The Dragon Never Sleeps

— 70 —

Turtle glanced up as Midnight bustled in. "What is it?"

"We're going to Tregesser Prime. A Voyager just came for Blessed. He's taking us with him."

He just looked at her.

"Aren't you excited?"

"No."

"Oh."

He had explained his moral quandry. She understood but was not worried. He was Turtle, and Turtle did not hurt people.

He wished he had faith in himself. Temptation and rationalization had him back-against-the-wall. "Have you seen Amber Soul?"

"Yes. She wasn't excited, either."

"I'd better pack if I'm going traveling."

It worked. Midnight said, "Oh! Me too!" and fluttered out.

Turtle did no packing. He had none to do. He settled back to ponder an odd question Blessed had asked recently. Had he ever heard of a stardrive, overdrive, hyperdrive, whatever, that ignored the Web?

He had. But in no context suggesting such a thing was possible. It was the intellectual toy of fantacists who carped against the restraints imposed by the Web.

Turtle had asked why.

"Curiosity. My hobby is trying to figure out where the human race came from. It didn't evolve on any of the worlds it occupies today. It didn't migrate into Canon space on the Web. Its first contact with the Web came a thousand years before Canon's founding, when the Go visited M. Vilbrantia in the Octohedron. All eight systems there had been occupied for several thousand years before that.

"Pity about the Go," Blessed had said.

In its first millennium on the Web, humanity fought eighteen wars with its benefactors. There was no need for a nineteenth. The Guardships came onto the stage of the Web in triumph complete and absolute.

Blessed scowled at Nyo. "Let the bastards grumble. I don't move till everything is set. I want nothing left for Provik's scavengers or the Guardships. Cable."

"Yes?"

"What's the data situation? They haven't come back, but that doesn't mean they didn't get something. Did they?"

"I don't think so. I can't find a hole that would've caught their attention."

"What're you doing now?"

"Trying to figure out how to get our guests into Tregesser Horata."

"Anybody going to get suspicious if I turn up with an artifact for a playmate?"

"No."

"There's one covered."

"Artifacts come and go. Ku warriors don't."

"It's your competence. Where's Tina, Nyo?"

"Fussing around trying to get everything on the lighter."

"And I've got everything loaded but live baggage," a voice said from Nyo's wrist. "Will you come on?"

Blessed glanced around. "I always feel like I'm forgetting something."

Nyo grunted. Cable did not say anything till they were on the launch platform. And that was something Blessed did not want to hear. "We'll have to bring Provik in on this eventually. There's no way around it."

"That means handing the whole damned thing over."

"He'll have somebody on the Voyager. He'll have somebody around us every minute. There won't be any way to hide the Ku."

The first person Blessed saw aboard the Voyager was that woman who had been Provik's companion that last day in the Pylon.

She smiled her enigmatic smile.