The translators continued, “With it comes an unhindered corridor of access through our space. Sovereign henceforth to Song Pa. We and others will only enter with your permission. Your access to the native creatures of this world is complete. Engineer it, exploit it as you will. We only ask that you accept a team of Weh advisors who will alert you to any environmental dangers for the native species.”
“We accept this honor.”
“There is more! It is not right to ask you to reject the possibility to die and to guarantee your seed will pass on. There will be another corridor, leading in the far direction. There you will find a new enemy, a cunning and ruthless civilization that threatens the peace in that sector. They will never back away from your challenge. I add that they will actually test your courage as none have done before. Do you also accept this honor?”
The Song Pai had already given respectful gestures and color changes at the first part of the offer, but at the mention of a military challenge, there was an enthusiastic waving of tentacles and clacking of claw blades. “Let this be a treaty! In the presence, we affirm this. All must remember. A new alliance and a new glory.”
There was general jubilation around the room, manifested in a dozen different ways by the various races. Even the humans eventually rose to join the Blastöo in their dancing, despite the fact that half their chairs were now empty. Ayan'we caught Entara's attention and pointed to the empty chair of the dour Anthony Wilson. Finally the celebration started to calm down and signal lights began to go on as other races quickly moved to add clauses to the interzonal treaty before the adjournment. Entara awaited her turn and the Forlani clauses were approved instantly. Everyone seemed to be getting what they wanted now that the prospect of war was gone. A Garanian, some kin of Tashto as Ayan'we recalled, had taken his place in their delegation. The reptilian (what was his name, Bashon?) had clabbered together a hasty trade deal with the Phiddians, arms for gems, that would give the leaders on Garan Prime a consolation for the failure of their military plans and the apparent defection of his cousin, so he gave a toothy grim of satisfaction when it was approved. It took a couple more station hours before the last of the worlds finished their wish lists and the conference was declared at an end.
Ayan'we had just begun to hope that the end of the conference would give her a few minutes to be alone with Entara and talk about her near-mating with Isshel when two Song Pai approached and texted that their head delegate wished to meet with Entara one more time before immediate departure. Ayan'we was miffed, but accompanied her mother and the cephalopods, signaling to Leli, Pulanate, and two others to follow them. The group had turned a corner in a corridor near the Song Pai ship when a voice called out behind them, “Halt or you die! Turn around and face me, you scum!”
It was Fianni, all alone and armed with a formidable-looking sidearm. The closer of the two Song Pai focused a couple of eyes on her and ever so slowly extended a claw hook to swing at the Phiddian, happy to have a chance for death in combat in the middle of the boring peace fest that the conference had become. Ayan'we held up a hand and commanded, “No. Wait.” She inched toward Entara to try to get between her and the attacker. The other Forlani were doing likewise. This is absurd. We're all trying to see who will die first. Can't help it.
Entara softly asked, “Fianni, why are you doing this? We mean you no harm.”
“That's right,” Ayan'we interrupted. “Listen, Fianni, we know what you've been going through. We know about the miscarriage. And the infection. We feel your pain. We can help you.”
“Help me?” Fianni seemed confused and lowered the weapon just a little. “Pain? What do you know about pain? You can still feel pleasure. You can feel it all each time a child slides out of you into this rotten universe. Over and over again. Not me. Not any more.” Suddenly there was anger again. “And now he's gone, gone with the antidote. There's no hope.”
“There's always hope,” Entara assured her.
“It's all your fault. Everything I tried, you ruined. You and that brat of yours.”
“We can restore you. Make you whole. Torghh and Rack, they can do it.”
“No, you don't understand. I'm Phiddian. They will never allow me to be restored. I am a traitor. They will leave me this way forever. It's torture! I can't stand it!”
Entara pleaded, “No, you can come with us. Back to Forlan. We'll give you asylum, amnesty.”
“Yes, I'm sure you will. Always one step ahead of me. I'm sick of you having your way. Sick of you. I'll kill you!”
