by Jean Johnson
No, not toyed with. Stop thinking like that, she ordered herself sternly.
“So, what am I going to be? A mere translator? Less than that? I . . . I’d be free to be a woman,” she added, gesturing at herself, at her outfit. “I could have a love life. Something I never thought I’d bother with. But I wouldn’t have a career. I don’t know if I’d have a career. We don’t know how the V’Dan view such things. Particularly not at their highest levels of society.” Her hand slashed out at nothing, at everything, and she started pacing again. “We have the word of a handful of people, one palpably biased against us, one with legitimate reason to be biased for us, or at least for me . . .
“But no matter how many times His Highness reassures us of this or that, it still isn’t official policy. It’s . . . wishes and hopes and dreams. It’s all ephemeral. Nothing exists anymore—it’s like being set adrift on the sea without sails or paddles or . . . or outboard motors . . . !”
“Jackie. Calm yourself,” Callan stated, rising to his feet. He held up his hands. “You are becoming agitated.”
“I can’t help it! I don’t want to feel this way—do you think I want to feel this way?” she demanded. “I did not go on that trip expecting to . . . to . . . to bond with anyone!”
“Miss MacKenzie, please—”
“Oh, so now it’s Miss MacKenzie! I’m not the Ambassador anymore?” Jackie asked, flipping her hand at him, anger and anxiety, especially anxiety, rising sharply within her.
“Please, you must calm down . . . what was it that message said . . .” the Premiere muttered half to himself.
“Calm myself? When my entire career and aspirations for public service are on the line, and you can’t even call me by my title, giving me an anxiety attack—”
“What was it . . . what was . . .”
“—and now you’re talking to yourself like a half-witted lunatic, and you want me to calm—”
He darted in and bopped her on the nose with his fingertips. Jackie reared back, stopped midspeech in sheer shock at the nondamaging, nonbruising, non sequitur attack. Callan eyed her warily, straightening slowly. Behind him, the door opened, and a security officer peered cautiously inside.
“Are you alright, sir?”
“You booped me!” Jackie exclaimed in a near whisper.
“Yes,” Callan said, addressing her even as he held out his hand to the agent at the door. “That’s what the message one of my aides received from Master Sherap said to do if you got . . . hysterical.”
“You booped me.”
“Yes. On the nose. He said if I did that, it should break the feedback loop of your . . . your agitated emotional state,” the Premiere repeated.
“Sir, is everything alright?” the security guard repeated. There were three more crowding the doorway behind him.
“Well? Is it?” Callan asked her.
“Yes, of course! . . . Why are you even in here? Surely not because of me raising my voice a little,” Jackie added tartly.
The guard eyed her and pointed with a gloved hand to the right and to the left. “We registered a KI spike, ma’am, on the machines monitoring this office. We just want to know if the reason behind it is a threat to the Premiere, ma’am.”
Jackie looked around her . . . and realized she was still levitating a few papers, a couple pens, a potted plant . . . and the coffee mugs and coffee table. “Oh. Sorry.” Carefully, she started lowering everything neatly back into place. “I . . . I haven’t done that in a while. At least I didn’t drop everything when you booped me.”
“I’m rather grateful it was just peacefully levitating things, and not flinging them around the room, myself,” Premiere Callan stated, adjusting his shirt cuffs.
“That’s because I don’t throw things when mad,” Jackie replied, setting down the coffee table and their mugs of water last. She hadn’t even spilled a single drop of their contents, just lifted them into the air with the tension in her mind. “In fact, that was the hardest lesson I had to pass, learning to throw objects at people with the intent to harm. I almost couldn’t do it . . . until the military assigned me a combat instructor who wanted to harm me. It turns out my telepathy was getting in the way, since the moment I got into range, I was ‘pretesting’ them for hostile intent. I . . . broke the poor woman’s leg when she chased after me with a knife in her hand and the free-willed intent to carve her initials three inches deep in my inner thigh. A direct threat to my femoral artery and the very clear possibility of killing me.”
