought ends. If it ever does."

"There's one more possibility," Jonny said into the growing murmur of agreement.

"And that is...?" Zhu prompted.

"End the drought now." Jonny gestured to Gwen. "May I present Dr. Gwen Moreau, recently returned from the mountains surrounding the Kaskia Valley."

Gwen stood. "With your permission, Governor-General Zhu, I would like to present the results of a study Syndic Moreau asked me to make a week ago."

"Concerning what?" Zhu asked suspiciously.

"Concerning a proposal to break a pass in the Molada Mountains that would divert water from Lake Ojaante directly into the currently dry Kaskia riverbed."

Jaw sagging slightly, Zhu waved her wordlessly to the table.

"Thank you. Gentlemen," she addressed the syndics, sliding her magcard into its slot, "let me show you how easily this proposal could be carried out...."

And for the better part of an hour she did just that, punctuating her talk with more charts and diagrams than even the botanist who'd preceded her. She spoke authoritatively and coherently, slipping in enough about the basic methods of tectonic utilization to painlessly educate even the most ignorant of the syndics... and slowly Jonny sensed the silence around the table change from astonishment to interest to guarded enthusiasm.

For him the changes went even deeper, as his mentally superimposed image of Gwen The Ten-Year-Old vanished forever from her face. His little sister was an adult now... and he was damn proud of what she'd become.

The final picture faded at last from the comboard screens and Gwen nodded to the syndics. "If there are any questions now, I'll do my best to answer them."

There was a moment of silence. Jonny glanced at D'arl, bracing for the attack the Committé would surely launch against this rival scheme. But the other remained silent, his look of admiration matching others Jonny could see around the table.

"We will need more study, if merely to confirm your evaluations," Zhu spoke up at last. "But unless you've totally missed some major problem, I think it safe to say that you can start drawing up detailed plans immediately for the precise fault-line charge placements you'll need." He nodded to her and glanced around the table. "If there's no further business—" He paused, almost unwillingly, at the sight of Jonny's raised forefinger. "Yes, Syndic Moreau?"

"I would like to request, sir, that a new vote be taken on Committé D'arl's proposal," Jonny said with polite firmness. "I believe the study just presented has borne out my earlier contention that our problems can be solved without the creation of a new generation of Cobras. I'd like to give the council a new opportunity to agree or disagree with that contention."

Zhu shook his head. "I'm sorry, but in my opinion you've shown us nothing that materially changes the situation."

"What? But—"

"Governor-General." D'arl's voice was calm as always. "If it would ease your official conscience, let me state that I have no objection to a new vote." His eyes met Jonny's and he smiled. "In my opinion, Syndic Moreau's earned a second try."

The vote was taken... and when it was over, the tally was eleven to seven in favor of D'arl's proposal.

Parked at one end of Capitalia's starfield, D'arl's ship was an impressive sight—smaller than the big space-only transports, of course, but still more than twice the size of Aventine's own Dewdrop. A sensor-guard perimeter extended another fifty meters in all directions, and as Jonny passed its boundary, he noticed an automated turret atop the ship rotate slightly to cover him. The two Marines at the closed entryway made no such obvious moves, but Jonny saw that the muzzles of their shoulder-mounted parrot guns stayed on him the entire way. "Syndic Jonny Moreau to see Committé D'arl," he told them, coming to a halt a few meters away.

"Are you expected, sir?" one of the guards asked. He could afford to be courteous; in full exoskeleton armor he was more powerful than even a Cobra.

"He'll see me," Jonny said. "Tell him I'm here."

The other guard glanced at his partner. "The Committé's quite busy, sir, with the departure tomorrow and all—"

"Tell him I'm here," Jonny repeated.

The first guard pursed his lips and touched a control at his throat. His conversation was brief and inaudible, but a moment later he nodded. "The Committé will see you, Syndic," he told Jonny. "Your escort will be here shortly."

Jonny nodded and settled down to wait; and when the escort arrived, he wasn't surprised to see who it was.

"Jonny," Jame nodded in greeting. His smile was cordial but tight. "Committé D'arl's waiting in his office. If you'll follow me...."

They passed through the heavy kyrelium steel entryway and between another pair of armored Marines. "I was hoping to see you again before we left," Jame said as they started into a maze of short corridors. "Your office said you were on vacation and couldn't be reached."

"Chrys thought it would help me to get away for a couple of weeks," Jonny told him evenly. "Try to come to grips with what your Committé's done to us."

Jame looked sideways at him. "And... did you?"

"You mean do I intend to attack him?" Jonny shook his head. "No. All I want is to understand him, to find out why. He owes me that much."

Ahead, two more Marines—this pair in dress uniforms—flanked an obviously reinforced door. Jame led the way between them and palmed the lock, and the panel slid soundlessly open.

"Syndic Moreau," D'arl said, rising from the desk that dominated the modest-sized room. "Welcome. Please sit down." He indicated a chair across the desk from him.

Jonny did so. Jame took a chair by the desk's corner, equidistant from the other two men. Jonny wondered briefly if the choice was deliberate, decided it probably was.

"I'd hoped you'd come by this evening," D'arl said, sitting back down himself. "This will be our last chance to talk—shall we say 'honestly'?—before the tedious departure ceremonies Zhu has scheduled for tomorrow."

" 'Tedious' ? I take it it's not the public acclaim or adoration that makes all this worthwhile to you, then." Jonny took a moment to glance around the room. Comfortable, certainly, but hardly up to the standards of luxury he would have expected in a Dominion Committé's personal quarters. "Obviously, it's not the wealth, either. So what is it? The power to make people do what you want?"

D'arl shook his head. "You miss the whole point of what happened here."

"Do I? You knew the gantuas would be going on a rampage just at the time you came dangling your Cobra bait in front of our faces. You knew all along it was the dehydrated blussa reeds, yet you said nothing about it until I forced your hand."

"And what if I had?" D'arl countered. "It's not as if I could be blamed for causing the situation."

Jonny snorted. "Of course not."

"But as you said outside," D'arl continued, as if he hadn't noticed the interruption, "the important question is why. Why did I offer and why did Aventine accept?"

"Why the council accepted is easy," Jonny said. "You're a Dominion Committé and what you say goes."

D'arl shook his head. "I told you you were missing the point. The gantua problem helped, certainly, but it was really only part of a much more basic motivation. They accepted because it was the solution that required the least amount of work."

Jonny frowned. "I don't understand."

"It's clear enough. By placing the main burden and danger of Aventine's growth on you Cobras, they've postponed any need to shift the responsibility to the general population. Given a chance to continue such a system, people will nearly always jump at it. Especially with an excuse as immediate and convenient as the gantuas to point to."

"But it's only a short-term solution," Jonny insisted. "In the long run—"

"I know that," D'arl snapped. "But the fraction of humanity who can sacrifice their next meal for a feast two weeks away wouldn't fill this city. If you're going to stay in politics, you'd damn well better learn that."

He stopped and grimaced into the silence. "It's been years since I lost my temper in anything approaching public," he admitted. "Forgive me, and take it as a sign that I'm not any happier than you are that this had to be done."

"Why did it?" Jonny asked quietly. Two weeks ago he would have shouted the question, putting into it all the frustration and fury he'd felt then. But now the anger was gone and he'd accepted his failure, and the question was a simple request for information.

D'arl sighed. "The other why. Because, Syndic Moreau, it was the only way I could think of to save this world from disaster." He waved his hand skyward. "The Troft threats to close the Corridor have been getting louder and more insistent over the past year or so. Only one thing keeps them from doing it tonight: the fact that it would mean a two-front war. And for Aventine to be a credible part of that two-front threat, you must have a continued Cobra presence."

Jonny shook his head. "But it doesn't work that way. We have no transport capability to speak of—we can't possibly threaten them. And even if we could, they could always launch a pre-emptive strike and wipe us out from the sky in a matter of hours."

"But they wouldn't. I once thought that myself, but the more I study the indirect psychological data gleaned over the years, the more I suspect mass destruction simply isn't the Troft way of making war. No, they'd be much more likely to invade, as they did on Silvern and Adirondack."

"But you still don't need Cobras to defend against that," Jonny persisted, feeling frustration stirring to life in him again. "You brought in antiarmor lasers—you could just as easily have brought in standard laser rifles and organized a militia or even a standing army. Why can't I make you understand that?"

D'arl smiled sadly. "Because the Trofts aren't afraid of human militias or armies. They're afraid of Cobras."

Jonny blinked. He opened his mouth to disagree... but all that came out was a single whispered syllable: "Damn."

D'arl nodded. "And you see now why I had to do all this. Aventine may never have the ability to truly defend itself against an invasion, but as long as a deterrent exists, even a purely psychological one... well, you at least have a chance."

"And the Dominion is spared the trouble and expense of a punitive war?" Jonny suggested acidly.

Again, D'arl smiled. "You're beginning to understand the mechanisms of politics. The greatest good for the greatest number, and immediate benefits for as many as possible."

"Or at least for those whose support you need?" Jonny asked quietly. "Those whose objections don't count can be ignored?"

"Jonny, it's your safety we're talking about here," Jame put in earnestly. "Yes, it's going to cost you something, but everything in life does."

"I know that." Jonny stood up. "And I'll even accept that the Committé had our interests at least somewhat at heart. But I don't have to like his solution, and I don't have to like his method of pushing it on us. You withheld information about the gantuas from us, Committé, maybe for months—and someone could have been killed because of it. If I could see it making a scrap of difference, I'd have that fact on the public net tonight. As it is, I suppose I'll just have to leave you to your own conscience. If you still have one."

"Jonny—" Jame began angrily.

"No, it's all right," D'arl interrupted him. "An honest enemy is worth a dozen allies of expediency. Good-bye, Syndic Moreau."

Jonny nodded and turned his back on the Committé. The door slid open as he approached it and he stepped through, relying on his memory to get him back through the corridors to the ship's exit. Thoughts churning, he didn't notice Jame had followed him until the other spoke. "I'm sorry it had to end that way. I would have liked you to understand him."

"Oh, I understand him," Jonny replied shortly. "I understand that he's a politician and can't bother to think through the human consequences of his chess moves."

"You're a politician now yourself," Jame reminded him, guiding him through a turn he'd forgotten. "Chances are you'll be stuck with a similar no-win situation yourself someday. In the meantime, I hope you have enough wins and losses to be able to handle both a bit better."

They said their good-byes at the entryway—cool, formal words of farewell Jonny would never have envisioned saying to his own brother—and a few minutes later the Cobra was back in his car.

But he didn't drive off immediately. Instead, he sat behind the wheel and stared at the muted sheen of the Dominion ship, his mind replaying over and over again Jame's last words to him. Could he really be reacting so strongly simply because he'd lost a minor power struggle? He was unused to defeat, after all. Could his noble-sounding concern for Aventine's future be truly that petty underneath?

No. He'd suffered defeats many times: on Adirondack, on Horizon after the war, even in the opening round of the brief struggle against Challinor. He knew how losing felt, knew how he reacted to it... and knew it was often only temporary.

Temporary.

With one final glance at D'arl's ship, Jonny started the car. No, it wasn't over yet. Aventine would survive and grow; and he, not D'arl, would be best in position to guide that growth. And if learning the art of politics was what he needed to do, he would become the best damn politician this side of Asgard.

In the meantime... there were a woman, a child, and a district who deserved his full attention. Turning the car around, he headed for home. Chrys, he knew, would be waiting up.

Interlude

The haiku garden had changed over the years, slowly and subtly enough that D'arl no longer remembered exactly how it had been when he had succeeded Committé H'orme. One stretch, however, showed D'arl's hand clearly: a series of blussa reeds, stunted cyprene trees, and other flora from Aventine. As far as he knew, he was the only Committé to incorporate plant life of the Outer Colonies in his haiku garden... and it looked very much like no one else would ever have the chance to do so.