It all happened in the wink of a human eye. Lila anticipated the flash of the weapon and covered Ayan’we’s body with her own. Pulanate leapt forward to take the blow herself, but she was too late. The blow hit Lila with immense force in the back and crumpled her. By the time it hit, the assassin’s weapon arm had been lopped off in one sweep of a Song Pai tentacle hook. “Hah!” said the Song Pai guard, slapping a patch over the bloody stump to stop the traumatic bleeding. He burbled something to his comrades that meant, “Wish I could play with this one for a good long while, but orders are orders. Has to be in condition to squeal.”
Entara slowly stepped up to Fianni, who was writhing on the floor and tearing at the patch. She wanted to bleed out. “Oh, this is so useless, Fianni. I was telling the truth.” She tried to replace the patch, but Fianni pawed at her with the other arm.
“No. Leave me, I know what I'm doing. I want it.” The Phiddian looked up Entara with a glazed expression. “Sorry. It will be... ohhh!”
“Who did this to you, Fianni, I know it wasn't really you. Who hurt you?”
Ayan'we was standing next to them now and had a horrible thought. No, it couldn't be! Did we let ourselves be tricked? “Fianni, was it the Garanians? Was it Tashto?”
“Not him. Not him. Humans. Anthony.” There was a final spasm. “Ericaaa.”
The Forlani heard Pulanate call out them, “Leaders, please come now.” The Phiddian was dead. Now it was time to tend to their own beloved. Ayan’we bent over Lila’s collapsed body. “Don’t worry, Lila. Well done. We’ll heal you.”
“Ah! It hurts like hell!” yelled Lila.
On the scene in a flash, Torghh had rushed up to her with syringe in mechanical hand. “This sedative will take away your pain.”
“No! Not yet!”
Surprised, Torghh retorted, “Well, if you don’t want to be free of pain, I’ll just do a little diagnosis.” He turned Lila onto her side while he examined her back.
“Yiiii!” shouted Lila, wriggling in pain.
“Let us give you something,” pleaded Ayan’we.
“Not yet, Cluster Leader. I need to feel this. Ah! It’s good. This will remind me.”
“Remind you of what?”
“That I really don’t have to envy you at all from now on. This should have been yours. Ahhh!”
“Envy? Me? Why? You just risked your life for me.”
“Don’t ask. Don’t need to know. OOOh! Too complicated.”
Pulanatae shook her head to discourage Ayan’we from probing further.
Torghh, who had been passing several sensors over Lila’s back, pronounced. “Damaged spine. Needs surgery. Rack, have the duplicator start on a Forlani eleventh vertebra, standard plus .763 millimeters. Type C closure. And get the lab to prepare for a stem cell culture. We may need to add a little tissue work. Now, officer,” he said directly to Lila, “Are you at last ready for sedation? In any case, you have no choice. I’m the physician,” he added, plunging the syringe into her neck.
It began to take effect immediately. Ayan’we turned to speak with another guard. Lila pulled Pulanate close enough to whisper, “Can you stay beside me? Don’t tell Ayan’we, but I’m getting a little scared.”
“I won’t leave you.”
Torghh was not looking at them, but of course his vibro-sensors picked up every hushed word. He spoke to Rack in machine language. “Scared!” with a signal that passed for a snort among members of the Robotic Guild. “Organisms!
What do you think of that, assistant? Why it’s nothing more than simple back surgery. Apprentice work! I could do it with only infrared and one grasper. Nothing elegant like replacing a Weh eyepod.”
“Indeed, main unit. Ordinary for you. Why even I…”
“Easy, Rack, Just because you performed a successful resuscitation, don’t get cocky. Still, I admit it was good work. Neatly done. You deserve an upgrade to senior medical assistant. Who knows, perhaps a little training is in order and you can qualify soon as an auxiliary surgeon. Easy stuff at first, naturally, closing up after intrusive operations. Then perhaps something not too demanding like Coriolan vascular replacement. I have complete confidence in you.”
Rack seemed alarmed. “Will that mean you will be sending me off and replacing me?”
