Worlds of Honor

Princess Adrienne sat with her feet tucked up under her in the armchair in her suite aboard HMS King Roger I while she gazed sightlessly out the armorplast view port. The suite's dimmed lights made the star-spangled view still more glorious, yet she scarcely even noticed it as her mind drifted through channels which had become far too well worn.

She'd always disliked the names tradition insisted upon hanging on each new royal yacht. This one, for example. It sounded . . . arrogant to name a ship after her own great-great-great-grandfather. Of course, the choice hadn't been made by the royal family—the Navy had picked the name when the Admiralty built the Roger as its predecessor's replacement—and no one else seemed to object. But she couldn't help it.

Maybe it's just because he was King, and Daddy is King, and I don't wantto be Queen, but they're going to make me. I ought to just let them crown me, then abdicate. That'd fix them all!

She toyed with the notion, visualizing the consternation. The fact that she was an only child and that her widower father had steadfastly refused to remarry had always made the political establishment nervous about the succession. It wasn't as if she didn't have a dozen cousins in varying degrees who could step into the breach, but the Star Kingdom's population had developed an almost frightening veneration for the House of Winton . . . and she was the last member of the family's senior branch.

Of course, I've read great-great-grandmother's personal journals, she thought. That has to make a difference in how much veneration Ifeel for the monarchy. I wonder how many people realize the Crown was supposed to be mostly a figurehead? A puppet for the House of Lords? Well, they got more than they figured on with Grandma Beth!

She grinned, but then the grin faded as she remembered what her ancestress' successful Constitution building had dumped on her own plate. Damn it! She was sure there were thousands of people simply dying to be King or Queen! Why couldn't she just pick one of them and pass the job to someone who actually wanted it?

She sighed and picked a bit of fluff off her bathrobe. She held it up on her opened palm, then puffed a breath of air at it and watched it sail off into the unknown. She lost sight of it almost instantly in the dimly lit cabin, and a sudden spasm of hurt lashed her as it brought back another day when a ten-year-old Adrienne had watched her mother's ship depart HMS Hephaestus for Gryphon. She'd been supposed to accompany the Queen Consort, but something had come up. Some minor detail which had derailed her own schedule. And so she'd simply accompanied her mother up to the space station to wave goodbye and then watched the yacht—that one had been named Queen Elizabeth I–until it vanished into the immensity of space, just as the bit of fluff had vanished.

And like the bit of fluff, she had never seen it—or her mother—again.

She bit her lip hard, as much in anger for letting memory ambush her as in anguish at reliving it, and forced it down, down into the deep places in her mind. It subsided sullenly, like a hungry neoshark, sinking back into the shadows but never truly gone. She felt it there, circling at the core of her, waiting for another opportunity to erupt from the depths and rend her afresh. And it would attack again. She knew it would.

She drew a deep breath and shoved her hands into the pockets of her robe, and then, slowly, she forced herself to relax and draw happier memories to the surface. Memories of her mother before her death . . . of her father before her mother's death.

A great many people had been astonished when Crown Prince Roger wedded Solange Chabala. Not by the fact that she wasn't a noblewoman, for the Constitution specifically required the Heir to marry a commoner, but rather because she was so . . . well, plain. With all the Crown's subjects to choose from, surely Prince Roger (who possessed the Winton handsomeness in full measure) could have picked someone who stood more than a hundred and fifty-one centimeters and had a face that was more than merely . . . comfortable looking. Oh, in the proper lighting little Princess Solange could pass for pretty, but she'd been undeniably plump, and she'd never managed to cultivate the air of boredom which was any proper aristocrat's birthright. Instead, she'd bustled, and she'd smiled incessantly, and she'd always been doing something, and somehow, without anyone's realizing it was happening, she had gathered the entire Star Kingdom to her heart and it had discovered that, without quite knowing how, it had learned to love her.

As Adrienne had. And her father. Indeed, King Roger had adored his Queen, and she had exercised a profound impact upon him. In his youth, Prince Roger had been the darling of the Liberals and the despair of his parents, for he'd been strongly attracted to the assertion that monarchies were obsolete. That argument had been around almost since the beginning of the Star Kingdom, of course, but in the last thirty or forty T-years the Liberal 'faxes had begun pointing to the growing Republic of Haven and its daughter colonies as the way of the future. Not even the discovery of the Manticore Wormhole Junction forty-five T-years before Adrienne's birth seemed likely to allow the Star Kingdom to close the vast gap in wealth and power between it and the Republic, and "the dead hand of monarchy" had been a favorite Liberal explanation for why that was so. For herself, Adrienne had been impressed by the fact that none of the Liberal Party's aristocratic members had ever been heard to comment on "the dead hand of the nobility" or to offer up their own privilege and wealth upon the altar of economic equality, universal suffrage, and democracy. But Roger had found much of the Liberal platform very appealing, although he hadn't quite known what to do about the Liberal notion that the monarchy, as the first, most fundamental barrier to the implementation of their sweeping changes, must be removed.

Until Princess Solange arrived, that was. Even now, with all the hurt and all the pain since, Adrienne had to smile whenever she thought of how her mother's impact had shaken Manticoran political circles. She was energetic, kind, caring, cheerful . . . and implacable as a Sphinx glacier. Her Gryphon yeoman background had gifted her with a sturdy sense of independence, a fundamental distrust of aristocrats who kept talking about how much they wanted to "help the common man," and a deep sense of trust in the monarchy. It never occurred to her that the Crown might be anything but the commoners' natural ally against the wealth and power of the aristocracy—whether that aristocracy described itself as Liberal, Conservative, or Reactionary—and she went through Mount Royal Palace like a hurricane of fresh air.

Those had been the good years, Adrienne thought now. The years when her mother and father had been a team. When first Princess and then Queen Consort Solange had convinced her husband to stop dabbling with theories of social engineering and get down to the pragmatic task of making the monarchy work to produce the things he'd longed to give his subjects. Adrienne could still remember childhood nights, sitting at the dinner table with her parents while she listened to them stripping the bones out of one problem after another, analyzing them, coming up with strategies. She'd been too young to understand what they were trying to accomplish, but she'd felt their energy and vibrancy, the gusto with which they tackled the job, and she'd known even then that it had been both her parents. That her father was the strategist and the planner, but that her mother was the power plant that drove the machine and the warm, caring heart which had become her husband's moral compass.

And then, just before Adrienne's eleventh birthday, Queen Elizabeth's inertial compensator had failed under power.

She had been pulling close to four hundred gravities when it happened. There had been no survivors, and the derelict ship, manned only by the dead, had attained a velocity of over .9 c before anyone could intercept it. Queen Elizabeth had been traveling at that speed when she struck a tiny lump of matter—later estimates were that it was probably no more than a couple of cubic meters in volume. Her over-stressed particle shielding had already failed, not that it would have done much good at her final velocity even if it had functioned perfectly. The explosion had been visible to the naked eye throughout most of the Manticore Binary System, if one knew where to look.

Roger II had known where to look. He'd stood on a balcony of Mount Royal Palace and watched the searing flash of his wife's funeral pyre without so much as a single tear . . . and he had never wept for her since.

But the man who had come back inside from that balcony never smiled, never raised his voice in anger or laughter, either. He might as well have been a machine, and all that mattered to the machine was the power of the greater machine he ran. All of the tactics he and Queen Solange had worked out were at his fingertips, and he used them ruthlessly, yet the heart had been cut out of him with his wife. He remained scrupulously fair and puritanically honest, but there was no laughter, no joy. No room for humanity, because humanity hurt. It was better to be the machine running the machine, to lose himself utterly in providing his subjects with efficient government, however cold and unfeeling, than to risk feeling anything ever again.