Jame Moreau, at his side, correctly interpreted his gaze. "This time they mean it, don't they," he said. It was more statement than question.

D'arl hesitated, then nodded. "I can't see any other interpretation for such a clear-cut demand. We're going to be lucky if the ship we're sending doesn't get stranded on Aventine."

"Or halfway back." Jame squatted down to straighten a blussa reed that was trying to fall over.

"Halfway back would be a problem," D'arl agreed. "But we can't let the Trofts close the Corridor without at least giving Aventine a little warning."

"For all the good it'll do." Jame's voice was controlled, but D'arl knew what he was thinking. The younger man's brother and sister were out there; and if the relationships were a bit cooler than they'd once been, Jame still cared deeply for them both.

"They'll survive," the Committé told him, wishing the words could be more than ineffectual puffs of air. "The Troft concept of hostage seems to involve land and property instead of people. If they behave themselves, the Trofts aren't likely to hurt them."

Jame straightened up, brushing bits of dirt from his fingers. "Except that they won't behave themselves," he said quietly. "They'll fight, especially Jonny and the other Cobras—and that is, after all, just what the Committee and Joint Command want them to do."

D'arl sighed. "That's always been the fate hanging over their heads, Moreau. We knew it when we sent them out—you probably knew it, down deep, when you first came up with the plan. Whatever happens now, it was still worth the risk."

Jame nodded. "I know, sir. But I can't help wishing there was something we could do for them here."

"I'm open to suggestions."

"How about letting the Trofts close the Corridor in exchange for leaving the colonies alone?"

D'arl shook his head. "I've thought of that, but the Committee would never go for it. Impossible to verify, for starters. Besides which, we've put a lot of money, people, and effort into those worlds, and we couldn't simply cut them adrift without a fight."

Jame sighed and nodded in reluctant agreement. "I'd like to request a place on the courier ship, sir, if you can get me aboard. I know it's short notice, but I can be ready before the scheduled lift from Adirondack."

D'arl had suspected the request was coming, but that didn't make his answer any easier to give. "I'm sorry, Moreau, but I'm afraid I can't allow you to go. You've pointed out yourself the danger of Troft capture or destruction on the return trip—and before you tell me you're willing to take the risks, let me say I'm not willing for you to do so. You know too much about the internal workings and frictions of the Committee, and I'd hate to have the Trofts using our own most petty politics against us."

"Then let me take a fast recall-blockage treatment," Jame persisted. "It wouldn't delay the lift by more than a day if I can schedule my recuperation period to be aboard ship."

D'arl shook his head. "No—because you could lose it all permanently with a hasty treatment like that, and I'm not risking that, either."

Jame exhaled in defeat. "Yes, sir."

D'arl gazed off across the haiku garden. "I'm not insensitive to your feelings," he said quietly, "but such a hurried meeting with your family under these conditions would be bittersweet at best and certainly unproductive. The best thing you can do for them is to stay here and help me hold off the diplomatic breakdown as long as I can. The longer we have before actual hostilities begin, the more time they'll have to prepare."

And the more time—he didn't add—the Dominion would have to prepare its own defenses. Because important as they were, the Outer Colonies represented less than four hundred thousand people... and from the perspective of the dome, the Dominion's seventy other worlds and hundred billion other people were vastly more important. In the defense of those people, Aventine and its sister worlds were ultimately expendable. The greatest good for the greatest number was still the most stable guidepoint D'arl knew.

He was careful not to spell it all out for Jame... but then, the other had probably already figured it out. Why else would he have wanted to go to Aventine and say good-bye?

With a sigh, D'arl continued down the path. One more curve and he would be back to his office door. Back to the real world, and to the looming specter of war.

And to waiting for a miracle he knew wouldn't happen.

Statesman: 2432

The bedside phone's signal was a loud, directional buzz scientifically designed to wake even deep sleepers. But it had been months since Jonny slept merely deeply, and his mind barely noticed the sound enough to incorporate it into his current dream. It wasn't until Chrys's gentle prodding escalated to a vigorous shake that he finally drifted up to partial wakefulness. "Um?" he asked, eyes still closed.

"Jonny, Theron Yutu's on the phone," she said. "He says it's urgent."

"Uff," Jonny sighed, rolling heavily onto his side and punching at the hold-release button. "Yeah?"

"Governor, I'm at the starfield," Yutu's voice came. "A Dominion courier ship's on its way in—ETA about an hour. They want you, Governor-General Stiggur, and as many syndics as possible assembled here when they arrive."

"At—what is it, three in the morning? What's the rush?"

"I don't know, sir—they wouldn't say anything more than that. But the starfield night manager said they wanted no more than a twelve-hour turnaround."

"They want to leave in twelve hours? What the hell is—? Oh, never mind; I'm sure they wouldn't tell you." Jonny inhaled deeply, trying to clear the ground clutter from his brain. "Have you gotten in touch with Stiggur yet?"

"No, sir. The Hap-3 satellite's still out, and it'll be another half hour before Hap-2 is in position to make the call."

And once he was notified it would be another three hours before he could get back from the outland district he was touring. Which meant the whole burden of greeting this mysterious and apparently impatient Dominion representative was going to fall on Jonny. "Well, you'd better get some people calling all the syndics—even the ones who can't get here in an hour should come as soon as they can. Uh... any idea of what rank this guy is?"

"No, sir, but from his attitude I doubt he's looking for much in the way of ceremony."

"Well, that's one bright spot, anyway. If it's efficiency he wants, we'll give it to him with spangles. We'll skip the Dominion Building altogether and meet at the starfield's entrypoint building. Can you get us a decently sized office or conference room and set up some security around it?"

"Almo Pyre's already down there—I'll have him find you a room."

"Good." Jonny tried to think of anything else he should suggest, but gave up the effort. Yutu generally knew what he was doing, anyway. "All right, I'll be at the starfield in half an hour. Better get out there yourself—I might need you."

"Yes, sir. Sorry about all this."

"S'okay. See you."

Jonny flicked off the phone with a sigh and lay quietly for a moment, gathering his strength. Then, trying not to groan audibly, he sat up. It wasn't as bad as he'd expected: he felt the usual stiffness in his joints, but only one or two actual twinges of pain. The lightheadedness left quickly, and he got to his feet. The hemafacient pills were on his nightstand, but he technically wasn't supposed to take one for another four hours. He did so anyway, and by the time he finished his shower the last remnants of his anemic fatigue were gone. At least for a while.

Chrys had been busy in his brief absence, finding and laying out his best formalwear. "What do you think it's all about?" she asked, keeping her voice low. The eight-year-olds, Joshua and Justin, were in the next room, and both had a history of light sleeping.

Jonny shook his head. "The last time they sent someone without at least a couple months' warning, it was to stick us with the Cobra factory. I suppose it could be something like that... but a twelve-hour turnaround sounds awfully ominous. He either wants to get back home as fast as possible or doesn't want to spend any more time here than absolutely necessary."

"Could some disease have shown up in our last shipment?" Chrys asked, holding his shirt for him. "A lot of those commercial carriers only take minimal precautions."

"If it had, they'd probably have specified that they'd stay aboard their ship while it was being serviced." Jonny grimaced as he backed into the sleeves, trying to keep the sudden pain from showing.

Chrys noticed anyway. "Dad called this afternoon to remind you again about getting that checkup," she said.

"What for?" Jonny growled. "To hear him tell me my anemia and arthritis are still getting worse? I already know that." He sighed. "I'm sorry, Chrys. I know I should go see Orrin, but I truly don't know what good it would do. I'm paying the price for being a superman all these years, and that's all there is to it."

She was silent for a long moment, and in a way her surface calm was more disturbing than the periodic outbursts of bitterness and rage that had occurred over the first months of his condition. It meant she'd accepted the fact that he couldn't be cured and was sublimating her own pain to help him and their three sons handle theirs. "You'll call when you know what's going on?" she asked at last.

"Sure," he promised, relieved at the change of subject. But only for a moment... because there was only one reason he could think of for the behavior of that ship out there. And if he was right, progressive anemia was likely to be the least of his worries.

Five minutes later he was driving toward the starfield. Beyond the glow of the streetlights, in the darkened city, the ghosts of Adirondack seemed to be gathering.

Tammerlaine Wrey was the image of the middle-level Dome bureaucrats that had been the favorite target of political caricaturists when Jonny was growing up. Paunchy and soft, with expensive clothes in better shape than he was, he had that faintly condescending air that frontier people often claimed to sense in all mainstream Dominion citizens.

And his news was as bad as it could possibly be.

"Understand, we'll be doing what we can to draw off the bulk of the Troft forces," he said, waving a finger at the curved battle front on the Star Force tactical map he'd brought with him. "But while we'll be keeping them pretty busy, it's unlikely they'll forget about you completely. The Joint Command's best estimate is that you can expect anywhere from twenty to a hundred thousand troops on your three planets within a year."

"My God!" Syndic Liang Kijika gasped. "A hundred thousand? That's a quarter of our combined populations."

"But you have nearly twenty-four hundred Cobras," Wrey pointed out. "A hundred thousand Trofts shouldn't be too much for them to handle, if past experience proves anything."

"Except that almost seventy percent of those Cobras have never seen any sort of warfare," Jonny put in, striving to keep his voice calm as the memories of Adirondack swirled like swamp vapor through his mind. "And those who have are likely to be unfit for duty by the time the attack comes."

" 'Those who can't do, teach,' " Wrey quoted. "Your veterans ought to be able to whip them into shape in a few months. Gentlemen, I didn't come here to run your defense for you—it's your people and your world and you'll undoubtedly do a better job of it than I or anyone else on Asgard could. I came here solely to give you a warning of what was coming down and to bring back the dozen or so Dominion citizens that the ban on commercial travel has stranded here."

"We're all Dominion citizens," Tamis Dyon snarled.

"Of course, of course," Wrey said. "You know what I mean. Anyway, I'll want those people packed and on my ship within six hours. I have their names, but you'll have to find them for me."

"What's being done to try and prevent the war?" Jonny asked.

Wrey frowned slightly. "It's beyond prevention, Governor—I thought I'd made that clear."

"But the Central Committee is still talking—"

"In order to delay the outbreak long enough for you to prepare."

"What do you mean, prepare?" Dyon snapped, rising half out of his seat. "What the hell are we going to do—build antiaircraft guns out of cyprene trees? You're condemning us to little more than a choice of deaths: murder by the Trofts or the slow strangulation of a closed supply pipeline."

"I am not responsible for what's happened," Wrey shot back. "The Trofts started this, and you ought to be damned glad the Committee was willing to back you up. If it hadn't, you'd have been overrun years ago." He paused, visibly regaining his control. "Here's the list of people I'm authorized to bring back," he said, sliding a magcard across the table toward Jonny. "Six hours, remember, because the Menssana's leaving in—now—eleven."

Slowly, Jonny reached across the table and picked up the magcard. The die was apparently cast... but there was too much at stake to just sit and do nothing. "I'd like to talk to Governor-General Stiggur about sending an emissary back with you," he said. "To find out what's really going on."

"Out of the question," Wrey shook his head. "In the first place we stand an even chance of getting hit by the Trofts before we ever reach Dominion space; and even if we get through, your emissary would just be trapped there. The Corridor hasn't a prayer of staying open long enough for him to return, and he'd just be dead weight on Asgard."

"He could function as a consultant on conditions here," Jonny persisted. "You admitted yourself you don't really know us."

"A consultant to what end? Are you expecting the Star Force to launch a backup assault through a hundred light-years of Troft territory?" Wrey glanced around the table at the others and stood up. "Unless there are any more questions, I'm going back to the Menssana for a while. Please inform me when Governor-General Stiggur arrives." Nodding, he strode briskly from the room.

"Doesn't care falx droppings for us, does he?" Kijika growled. His fingertips were pressed hard enough against the tabletop to show white under the nails.

"It's not going to matter much longer what he or anyone else in the Dominion thinks about us," Dyon said grimly.