“Of course not! Don’t be daft. It takes a lot of time to adapt to an assistant. You can do it while I’m on a rotation close to a training center.”
“Thank you so much, main unit.”
“That’s all right, Rack. Don’t get maudlin.”
Ayan'we escorted her mother to the Song Pai meeting and then caught up with the medical staff taking Lila's immobilized body to the operating room. By the time Torghh and Rack were done, Entara's meeting was over and she had gone back to the Forlani ship to start procedures for their return. Ayan'we reported to her right away.
“Mother, our doctor friends were completely succesful.”
“I had been hoping for that. The fact that Leli was in so much pain was actually a good sign, because if her spine had been completely broken, she would not have felt much.”
“That's exactly what they said. They were able to start operating right away, without waiting for tissue to be grown, because the Weh had an extensive tissue bank in their hospital ship and sent some over right away. They had to splice some into the spinal column. Lila also has two new vertebrae that they fabricated specially for her after scanning in the adjoining ones and the pieces that had been fractured. Torghh even asked Rack todo the closing up, because he has now been promoted somehow and will go on to train as a full-fledged surgeon.”
“That's wonderful. Will Lila be able to return to duty in the security force?”
“Torghh said she will need several months of rehabilitation, but it appears likely she will. In any case, she'll be ready to come back with us on the ship.”
“We'll take very good care of her and she'll have plenty of rest.” Entara gave her daughter a knowing look. “And so will you. You can now be assured that this big assignment has worked out well for you. I know the official part is not as important to you as the fact that you could protect Quatilla and me. This has been a strain, though, hasn't it? I've noticed that these past days you've seemed a little bit more distracted, unlike your usual ready-for-anything self.”
“More than you know, Mother.” Ayan'we turned away for a moment to ask herself if she were prepared to talk about her incident with Isshel, took a deep breath, and turned back to face Entara. “There's something more I have to tell you. It involves our male colleague. You see, I found I could confide in Isshel. He is unusually open and considerate for a male. Perhaps I got to trust him a bit too far, to become dependent on him. I needed someone to listen sometimes and didn't want to burden you, especially with what happened to little sister. I went to get his opinions, to let out some of my anxieties. I didn't mean for anything to happen. I suppose I had underestimated my own dread, my relief that there was someone who understood right away.” She paused, remembering the scene. “At any rate, somehow things went a little too far. I was completely shocked. For one thing, I hadn't thought enough about Isshel, what he must be feeling. He had developed something that went – how can I say – beyond sympathy for me. Mother, we both lost control and almost wound up mating.”
“Well.” Entara leaned back and blinked her eyes a few times. She was assessing the situation. Ayan'we expected a stern but very controlled reprimand. What she got was something else. Entara let out a brief laugh. “Firstborn, you're not the only one to be surprised. I don't know why I should be, because as I myself have repeatedly hinted, it's high time you come to grips with all the aspects of being a woman. I can't expect you to stay my girl wonder forever. So, what did you do, did you have to fight him off?”
“That's just it, Mother, I couldn't. I went into the premating trance. Without herbs, without concentration, without anything. It just happened naturally and I was unable to control it. I was going limp and starting to submit. Did you ever hear of that happening? Did it ever happen to you?”
“No, I can't say it ever happened to me. Before my first mating, I took advantage of every herb and every concentration exercise in the book and was terribly happy that they worked. I might have gone crazy if I had to confront the pain without that. But, you know, it's not unheard of. There are stories in the matriline of women who went into a trance voluntarily or not, sometimes under extraordinary conditions during the times of troubles, and also without an external crisis, totally unexpected. We will have to consult the matrons of the mahäme to find if they know of any precedents among our ancestors.” Entara's face grew wrinkled with puzzlement. “But Ayan'we, if you couldn't resist, what did happen?”
“Fortunately, by some miracle, Isshel was able to preserve some self control. In the middle of the mating rage, he grabbed a blade and stabbed himself deep in the thigh to distract his feelings. I was so grateful, because when I regained normal consciousness, I realized that I wouldn't have been capable of doing anything, and it would have put us both in such a bind.”