And the one creature the machine had feared most in all the universe was a small, slender child who had just lost her mother. For that child could have made him feel again, could have dragged him back to face his agony, and so he'd used the press of his duties, and the formality of palace etiquette, and the need for tutors to teach her all the things she had to know, as excuses to hide from her. He'd pushed her away, fought to crush her into some sort of mold that would squash out the perfect automated successor for a machine which had once been a man. She was his heir, his replacement part, and that was all he dared let her ever be, lest she, too, die and wound him all over again.

She hadn't understood, of course. All she'd known was that when she'd needed her father most, he had deserted her. And because she was her mother's child, and because she'd loved him so much, she had reasoned that the fault must be hers and not his. That she must have done something to drive him away.

That logic had almost destroyed her—would have destroyed her but for the fact that she was Queen Solange's daughter. Her mother had been loving, but she had been equally and unflinchingly honest, and she had imbued her daughter with both those qualities. It took almost two T-years for Adrienne to realize what had actually happened—to recognize that her father had shut her out because of the damage he'd taken from her mother's death, not because of anything she had done. And in at least one sense, she'd realized it too late. Not too late to save herself, but too late to forgive her father.

She understood—now—what he'd done. She even understood why, and that his present cold, uncaring persona sprang out of how deeply he'd once allowed himself to love. But she also understood that countless other people had lost beloved wives or husbands or children and managed, somehow, to remain more than reasonably functional pieces of machinery. And she understood her father's selfishness, his inability to look beyond his hurt and his loss and his pain to the daughter he still had or to realize that his actions had deprived her of her father, as well as her mother.

He'd been a coward. He hadn't loved her enough to be there for her. That was what she could not forgive him for. A part of her kept insisting she was wrong to be so harsh. Some people were stronger than others, and he'd pushed her aside out of pain, not cruelty. But it didn't matter, and she wondered sometimes how much of the anger and the fury she felt for him was her way of sublimating her own anguish at her mother's death, as if she could somehow subtly blame him for all her pain if she only tried hard enough.

Now she sighed and closed her eyes wearily.

Someday Daddy and I are simply going to have to reconcile, for the Kingdom's sake, if nothing else! I just wish I knew how we can possibly do it. And I suppose that if I'm going to be honest, this little excursion to Twin Forks isn't going to help matters.

She grimaced again. For the last ten T-years, her father's one ambition had been to make the Crown truly supreme, and he'd devoted all his formidable ability and obsessive energy to that task. Adrienne had no doubt that Roger II would go down in history as second only to Elizabeth I among the builders of the Manticoran monarchy, and she knew many traditional power groups were dismayed by how his reforms had pruned and chopped away at their ability to influence policy. Several had attempted to resist their systematic emasculation, but none had been able to defy the avalanche named Roger II.

Except one. The Sphinx Forestry Service had one tremendous advantage over every other independently-minded bureau upon which Roger had directed the force of his will: a direct Constitutional commission. The Ninth Amendment specifically recognized the treecats as the native sentient species of Sphinx, guaranteed their corporate title to over a third of the planet's land area in perpetuity, and expressly required the Forestry Service to act as the 'cats' legal guardians, advocates, and representatives. The Crown had the right to name the head of the Service, but only with the advice and consent of the House of Lords, and the Lords had long since realized how the wind set in Mount Royal Palace. They'd begun to fight back against the reduction of their own prerogatives with every weapon at their disposal, including a stubborn refusal to consent in the appointment of a suitably obedient SFS chief who would run the Service the way Roger wanted it run.

That alone would have been enough to focus his cold, unforgiving ire on the Service, but he also found it an intolerable insult that a full third of Sphinx—all of which had originally been Crown land—had been placed forever beyond his reach. To make things worse, much of that land held vast, untouched mineral deposits. The ability to confer those lands on allies in the Lords—or in the House of Commons—would have been an enormously potent weapon, and the man who had become totally committed to the supremacy of the Crown hated the 'cats for depriving him of it.

Which is foolish, Adrienne thought. No, be honest—it's downright stupid! He's still got most of the Unicorn Belt and allthe Gorgon Belt over in Manticore-B, and that doesn't even mention the better part of thirty-seven moons, or the Crown lands he still doeshave on Sphinx. Plus Gryphon and even Manticore! For that matter, most people would preferan asteroid grant, because it's so much cheaper to work asteroids than an old-fashioned, dirtside mine. But I don't suppose anyone ever said obsessions have to make sense, and Daddy has more than enough of thoseto go around.

She sighed sadly and pushed up out of her chair. King Roger was due to depart for Sphinx in six hours, and she needed to get some sleep before their arrival. Besides, sitting here and rehashing all the things which had gone wrong in her life in the last ten T-years was pointless—and so was indulging herself in an orgy of "poor little princess" misery. Her mother had always told her the universe was the way the universe was, and that all anyone could do was deal with it as she found it.

Of course, Mom was always figuring out ways to suck the universe into doing what shewanted . . . and she usually found one when she needed it, too. She smiled wearily and stepped into her sleeping cabin and unbelted her robe. I wonder what she'd think of my subterfuge with my itinerary? She'd probably be pissed at me for using it as a way to tick Daddy off, but maybe not. One thing I know for certain: she'd be pissed as hellat him for the way he's acted since her death, so maybe she wouldn't be so mad at me after all.

I hope not, anyway.

Crown Princess Adrienne slipped into bed, waved the lights out, and settled down into her pillows, and deep inside her, where she could scarcely hear them any more, the tears of a lonely little girl fell into the silence.

"I don't like it."

"You never like it, Henry. That's why I work with you."

"Huh?" Henry Thoreau's face wrinkled in puzzlement, an expression which made him look even more like one of the genetically enhanced buffalo being experimentally introduced to Gryphon. He stood a full two meters in height, with a broad, meaty face remarkable for its extreme plainness, whereas Jean-Marc Krogman was a small, sleek whippet of a man. Krogman was also the more intelligent of the two, but that very intelligence prevented him from underestimating Thoreau. The bigger man was no genius, but neither was he stupid . . . and he was pragmatic, with good instincts, and very, very good at what he did.

"You never like it," Krogman repeated now, "whatever the job. But that's good. It's what keeps you on your toes and makes you so good at spotting potential problems before they bite us on the ass."

"Oh." Thoreau rubbed his nose while he considered that, then shrugged. "So fine. That means you should listen to me. And I'm telling you that this one is too high profile. We try to pull it off, and we'd better plan on migrating to some neobarb colony no one ever heard of and staying there for good, 'cause there sure as hell ain't gonna be a hole deep enough to hide in here! And I don't know about you, Jean-Marc, but I kinda like it here. 'Specially compared to someplace like Old Earth or Beowulf," he added pointedly.

"As do I," Krogman agreed. "Nor do I have any intention of leaving. But in this instance, I think the prominence of the mark makes you unduly nervous. And it would be . . . unwise to change our minds this late in the game. Our client would take a dim view of that, you know." He cocked a quizzical eyebrow at Thoreau, and after a moment the big man nodded glumly. "Besides, the pieces are all in position, and our weapon has been thoroughly prepped, if I say so myself. No, Henry. It doesn't matter how high profile the job is when the work is properly planned and executed. We can get to her and get away clean. After all," he smiled thinly, "it's been done before."

"Ha! I've heard the rumors, too, and that's all they are. No way in hell that was a hit!"

"Oh?" Krogman cocked his head, and his eyes glinted. "You think not? Then tell me this—how many other inertial compensators have failed in the last ten T-years?"

"Huh?" Thoreau rubbed his nose again, then shrugged irritably. "How the hell should I know?"