"Maybe we can postpone that a bit," Jonny told him, handing Dyon the magcard. "Would you give this to Theron Yutu and have him start locating these people? I have an important call to make."

Governor-General Brom Stiggur was still en route to Capitalia, but he was within constant range of the Hap-2 communications satellite now and the picture was crystal clear. Not that it mattered, really—Stiggur's expression was exactly as Jonny had expected it to be. "So that's it, then," the other said when Jonny had summarized Wrey's doomsday message. "The Trofts have finally gotten their courage up for round two. Damn them all to hell." He snorted. "Well, what's it going to take to get us ready for a siege?"

"More time than we've got," Jonny said bluntly. "To be brutally honest, Brom, I don't think we've got an icecube's chance on Vega if the Trofts decide they really want us. The new Cobras are our only defense and they know less than nothing about warfare."

Stiggur grimaced. "Should we be discussing this on a broadcast signal—?"

"We're going to keep all this a secret?"

"Not hardly," Stiggur conceded. "All right, Jonny—you didn't call just to give me advance notice of Armageddon. What do you want?"

Jonny swallowed hard. "Permission to return with Wrey to Asgard and see what can be done to hold off the war."

Stiggur's eyebrows lifted toward his hairline. "Don't you think they've done everything possible in that direction already?"

"I don't know. How can we unless we talk directly to the Central Committee or Joint Command?"

Stiggur exhaled loudly. "We need you here."

"You know better than that. I can't fight worth a damn anymore, and there are a lot of First Cobras with better military and tactical knowledge."

"What about your family, then?" Stiggur asked quietly. "They need you."

Jonny took a deep breath. "Twenty-nine years ago I left all the family I had then to fight for people I didn't even know. How can I pass up even the slimmest chance now to save the lives of not only my wife and children, but virtually all the friends I've ever had?"

Stiggur gazed at him for a long minute, his expression giving away nothing of what was going on behind it. "Much as I hate to admit it, I suppose you're right," he finally said. "I'll recommend to this Wrey character that he take you along. Uh... another half-hour to Capitalia, looks like. I should have his answer in an hour or so. In the meantime—" He hesitated. "You'd better let Yutu handle things and go discuss this with Chrys."

"Thanks, Brom. I'd already planned to do that."

"I'll talk to you whenever I know something." He nodded and the screen went blank.

Sighing, Jonny carefully flexed his rebellious elbows and punched for Yutu.

They all sat quietly in the softly lit living room as Jonny explained both the bad news and his proposed response to the crisis; and as he gazed at each member of his family in turn, he was struck as never before by the contrasting personalities their expressions revealed. Justin and Joshua, huddled together on the couch, showed roughly equal parts of fear and unquestioning trust, a mixture that was painfully reminiscent of his sister Gwen's childhood hero-worship. By contrast, Corwin's face belied his thirteen years as he clearly struggled to find an adult perspective into which he could submerge his own feelings of dread. Very like Jame, who'd always seemed older than his own biological age. And Chrys...

Chrys was as she always was, radiating a quiet strength and support toward him even while her eyes ached with the fear and pain a permanent separation would bring her. An acceptance of his plan based not on submission of any kind, but on the simple fact that her mind worked the same as his did and she could see just as clearly that it was something that had to be tried.

He finished his explanation, and for a few moments the silence was broken only by the soft hum of the air conditioning. "When'll you be leaving, Dad?" Corwin asked at last.

"If I go, it'll be today," Jonny answered. "They'll want to leave as soon as the ship's refueled and all."

"Are you going to take Almo or someone with you?"

Jonny smiled briefly. Almo Pyre had been one of the first volunteers through D'arl's Cobra factory, and with his fierce loyalty toward Jonny and the entire Moreau family, he'd been a natural role model for Corwin to latch onto. "I don't think we'll have any problems on the way back," he told his son. "Besides which, your father's not that helpless yet." Steeling himself, he turned to Chrys. Her loyalty toward him deserved at least as much back. "I've explained all of what I know and think, and why I feel I should go," he told her. "But if, after hearing it, you think I should stay, I'll do so."

She smiled sadly. "If you don't understand me better than that by now—"

The abrupt ring from the phone made them all jump. Getting carefully to his feet, Jonny went to his desk and flipped the instrument on. "Yes?"

It was Stiggur. "Sorry, Jonny, but no go. Wrey steadfastly refuses to clutter his ship with useless colonial officials. His words."

Jonny exhaled slowly. "Did you explain how important it could be?"

"Loudly enough to scare a gantua. He simply refuses to consider anything even marginally outside his orders."

"Then maybe I'd better talk to him again myself. Do I still have your authorization to go?"

"I guess so. But it's all academic now."

"Perhaps. I'll get back to you."

He disconnected and started to punch for the starfield... but halfway through the motion he paused and turned to look at Chrys.

Her eyes gazed at his, and through them to whatever pain she saw in the future. But though her lips seemed made of wood, her voice was firm enough. "Yes. Try."

He held her eyes another second, then turned back to the phone. A few moments later Wrey's face appeared. "Yes? Oh, it's you. Look, Governor—"

"Mr. Wrey, I'm not going to repeat Governor-General Stiggur's arguments," Jonny interrupted him. "I don't care whether you can't see past your own nose and understand why this is important. The fact of the matter is that I'm coming with you to Asgard, and you can like it or not."

Wrey snorted. "Oh, really? They call that a Titan complex back in Dome, Moreau—the belief that you can go ahead and defy authority any time you want to. I suggest you check on my status here and consider what would happen if you tried to barge past my Marines against my orders."

Jonny shook his head. "I'm afraid it is you, sir, who's misunderstanding the legal situation here. Our charter clearly states that the governor-general may requisition a berth on any outgoing ship for purposes of consultation with Dominion officials. The charter makes no provision for exceptions."

"I claim an exception anyway. If you don't like it, you can file a grievance with the Central Committee when the war's over."

"I'm sorry, but it doesn't work that way. If you want to claim a legitimate exception, you'll have to present your case here, to Aventine's Council of Syndics."

Wrey's eyes narrowed. "What does that entail?"

Which meant the other had been on Asgard so long he'd forgotten how planet-level politics worked. For an instant Jonny was tempted to spin a genuine horror story, but quickly decided against it. Playing it straight was safer, and the truth was bad enough. "We'll first need to assemble all the Syndics—that's the easy part; they're all on the way here already. Then you'll present your credentials and your case and Governor-General Stiggur will present his. The council will discuss the situation and probably recess to make individual studies of the charter and try to find precedents in whatever Dominion records we have on file. Then they'll reassemble for a full debate, and when that's finished they'll vote. If the law seems to allow both sides of the case, a simple majority will suffice; but if the charter regulation I mentioned seems unopposed, then you'll need a three-quarters vote to grant you a one-time exception. The whole process will take—oh, maybe three to five days, minimum."

From the look on Wrey's face, the other had already added up the times. "Suppose I refuse to cooperate with this little delaying tactic?"

"You're free not to cooperate... but your ship doesn't lift until all this is resolved."

"How are you going to stop me?"

Reaching to the phone, Jonny tapped some keys, and a second later a new voice joined the circuit. "Pyre here."

"Almo, this is Jonny Moreau. How's security setup going?"

"All locked down, Governor," the younger Cobra told him.

"Good. Please inform the night manager that there's no longer any rush to service the Dominion ship. It won't be leaving for a few more days."

"Yes, sir."

"Hold it, soldier," Wrey snapped. "I am a direct representative of the Central Committee, and on that authority I'm countermanding that order. Understand?"

There was a short pause. "Governor, is his claim legitimate?"

"Yes, but this specific action seems to violate a clear charter provision. It looks like it'll be going to the council."

"Understood, sir. Servicing operations will be suspended immediately."

"What?" Wrey barked. "Just a damned—"

"Out, sir."

A click signaled Pyre's departure, leaving the rest of Wrey's outburst to expend itself in thin air. He broke off, fixing Jonny with a furious glare. "You're not going to get away with this, Moreau. You can throw your Cobras against my armored Marines all day without—"

"Are you suggesting a firefight in the vicinity of your ship, sir?" Jonny asked mildly.

Wrey fell suddenly silent. "You won't get away with it," he repeated mechanically.

"The law is on my side," Jonny said. "Frankly, Mr. Wrey, I don't see why this is really a problem. You obviously have the room to spare for me, and I've already showed you that you'll be both morally and legally in the clear if your superiors become annoyed. And who knows? Maybe they'll actually be glad I came along... in which case you'll get all the credit for such foresight."

Wrey snorted at that, but Jonny could see in his face that he'd already opted for the simpler, safer course. "All right, what the hell. You want to cut out and spend the war on Asgard, that's none of my business. Just be here when the rest of the passengers show or I'll leave without you."

"Understood. And thank you."

Wrey snorted again and the screen went blank.

Jonny exhaled slowly. Another minor victory... and as emotionally unsatisfying as all such political wins seemed to be. Perhaps, he thought, it was because no opponent was ever fully vanquished in this form of combat. They always got back up out of the dust, a little smarter and—often—a little madder each time. And Jonny would now be spending the next three months heading straight for Wrey's political domain, while Wrey himself had those same months to plan whatever revenge he chose.

So much for victory.

Grimacing, Jonny punched again for Almo Pyre. His order halting the ship's servicing would have to be rescinded.

There was a great deal of work involved in turning over his duties on such short notice, and in the end Jonny wound up with far less time than he'd wanted to tell his family good-bye. It added one more shade of pain to the already Pyrrhic victory, especially as he had no intention of letting Wrey know how he felt.

The worst part, of course, was that there was very little aboard ship to occupy his thoughts. On the original trip to Aventine a quarter century earlier, there'd been fellow colonists to meet as well as magcards of information compiled by the survey teams to be studied. Here, even with the fourteen business passengers Wrey was bringing home, the ship carried only thirty-six people, none of whom Jonny was especially interested in getting to know. And if the ship carried any useful information on the impending war, no one was saying anything about it.

So for the first couple of weeks Jonny did little except sit alone in his cabin, reread the colonies' data he'd brought to show the Central Committee, and brood... until one morning he awoke with an unexpected, almost preternatural alertness. It took him several minutes to figure out on a conscious level what his subconscious had already realized: during ship's night they had passed from no-man's space into the Troft Corridor. The old pattern of being in hostile territory evoked long-buried Cobra training; and as the politician yielded to the warrior, Jonny unexpectedly found his helpless feelings giving way to new determination. For the time being, at least, the political situation had become a potentially military one... and military situations were almost never completely hopeless.

He began in the accepted military way: learning the territory. For hours at a time he toured the Menssana, getting to know everything about it and compiling long mental lists of strengths, weaknesses, quirks, and possibilities. He learned the names and faces of each of the fourteen crewers and six Marines, evaluating as best he could how they would react in a crisis. Doing the same with the passengers actually proved a bit easier: with the same excess of free time he himself had, they were eager to spend time with him, playing games or just talking. More than once Jonny wished he'd brought Cally Halloran along, but even without the other's knack at informal psych analysis, he was soon able to divide the passengers into the old "float/freeze" categories: those who could probably deal with and adapt to a crisis, and those who couldn't. Heading the former were two executive field reps Jonny soon learned to consider friends as well as potential allies: Dru Quoraheim, a pharmaceutical company executive whose face and dry humor reminded him vaguely of Ilona Linder; and Rando Harmon, whose interests lay in rare metals and, occasionally, Dru Quoraheim. For a while Jonny wondered if Dru had latched onto him to use as a partial shield against Harmon's advances, but as it became clear that those advances were entirely non-serious he realized the whole thing was an elaborate game designed to give the participants something to concentrate on besides the mental picture of silent Troft warships.

And when his survey was complete... it was back to waiting. He played chess with Dru and Harmon, kept abreast of the ship's progress, and—alone, late at night—tried to come up with some way to keep the war from happening, or at least to keep it from happening to Aventine. And wondered if and when the Trofts would move against the Menssana.