“What did you fling at her, to break her leg?” Callan asked.
She looked at him. “I didn’t. I broke her leg directly so she couldn’t keep running after me.”
“Sir, is everything okay?” the guard repeated for a third time.
Callan faced him. “Everything is okay. Everything is perfectly okay. Everything is okay.”
All four guards relaxed, accepting the coded way he spoke. The lead guard nodded. “. . . If you say so, sir. Sorry for the interruption, ma’am,” the lead one said. “Just don’t spike the monitors again. We’ll have to come back in again because that’s in the rules and regs, ma’am.”
“I’ll try to keep myself calm and under control,” Jackie told them.
They withdrew—and someone else came running up. Tangira quickly reached them, a datapad lifted in her hand. “Sir! Premiere Callan!”
Callan sighed and beckoned her in. “What is it?”
“Sir, they’ve found it,” the aide reported, handing over the tablet before swiping a hand through her dark curls to tidy them from her run. “Aloha 22 found a known system based on the V’Dan astrophysics descriptions. All the planets their pilot Ba’oul could remember, and signs of space stations and starships. They were spotted in the general configuration sketched by our guests for both Gatsugi and K’Katta design. No sign of a V’Dan vessel, but we’ve sent the images to the Katherine G. The V’Dan pilot and gunner, the ones who have worked the hardest on describing their known systems, are currently in a sleep cycle, but they are being woken up to help confirm it.”
Jackie lifted her chin, anxiety warring with relief. The latter, because it meant Li’eth and his companions would finally be able to go home . . . eventually. Anxiety, because her own situation was still up in the air. “They’ve already described how they line-of-sight navigate, then sail from system to system, one system at a time, so this means we can trace their path from star to star how to get to the V’Dan homeworld.”
“Yes, and we already have all the markers for doing that straight from their pilot,” Tangira agreed. “Alohas 1 through 8 are on standby, ready to jump out and start laying a trail of hyperrelay probes along the known vectors, which Leftenant Ba’oul gave us. They’re just waiting on your word, sir, and Project White Pebbles will forge a trail to the V’Dan homeworld.”
“White Pebbles?” Jackie asked, quirking her brows. “The project has a name, now? I thought it was just Project Find V’Dan.”
“To the public, that’s what it is. Internally, it’s got a few extra layers. The name comes from the old Hansel and Gretel story—the first trail they laid was of white pebbles so they could find their way back home again,” Callan told her. “Only in our case, we’re the birds laying the pebbles for the V’Dan to find their way home again.”
“Didn’t those same birds eat the bread crumbs on the second trip?” Jackie asked, wary of the project name’s analogy.
“Yes. If they try to ‘eat’ the pebbles, they won’t get very far,” Callan said, hands resting on his hips. “They’ll vanish like bread crumbs. All five V’Dan are still amazed and awed by our near-instantaneous communications system; that much awe means it’s currently our biggest bargaining chip. We may be ethical and honorable, but we won’t give away our biggest assets for free. Do you have an objection, Ambassador MacKenzie?”
She folded her arms across her chest. “Am I?”
“For now,” he allowed. He held up one finger. “But this is a situation that is st
ill fraught with a lot of potential land mines, political and cultural. A lot of unknowns on the V’Dan side of the equation. We know now that you are a Gestalt, and we know that we know what that means . . . but we still don’t know how the V’Dan government will react to it. Which means I cannot make this decision a permanent one. Not alone.”
“Boot me,” Jackie whispered, closing her eyes as she caught the loud thought. “You’re putting it to the whole Council, aren’t you?”
“Fellowship and all. When the prince comes to Earth, and has had a tour of the planet, he and his companions will be welcomed in person to the Council Hall . . . and that is where the two of you will be cross-questioned. You can reassure us he’s an Imperial prince, and he can reassure us, and his companions can as well . . . but even if they believe it’s the truth, even if it is the truth . . . we don’t know if he’s going to be a favored son returning home safe and sound, a prodigal son returning home with lingering problems to be overcome in spite of the joys of having him home again, or an entirely unwanted headache returning home. Particularly with a bunch of culturally perceived children in tow,” Callan finished.