"A fair question," Krogman conceded. "The numbers are scarcely a matter of general interest, and some research would be required to discover them. But unlike you, I've looked into it—a matter of professional curiosity, you understand—and the answer is none. Not a single compensator has failed aboard a single Manticoran vessel since the Queen Elizabeth's. Don't you find it just a little odd that the only ship to suffer complete and catastrophic compensator failure in all that time also happened to be the single most carefully maintained vessel in the entire Star Kingdom?"

"I guess it does sound funny, put that way," Thoreau admitted after a moment.

"Indeed it does," Krogman said with another smile, "and I wonder how it was managed? Of course, whoever pulled it off was also far luckier than anyone has any right to plan for. He couldn't possibly have counted on having the ship blow itself—and any evidence—the hell up. But I'll guarantee you that anyone who could get to the royal yacht's compensator would have set up a defense in depth that would have held even if someone had managed to intercept the ship and bring it back intact."

"That's a pretty big supposition," Thoreau pointed out.

"Maybe. On the other hand, I've got a strong suspicion that the people who hired us were behind that hit as well. And that they're connected pretty damned high up at Court, too." Thoreau raised an eyebrow, and the smaller man shrugged. "It's exactly the same MO, Henry. Rather than attack the King directly—and maybe start someone looking for high-placed conspirators who might profit equally directly from his demise—they go after targets that attack him only obliquely. Hmm. . . ."

He leaned back in his chair, thinking hard while summer Sphinx sunlight spilled over the street-side cafe.

"I wonder," he murmured at last. "Do they only want to cripple him? To derail this passion of his for making the Crown supreme? Or will they go for him directly later?"

"If they want him diverted, then they weren't as smart as they thought the first time around—assuming what happened to the Queen Elizabeth really was a hit—now were they?" Thoreau snorted. "Sure, they got the Queen, but he's only been an even bigger pain in the ass for anybody else who wants a slice of the pie since she died."

"To the contrary, Henry. They were smart enough; they just hadn't counted on how much it would hurt him, and they got a bad case of overkill." Thoreau frowned, and Krogman shrugged. "Think about it. If someone did sabotage the ship to cripple the King, they succeeded. They simply didn't cripple him in the way they'd anticipated. Instead of abandoning government while he tried to put his private life back together, he totally buried himself in his work to avoid the wreckage of his private life. Given how much he and his wife both loved their daughter, I would've made the same call and expected him to bury himself in the kid, instead."

"And you would've been wrong," Thoreau said with a certain satisfaction, and Krogman grinned. His towering partner seldom got a chance to point out errors on his part, especially in matters psychological, and Thoreau enjoyed the rare opportunities to gloat. Not that Thoreau was foolish enough to want Krogman to make mistakes, which was one reason Krogman was amused rather than irritated by the big man's gloating.

"I would've been wrong," he conceded. "But I don't think he'll be able to just keep going if he loses the kid now. Oh, no. If anything happens to the Heir, everything he's been avoiding since his wife's death will jump up and go straight for his throat, Henry. I'm as sure of that as I am that we're sitting here right now. But is that what they want, or will they go after him directly while he and his security people are still reeling?"

"If they do, then they can damned well find someone else for the job!" Thoreau said bluntly. "And that goes for you, too, Jean-Marc! I've done some risky things with you, but I am not going after the frigging King of frigging Manticore!"

"No one's asking you to," Krogman soothed. "But it would make sense, wouldn't it? I mean, if they wanted to manipulate the succession." His eyes took on a faraway expression, and he pursed his lips. "Everyone thinks what happened to Queen Elizabeth was an accident," he mused. "Well, everyone but the PGS and the King's Own, at least, and even they probably lean that way. And if things work right, everyone'll think what happens to the Heir is the work of a lone madman. Security for the King will tighten up, sure, but I wonder if anyone else has considered how removing his wife prevented him from producing any other heirs while removing his daughter will eliminate the only heir he has. Which means that if they eliminate him, why, the direct line of Winton will go—pouf!"

He snapped his fingers, and Thoreau twitched uncomfortably. He looked around the cafe quickly, suddenly nervous about listening ears. But it was early, they sat alone in a sea of empty tables still awaiting the normal lunch rush, and neither of them had been foolish enough to raise his voice. Besides, he'd swept for bugs himself, and neither he nor Krogman had any sort of criminal record to attract official attention. Or not, at least, here in the Star Kingdom and under the names of Thoreau and Krogman.

None of which made him any happier about Krogman's speculations. The possibility that someone might have managed to sneak a bug in on them despite his best efforts was bad enough, but his partner's musings were frightening. People in their line of work became dangerous when they knew too much . . . and their employers became dangerous to them when those employers only thought they knew too much. Besides, he'd heard that same note from Krogman before, and it usually indicated that the other man was mentally prospecting for fresh opportunities. Which was a good thing, most of the time, but would be a decidedly bad thing if it got them any deeper into some kind of plot aimed at toppling the monarchy outright.

"Yeah, well, maybe you're right about all that, Jean-Marc," he said, "and maybe you aren't. But what we've got to worry about is the operation we signed on for, and I'd feel a hell of a lot better if we already had her real itinerary."

"All we can do is all we can do," Krogman replied with a philosophical shrug. "We told them they'd have to provide us with the intel to get our boy into position, and they agreed. So if they don't get us the word this time, then we wait for the next time she comes out where we can get at her. Either that, or they find themselves another team."

"I don't much like that thought, either," Thoreau muttered, and Krogman quirked an eyebrow. "The thought of their finding another team," the big man amplified. "I mean, what if they've already lined up somebody to pop us right after we pop her? Kinda tie up the loose ends real quick, just in case?"

"A thought," Krogman murmured, and there was a gleam of respect in his eyes as he regarded his partner. In point of fact, Krogman had already considered that possibility, but the fact that Thoreau had also pondered it gave it additional point.

Of course, that's always a part of the game, isn't it? And our "clients" know that we know that they know that we know it. So if I were the people we're working for, and if I were as smart as I've been giving them credit for being, would I also be smart enough to know that people like me always cover our asses? Or would I be smart enough to figure out a way to pop me and get away with it no matter howthoroughly I've covered my ass?

He smiled dreamily at the thought.

* * *

"Here! Take it and get the hell out of my life!" the uniformed woman hissed, and threw the data chip viciously at the elegantly groomed man. They stood between towering banks of Terran rhododendron in Mount Royal Palace's Grand Garden, atop the hill overlooking the city of Landing, and Manticore-A hung on the western horizon. The cool breezes of evening sighed in the glossy green leaves, and the shadows were dense enough to blur their features, but the insignia of a commander in the Royal Manticoran Navy glittered on the woman's collar.

"Now, now, Anna!" The elegant man caught the chip with negligent grace. "That's no way to talk to someone who's paid you so well for your services."

"Paid? You call it paid?" The commander sounded strangled, and her fisted hand quivered at her side. "I never took a goddamned cent from you!"

"Ah? Well, I suppose not," the elegant man agreed. "But there are other commodities than money, aren't there, Anna? Like silence. Yes," he mused, "silence can be quite valuable, can't it? Especially when it keeps someone like you in the service of the Crown rather than buried on a prison asteroid somewhere. Or possibly just buried, if the court-martial happened to feel particularly vindictive. Normal bribes and contractor kickbacks are one thing, after all, but when substitution of substandard materials leads to the deaths of—what was it? Sixty of your fellow Navy personnel? Well—"

He clicked his tongue and shrugged, and the woman physically twitched with the rage boiling through her. But he was right, damn him! All he had to do was drop a hint in the right ear, and her career, her freedom, and quite possibly her life would be over.

But the smartass bastard's overlooked the flip side of the coin, she thought savagely. Sure, he can wreck my life. But I can do the same for him, too, and if I turn King's Evidence to nail a damned dukefor treason, they just might let me walk, too!

The thought helped steady her, and she drew a deep, hissing breath.