Twenty-five light-years from Dominion space, they finally did.

It was evening, ship's time, and most of the passengers were in the lounge, grouped in twos and threes for conversation, social drinking, or the occasional game. At a table near the back Jonny, Dru, and Harmon had managed a synthesis of all three in the form of a light Aventine sherry and a particularly nasty round of trisec chess.

A game Jonny's red pieces were steadily losing. "You realize, of course," he commented to his opponents, "that such friendly cooperation between you two is prima facie evidence of collusion between your two companies. If I lose this game, I'm swearing out a complaint when we get to Asgard."

"Never stand up in court," Harmon rumbled distractedly. His attention had good reason to be elsewhere; Dru was slowly but inexorably building up pressure on his king side and too many of his own pieces were out of position to help. "Dru's the one who's apparently moonlighting from the Joint Command's tactical staff."

"I wish I was," Dru shook her head. "At least I'd have something to do during the war. Market developers don't get much work when the market shrinks."

For a few minutes the only sound was the click of chess pieces as Dru launched her attack, Harmon defended, and Jonny took advantage of the breather to reposition his own men. Harmon was a move behind in the exchange and wound up losing most of his cozy castle arrangement. "Tell me again about this collusion," he said when the flurry of moves was over.

"Well, I could be mistaken," Jonny admitted.

Harmon grunted and took a sip of his drink. "Going to be the last Aventine sherry anyone back home gets for a long time," he commented. "A real pity."

"War usually is." Jonny hesitated. "Tell me, what does the Dominion's business community think of the upcoming hostilities?"

Dru snorted. "I presume you're not talking about the shipyards and armaments manufacturers?"

"No, I mean companies like yours that've been working with Aventine. Maybe even the Trofts, too, for all I know. Like you said, Dru, you're losing a growing market out here."

She glanced at Harmon. "With Aventine, yes, though I'll point out for the record that neither of our companies deals with the Trofts—Dome is very stingy with licenses for that kind of trade. You're right, though, that the Outer Colonies are going to be missed."

"Anyone who deals with you feels pretty much the same way," Harmon added. "But there's nothing obvious we can do about it."

"About all we can do is hope our first attack is so brilliant and decisive that it ends the war before too much damage is done." Dru moved a pawn, simultaneously opening Harmon's king to a new threat and blocking an advance from Jonny's remaining rook.

Harmon waved at the board. "And if the Star Force has any brains, they'll put Dru in charge—what was that?"

Jonny had felt it too: a dull, almost audible thump, as if someone had dropped an exceptionally heavy wrench in the Menssana's engine room. "We've just dropped out of hyperspace," he said quietly, sliding his chair back and looking around. None of the others in the lounge seemed to have noticed the jolt.

"Out here?" Dru frowned. "Aren't we still two weeks inside Troft territory?"

"It may not have been voluntary." Jonny stood up. "Stay here; I'm going to the bridge. Don't say anything to the others yet—no sense panicking anyone until we know what's going on."

He reached the bridge to find Captain Davi Tarvn presiding over a scene of controlled chaos. "What's the situation?" he asked, stepping to the other's command station.

"Too soon to really tell," Tarvn replied tightly. "Looks like we hit a Troft flicker-mine web, but so far the usual spider ships haven't shown up. Maybe they won't."

"Wishful thinking."

"Sure, but that's about all we've got," Tarvn nodded. "If a Troft shows up before the drive's recalibrated, we've had it. You know as well as I do how long our weaponry and plating would hold against attack—you've been studying the ship enough lately."

Jonny grimaced. "About half a minute if they were determined. What can I do?"

"You can get the hell off the bridge," a new voice snapped, and Jonny turned to see Wrey crossing the floor toward them. "Status, Captain?"

"Minimum of an hour before the drive can be fixed," Tarvn told him. "Until then we try to be as inconspicuous as possible—"

"Hostile at ninety-seven slash sixty," the navigator interjected suddenly. "Closing, Captain."

"Battle stations," Tarvn gritted. "Well, gentlemen, so much for staying inconspicuous. Mr. Wrey, what do you want me to do?"

Wrey hesitated. "Any chance of outrunning him?"

"Second hostile," the navigator said before Tarvn could reply. "Two-ninety slash ten. Also closing."

"Right on top of us," Tarvn muttered. "I'd say our chances are slim, sir, at least as long as we're stuck in normal."

"Then we have to surrender," Jonny said.

Wrey turned a murderous glare onto him. "I told you to get lost," he snarled. "You have no business here—this is a military situation."

"Which is exactly why you need me. I've fought the Trofts; you almost certainly never have."

"So you're an overage reservist," Wrey grunted. "That still doesn't—"

"No," Jonny said, lowering his voice so that only Wrey and Tarvn could hear. "I'm a Cobra."

Wrey's voice died in mid-word, his eyes flicking over Jonny's form. Tarvn muttered something under his breath that Jonny didn't bother notching up his enhancers to catch. But the captain recovered fast. "Any of the passengers know?" he murmured.

Jonny shook his head. "Just you two—and I want it kept that way."

"You should have told me earlier—" Wrey began.

"Be quiet, sir," Tarvn said unexpectedly, his eyes still on Jonny. "Will the Trofts be able to detect your equipment, Governor?"

"Depends on how tight a filter they put all of us through," Jonny shrugged. "A full bioscan will show it, but a cursory weapon detector check shouldn't."

Behind Jonny the helmsman cleared his throat. "Captain?" he said, his voice rigidly controlled. "The Trofts are calling on us to surrender."

Tarvn glanced at his screens, turned back to Wrey. "We really don't have any choice, sir."

"Tell them we're an official Dominion courier and that this is a violation of treaty," Wrey said tightly, his own eyes on the displays. "Threaten, argue—do your damnedest to talk our way out. Then—" He exhaled between clenched teeth. "If it doesn't work, go ahead and surrender."

"And try to get terms that'll leave all of us aboard the Menssana," Jonny added. "We may need to get out in a hurry if we get an opening."

"We damn well better get that opening," Wrey murmured softly. "All of this is your idea, remember."

Jonny almost laughed. Middle-level bureaucrat, indeed—the operation had barely begun and already Wrey was scrambling to place any possible blame elsewhere. Predictable and annoying; but occasionally it could be used. "In that case, I presume I'm authorized to handle the whole operation? Including giving Captain Tarvn orders?"

Wrey hesitated, but only briefly. "Whatever you want. It's your game now."

"Thank you." Jonny turned back to Tarvn. "Let's see what we can do now about stacking the deck and maybe providing a little diversion at the same time."

He outlined his plan, got Tarvn's approval, and hurried to the Marine guardroom to set things up. Then it was back to the lounge and a quiet consultation with Dru and Harmon. They took the news calmly, and as they all collected and put away the chess pieces, he outlined the minor and—theoretically—safe roles he wanted them to play. Both agreed with a grim eagerness that showed he'd chosen his potential allies well.

He was back in his cabin fifteen minutes later, hiding the most sensitive of his Aventine data on random sections of unrelated magcards, when Tarvn officially announced the Menssana's surrender. Obeying the captain's instructions, he went to the lounge with the others and tried to relax. He succeeded about as well as everyone else.

A half hour later, the Trofts came aboard.

The lounge was the largest public room on the ship, but fifteen passengers, thirteen crewers, and four Marines made for cozy quarters even without the seven armed Trofts lined up along the wall. Wrey and Tarvn were absent, presumably having been taken elsewhere; Jonny kept his fingers crossed that anyone who noticed would assume the two missing Marines were with them.

There had been few communications with the Trofts during the war to which Jonny had been privy, but back then he'd gotten the impression the aliens weren't much for social or even political small talk, and the boarding party's spokesman did nothing to shake that image. "This ship and its resources are now possessions of the Drea'shaa'chki Demesne of the Trof'te Assemblage," the alien's translator repeater stated in flat tones. "The crew and passengers will remain aboard as tokens of human consensus-order violations. The so-named Trof'te Corridor has been reclaimed."

So they were to be held aboard. That was a stroke of luck Jonny had hoped for but not dared to expect. If Wrey had wangled this concession, perhaps he was good for something, after all—

His thoughts were cut off abruptly as an armored but weaponless Marine was hauled through the door by two Trofts and put into line with the other prisoners. Mentally, Jonny shrugged; he'd expected the better equipped of his two sleepers to be found fairly quickly. The other Marine, in shirtsleeves and armed only with a knife and garotte, should withstand the search somewhat better. Not that his freedom or capture ultimately made much difference. As long as he drew the Trofts' attention away from the civilians, he was serving his purpose. Though Jonny doubted that he realized that.

The prisoners were kept in the lounge another hour, leading Jonny to wonder whether they would be staying there until the Trofts were satisfied everyone had been found. But as they were led back to the passenger cabin section without the second Marine making his appearance, he decided the reason for the delay was probably more prosaic: that the aliens had been conducting careful sensor searches of their rooms with an eye toward turning them into cells. The guess turned out to be correct, and a few minutes later Jonny found himself back in his cabin.

Though not quite alone.

The three sensor disks the Trofts had attached to selected sections of wall and ceiling were rather conspicuous as such things went, nearly two centimeters across each with faintly translucent surfaces. A quick check showed that the bathroom and even the closet were equipped with disks of their own. What they might pick up besides an optical picture Jonny didn't know, but it hardly mattered. As long as they were in place, he was unable to act; ergo, his first task was to get rid of them.

It was probably the first time in twenty-seven years that his arcthrower might have done him some good; but then, he hardly could have used it without announcing in large red letters that he was a Cobra. Fortunately, there were other ways to accomplish what he had in mind. Returning to the bathroom, he selected a tube of burn salve from the cabinet first-aid kit. He was in the process of coating the second of the main room's disks with a thick layer of cream when the inevitable Troft charged in.

"You will cease this activity," the alien said, the monotone translator voice editing out whatever emotion lay behind the words.

"I'll be damned if I will," Jonny snarled back, putting all the righteous indignation he could into both voice and body language on the off-chance this was one of those Trofts who could read such nuances. "You attack us, pirate our ship, paw through our cabins—just look at the mess you left my magcards in—and now you have the damned nerve to spy on us. Well, I'm not going to stand for it—you hear me?"

The alien's upper-arm membranes rippled uncertainly. "Not all of you seem bothered by our security needs."

Not all of you... which implied Dru and Harmon had followed his instructions to kick up similar fusses. Three wasn't a very big crowd to hide in, but it was better than being blatantly unique. "Not all of us grew up with private bathrooms, either," he retorted, "but those who did can't do without them. I want my privacy and I'm going to get it."

"The sensors will remain," the Troft insisted.

"Then you're going to have to chain me up," Jonny snarled, crossing his arms defiantly.

The alien paused, and Jonny's enhanced hearing caught a stream of high-speed Troft catertalk. It was another minute before the translator came back on-line. "You spoke of privacy in the bathroom. If the sensor is removed from in there, will that satisfy your needs?"

Jonny pursed his lips. It would, actually, but he didn't want to accept the compromise too eagerly. "Well... I could try that, I suppose."

The Troft stepped past him and disappeared into the bathroom, returning a moment later with the sensor disk in one hand and some tissues from the dispenser in the other. He offered the latter to Jonny. It took the Cobra a second to understand; then, taking them, he proceeded to wipe clean the two disks he'd disabled. When he was finished, the Troft strode to the door and left.

He gave in awfully easily, was Jonny's first thought. A careful check of the bathroom, though, showed it was indeed clear of all sensors. Returning to the main room, he sat back down with his comboard—remembering to maintain an air of discomfort—and pretended to read.

He waited an hour, ten minutes of which time was spent in the bathroom to see if the Trofts would get nervous and send in a guard. But they'd evidently decided there was nothing dangerous he could do in there and no one disturbed him. Taking slightly higher than normal doses of his anemia and arthritis medicines, he returned to his comboard... and when the drugs took effect it was time to go.