“Great.” She pulled her fingers apart so that she could rub at her brow. Her head hurt, as if a great pressure was building behind her skull. “And when he returns . . . what do I do about the bond, between his return and his . . . our . . . appearance before the Council? Do I join them? Do I stay away? Do I join them but stay away from him?”
Callan flicked his hand around his office. “Given your little display just now, I think I shall follow Sonam Sherap’s advice. I would like you to go to the Psi League University and stay in their testing-facility quarters. If you get agitated again, I want them able to shut you down. Make you fall asleep. I’ll have word sent to the Katherine G to have watchers set on the prince as well. That, I am told, is the correct procedure for separated Gestalt members who get agitated beyond reason. Beyond nose-booping.”
She nodded, lowering her gaze. “It is. Master Sonam knows all the steps and all the tricks for controlling his students.” Her head hurt worse now, though it shouldn’t have. She hadn’t taxed her telekinesis in any way. Pushing against the pain, she thought through the ramifications. “You’ll need to have this explained to the prince in advance . . . and have him appoint their pilot as next-in-command. Make it an official order. You don’t want Leftenant Nanu’oc in charge with her captain sedated.”
“No, we don’t . . . and it has thankfully already been suggested, when I realized on your last visit that you were showing signs of distress. Focus on calming yourself . . .”
( . . . no you don’t! You don’t do that! You don’t touch me, you don’t talk to me, you get away from me! I know you did something to her, and I—)
Surprised by the anger, the paranoia behind that mental shout, Jackie blinked twice . . . and then collapsed at the feel of something stinging her in her cheek. She reached up with eyes that no longer saw the Premiere’s office even as she fell. A mix of the Premiere, his aide, and people who weren’t even there shouted at her, lunged toward her, but then it wasn’t her fingers that pulled the dart away from the face that wasn’t her f . . .
CHAPTER 17
TUPSF KATHERINE G
INSYSTEM SPACE
“Good morning, sleeping princeling . . . no use hiding under your eyelids; all this fancy Terran biotech is telling me you are now wide-awake.”
Li’eth cracked open one eye, feeling disoriented, dizzy. His brain was finally used to translating Terranglo, so to hear his friend and chief gunner speaking in V’Dan confused him for a moment. He answered in Terranglo, still trying to focus on his friend’s pink-marked face. “Not wide-awake . . . head feels like the ball in . . . a guanjiball game.”
“Well, hopefully you won’t go off again like you did a couple hours ago,” V’kol stated, switching to Terranglo as well. He held up a pair of fingers. “Just two hours, so it’s not actually morning, but you were asleep for a while. They dosed you with enough anesthetic or whatever to put you out for four to six hours, but that red-robed old fellow and this machine over here,” the leftenant stated, patting the KI machine, “both say your biokinesis has been chugging along like mad, burning right through the stuff.”
Li’eth grunted and lifted his hand to his cheek. He remembered pulling something off his face, small, metal-and-fletched, red with a long . . . “Needle. They shot me.”
“Ya.”
“Why?” he asked V’kol, who was busy touching something on a tablet in his hands.
“You started getting paranoid right after we were woken up with the good news. You mentioned having suffered some nightmares about being in those damned Salik pens, then ranted about our hostess being stressed. Then you started accusing people of deliberately harming her,” his friend added.
Li’eth frowned, trying to remember what good news his friend meant. Seated in a tallish, rolling chair by the infirmary bed, V’kol had his boots up on the bedcovers. Clean boots, of course; they hadn’t worn them on any planet yet, and all corridors they had seen so far were regularly swept and mopped. Except for the three Luna-surface tours, but those had involved pressure-suits with their own footwear, and the Lunar dust had been left in the airlocks.