"You've got your information," she said flatly, "and I hope it doesn't do you a damned bit of good. I sure couldn't break the encrypt."

"Just as long as it's the right file." The elegant man's voice was no longer lazy, and the woman felt a sudden flicker of fear at its sudden coldness.

"It's the one you asked for—that's all I can tell you," she said. "That's all anybody could tell you about a Blue File without the encrypt key."

The elegant man seemed to consider that, then nodded slowly, and she relaxed a bit at the evidence that he meant to be at least a little reasonable. Blue Files were the most closely held of all military data. Their encryption programs were the best in the Star Kingdom, and their file designations were randomly generated strings of letters and numbers to avoid names which might offer any possible clue as to their contents. All the commander knew was that this particular file had been designated as "A1108G7Q23," and that she had pulled it out of the files of the King's Own Regiment. And, frankly, that was all she wanted to know about it.

"Then I suppose I'll just have to find myself a key," the elegant man said, and smiled. "You wouldn't happen to know where I could find one, would you, Anna?"

"No, I wouldn't," she said shortly.

"A pity. Ah, well. Thank you ever so much for your assistance. If I should need any other small favors, I'll be in touch."

He raised one hand and twiddled its fingers in a dismissive, shooing gesture, and she clenched her jaw. But she also made herself turn obediently and leave.

Let the prick enjoy himself for now, she told herself venomously. I'm just about ready to put the blocks to his ass.

She smiled thinly into the gathering evening gloom at the thought. It was risky, and she'd implicated herself hopelessly if anyone else ever found it, but the file she'd put together on all her "patron's" demands over the years was just about thick enough.

Another few months, she thought, nodding a brusque salute to the sentry outside Mount Royal's Lion Gate, and turned to her left, stalking down the pedestrian mall with a long, angry stride.

Just a few more demands like tonight, and it'll be enough to take to Justice and barter for a pass on the bribery charges. Hell, I'll even settle for five-to-ten in a cell if it lets me take the son-of-a-bitch down with me!

Commander Anna Marquette, senior military aide to the Second Lord of the Manticoran Admiralty, never noticed the dark-haired woman behind her. There was no reason she should have, for the stranger had mastered the art of unobtrusiveness. It was, in fact, her stock in trade, and she moved through the sparse, evening foot traffic as if she wore a cloak of invisibility, making no more impression than the breeze itself on anyone who saw her—or, rather, didn't quite see her—as she drifted along behind Marquette.

As a matter of fact, the commander mused as she made the familiar turn to cut through Eminger Park, maybe I shouldn't wait even another month. I don't know what the damned file he wanted was all about, but it wasa Blue File. That means someonesure as hell thought whatever's in it was important enough to bury deep, and if that's true, then—

The unobtrusive woman touched a button in her pocket, activating the contact lens in her left eye. An illuminated display which only she could see appeared to float before her, and she felt a glow of satisfaction as she carefully checked its icons. The closest thermal signature was fifteen meters in front of the target, and there was no one behind them for at least eighty meters. That was more than enough for her purposes, and she smiled slightly. The target's habit of taking the same route from the Palace back to Admiralty House every single time had made planning ever so much simpler.

Her left hand made a peculiar little twisting gesture, and a small gray tube, cross section thinner than a drinking straw, slid into her hand as she took three larger strides and closed the distance to the commander. One more stride to her left, and her right shoulder jostled Marquette ever so lightly as she stepped past her. The officer's head snapped around, eyebrows rising in surprise at the sudden contact, for she'd never suspected that anyone was behind her.

Perfect, the unobtrusive woman thought.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" she apologized, and her left hand came up. Marquette didn't see it until the last instant, and even then, no warning bells rang until the gray tube hissed and sent an invisible burst of precisely designed nanotech biochines straight up her nostrils. She heard the sound, then, and her eyes began to widen in shock, but she never felt a thing . . . until the terrible, utterly incapacitating agony as the tiny machines created what all but the very closest of autopsies would insist was a natural cerebral hemorrhage.

The unobtrusive woman didn't even pause as the commander went down in a boneless heap. There was no need. Her nannies had already done their jobs; now they were busy dissolving into odds and ends of "blood protein" that would pass any scientific examination. They would even have the right genetic markers, because the biolab which had built them had been provided with tissue samples from the target's BuMed records to use for building blocks.

Confident in the quality of her own work, the assassin neither shortened nor lengthened her stride. She simply walked away, like any other stroller in the park, without even a smile to betray her satisfaction with a job well done.

"You're certain you got all of it?" the elegant man asked.

"Positive, My Lord," the man in the Palace Guard Service uniform assured him. "The hard copy was exactly where we thought it would be, and I vacuumed every bit of it out of her electronic system, as well. It's gone. Or, at least, if it still exists anywhere, no one else will ever be able to find it if I can't."

The elegant man frowned ever so slightly at that, for he hated qualifiers. On the other hand, his minion had a habit of succeeding at even the most difficult tasks. He also had the reach and the avenues of information, both official and private, to make good on his boast. And truth to tell, it was better to work with people forthright enough to make qualifying admissions rather than promise more than they could truly deliver.

The PGS man only stood there, gazing calmly at his employer, as if he knew precisely what thoughts were flowing through this mind, and the elegant man smiled.

"Excellent. I won't forget this," he promised, and walked away with a nod.

Seeker of Dreams looked in the indicated direction as he and Leaf Stalker paused in the fork of a tree. The Bright Water hunter had volunteered to escort Seeker of Dreams to the gathering place of the humans who watched over the People, and Seeker of Dreams appreciated his kindness. The other's mind glow told him they were kindred souls, but though Leaf Stalker felt a sort of wistful envy of his quest, the hunter did not share it. He knew more of humans than many of the People, and he spoke often with the People who had bonded with them, yet he lacked that need, that urgent hunger to seek out the human mind glow, which drove Seeker of Dreams.

And he is wise not to seek the bond without it, Seeker of Dreams thought, and it was his turn to feel a wistful envy, for Sings Truly was correct. Only one driven by a need he could neither master nor resist would choose the path he had, for he was young. It was almost certain that the dream he sought would send him to his death before half his allotted turnings were sped, and he felt a sharp flicker of sorrow for all the other things he would never see and experience. As Leaf Stalker did not share his own quest, so Seeker of Dreams would not share the slow, sweet turnings—the mate and kittens, the snow times, and mud times, and green, drowsy times—that the hunter would know.

Leaf Stalker asked again, and Seeker of Dreams looked more carefully, then flicked his ears in assent. They were too distant to make out many details, but a straight, sharp edge of green, darker than the leaves about them, stood out against a bright patch of sky, and something about it prodded at his memory. Not of anything he had ever seen with his eyes, but of something from the memory songs. . . .

Leaf Stalker told him almost reverently.

The hunter sighed, and flicked his tail in perplexity. never trulyunderstand the two-legs. Perhaps—> the hunter turned his head to gaze directly at Seeker of Dreams <—you will prove my fear unfounded. I hope you may, Seeker of Dreams.>

Seeker of Dreams mused, and Leaf Stalker flipped his ears in agreement. They perched on the high, chalet-style roof of the brand new main administration block of the Forestry Service's HQ. A dozen more People perched with them, and Seeker of Dreams felt the welcome of their mind glows as they recognized the need which had brought him here. More than that, he felt their deep satisfaction with the bonds that same need had drawn them to establish.

Leaf Stalker agreed, and turned to one of the others on the roof. he said.