He began with the normal human pattern for a pre-bedtime shower: pajamas carried into the bathroom accompanied by the hiss of water against tile. But under cover of the sound, Jonny's fingertip lasers traced a rectangular pattern on the thin metal panel between sink and shower stall, and within a minute he had a passable opening to the cramped service corridor behind the row of cabins. Leaving the water running, he squeezed into the corridor and began sidling his way forward.

The Menssana's designer had apparently felt that separate ventilation systems for the various service lane levels would be a waste of good equipment and had opted instead for periodically spaced grilles to connect all of them together. It was a quirk that would ordinarily be of no use to anyone in Jonny's position, as the cramped quarters and high ceilings discouraged vertical movement almost as much as solid floors would have. But then, the designer hadn't been thinking about Cobras.

Jonny passed three more cabins before finding a grille leading to the deck above. Bending his knees the few degrees the walls allowed, he jumped upward, stifling a grunt as a twinge of pain touched the joints. Catching the grille, he hung suspended for a moment as he searched out the best spots to cut. Then, with leg servos pressing his feet against the walls in a solid friction grip, he turned his lasers against the metal mesh. A minute later he was through the hole and sidling down that level's service corridor; two minutes after that he was peering out the corridor's access door at the darkened equipment room into which it opened. Next door would be the EVA-ready room. Beyond that was the main hatch and the probable connection to the Troft ship.

Jonny eased out the equipment room door into the deserted corridor, alert for sounds of activity that weren't there. The main hatch was indeed open, the boarding tunnel beyond snaking enough to block any sight of the alien ship's own entryway. Whatever security the Trofts had set up was apparently at the far end of the tunnel, an arrangement that would be difficult but not impossible to exploit. But any such operation required first that the Menssana be under human control again... and to accomplish that, he would have to retake the bridge. Passing the hatch, he continued on forward.

The spiral stairway leading to the bridge had not been designed with military security in mind, but the Trofts had added one of their sensor disks to the spiral in a position impossible to bypass. From a semi-shadowed position down the hall, Jonny gritted his teeth and searched his memory for a way to approach the stairway from behind. But any such route would take a great deal of time, and time was in short supply at the moment. On the other hand... if the Trofts saw an apparently unarmed man approaching their position, they were unlikely to greet him with an automatic blaze of laser fire. They would probably merely point their weapons and order him to surrender, after which they would return him to his cell and find out how he'd escaped. If they followed safe military procedure and called in before confronting him... but he'd just have to risk that. Now, while the Menssana was still in or near the Corridor, was their best opportunity for escape. Gritting his teeth, he started for the staircase.

He moved quickly, though no faster than a normal human could have, and no challenges or shots came his way before he reached the stairs and started up. His catlike steps were small bomb blasts in his enhanced hearing, but between them he could hear the unmistakable sounds of sudden activity overhead. He kept going... and when he raised his head cautiously above the level of the bridge floor he found himself facing a semicircle of four Troft handguns. "You will make no sudden movements," a translator voice ordered as he froze in place. "Now: continue forward for questioning."

Slowly, Jonny continued up the stairs and into the bridge, keeping his hands visible. The four guards were backed up by three more at the Menssana's consoles, armed but with weapons holstered. Sitting atop the communications board was a small box of alien design. The Trofts' link with their own ship and translator, most likely... and in a highly vulnerable position.

"How did you escape from your quarters?" one of the guards asked.

Jonny focused on the semicircle. "Call your captain," he said. "I wish to speak to him about a trade."

The Trofts' arm membranes fluttered. "You are in no position to trade anything."

"How do you know?" Jonny countered. "Only your captain can make that assessment."

The Troft hesitated. Then, slowly, he raised a hand to a collar pin and let loose with a stream of catertalk. Another pause... and the communications box abruptly spoke. "This the Ship Commander. What do you propose to trade?"

Jonny pursed his lips. It was a question he'd been working on since the Trofts first came aboard... and he had yet to come up with a really satisfactory answer. Trade back the Trofts aboard the Menssana? But the aliens didn't think of hostage as a word applicable to living beings. The Menssana itself? But he hardly had real control of the ship. Still, if politics had taught him anything, it was the value of a plausible bluff. "I offer you your own ship in return for the humans you hold plus the release of this vessel," he said.

There was a long pause. "Repeat, please. You offer me my own demesne-ship?"

"That's right," Jonny nodded. "From this ship I have the power to destroy yours. For obvious example, a hard starboard yaw would tear out the boarding tunnel, depressurizing that part of your demesne-ship, and a simultaneous blast with the drive at this range would cause extensive damage to your own engines. Is this possibility not worth trading to avoid?"

His captors' arm membranes were fluttering at half-mast now. Either the room temperature had risen dramatically or he had indeed hit a sensitive nerve. "Commander?" he prompted.

"The ability you claim is nonexistent," the box said. "You are not in control of that ship."

"You're wrong, Commander. My companion and I are in full control here."

"You have no companion. The soldier hiding in the dining-area ventilation system has been returned to his quarters."

So the other Marine had been found. "I'm not speaking of him."

"Where is your companion?"

"Nearby, and in control. If you want to know any more you'll have to come here and negotiate the trade I've suggested."

There was another long pause. "Very well. I will come."

"Good." Jonny blew a drop of sweat from the tip of his nose. Perhaps it was just getting hot.

"You will reveal your companion to us before the Ship Commander arrives," one of the guards said. It didn't sound like a request.

Jonny took a careful breath... prepared himself. "Certainly. She's right here." He gestured to his left, the arm movement masking the slight bending of his knees—

And he ricocheted off the ceiling to slam to the deck behind the four guards, fingertip lasers blazing.

The communications box went first, fried instantly by a blast from his arcthrower. Two of the guards' guns hit the deck midway through that first salvo; the other two guards made it nearly all the way around before their lasers also erupted with clouds of vaporized metal and plastic and went spinning from burned hands. A sideways jump and half turn and Jonny had the last three Trofts in sight. "Don't move," he snapped.

With the translator link down his words were unintelligible, but none of the aliens seemed to mistake his meaning. All remained frozen where they stood or sat, arm membranes stretched wide, as Jonny disarmed the last three and then tore the communicator pins from the uniforms of all seven. Herding them down the staircase, he got them into a nearby water pumping room—spot-welding the latch to make sure they stayed put—and hurried aft toward the main hatch. The Troft commander wasn't likely to come alone, and Jonny needed at least a little advance notice as to what size force he'd have to handle. The possibility that the other would simply veer off, trading his occupation force for two humans, wasn't one Jonny wanted to consider.

He heard them coming down the boarding tunnel long before they actually appeared: ten to fifteen of them, he estimated, from the sound. Hidden in an emergency battery closet a dozen meters down the hall, he watched through a cracked door as they approached. The commander was easy to spot, keeping to the geometric center of his guard array: an older Troft, by the purple blotches on his throat bladder, his uniform fairly dripping with the colored piping of rank. Six guards ahead of him, six behind him, their lasers fanned to cover both directions, the procession moved down the corridor toward Jonny's hiding place and the bridge. The vanguard passed him... and Jonny slammed open the door and leaped.

The door caught the nearest Troft full in the back, jolting him forward and clearing just enough room for Jonny's rush to get him through the phalanx unhindered. With one outstretched arm he caught the commander around his torso, the action spinning them both around as Jonny's initial momentum drove them toward the far wall. Slipping between the two guards on that side, they slammed against the plating, Jonny's back screaming with agony as it took the brunt of the impact.

And then, for a long moment, the corridor was a silent, frozen tableau.

"All right," Jonny said as his breath returned, "I know you don't apply the idea of hostage to yourselves, Commander, so we'll just think of this as a matter of your personal safety. All of you—lay your weapons down on the deck. I don't especially want to hurt your commander, but I will if I have to."

Still no one moved, the twelve laser muzzles forming shining counterpoint to the arched arm membranes spread out behind each of them. "I told you to drop your guns," Jonny repeated more harshly. "Don't forget that you can't hit me without killing your commander."

The Troft leaning against him stirred slightly in his grip. "They have no concern for my life," the translator voice said. "I am not the Ship Commander, merely a Services Engineer in his uniform. A crude trick, but one which we learned from humans."

Jonny's mouth went dry. His eyes swept the circle of Trofts, the steadiness of their weapons an unspoken confirmation of the other's words. "You're lying," he said, not believing it but driven to say something. "If you're not the commander, then why haven't they opened fire?" He knew the answer to that: they wanted him alive. History—personal history, at least—had repeated itself... and even more than on Adirondack, he knew the knowledge he held this time was too valuable to allow the enemy to have. Chrys, a detached fragment of his mind breathed in anguish toward the distant stars, and he prepared for his last battle—

"They will not shoot," the Troft in his grip said. "You are a koubrah-soldier from the Aventine world, and if killed you would merely fight on until all aboard were dead."

Jonny frowned. "How's that?"

"You need not deny the truth. We have all heard the report."

What report? Jonny opened his mouth to ask the question aloud... and suddenly he understood.

MacDonald. Somehow they'd heard about MacDonald.

He looked at the circle of Trofts again, seeing their rigidly stretched arm membranes with new eyes. Determination, he'd thought earlier, or perhaps rage. But now he recognized the emotion for what it was: simple, naked fear. D'arl was right, that same detached fragment of his mind realized. They are afraid of us. "I don't wish to kill anyone," he said quietly. "I want only to free my companions and to continue on my way."

"To what end?" the same flat voice came from the direction of the boarding tunnel. Jonny turned his head to see another middle-aged Troft walking slowly toward them. His uniform was identical to the one wrapped in Jonny's arms.

"That of protecting my world, Commander," Jonny told him. "By diplomatic means if possible, military ones if necessary."

The other said something in catertalk, and slowly the circle of laser muzzles dipped to point at the floor. His eyes on the Troft commander, Jonny released his captive and stepped out from behind him. A trick to put the Cobra off-guard, perhaps; but the politician within Jonny recognized the need to respond to the gesture with a good-faith one of his own. "Have we any grounds for negotiation?" he asked.

"Perhaps," the commander said. "You spared the lives of the Trof'tes in your control center when you could as easily have killed them. Why?"

Jonny frowned, realizing for the first time that he had no idea why he'd handled things that way. Too long in politics, where one never killed one's opponent? No. The real reason was considerably less colorful. "There wasn't any need to kill them," he said with a shrug. "I suppose it never really occurred to me."

"Koubrah-soldiers were created to kill."

"We were created to defend. There's a difference."

The other seemed to ponder that. "Perhaps there are grounds for compromise," he said at last. "Or at least for discussion. Will you and your companion come to my bridge?"

Jonny nodded. "Yes... but the companion I mentioned won't actually be there. She's an insubstantial entity we humans call Lady Luck."

The commander was silent a moment. "I believe I understand. If so, I would still invite her to accompany us."

Turning, he disappeared into the boarding tunnel. Hesitating only a moment, Jonny followed. The escort, weapons still lowered, fell into step around him.

He was back on the Menssana side of the tunnel four hours later when Wrey and Tarvn were brought aboard. "Good evening, gentlemen," Jonny nodded as their Troft escort silently disappeared back down the tunnel. "Captain, if you'll seal that hatch we're almost ready to be on our way."

"What the hell happened?" Wrey asked, his bewildered tone making the words more plaintive than demanding. "No questioning, no demands—no talk, period—and suddenly they're letting us go?"

"Oh, there was talking, all right," Jonny said. "Lots of it. That hatch secure? Good. Captain, I believe the drive repairs are finished, but you'll need to confirm that from the bridge. And make sure we're all ready before you pull away—the other Troft ship isn't in on this and they might try and stop us."

Tarvn's eyebrows arched, but all he said was, "Got it," before heading forward at a fast trot.

"What's going on?" Wrey demanded as Jonny started to follow. "What do you mean, there was lots of talking?"