“Master Sonam wasn’t around at that moment to bring you down out of your . . . whatever it was . . . your little fit, so the Terran crew had orders to tranquilize you,” V’kol added blithely.
“Tranquilizer . . .” That would explain the dizziness, and the trouble he had remembering everything. It would come back as his head continued to clear. Patches of the drug were being processed in his bloodstream in uneven amounts . . . which that monk had told him might happen, regarding his barely trained biokinetic abilities.
“A bit crude compared to Salik stunner weaponry,” V’kol acknowledged, “but effective. Oh, and you’re officially on medical leave, and I am officially in charge of you. Ba’oul isn’t available, so it fell to me. Shi’ol’s madder than a dry trask right now. The Terrans have told her flat out that they do not, and will never, accept her in a position of authority. She’s fuming in her quarters.”
“Where’s Ba’oul?” Li’eth asked, pushing up onto his elbows with rising worry. “Am I stuck here? Where’s Dai’a? What are they doing to—”
V’kol reached over midspeech and pushed on the prince’s nose like it was a door chime. He even made a little “ping-ong!” noise, grinning as he sat back. “I am officially under orders to ‘nose-boop’ you, as they call it, each time you start to get agitated. Master Sonam’s in the bathroom, or he’d have been here on hand when you woke up. Something about fiber and an elderly digestive tract.”
Easing back onto the bed, Li’eth let out a sigh. “As a distraction method . . . it is undignified. Effective, but undignified. What’s on the tablet?”
“The bridge has set up a communications link on standby with a similar room on their main world. Your little paranoia attack—which they don’t blame you for; they say it’s all just part of being a Gestalt pair—caused your lovely, if unmarked, partner to collapse when you were tranquilized.”
His eyes snapped open. “Jackie . . .”
“She’s fine. Relax. They’ll be . . . ah, there we go.” Kicking his feet off the bed, he reached up and dragged over a monitor screen on a smooth-floating arm system. The screen had gone from black to blue with the silver-white logo of the Terran Space Force. “Connecting you to her observation lounge in three, tw—whoops, off by a second. Greetings, Ambassador,” V’kol added, angling his body so that he was beside his recumbent captain. “How are you feeling?”
“Peachy. Black eye from when I fell. Or . . . oh. Possible Gestalt sympathetic biofeedback echo,” Jackie muttered, using a jumble of words that Li’eth half understood. She had a soot-eye, her right one . . . which was on the side Li’eth had been shot.
“Is my eye sooted, too?” Li’eth asked V’kol, touching his cheek. He couldn’t see his own face; there were no reflective sur
faces nearby, but he could feel with his fingertips. The scratch from the tranquilizer dart was more or less gone, but bruises often took longer to fade, even with holy healing. With biokinesis. V’kol nodded. So did Jackie.
She spoke, recapturing his full attention. “Because of the severity of the link—I dropped literally when you did—we are now authorized to communicate every day telepathically to maintain . . . psychic emotional stability. Since you’re already most of the way to Peregrine Station, I am being shipped out to the L3 Array tomorrow, and will meet up with you there. So it’ll just be a few more days before I rejoin the tour group. Can you stay calm until then?”
Embarrassment at his behavior made his face feel a bit hot. “I . . . I think so. I didn’t mean to—”
She held up her hand palm out, Terran style, forestalling him. It was so strange to realize he was literally on the far side of this system’s star from her, yet they were able to communicate pretty much instantly with each other instead of waiting tedious minutes, even hours, for lightspeed communications to transmit painstakingly composed messages.
“It’s alright, Li’eth. We do understand. Even knowing what could potentially happen, even I got a little stressed and accidentally floated several objects in the Premiere’s office. The guards were a bit nerve-wracked by it when it set off their KI monitors.”
V’kol frowned in confusion and pointed at the machine to which Li’eth was once again wired. “You mean he has one of these things attached to him?”