Seeker of Dreams looked more closely at the one Leaf Stalker had called "Parsifal." The peculiar name had an odd taste in the Bright Water hunter's mind voice, and Seeker of Dreams felt a little thrill of excitement he knew was foolish as he realized that was because it had been intended as one of the two-le– As one of the human's mouth sounds. "Words," they called them, he reminded himself, trying to fit his mind voice around the sound and wondering how any creature could possibly make such strange noises as the humans did. But the name was more than a mere oddity, for it was the human custom to give new names to their friends after bonding. That was no doubt inevitable, for if the People could never make the sounds humans made, humans were equally incapable of tasting the names by which People called one another. Yet the acceptance of such human names was also of deep significance, for each was the formal acknowledgment of a person's acceptance of a bond which only death could dissolve.

aremuch excited, are they not?> the one called Parsifal agreed in a soft mind voice rich with tolerant amusement and affection. he added for Seeker of Dream's benefit. he said with a certain pride.

He let his eye drift across his chrono as he turned a 'fax page—again—and his carefully concealed disgust ratcheted up another notch. The target and her entourage were over twenty minutes behind schedule.

He allowed himself a mental grumble that never touched his face and commanded himself not to pay any attention whatsoever to the blank-faced young man sitting to his left. The younger man appeared to be reading a book. Actually, he was only hitting the advance button at regular intervals while he stared unseeingly at the display, and Thoreau hoped he wouldn't run out of pages before the target reemerged into the open. Having some sharp-eyed security type notice that there was someone sitting there staring at a blank book viewer would not do wonderful things for his and Krogman's plan.

His nostrils flared slightly at the thought of his partner. He knew why Krogman couldn't execute the hit himself, but that didn't keep him from feeling increasingly grumpy about his own exposure as the delay dragged on. Krogman was the one who'd crafted their weapon, and Thoreau found himself wishing Krogman could have pulled the damned trigger himself, as well. Except, of course, that Krogman couldn't possibly risk being physically present when the attack went down. His record might be clean in the Star Kingdom, but he was a registered psych adjuster.

Unlike many star nations, the Star Kingdom had ruled involuntary psych adjustment of anyone for any reason strictly illegal. The Star Kingdom wasn't alone in refusing to use it as a punitive sentence, but many other worlds allowed for the involuntary adjustment of individuals deemed dangerous to themselves or society. The people who allowed it viewed it—officially, at least—as equivalent to the old "not guilty by reason of insanity" plea. The Manticoran view, however, was that psych adjustment didn't cure anything; it simply crammed in an additional set of compulsions which forced the adjusted individual to act as if he had been cured. That was all very soothing to society, no doubt, and might well prevent an "adjusted" serial killer from killing again, but Manticorans considered that it was both simpler and more ethical—and moral—to shoot someone than it was to lock him up for life in a prison inside his own skull. Besides, even in jurisdictions which routinely employed it, there were those who argued that psych adjustment tended to make mental health professionals lazy. Why bother to fix a problem when one could simply use a hardwired patch to make sure it didn't bother anyone . . . except, of course, for the person who still had it?

And then there were the regimes that just loved adjustment. It was too expensive for use on a mass scale—mostly because of the time involved; the materials cost was ludicrously low—but it could be extremely effective when employed against strategic targets like key leaders of opposition groups. Nor had the military implications passed unnoticed. Though the Deneb Accords forbade adjustment of captured enemy personnel, everyone knew it would happen anyway if someone thought he could get away with it. The development of drugs and techniques to resist it had been on the list of every major military for centuries, and, for the most part, they'd succeeded in producing workable defenses. They weren't perfect, and they could usually be broken by old-fashioned sensory deprivation or systematic abuse. They also required periodic updating as adjustment techniques were improved to defeat them, but at least they managed to prevent adjusters from turning the pre-space nightmare of the mass brainwashing of troops into a reality.

But like any other form of technology, it was extremely difficult to simply shove adjustment back into its bottle. Personally, Thoreau couldn't imagine availing himself of the service. Have an irresistible compulsion—even one he'd selected himself—implanted in his brain? No, thank you very much. He believed he'd pass. Yet there were those who did just that, for reasons ranging from a desire to be addiction-proofed to people who wanted to lose weight to those who feared compulsions in the dark crannies of their souls would drive them into criminal acts. The Star Kingdom might reject imposing adjustment on anyone, but it would not stand in the way of someone who voluntarily sought it, and a small, highly regulated and closely supervised psych adjustment industry existed for the sole purpose of providing the service to those who wanted it.

Which was why Krogman couldn't have even the remotest connection, including that of simple proximity, with the young man with the book viewer. Deafening klaxons would sound in the brain of the most imbecilic security officer in the known universe if a known adjuster was anywhere near a "lone madman assassin" who just happened to murder the Crown Princess of Manticore.

Just having Krogman register with Manticoran immigration as a psych adjuster upon their arrival in the Star Kingdom had carried an uncomfortable degree of risk. But it had been necessary. While Krogman would never be so stupid as to select a patient of his own—or one he'd ever officially seen in any capacity—he had to have access to the patient files and facilities he needed. The best way to acquire that was to hide in plain sight by setting himself up as a licensed adjuster with a small but comfortable practice, and the original Jean-Marc Krogman had been a well trained and competent adjuster back in the Solarian League. So had the current Jean-Marc Krogman (although he had maintained a much lower profile, given the clientele he served), and since the original Krogman no longer required his identity, the man who now wore it had appropriated it without fuss or bother. After all, he and "Henry Thoreau" were the only two people who knew the real Krogman was dead.

With such a comfortable, outwardly legitimate identity, the current Krogman had found it child's play to set up an effective cover, and The Organization—which Thoreau thought was one of the less imaginative names the local organized underworld could have assigned itself—was delighted to have an adjuster of its very own. Crime lords always needed one odd job of adjustment or another, and they paid lucratively for Krogman's services. On the other hand, not even The Organization knew about the freelance jobs Krogman and Thoreau occasionally undertook. Which was just as well. After all, one or two Organization kingpins had fallen afoul of imaginative underlings able to visualize the advantages of having one of the underling's rivals suddenly, and for no apparent reason, gun down their mutual boss (thus creating a vacancy at the top) before dying in a hail of gunfire from the bodyguards of the late, lamented boss in question.

Of course, both The Organization and law enforcement were well aware of how adjustment could be misused, which was another reason the law took such a dim view of the profession. Officers of the King's justice routinely considered the possibility of adjustment any time a killer "just snapped," and it was relatively simple for a trained psychiatrist to recognize the signs of adjustment in a subject. But that was why people like Krogman commanded such astronomical fees, for the true mastery of their art lay in subtlety, careful recruitment, anonymity, and misdirection.

Every policeman knew adjustment was a possible explanation for almost any murder, but good adjusters of a criminal bent were rare, and all adjusters were carefully regulated. Because of that, actual cases of adjusted murderers were far less common than bad mystery writers liked to suggest. As a result, investigators tended to look for more everyday motives first, so whenever possible, Krogman picked as his weapon someone who had another motive. When someone murdered someone else whom they had always hated, the police looked at the history of killer and victim and found their motivation there rather than seeking more esoteric and unlikely causations.

In addition, Krogman preferred to program his weapons for kamikaze attacks. Of course, he didn't want them to look deliberately suicidal—that was another thing that started nasty, suspicious police thinking in terms of adjustment—but it was relatively simple to program someone to make a mistake with lethal consequences if bodyguards were involved. Lovers' murder-suicides were another technique of which he was rather fond, because police saw so many they were effectively routine. Only when he had no other option did he rely on a weapon with no personal motive for the attack, and then he invariably saw to it that the killer did not survive his victim.

But the true key to his success was that he always remembered the best way to avoid detection was to set things up in the first place so no one had any reason to suspect the killer had been commanded to kill, and his current weapon was a masterpiece. This hit had first been commissioned over a T-year before, and for the last ten T-months, the young, friendless drifter he'd selected as his tool had systematically created all the proper back trail of a fatally obsessive personality. His inexpensive rooms had been converted into a veritable shrine to Crown Princess Adrienne. Guided by Krogman's "adjustments," he'd begun with occasional, rambling journal entries and progressed steadily to the point of mad obsession with the Princess. The sheer length of time over which he had collected and created his hoard of pictures, hardcopy and electronic clippings, and diaries would surely convince any but the most paranoid and indefatigable of investigators that it was genuine, the product of a deranged mind working in isolation.