"The Ship Commander and I had a discussion, and I convinced him it was in his best interests to let us go."

"In other words, you made a deal," Wrey growled. "What was it?"

"Something I'll discuss only with the Central Committee and only when we reach Asgard," Jonny told him flatly.

Wrey frowned at him, irritation and growing suspicion etching his face. "You're not authorized to negotiate for the entire Dominion of Man."

"That's okay—the Ship Commander wasn't authorized to negotiate for the Troft Assemblage, either." A gentle thump rippled through the deck and Jonny relaxed muscles he hadn't realized he'd had tensed. "But what authority he did have seems to have been adequate to get us away."

"Moreau—"

"Now if you'll excuse me, it's been a long night and I'm very tired. Good-night, Mr. Wrey; you can figure out on your own how you'll write this incident up. I'm sure you'll come out the hero in the final version."

Which was a rather cheap shot, Jonny admitted to himself as he headed aft toward his cabin. But at the moment his body was aching more than Wrey would ever know and he had no patience left for mid-bureaucratic mentality.

Or, for that matter, for illegal business practices and deliberate evasions. Which was why he planned to take a few days to recuperate before confronting Dru and Harmon with the half-truth the Troft Ship Commander had popped. Allies they had been; allies they might yet be... and he would like if possible to also keep them as friends.

It was another two weeks' travel to the Troft-Dominion border, fourteen of the longest days Jonny had ever suffered through this side of the last war. The cooling attitude toward him aboard the Menssana was part of it, of course, bringing back painful memories of those last months on Horizon. Jonny had all but forgotten the fear mainstream Dominion society felt toward Cobras, and on top of that he suspected Wrey of spitefully dropping hints that he'd made some terrible deal to buy their freedom. Only Harmon and Dru seemed relatively untouched by the general aloofness, and even with them Jonny could tell their friendliness had a large wedge of self-interest mixed in. After the long and painful confession session Jonny had forced them through shortly after their escape, he had the power to bring a fair amount of official flak down on them, and they both knew it.

But the social isolation was only a minor part of the frustration Jonny felt with the slowness of their progress. He had a real chance of sidetracking the war completely, but only if he could get to Asgard before the actual shooting began. To Asgard, and in front of the Central Committee. He hoped Jame would be able to arrange that; Wrey wasn't likely to be of any help.

And at last the Menssana touched down on Adirondack, the terminus point for Corridor traffic... and Wrey played his trump card.

"I'm sorry for whatever inconvenience it'll cost you to have to find your own ways back to your ultimate destinations," Wrey told the group of passengers as they gathered in the Dannimor starfield's customs building. "Unfortunately, the fast courier I'll be taking to Asgard hasn't room for anyone besides myself and Captain Tarvn."

"And me, I presume," Jonny spoke up.

"Afraid not," Wrey said blandly. "But then, you'll remember I warned you against inviting yourself along."

For a heartbeat Jonny simply stood there, unable to believe his ears. "You can't do that, Wrey—"

"Can't I?" the other retorted. "I suggest you check the statutes, Moreau—if you know how to look up real law, that is."

Jonny gazed at the other's self-satisfied expression, the small gloating smile playing at the corners of the paunchy man's mouth—the small mind having its big moment. And Jonny, his own mind occupied by too many other things, had failed completely to anticipate this move. "Look," he said quietly, "this is foolish, and you know it. The Committee needs to hear what the Troft Ship Commander told me—"

"Oh, yes—the 'secret plan' to stop the war that you won't tell anyone about," Wrey almost-sneered. "Maybe you'd better finally loosen up and give me at least the basic outline. I'd be sure and mention it to the Committee."

"I'm sure you would," Jonny grated. "You'll forgive me if I don't trust you to do the job right. Of course, you realize leaving me stranded here with vital information is likely to land you in very deep water very fast."

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that." Wrey raised a finger and four men in Army uniforms detached themselves from various walls and stepped forward, halting in a loose box formation about Jonny. "I wouldn't worry about yourself, either," Wrey added. "You're going to be well taken care of."

Jonny glanced at the guards, his eyes slipping from the quietly alert faces to the collar insignia beneath. Interrorum, the Army's crack anti-espionage/anti-terrorist squad. "What the hell is this?" he demanded.

"You'll be getting a first-class military ride to Asgard," Wrey told him. "After you've been checked for hypnotic and subliminal manipulation, of course."

"What? Look, Wrey, unless basic citizen rights have been suspended recently—"

"You were alone with the Trofts for several hours, by your own admission," Wrey interrupted harshly. "Maybe they let us go because you'd been programmed for sabotage or assassination."

Jonny felt his jaw drop. "Of all the ridiculous—you can't make a charge like that stick for ten minutes."

"Take it easy, Governor. I'm not trying to make anything 'stick'—I'm merely following established procedures. You'll be released in—what were those numbers? Three to five days minimum? It takes a three-quarters majority of the examiners to clear you, of course."

Jonny ground his teeth. Wrey was really taking his pound of flesh. "And suppose while I'm sitting around hooked to a biomedical sensor your news of the Troft hijacking starts a war that could have been prevented? Or didn't that occur to you?"

For just an instant Wrey's eyes lost some of their insolence. "I don't think there's any danger of that. You'll get to Asgard in plenty of time." He smiled slyly. "Probably. All right, take him."

For a long second Jonny was tempted. But the soldiers were undoubtedly backed up by plainclothesmen elsewhere, and there were lots of innocent civilians in the building who'd be caught in any crossfire. Exhaling through his teeth, he let them take him away.

The first part of this kind of testing, Jonny remembered from his Cobra lectures, was to establish a physiological baseline by giving the subject several hours of solitary while hidden sensors piled up data. A side effect, especially for those who didn't know the procedure, was to raise the subject's tension level as he contemplated the unknown future awaiting him.

For Jonny, the wasted hours ticking by were maddening.

A dozen times in the first hour he seriously considered breaking out and trying to commandeer a star ship, and each time it was the sheer number of uncertainties that finally stopped him. By the end of the second hour the first twinges of pain began to intrude on his planning. He called the guard, was politely but firmly told his medicine would be returned once it had been analyzed. Protests were of no avail, and as he settled back on his cot to wait, the simmering anger within him began to slowly change into fear. In a very short time he would lose the ability to function... and when that happened he truly would be at Wrey's mercy.

He'd been in the cell nearly three hours when a shadow passed across the observation window and his enhanced hearing picked up a quiet click from the direction of the door.

He turned his head to see, muscles tensing... but the door wasn't being opened. Instead, a small hemispherical dome near the floor beside it rotated open to reveal a tray of food.

At the observation window a guard's face appeared. "Thanks," Jonny said, easing from the cot and retrieving the meal. The old familiar Adirondack cooking, his nostrils told him as he carried the tray back and sat down.

"No problem." The guard hesitated. "Are you really one of the Cobras that saved Adirondack from the Trofts?"

Jonny paused, spoon halfway to his mouth. "Yes," he acknowledged. "Are you a native?"

The guard nodded. "Born and raised right here in Dannimor. Where were you stationed?"

"Over in Cranach." The mesh in the window made the guard's face hard to see, but Jonny estimated his age in the low thirties. "You were probably too young to remember the war much."

"I remember enough. We had relatives in Paris when it was destroyed." He pursed his lips at the memory. "I had an uncle in Cranach then, too. Did you know a Rob Delano?"

"No." Memories flooded back of the people he had known... and with the mental pictures came an idea. "Tell me, just how isolated am I supposed to be?"

"What do you mean—visitors or something?"

"Or even phone calls. There are people probably still living nearby who I once thought I'd never see again. As long as I'm stuck here for a while maybe I can at least say hello to some of them."

"Well... maybe later that'll be possible."

"Can you at least get me a directory or something so I can find out who still lives in the area?" Jonny persisted. "This dose of solitary isn't a punishment, after all—it's just part of the deep-psych test preparation. I ought to be allowed to have reading material in here."

The guard frowned at that, but then shrugged. "I'm not sure that really qualifies as reading material, but I'll check with the guard captain."

"Be sure to remind him that I am a high Dominion official," Jonny said softly.

"Yes, sir." The guard disappeared.

Jonny returned his attention to his dinner, striving to keep his new spark of hope in check. What he could accomplish with a directory—or even with the hoped-for contact with his old allies—wasn't immediately clear, but at least it was somewhere to start. If nothing else, it might give him a feel for exactly how big an official cloud Wrey had put him under.

He had finished his meal and returned the tray to its place by the door, and was considering lying down again, when the guard returned. "The captain wasn't available," his disembodied voice came as the tray disappeared and a small comboard showed up in its place. "But since you're a Dominion official and all, I guess it'll be all right." His face reappeared at the window, and he watched as Jonny brought the instrument back to his cot.

"I really appreciate it," Jonny told him. "The directory's on the magcard here?"

"Yes—it covers Cranach, Dannimor, and the ten or so smaller towns around." He paused. "You Cobras were pretty effective, from all I've read about you."

Something in his tone caught Jonny's attention. "We did all right. Of course, we couldn't have done it without the civilian underground."

"Or vice versa. We're not going to have Cobras for the next war—did you know that?"

Jonny grimaced. "I didn't, but I guess I'm not surprised. The Army just going to set up normal guerrilla teams if war breaks out?"

"When, not if," the other corrected. "Yeah, we've got a whole bunch of Ranger and Alpha Force groups here now, some of them setting up civilian resistance networks."

Jonny nodded as he finally placed the guard's tone. "Scary, isn't it? War always is... but this one doesn't have to happen."

"Yes, I heard the Interrorum guys talking about that. They said a Cobra would blow up if he'd been hypno-conditioned."

"No, they took those self-destruct triggers out right after the war. But I wasn't hypno-conditioned; by the Trofts or anyone else."

"That Committee man, Wrey, seems to think so."

Jonny smiled bitterly. "Wrey's a short-sighted idiot who's nursing a bruised pride. I had to practically force him to bring me from Aventine in the first place, and then I saved his spangles for him when the Trofts captured the Menssana. This is his way of putting me in my place."

"But would you necessarily know if your mind had been tampered with?"

"I would, yes. That kind of thing requires that the subject be put into an unconscious or semiconscious state, and I've got internal sensors that would warn me of any chemical, optical, or sonic attempts to do that."

The guard nodded slowly. "Does Wrey know that?"

"I wasn't given the chance to tell him."

"I see. Well... I'd better get back to my duties. I'll be back later for the comboard."

"Thanks again," Jonny said; but the other had gone. Now what, he wondered uneasily, was that all about? Information? Reassurance? Or was someone pulling his strings, trying to see how much I'd say? Maybe Wrey had decided to hang around a few more hours hoping to be spared the trouble of shipping Jonny to Asgard. If so, Jonny knew, it would be a long wait. Balancing the comboard on his knees, he started his search.

Weissmann, Dane, Nunki; the names of a dozen temporary families and twice that many temporary teammates; the names and faces of Cobras living and dead—all of them tumbled out together with an ease that belied the twenty-six-year gap. For nearly half an hour he bounced back and forth through the directory as fast as his stiffening fingers would allow; for an hour after that he went more slowly as the flood of names became a trickle and finally ceased entirely.

And none of them were listed.

He stared at the comboard, mind unwilling to accept the evidence of his eyes. Adirondack was still classified as a frontier world, yes, with new areas constantly being developed—but even in twenty-six years how could everyone he'd known here have moved somewhere else?

He was still trying to make sense of it all when a movement outside his cell made him look up. The click of multiple bolts being withdrawn gave him just enough time to slide the comboard under his pillow before the cell door opened to reveal a young woman. "Governor Moreau?" she asked.

"Yes," Jonny nodded. "I hope you're someone in authority here."

Something crossed her face, too quickly to identify. "Not hardly. Thank you," she said, turning to the guard hovering at her shoulder—a different one, Jonny noted, than the one he'd talked with earlier. "I'll call when I'm done."