“Whew! That was lucky. I don't think I know another male of any species who could do that. So that's why he was limping around for a few days. He gave the guards a cock-and-bull story about breaking some glassware during an experiment. This gets more and more uncanny. What I want to know now, daughter, is how are you feeling about this?”
“I am frightened, naturally. But mostly confused. Deeply, deeply confused. I don't know if it will make me more inclined to become a mother or not. It's almost as if there's another self inside of me that I never suspected and I don't know what to make of it. On the one hand, I'm sooo glad things worked out as they did, and on the other, there's this sort of a phantom me that I can't just turn on or off.”
Entara touched her shoulder and smiled, “If you're waiting for me to give you an easy answer, I can't. I've always known that there were facets to you that were totally beyond my influence and this proves it beyond a doubt. It's something you'll have to work out for yourself.” She took Ayan'we's chin in her hand and pointed it toward her. “You remember this, firstborn – whatever you decide or whatever happens, I will be here to help you and support you, regardless of what people may say, regardless of the matriline, whatever it costs.”
“Thank you, mom.” Ayan'we cheered up a little. “You know, it seems illogical, but I think there may be somebody else that can help me, too. For some reason, I think I want to talk this over with Amanda. All of a sudden, I really want to see her. It's not that you aren't enough. You're my mother, my flesh and blood. But Amanda's young, like me. I know people might expect me to listen to the judgment of Ishan and Tolowe, my own biological sisters. But there's this closeness, I don't know, I can't explain it well. I was actually dreaming of being with Amanda lately. Do you think that's too wild?”
Entara grew serious. “No way. Remember, I have dreams, too. Amanda is the human child of Klein and nothing about that relationship would surprise me. I've seen that for a long time.”
“Do you think I can get a leave to visit them on Earth once we return to Forlan?”
Entara rested her chin on her fist and reflected for several moments. “Perhaps we don't have to wait that long. We will pass not too far from Tau Ceti Anchorage on the way back. I have plenipotentiary powers for this delegation. If I were to decide that the ramifications of the Interzonal Treaty require me to gather information about the resettlement project on Earth, I can send anyone I wish, even if it mean
s suspending their responsibilities on Forlan for a while. At Tau Ceti, you could get a ride to Earth almost immediately. Let's see how that works. Now we both need a sound sleep.”
Just as Entara and her daughters were turning in, Erica emerged from a troubled “night” of tossing and turning. Glancing at the station clock, she was shocked to find it was hours later than she anticipated. A communicator alarm was flashing on her desk. Surprised, she answered and heard a recorded message that told her to report immediately to Robotic Guild security.
This is not good. Are they rounding us up? Have they found out something? Must talk with Anthony. Her signals to him went unanswered. She called the human delegation central. She gasped as she learned Anthony was no longer on Varess and had been reassigned to an unreachable location. Trying Chester, she was told he was too busy to speak with her. This is really awful. What to do? Get to the safe room quick!
She rushed to pick up a few vital tools of the trade. Her limbs seemed like rubber, impeding her movements. What the hell is going on? Did someone slip me a drug? Did they get in here and break into my fridge? All the spy traps were intact. Unless... oh, no. That human safe room might not be as safe as she thought. Anthony's absence and Chester's unwillingness to help suggested that maybe they were setting her up. But for what? She tore open the door to her compartment only to find half a dozen Phiddian security with their sharpened quoits at the ready. She considered trying to break through and run, but the light glinting off those razor-sharp edges stopped her. No use losing an arm or a leg. Maybe I can talk my way out of whatever it is.
Ramatoulaye stepped forward and spat out, “Erica Duquesne, you are under station arrest for treason and other offenses. Make no resistance.” One of the Phiddians stepped behind her and attached something low between her shoulders in the most difficult spot on the back to reach. An immobilizer or worse. They placed her hands into a kind of double mitten that prevented her from removing it. Phiddian cuffs.
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