That was Krogman's primary line of defense, and he expected it to hold. If it failed, however, his second line of defense was anonymity. No one had ever seen him and the drifter together, and he had taken excruciating pains to insure that there was nothing at all to connect him in any way, however indirectly, to his tool.

And, of course, he had made absolutely certain that the young man in question would not survive his victim.

But all of that explained why the only choice to launch the attack was Thoreau. Someone had to do it, if only because of the ancient K.I.S.S. principle. Human minds were complex mechanisms. Given the proper circumstances, they could defeat even the most deep reaching and thorough adjustment, and the more complex the adjustment, the more opportunity for the adjusted individual's mind to find a chink in the programming and wiggle through it. That meant complicated trigger commands increased the risk of failure exponentially, and they could afford no slipups on this operation. So the trigger had been kept as simple as possible: an innocent visual cue no investigator studying security camera imagery later could possibly associate with the attack.

In this case, a red handkerchief in a breast pocket, combined with a man reading a newsfax and drinking lemonade, and a sneeze.

Now if only the target would get her ass out here so that Thoreau could launch the weapon and be done with it.

Seeker of Dreams asked Parsifal. The older cat looked at him and cocked one ear.

he observed.

Seeker of Dreams flicked the end of his tail with a trace of sadness, he pointed out.

Parsifal agreed after a moment. He straightened and stretched, yawning mightily, and Seeker of Dreams felt his mind voice reach out to another. Seeker of Dreams could not taste the conversation—not unusual when one did not know the far end of a focused link—but he sensed the flow of information. Then Parsifal nodded, his mind glow radiating satisfaction, and peered down over the building's wide roof.

he said.

"Thank you for showing me your new building, General," Adrienne said as they walked toward the exit side-by-side.

"You're more welcome than I can say, Your Highness," MacClintock replied. "And the thanks cut both ways, you know. An expression of royal interest, well—"

He shrugged, and Adrienne nodded with another, familiar stab of hurt. She was grateful he'd been too tactful to complete the sentence, but she knew what he'd meant. And much as she'd enjoyed her visit, she felt ominously certain her father would recognize the same impact. There would be no fights, no screaming fits. He wouldn't even lecture her. He knew she disagreed with his attitude towards the treecats, and so he would recognize her trip to Twin Forks for what it had been. But he wouldn't even acknowledge her small act of rebellion. He would simply allow for it in his next set of calculations, and he would give her one of those chill, impersonal looks—the sort that said "Wait and see how you like it when you're Queen"—and then he would ignore the episode completely.

Was that the real reason I came? she wondered unhappily. Because I wanted to anger him enough to get some reaction out of him? Am I still thatdesperate for some sign he even cares? And is it really possible I could be so stupid as to think I could get one?

She swallowed the thought and smiled brightly as MacClintock opened the door.

* * *

Seeker of Dreams crouched on the gutter, and the massed background blaze of human mind glows washed out from the crowd outside the building. It had been there from the beginning, of course, but Seeker of Dreams had buttressed himself against it without even realizing he was doing so. It had been the empathic equivalent of squinting against a blinding glare, but now he opened his "eyes" wide, sending his empathy out to quest for the mind glow Parsifal had told him of, and the sheer energy rising up behind him was almost terrifying.

Somehow I had not expected there to be so much difference between the memory songs and the reality, he thought, half-dazed by the excitement and anticipation flowing from so many mind glows. I should have. All the songs agree that human mind glows are more powerful than any of the People's, yet how could even the greatest memory singer recreate such raw power?

He shook his head, hunching forward as if into a high wind, and slowly forced the seething tumult out of the front of his own mind. He pulled his own personality free of it and reached out once more, searching for the "princess," and suddenly his ears twitched and his tail kinked straight up behind him.

Not possible, he thought. This is notpossible! No one, human or of the People, can radiate such a mind glow! Surely its power would consume any in whom it burned!

Yet even as he thought that, he knew better, for he felt the reality walking down the hall towards him. Such power, he thought in awe. Such clarity and strength! He tasted the mind glow's compassion, its sense of order and responsibility, of dedication. And he tasted the love its owner carried like a welcoming fire, waiting to warm and comfort any who called upon it.

And he tasted pain. Terrible, aching pain—an emptiness that cried out to be filled. He did not understand the source of that pain, for how could one possessed of so much power to love be crushed by rejection and abandonment? Where were the human elders, their memory singers and mind healers? How could any species allow one of its own to suffer so hideously when all she longed to do was to love and be loved in return?

For just one instant, as he hovered on the brink of Adrienne Winton's loneliness and broken love, Seeker of Dreams shuddered before the horrid suspicion that the memory singers had been wrong—that humans were all mad. Surely it was the only answer for the sharp-edged agony he tasted amid the jewel-like splendor of that mind glow's other facets! But then he remembered. Humans were mind-blind. They could not taste as he tasted, and so, perhaps, they did not even suspect how dreadfully wounded their "princess" was. It even made sense, in a way, for the other things he tasted within that mind glow included pride, a sense of duty, a refusal to whimper or plead or beg, and an iron-boned determination to never, ever show weakness.

His heart went out to her—this princess he had never so much as seen—and he made a small, soft sound, almost a whimper, as he recognized his fate. He felt himself reaching for that bright splendor, even knowing he must embrace the darkness, as well, and a corner of his own mind wailed for him to run. To flee and hide, as he would have fled a death fang itself. But there was no escape. The mind glow had captured him. He tasted Parsifal's half-shocked, half-unsurprised mind glow—and pity—beside him as he reached out to the human furnace, yet the other 'cat was distant and far away, almost trivial beside the human walking obliviously towards him.

Is that the true secret of their mind glow's power?The loneliness? The fact that they cannot hear one another or taste one another's inner hearts, however much they long to? Such a terrible, terrible price, if it is . . . and yet such glory it produces! And how very much love they have to give. He shook himself once more, awed by the raw courage it must take to feel so much love when no human could taste his beloved's love in return. They know so much, are so clever, have so many tools and marvels, and yet I pity them, he thought wonderingly. But they are magnificent in their loneliness, in the isolation each carries with him even in the midst of all his fellows.

Then the door opened.

* * *

Alvin Tudev saw the Princess stop dead. She didn't simply stop walking forward; she froze, with the sudden, absolute shock of someone who had just taken a bullet.

For a moment, that was precisely what he thought had happened, and a spasm of horror rocked through him. He hurled himself forward without conscious thought, bulldozing through the plainclothes sergeants of his own detail to reach her, and he was only dimly aware of startled shouts as he hurled other human beings aside. He was already gathering his muscles to leap on her, smothering her in his arms and slamming her to the ground while he offered his own body as protection against follow up shots, when she broke her momentary stasis. Her head snapped around, and Tudev just had time to throw his own weight to one side before he plowed into her from behind.

He grunted with anguish as his solidly muscled bulk drove shoulder-first into the old-fashioned brick wall of the SFS's new admin building. For a moment, he was certain he'd broken at least his collarbone, but that scarcely mattered. Indeed, he hardly felt it through a flood of relief almost more terrible than his original horror as he realized his Princess was unharmed.

But if she was unhurt, then why stop so suddenly? And why was she—?