"All right, Doctor." The door swung shut behind her.

"Well, Governor, your medicine's been cleared," she said briskly, reaching into a pouch on her belt and producing the two vials that had been taken from him earlier. "I imagine you'd like to get some into your system before the examination."

Jonny frowned. "Examination?"

"Just routine. Take your pills, please."

He complied, and she sat down beside him on the cot. "I'll be taking some local/gradient readings," she said, producing a small cylinder from her pouch. "Just hold still and don't talk."

She flipped the instrument on and an oddly pervasive humming filled the room. "You've changed a lot," she said, just barely over the noise. "I wasn't sure it was you until I heard you speak."

"What?"

"Talk without moving your lips, please." She moved the instrument slowly across his chest, eyes on the readout.

Jonny felt a cold sweat break out on his forehead. Again, the possibility that this was a test sprang to mind... but if so the stakes had been jumped immensely. Even passive cooperation with this woman might be worth a conspiracy charge. "Who are you?" he mumbled, lips as motionless as he could keep them.

Her eyes met his for the first time and a strangely mischievous smile tugged at the corners of her lips. "Don't you remember your star geometry pupil?"

Geometry? "Danice? Danice Tolan?"

Her smile widened a bit. "I knew I hadn't changed that much." Abruptly, she became serious again. "Now: what are you doing in a Dominion military prison?"

"Officially, I'm here because I've been talking about peace with the Trofts and am therefore considered a security risk. In actuality, I'm here for stepping on a little man's pride."

"Peace." Danice said the word as if tasting it. "Anything come of those talks that could be considered progress?"

"It wasn't exactly a formal negotiation: but yes, I think I can keep the war from happening. If I can get the Central Committee to go along, that is."

"Which you obviously can't do from here." Her eyes were hard, measuring. "How long are you in for?"

"Wrey said three to five days or more. But he's already gone on to Asgard and there's no telling what the Committee'll do when he tells them we were stopped and boarded by the Trofts."

"You think they might declare war right then and there?"

"You tell me—you must know more about Dominion politics these days than I do."

Danice chewed gently at her lip, and for a long minute the only sound in the cell was the hum of her probe. Twice she paused to reset the instrument, and Jonny noticed a worried frown gradually spreading across her face. "All right," she mumbled abruptly. "We'll do it now. I'm registering a possible aneurysm in the hepatic artery—that should buy us a trip to the hospital for a closer look. Just try and play off of any cues." Without waiting for a reply she flicked off the instrument and called for the guard captain.

The captain wasn't wildly enthusiastic about her proposed hospital trip, but it was clear from his tone and worried glances that he considered the Cobra an important prisoner. Barely fifteen minutes later Jonny and Danice were heading under heavy guard through the gathering dusk toward the city's newest and best-equipped hospital.

Jonny's last experience with full mainstream medical care had been just before leaving for Aventine, and he was thoroughly impressed by the added sophistication and power the equipment had achieved in the intervening time. Multiple-layer, real-time holographic displays of his body were available at anything from a quarter- to twenty-thousand-power magnification, with structural and chemical highlighting available. Danice handled the controls with the skill of obvious practice, locating and displaying the alleged aneurysm so clearly that even Jonny could spot it in the holo.

"We'll have to operate," Danice said, turning to the senior guard who'd accompanied them. "I suggest you check with your superiors for instructions—see if there's a particular surgeon they'd prefer to use or whatever. In the meantime I'm going to sedate him and give him a shot of vasodepressor to relieve pressure on that aneurysm."

The guard nodded and fumbled out his phone. A floating table, looking uncomfortably like a coffin with a long ground-effect skirt, was brought up. Jonny was hoisted onto it and strapped down, and from a cabinet in its side Danice withdrew a hypospray and two vials. Injecting their contents into Jonny's arm, she replaced the hypospray and brought out a full-face oxygen mask. "What's that for?" one of the guards asked as she slipped the milky plastic over Jonny's head.

"He needs a slightly enhanced air supply to compensate for his suppressed circulation," she said. "What room, orderly?"

"Three-oh-seven," the man who'd brought in the floating table told her. "If you'll all get out of the way... thank you."

Danice at his side, Jonny was pushed out into the hospital's corridor maze, arriving eventually at room 307, the numbers barely legible through the mask. "Wait here until he's settled," Danice told the guards curtly. "There's not enough room to accommodate spectators in there."

Jonny was maneuvered alongside a bed in a crackerbox-sized alcove. Stepping to the far side of his table—the side between him and the guards at the door—Danice and the orderly reached down—

And he was flipped over into total darkness.

The action was so unexpected that it took Jonny several heartbeats to realize exactly what had happened. The flat top of the floating table had apparently rotated a half turn on its long axis, concealing him in a hollowed-out part of the table's upper section. Above him he could hear the faint sounds of something heavy being lifted from the table... felt the table moving away from the bed... indistinct voices holding a short conversation... then moving again, through several turns and a long elevator ride....

When he was finally rotated into the open again, he and Danice were alone in an underground parking garage. "Hurry," she whispered, her hands shaking as she unfastened his restraints. "We've got to get you off-planet before they realize that's not you in that bed."

"Who is there?" Jonny asked as they jogged to a nondescript gray car.

"Fritz—one of the hospital's medical practice robots." She got behind the wheel, took a deep breath. "We had a few minutes to touch up his features a bit, but the minute someone pulls off that mask, it's all over."

"You want me to drive?" Jonny asked, eyeing the tension lines in her face.

A quick shake of the head. "I need to get used to this sometime. It might as well be now."

She drove them through the garage, up a ramp, and out into the bustle of early-evening traffic. Jonny let her drive in silence for a few minutes before asking the obvious question. "Where are we going?"

"There's a freighter leaving for Palm in about two hours," she said, not looking at him. "We've bumped some ungodly number of high-stress plastic whosies to put aboard a yacht and pilot for you—you can tell him exactly where and when to part company with the freighter."

Jonny nodded, feeling slightly dazed by the speed at which this was all happening. "Do I get to ask who I have to thank for all this?"

"Do you really want to know?" she countered.

Jonny thought that one over. It wasn't a trivial question. "Yes," he said at last.

She sighed. "Well. First of all, you can lay your worst fears to rest—we're not in any way a criminal group. In fact, in one sense we're actually an official arm of the Dominion Joint Command." She snorted. "Though that may change after this. We're what's known as the Underground Defense Network, an organization that's supposed to do in this war what you and my parents' underground did in the last one. Except that we won't have any Cobras."

"You sound like one of my guards," Jonny murmured. "He the one who told you about me?"

Danice glanced at him in obvious surprise. "You're as quick as I always remembered you being. Yes, he's one of the handful of quiet liaisons between the military and the UDN, though I don't think his immediate superiors know. He's the one who put word of your arrest on our communications net."

"And convinced all of you I was worth defying the authorities over?"

She smiled bitterly. "Nothing of the kind. Everyone helping us thinks this is just another training exercise. Rescuing Prisoner From Under Enemy's Nose 101; final exam."

"Except you." The question was obvious; he didn't bother to voice it.

"I was just a kid in the last war, Jonny," she said quietly, "but I remember enough about it to haunt two or three lifetimes. I don't want to go through it again... but if the Dominion goes to war I'll have to."

"Maybe not—" Jonny began cautiously.

"What do you mean, 'maybe not'?" she flared. "You think they're going to all this trouble for the fun of it? They know Adirondack's going to be a major Troft target, and they've as good as admitted they won't be able to defend us. The plain, simple truth is that they're writing our world off and preparing us to sink or swim on our own. And for nothing."

She broke off and took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, Jonny. I'm sure Aventine means a lot to you. But I just can't see sacrificing Adirondack and maybe Silvern and Iberiand too in what amounts to a war of retribution."

"No need to apologize," he assured her. "No world should have to fight for its life twice in one generation."

Danice shook her head wearily. "You don't know the half of it. The social upheaval alone... There were a lot of books written about us after the war, you know, books that listed a lot of the underground people by name. Well, the Joint Command decided those people's lives might be in danger when the Trofts came in again, so five years ago they took everybody mentioned in any of the books and gave them new identities somewhere else on the planet. I was just barely able to find my own parents, and they still don't know where half of their oldest friends are."

Ahead, Jonny could see the starfield's control tower silhouetted against the last traces of red in the southwestern sky. "This pilot you've picked out also thinks this is a training exercise?"

"Theoretically. But Don is pretty smart—he may have figured out something else is up. Anyway, you'll have several days to discuss it." She favored him with a thoughtful look. "You really don't like this business of trusting other people with your life, do you? I suppose the habits of being a Cobra die hard."

"Not as hard as you'd think," Jonny shook his head. "You're remembering me with the eyes of a ten-year-old. Even then, I wasn't really any less dependent on other people than you are now."

Which was not, of course, an answer to her question. He didn't like depending on others, especially with so much at stake.

But it was something he could get used to.

"Committé Vanis D'arl's office," the bored face in the phone screen announced.

"Jame Moreau," Jonny told her, watching her closely. If she gave even the slightest indication she recognized him...

"Who's calling, please?" she asked.

"Teague Stillman—I used to be mayor of his home town. Tell him it's important."

Jonny held his breath; but, "Just a minute, please," was all she said before her face was replaced by a stylized dome. The local "hold" symbol, Jonny supposed, automatically starting his nanocomputer clock circuit. He'd give Jame two minutes to answer before assuming the woman had called the cops instead and getting the hell out of the area—

"Hello, Jonny."

Jonny wrenched his gaze back from its survey of possible escape routes. If Jame was surprised to see him, it didn't show. "Hi, Jame," he said cautiously. "Uh..."

"The line's secure," his brother said. "You all right?"

"I'm fine, but I need your help. I have to—"

"Yeah, I know all about it. Damn it all, Jonny—look, where are you?"

Jonny felt icy fingers closing around his gut. "Why?"

"Why do you think?" Jame waved a hand in irritation. "Never mind—do it your own way. My neck's stuck far enough out as it is."

Jonny gritted his teeth. "I'm at a public phone on V'awter Street, just north of Carle Park."

Jame sighed. "All right. I'll be there in half an hour or less to get you. And stay put this time—understand?"

"Okay. And—thanks."

Some of the steel seemed to go out of Jame's backbone, and a small, guarded smile even touched his face. "Yeah. See you soon."

He was there in twenty minutes flat, and even with Jonny's lack of familiarity with current styles, it was obvious the younger Moreau's car was a top-of-the-line model. "Nice," Jonny nodded as he got in beside Jame and sank into the rich cushioning. "A step or two up from Dader's old limper."

"It won't stay that way long if anyone spots us," Jame replied tartly as he pulled into the traffic flow. "We're just lucky the alert on you was limited to the military and not made public. What did you think you were up to, anyway, breaking confinement like that?"

"What did you expect—that I'd just sit there in Wrey's private limbo while the pompous idiot got a war going?"

"Granted Wrey's a self-centered grudge-holder, credit him with at least the intelligence to guard his own skin," Jame growled. "He wouldn't have left you there more than two days at the most—and he'd arranged for a Star Force scoutship to bring you here after you'd been cleared. With the extra speed scouts can make, you'd have been here four days ago—barely a day, if that, behind Wrey."

Jonny's hands curled into fists. Could he really have misread Wrey that badly? "Damn," he murmured.

Jame sighed. "So instead of being brought before the Committee to have your say, you're right up there on the military's must-find list. I don't think even Wrey really believed his innuendo about you making a private deal with the Trofts, but the ease with which your friends got you loose has a lot of people very nervous. How'd you organize all that, anyway?"

"I didn't." Jonny sighed. "Okay. I admit I crusked up good. But it doesn't change the fact that the Committee needs to hear what I've brought."

Jame shook his head. "Not a chance. You wouldn't get past the first door of the dome."

Abruptly, Jonny realized that they were heading further out of the city instead of inward. "Where are we going?"

"To Committé D'arl's country estate."

Jonny's mouth went dry. "Why?"

Jame frowned at him. "You're the one who just said you wanted to talk to someone. Committé D'arl's agreed to hear you out."

"At his private estate." Where Jonny could quietly and conveniently disappear, if necessary, with no one the wiser.

Jame sighed. "Look, Jonny, I know you don't like the Committé, but this is the only way you're going to get a hearing. And I'll tell you flat out that you couldn't find a more receptive audience anywhere in Dome." He glanced at his older brother. "Come on—settle back and relax. I know it probably looks like the whole universe is against you right now, but if you can't trust your old pillow-fight partner, who can you trust?"

Almost unwillingly, Jonny felt a smile touch his lips. "You may be right," he admitted.

"Of course I'm right. Now: we've got just under an hour for you to bring me up-to-date on the Aventine branch of the Moreau family. So start talking."

D'arl's country estate was at least as large as the entire city of Capitalia; a rich man's version, Jonny thought once, of the Tyler Mansion and grounds of Adirondack. With a rich man's version of security, too. The car was stopped six times by pairs of variously armed guards, and at each roadblock Jonny's enhanced vision picked out hidden remotes and backups lurking near trees or oddly-shaped statues. But the Moreaus were clearly expected, and the guards passed them through without question.

The main house was as impressive as the grounds, its exterior magnificent and imposing, its interior carrying the same underplayed sense of luxury Jonny had noticed on the Committé's star ship so long ago. Personal taste, he'd thought then; but with eleven more years of politics behind him he could now recognize the additional subtle warning the decor conveyed: its owner was not a man who could be bought.

D'arl was waiting for them in a small study clearly designed for personal work rather than for public or private audiences. He looked up as they entered, waved them silently to the chairs already pulled up to face his. They sat down, and for a moment the Committé gazed at Jonny. "Well, Governor—it is Governor, isn't it?" he said at last. "You seem to have made a genuine mess of your little diplomatic trip. I presume your brother has already dragged you through the roasting pit over that asinine escape from Adirondack, so I'll dispense with any further remarks about that. So now tell me why you're worth sticking my neck out."

"Because I have information about the Troft Assemblage I think you don't," Jonny said calmly. "And what may be a good chance to prevent a war. The greatest good for the greatest number—wasn't that the criterion you've always followed?"

D'arl's lip twitched in a brief smile. "Your political skills have definitely improved, Governor. All right. Let's start with why you called the Troft Empire an Assemblage a minute ago."

"Because that's what the Trofts call it, and because that's exactly what it is. There's no centralized government, at least nothing corresponding in authority to Dome or the Committee. The Assemblage is actually nothing more than a loose-knit fraternity of two- to four-planet demesnes."

D'arl frowned. "You'll forgive me if I'm skeptical. A collection of systems working at cross-purposes could hardly have held off the Dominion's military might for three years."

"True—but I never said they always worked at cross-purposes."

D'arl shook his head. "Individual self-interest alone would guarantee disunity among that many demesnes."

"Unless there were some issue of overriding importance to all of them," Jonny said quietly. "Such as an invasion by an alien race. Us."

"Jonny, the Trofts started the war, not us," Jame spoke up. "That's not just an official line, you know—I've personally seen the records."

"Then perhaps you've also seen the records of the 471 Scorpii exploration," Jonny said. "That, according to the Trofts, is what started the war."

D'arl started to speak, reached instead for a comboard resting on a low table beside his seat. "I don't think I know the reference," Jame said.

"It was a minor double star system the Dominion thought might be worth a mining development," D'arl told him. "But according to this, the initial probe took place almost ten years before Silvern was hit."

"Yes, sir," Jonny nodded. "It took the affected demesnes that long to convince the others a war was necessary."

For a moment D'arl gazed at the comboard, fingers drumming on the chair arm. "You're implying the Committee's been blind for the past thirty years." His tone was less accusing than it was thoughtful.

Jonny shrugged. "The Trofts would hardly have advertised what they probably saw as a major military disadvantage. And any dealings since then on a planetary scale or less really would look very similar to how the Dominion does things, too. But the indications were there, if the figures the Troft Ship Commander gave me are correct. Do you have the number of representatives the Trofts sent to the peace talks after the war?"

D'arl busied himself with his comboard. "They had—let's see: twenty-six Senior Representatives. Another eighty-four aides and support personnel came to Iberiand with them."

"Twenty-six. What size team did the Dominion send, about ten?"

"Twelve—and I remember Committé H'orme complaining at the time that that seemed top-heavy." D'arl's eyes met Jonny's. "Twenty-six Troft demesnes?"

Jonny nodded. "One each from the border demesnes, the only ones whose territory would be directly affected by any settlement. But then a year later you began negotiations for the rights to the Troft Corridor, which I estimate affected eighty or so additional demesnes."

D'arl was already punching keys. "One hundred six Senior Representatives," he said, shaking his head slowly. "Eighty more, exactly."

"There were other indications, too," Jonny said into the silence that followed. "The Ship Commander who let us go obviously felt entitled to disobey his orders when he had sufficient reason to do so. And even during the war I was captured by a local officer who kept me alive almost certainly against orders. You may remember me telling you about that one, Jame."

The younger Moreau was frowning. "I remember... but I don't buy your explanation. This wide-open autonomy between demesnes is bad enough, but if you run it to upper military command level, too, you're going to wind up with complete anarchy."

Jonny shrugged. "I frankly don't understand it myself," he admitted. "The Ship Commander tried to explain how a graduated system of respect or obedience based on an individual's past record kept their society running smoothly, but it still sounds like magic to me."

"All right," D'arl said abruptly. "Assume for the moment all this is true. Then what?"

Jonny turned back to face him. "Then avoiding a war becomes simply a matter of removing the issue the demesnes are uniting over. Specifically, allowing them to close the Corridor."

"Out of the question." D'arl's voice was flat. "Official Dominion policy says the Corridor stays open or the Trofts pay heavily for closing it."

"Dominion policy isn't carved into bedrock," Jonny countered. "The purpose of that threat was to protect Aventine from attack. Fine—but right now we have a better chance of surviving without your protection; and if loss of contact with you is the price, we're willing to pay it."

"Are you, now," D'arl said. "And what happens when your machines and electronics start breaking down? Aventine hasn't got an extensive enough technological base to maintain things for long."

"No, but the Trofts do. We can undoubtedly trade with them as well as you do."

"Our trade has been extremely minimal, for intelligence purposes only—"

"Oh, come on," Jonny snorted. "We both know what I'm talking about. Practically every one of your licensed carriers routinely stops off for trade en route to Aventine. Why else do you think the Corridor demesnes have put up with the arrangement all these years? They get goods and information that they would normally have to buy—with heavy tariffs, no doubt—from their brother demesnes."

D'arl had a sour look on his face. "As it happens, we've been trying to come up with a good way to end that clandestine trade for years."

Jonny spread his hands. "Well, here's your chance."

D'arl sighed. "Governor, you still don't understand the political realities here. The Committee has taken a stand; we cannot back down without a damn good reason."

"So make one up," Jonny snapped, his patience beginning to fray. "You're a consummate politician—surely you won't let a little matter of truth stand in the way of what you want." D'arl's brow darkened, but Jonny rushed on before the other could speak. "Aventine doesn't want war, the Trofts don't especially want war, your own people don't want war. Is the Committee so hell-bent on fighting someone that not even that will stop them?"

"Jonny!" Jame snapped.

"It's all right, Moreau, I'll handle it," D'arl said. "Governor, I'll take your recommendation to the Committee tomorrow. That's the best that I can do."

"A Committé with your experience?" Jonny scoffed. "You can do better than just playing court reporter."

"I can push any solidly-based, politically plausible reason for closing the Corridor," D'arl bit back. "You've yet to give me anything that qualifies."

"You want a good political reason? Fine; I'll give you one right now." Jonny stood up, dimly aware that his anger was near to overwhelming all control over it. "What do you think the Committee would do if a visiting dignitary from Aventine shot down one of its members?"

"Jonny!" Jame jumped to his feet.

"Stay back, Jame." Jonny kept his eyes on D'arl. "Well, Committé? It would mean economic sanctions against the colonies, wouldn't it, which for all practical purposes means closing the Corridor."

"It would." D'arl was glacially calm. "But you wouldn't shoot me down in cold blood just for that."

"Wouldn't I? The greatest good for the greatest number, remember? What does it matter that you and I would be sacrificed? And I've got more than just that, anyway. For what you've done to thousands of Aventine boys alone I could hate you enough to kill. Jame, get back."

The younger Moreau ignored the order. Quietly, he walked over to stand squarely between the other two men. For a long moment the brothers locked gazes. Then Jonny reached forward and effortlessly lifted Jame into the air by his upper arms, setting him to the side. The brief burst of anger was gone, leaving only determination and the cold knowledge that he'd come too far to back out now. "Committé, I want you to get on the phone and start calling in all the favors you've undoubtedly been accumulating through the years," he told D'arl grimly. "Now. You are going to get the Corridor closing accepted."

D'arl didn't move. "Under threat to my life? No. And certainly not because of your unreasonable feelings about the Aventine Cobra project."

He said the last so casually that Jonny was taken aback. Fury threatened to drown him... but abruptly he understood. "You don't know, do you?" he said, more in bitterness than in anger. "I suppose it hasn't happened yet to your own Cobras."

"Know what?"

Jonny dug into his pocket for his medicine, tossed the two vials into D'arl's lap. The Committé frowned at the labels and keyed the names into his comboard. A moment later he looked up to meet Jonny's eyes. "Anemia and arthritis," he almost whispered.

"Yes," Jonny nodded, wondering at the oddly intense reaction. "Every one of the First Cobras in the colonies is coming down with those diseases, as a direct result of our implanted servos and laminae, and there are indications our immune systems are starting to be affected, as well. Best estimates give me barely twenty years left to live, if that long. That's the ultimate legacy your Cobra project has left on Aventine."

D'arl stared down at the vials in his hand. "It's starting here, too, Governor. Reports of chronic Cobra illnesses have dribbled in for the past year or so. Statistically inconclusive as yet... I'd hoped my suspicions were wrong." He looked up at Jame's stunned expression. "I ran the reports through Alveres, Moreau—I didn't see any point in worrying you about your brother's health."

Jame took a deep breath. "Committé... if what Jonny said about secret trade helping to keep the Corridor open is true, then it follows that the whole Aventine Cobra project was indeed unnecessary, or at least premature."

"The Cobras will be needed now."

"No," Jonny shook his head. "We'll be maintaining the trade relationship with the Trofts, and with the Corridor closed we're no longer a military threat. They won't attack us—and we won't provoke them, either. There's another point for you, Committé: if war starts, you won't be able to count on those hundred thousand Troft troops being tied up on Aventine."

"My point, sir—" Jame cut off as D'arl raised a hand.

"Peace, Moreau," the Committé said quietly. "I never said I didn't want to help, just that I needed a stronger case. And now I've got it. Excuse me."

Standing, he brushed by Jonny and stepped to a small desk off to one side. "Starport," he said to the phone screen. "...This is Committé D'arl. Number one star ship is to be prepared for travel, under the direction of Jame Moreau. Passenger and cargo lists to be supplied by him; ultimate destination Adirondack.... Thank you."

He keyed the phone off and turned to face the two Moreaus. "I'm heading back to Dome to get things started. Governor, you and your brother need to make a list of whatever you'd like as your last shipment of goods to the Outer Colonies. You can go whenever you're ready; I'll contact you on Adirondack before you leave there with any final messages." He turned to go.

"Committé," Jonny called after him. "Thank you."

The other turned back, and Jonny was surprised to see an ironic smile tugging at his lips. "I'll stop the war, Governor. But save your thanks until you see how I do it." He left the room, closing the door gently behind him. Jonny never saw him again.