The answer presented itself before his mind finished forming its second question. A small, sleek body dropped from the gutter with a high, ringing "Bleeeeeek!" of joy, and Adrienne's arms opened to receive it. The treecat fell into her embrace with a grace that seemed inevitable, and a triumphant chorus of other treecat voices joined the newcomer's paean of exultation. Adrienne's arms closed about the 'cat, hugging it to her, her brown eyes blazing with a joy and raw, loving welcome that hit the lieutenant colonel like a fist, and the 'cat clung to her in return, rubbing his cheek ecstatically against her own.

Oh . . . my . . . God, Tudev thought with an odd, distant sort of calm. His Majesty isn't going to be at allpleased about this!

* * *

Adrienne Winton stared into the brilliant green eyes, and an incredible wave of love and welcome poured from her. She'd studied all the information on treecats she could get her hands on, but none of it had prepared her for this moment. The descriptions of what it meant to be adopted had always struck her as maddeningly vague, incomplete, confusing. It had sometimes seemed as if all those fortunate souls were involved in some conspiracy to keep the rest of the human race from knowing what it felt like.

Now she knew better. They hadn't explained it because they couldn't. It was like smelling a color or trying to weigh diamonds with a spectrograph. There simply were no words for the sensation she felt at that moment, yet her brain stubbornly insisted on trying to find some way to process the information.

The treecat was an empath. She knew that, just as she knew that at this very moment, the lithe little creature could feel her own emotions and the brilliant welcome blazing in her soul, and she longed desperately for the ability to feel his emotions, in return. But she couldn't. Unlike him, she was only human, with the limited perceptions of a human brain. And yet . . . and yet there was something. . . . She couldn't pin it down, couldn't drag it out to look at it or analyze it. She couldn't even have proved she wasn't imagining whatever it was, and yet she was certain she was not. And whatever it was, it sank down into the dark and lonely depths of her spirit like cleansing lightning, bringing warmth and life to the shadows where she had been alone for far too long.

* * *

Seeker of Dreams stared into the human's round-pupilled brown eyes and tasted her confusion, puzzlement . . . and joy. He truly had not intended to bond to her when he reached out for her mind glow, yet now he had, and at last he fully understood that which had driven him to seek this moment. That yearning, that need and unused ability which had been part of him for so long, had flared bright and fierce in the instant he touched her mind glow. He had actually felt the sharp, reverberating "Snap!" as the two of them socketed into place, each filling the hole in the other's soul. He did not know if he had been meant from birth for this human, or if another of the People might have filled the wound gaping at her heart, and it did not matter. What mattered was that he had found her, and in the moment of finding, they had come together. He could already feel the increased power of his own mind voice, the sharper, stronger reach of his ability to taste other mind glows. It was as if his person had become a warm, brilliant sun, beaming power and strength into him, making him more than he had ever dreamed of being.

Yet even as he crooned his loving welcome and rubbed his cheek joyously against hers, he also tasted the tragedy of their bond. He was like a tiny world, circling the sun of her mind glow as the humans said the People's world circled its sun. Like the world, he had life and purpose of his own, yet also like the world, he could no longer be whole and complete without his sun. In that sense, the two had become one . . . yet his human would never taste what he was tasting, never know the depth of his love as he could know hers. He felt oddly certain that she had already tasted more than most humans ever did—that, like some of Death Fang's Bane's younglings, she was more sensitive, more alive to the bond than other humans—but her experience would never be even a shadow of his own.

And he also knew Sings Truly had been correct. This was a young human, but not nearly so young as Death Fang's Bane had been. Perhaps she would live another fifteen turnings, which would be a long life indeed for a human, but then she would die, and Seeker of Dreams would have lived only twenty-four turnings of his allotted forty-eight.

He did not think she realized that. Not yet, at any rate, for he felt no sorrow, no grief for him, and he knew he would whenever she finally realized their bond was almost certain to cost him half his normal span. And it would be a tragedy, he thought, to go into the dark so young. But it would also be right, for he would cling to her glorious mind glow wherever it went, into light or into dark or into nothingness at all, and be content.

* * *

"Your Highness?"

Adrienne tore her eyes from the treecat as MacClintock's gentle voice invaded their reverie. She blinked at him, trying to refocus on something beyond the 'cat in her arms, and he smiled.

"Forgive me for intruding, Your Highness, but you've been standing there for just over five minutes," he said apologetically.

Dunatis sat on his shoulder, crooning down at Adrienne and her 'cat—her'cat! she thought in exultant wonder—and beyond them she saw Colonel Alcerro and Musashi. Both older 'cats crooned as if to vibrate the bones right out of their bodies, and as she stared at them, she realized she was hearing the same sound from dozens of other sources. She raised her head, gazing up at the treecats lined up along the admin building's eaves, and the same soft, welcoming music washed down over her from all of them.

"Five minutes, General?" she asked at last, turning back to MacClintock.

"Almost six, actually." His right hand fluttered for a moment, as if he wanted to grip her shoulder—an act which etiquette made totally out of the question—and his eyes smiled at her. "The average is around thirteen, I believe. Left to my own devices, I wouldn't bother either of you until you were both ready to come up, but—" He waved the hovering right hand, and she blinked again as she followed it to the rest of her entourage.

Lieutenant Colonel Tudev stood watching with no expression at all. No, that wasn't quite correct. He was favoring one shoulder, and there were pain lines around his mouth, as if he'd injured himself somehow when she wasn't looking. For a moment she thought those lines were of disapproval for what had happened, but then she saw the wry resignation in his eyes, and a sense of apprehension surged through her.

Oh my God, Daddy is going to killme for this!Bad enough I came to Twin Forks without telling him, but this—!

One look at Nassouah Haroun's face more than confirmed her thoughts. Lady Haroun's expression was one of unmitigated horror, as if she were certain His Majesty would feel his daughter's appointments secretary should somehow have prevented this disaster from occurring, and the palace PR types looked equally horrified. In fact, they looked so stunned Adrienne felt the corners of her mouth twitch. She closed her eyes and clamped her jaws against the totally inappropriate laughter suddenly fighting to break free, and somehow she managed to stop almost all of it. The one spurt which did escape, she transformed into an almost convincing cough, but forty seconds passed before she trusted herself to open her eyes and look at them once more without completely losing it.

Oh, my. This is all going to be quite . . . difficult, isn't it, little friend? she thought, gazing down at the adoring treecat in her arms. I'll bet you never even guessed what a frying pan you were leaping into, did you?

The 'cat only sang his buzzing purr to her and reached out to pat her cheek with a gentle true-hand, and she smiled brilliantly and lifted him so she could bury her face in the soft, creamy fur of his belly. She held him that way for several seconds, then lowered him once more and turned back to MacClintock. Unlike his uniform tunic, the shoulder of her light jacket was unreinforced fabric, totally unsuited to treecat claws, so she cradled her new companion in her arms as she smiled at the SFS CO once more.

"I quite understand why you can't simply let us work through this at our own pace, General," she told him. "Besides, it would be impolite of me. There are people waiting for my speech out there, so I suppose we'd better get to it."

"Of course, Your Highness. Ah, just one thing first, though." She quirked an eyebrow at him, and he smiled diffidently. "I was just wondering if you've thought of a name for him, Your Highness?"

"Already?" Adrienne's other eyebrow rose to join the first one.

"Well, it seems to work in two basic ways, Your Highness," MacClintock explained. "Either a name comes to an adoptee almost immediately—as it did to Colonel Alcerro here—or else he tends to spend quite some time thinking about it to get it just right. I was merely wondering which it would be in your case?"

"I see." She considered for a moment, then shrugged. "I think you'll have to put me into the second category, Colonel. It's going to take me a while to think of a name anywhere near the one this wonderful fellow deserves."

"Good," MacClintock said, and grinned at her look of surprise. "I fell into the second category myself, Your Highness. That's one reason I asked. I just wanted to assure you that not having a name jump up and bite you immediately doesn't indicate that anything is wrong with you or your bond." He reached out and touched the 'cat in her arms gently, running his fingers down its spine, and smiled as it arched in pleasure. Then he looked back at Adrienne again.

"And now, Your Highness, I'm afraid we really ought to get on with that speech of yours."

Finally!

Henry Thoreau couldn't suppress his grunt of satisfaction as the cheering began. Princess Adrienne was over an hour late, but she was on her way at last.

His vantage point in the park gave him an excellent view of the speaker's platform, but he couldn't see much else. That was deliberate—staying back a little helped him blend anonymously into the crowd—but it also meant he hadn't been able to see whatever had occasioned the last delay. All he knew was that the Heir's entourage had stopped abruptly, stayed that way for ten minutes or so, and then started moving once more.

Well, it doesn't really matter what kind of glitch their schedule hit, he told himself as the leading edge of the Princess' attendants entered his field of view at last. What matters is that she's on her way now.

He drew the red handkerchief from his breast pocket.

* * *

Seeker of Dreams rode in his person's arms, and the noise of the humans beat over him like a great, rushing wind. He had never imagined so many mouth sounds being made all at one time, yet the mind voices of Parsifal and others assured him humans often made such noises. He found that hard to believe, but Musashi sent him an image of thousands of humans seated around a large green field while two smaller groups of humans ran back and forth, kicking a white sphere. Musashi was no memory singer, but his image carried the concentration and hint of excitement his person had felt as she watched the sphere move up and down the field, and then one of the humans on the grass hit the ball with his head, not his foot. It sailed right through the hands of another human and plopped into an upright net, and at least half those thousands of watching humans surged to their feet with a deep, roaring sound of wild approval.

Seeker of Dreams had no idea what the humans had been up to in Musashi's images. It felt almost like the competition as two teams of junior hunters or scouts raced one another through the branches searching for the senior scouts seeking to evade them. But that was different—a serious test to determine which were ready to assume more demanding, responsible duties—and only those involved paid it much heed. Such competitions were the business of those being tested, yet the humans had gathered in huge numbers to watch others compete, and seemed wildly excited about the outcome.

Best leave that ground runner for a later hunt, he told himself. Besides, it is not the same as this excitement, anyway. This excitement is focused on my person, and through her, upon me, as well.

The sheer power of it lashed at him, making him taut and uneasy, yet there was an odd euphoria in it, as well. It was all but impossible to separate individual mind glows from one another in the midst of such tumult, but he tasted the welcome, the excitement, the sense of deference. In a strange way, it tasted much like his own feelings for Sings Truly. Or perhaps that was too strong. Perhaps it actually tasted more like his feelings for Leaper of High Branches, his own clan's chief elder. He did not understand how such intensity of emotion could focus on one so young as his person. If they had been able, as he, to taste the glory of her mind glow, perhaps he might have understood, but they were mind-blind, and she was far too young to be an elder in anyone's clan.

He looked up at her, and she looked down quickly, as if she had felt his eyes. Her mouth moved in the expression—the "smile"—he had been told humans used to show pleasure to their mind-blind fellows, and the deep warmth of her mind glow echoed the expression. He bleeked up at her, reaching high to pat her cheek once more, then turned his attention outward. It was difficult to separate himself from her mind glow, but he badly wanted to understand why all these others felt such respect and veneration for her.

He sent his empathy questing outward once more, and fresh surprise at the manner in which his range and sensitivity had increased washed over him. He could actually reach out into that vast crowd and taste the mind glows of individual humans he could scarcely even see, despite all the background energy and passion. It was difficult to tune that background down enough to taste clearly, but it ought to have been completely impossible, and he reveled in his newfound abilities.

There was an older female human, her mind glow blazing with welcome. And there behind her was another female, this one less delighted to see his person—not from any personal animosity, but because of something else, some human thing Seeker of Dreams did not understand but which appeared to involve decisions and the making of rules—but still excited and focused. And there—

Seeker of Dreams stiffened as he sensed the dark, twisted knot of wrongness pushing through the crowd towards his person. It was terrifying, like finding one's self trapped on the ground as a death fang closed in, and he gave a high, warning squeal of alarm. He jerked up, head questing, eyes searching for the one he had tasted, and then he saw him—a male human, little older than his own human, who thrust his way through the crowd while his own burning stare locked to Seeker of Dreams' human. And something was wrong, wrong, wrong! Seeker of Dreams tasted the deadness, the emptiness within his mind glow, and that was terrifying enough. But there was worse. For even as the empty human forced his way towards Seeker of Dream's human, some tiny part of him cried out, screaming for help, as if his innermost self were trapped in a bog of quicksand. That tiny part wailed in terror, fighting desperately against whatever pulled him forward, yet it could not resist the compulsion, and the taste of the human's despair was almost worse than Seeker of Dream's sudden realization that the other meant to slay his person!

He reared up in her arms, baring his fangs, and those around his human faltered and fell back from the rippling snarl of his war cry. Some cried out in alarm, and one or two of her protectors reached for the weapons they carried, but they lacked his empathy. They could not taste what he tasted, and so they turned towards him, guided by their physical senses alone, unaware of the danger coming closer with every instant.

But others could sense what he sensed, and he heard the sudden, high-pitched snarls of at least a dozen People. Dunatis and Musashi, Parsifal and Leaf Hunter and others whose names he had never learned reached out to him, tasting what he tasted, sensing the darkness through him, and he heard more human cries of shock and confusion as a wave of cream-and-gray fur exploded from the roof of the new admin wing.

Sixteen treecats launched outward in prodigious leaps that carried them clear of the crowd and into the trees of the landscaped grounds. They flashed through the branches, converging on Seeker of Dreams and his human and the darkness that threatened them, and consternation and confusion came with them. Not one human being had the least idea of what they were doing, or why, and there was no time for anyone to figure it out.

Alvin Tudev heard the 'cat's sudden, rippling snarl. He'd never heard anything like it, but he recognized its meaning with the instant intuition of instinct. His own head came up, searching for whatever threat the 'cat had detected, but he saw nothing. Only the path to the speaker's platform, and the rows of spectators behind the barricades holding them back.

But some of those spectators were beginning to react to the treecat's snarling fury. They recoiled, shrinking away from him, and heads were turning as a flood of additional 'cats flashed through the trees towards them. They had no idea what was happening, but they would have been more than human not to be alarmed, and alarm pushed them back. They couldn't move far—they were too tightly packed for that—but their common instinct seemed to be to avoid crowding the Heir.

All but one. Tudev didn't think about it, for there was no time to think. There was only time to see and react, and he did. He saw the one person who bucked the movement of the crowd, kicking and shoving to get closer to Princess Adrienne, and trained instinct shrieked a warning even louder than the 'cat's snarls.

Seeker of Dreams sprang from his human's arms. She tried to prevent him, and he felt her surge of confused fear—not for herself, but for him—as her arms tightened. But she was an instant too late, and he arrowed through the air like a vengeful demon. A gray-haired male human flung up his arms, covering his head with a strangled cry as Seeker of Dreams landed on his shoulders, but he didn't even pause. He only ricocheted onward like a rebounding ball, on a course that took him straight towards the empty one.

Tudev saw the young man's hand slide inside his jacket, saw the Heir's treecat slashing through the crowd like a missile, heard the other 'cats' passage through the trees like a gray hurricane. The rest of his detail was still looking in the wrong direction, drawn towards the only threat they could identify: the 'cats' movement. Only Tudev realized, however imperfectly, what was actually happening, and there was no time to explain it to anyone else.

"Gun!" he screamed, and for the second time that day, he flung himself at Princess Adrienne's back.

This time he didn't turn aside at the last moment.

* * *

The mind voice shouted in the back of Seeker of Dreams' brain. alive!>