“Approximately.” Renee’s voice cracked a trifle.
“A rough estimate, only, muddled by the fact that we are a very broad-based collective. We represent many species from many widely scattered stellar regions, and our missions operate throughout a quarter of the galaxy.”
“That’s … a hell of a big chunk of real estate.”
Martil looked weary. “Then can you see why we might easily lose track of a war involving merely two species, comprising less than fifty square light-years in their combined spheres of influence?”
“But Earth’s somewhere in the middle of their ‘spheres of influence’!” Renee argued. “Earth and plenty of other planets that may be home to intelligent life-forms. I don’t want us getting crunched while the Niandians and the Haukiets are debating who got to which godforsaken lump of orbiting rock first!”
“And we very much want to protect your planet, and every neighboring planet endangered by that war,” Martil said, very earnest.
“Then hadn’t you better head on out to Niand? I don’t know why you’ve wasted so much time baby-sitting me. You need Chayo, sure. But I can wait however long it takes. You and Tae and the Ka-Eens take Chayo home, fast. If the truce the other Arbiter team worked out with the Haukiets holds, it could give some Niandian die-hards a chance to strike while their enemy is vulnerable. And keep the whole damned mess going on and on until they wipe out everything …”
Martil was amused, shaking his head. “It will take the Niandians some time to learn of that truce and confirm it. We knew, of course, immediately after the Haukiet Council’s decision. The Ka-Eens could provide instant transportation for our team back to our central world to tell us of the fact. But both the Niandians and Haukiets are limited by time, space, and their rather crude communication and travel technologies. Further, they have not been able to conduct effective espionage behind their enemies’ lines; their somatotypes are far too different to permit convincing disguises for their spies. No, it is extremely unlikely that the Haukiets’ agreement to abort those hostilities is yet obvious to Niand. That is beyond their capabilities, though not beyond ours.”
That final statement made Renee perk up her ears. Her position remained ambiguous, and for the past few days she’d been waiting tensely for any sort of clue concerning her future. “Ours? Does that mean I qualify as a permanent addition to the team?” She felt as though she were sitting in a personnel manager’s hot seat, applying for an opening.
Wanted: Beings willing to abandon their entire past lives and be “possessed” by all-powerful non-anthropomorphic entities. Job entails considerable risk-taking in exotic locales. Join the Arbiters and see the Universe!
… If you live long enough.
He refused to meet Renee’s questioning stare. “I can’t tell you that — yet. In a way, you will know the answer before I do,” he said, refusing to elaborate on those cryptic words.
They had reached the bottom of the hill. Tae and his and Martil’s trainers were watching Chayo’s exercise session. The prince’s instructor was an older, stockily built man, and he didn’t make things easy for his pupil. Eventually, though, Chayo succeeded in throwing the teacher. Both of them were grinning as they got to their feet. They slapped hands enthusiastically, reminding Renee of black Earthmen celebrating a victory.
No, she said to herself. Don’t think of that. I’m never going to see Earth or any of my friends in the Sisterhood again.
Tae walked toward her and reached out, caressing her hair. And all at once, putting away her past was somehow less painful. The intense pang of loss softened. Mementoes were being tucked into a mental attic. When the anguish had faded to a bearable level, she’d be able to take those mementoes out of their figurative wrappings of tissue paper and hold them fondly. By then, they would be lovely souvenirs, but no longer her entire life. Tae’s mouth curved in a froggy smile, and he drew back his hand.
Awed, she gazed up at him.
What is it like in your prison of a body, Tae? she wondered. What were you yourself like, before you agreed to let them lock you into humanoid form? I’m sure you were kind and gentle, as you are now, sensitive to others’ feelings. Do you ever long to return to what you were?
The big blond Arbiter grinned. And Renee knew that he didn’t yearn for the past. He was advising her to do the same. No spoken words were needed. In the past days, she had become increasingly aware of the silent current flowing between Tae and Martil and between Tae and her. She still wasn’t nearly as adept at detecting and reading those signals as Martil was. How could she be? But she no longer assumed she was merely guessing at what Tae was trying to tell her.
There was another growing element in that network, one far more difficult to decipher: the Ka-Eens. Hers, Martil’s, and Tae’s, and, to a very tiny degree, Chayo’s. Chayo’s presence didn’t really enter the picture; he remained strictly an outsider, never joining that subtle thread linking the rest of them.
Ka-Een entities. That was as useful a description of those caged, glowing members of the team as any other. Renee received fleeting impressions, now and then, of formless personalities, darting like cosmic silverfish, able to be in several places at once, and as intangible as gray-green-gold smoke. Yet real. Very, very real. As were their seemingly omnipotent talents for translation and fast transportation, among other tricks.
The men — except for Tae — had been trading friendly insults and arm punches. Finally, the gathering was breaking up, the trainers heading for their individual skimmers. Chayo and the Arbiters waved the others off, and the tiny vehicles wafted away above the rustic scenery. Trainers, Renee had learned, were fresh-air fiends, wanting to feel the wind in their faces. Soh and her counterparts resided on this planet, and could have used their Ka-Een pendants to carry them back to their homes in the blink of an eye. They preferred slower methods, probably for the same perverse reasons humanoids throughout the galaxy maintained craftsmanship hobbies and enjoyed collecting objects their technology had long since made obsolete.
Martil turned to Chayo. “A good session. You should be ready now.”
The prince had just finished pulling on the Arbiters’ version of a sweatshirt. He fished his Ka-Een pendant free of its neckline and stared blankly at the Arbiter. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t you want to return to Niand?”
Renee suppressed a start of surprise. That was exactly what she’d nudged Martil about, minutes ago. Sly dog! He’d been meaning to set up Chayo’s homeward-bound trip today, all along! Annoyed, she said tauntingly, “Maybe he’s not eager to go back to being a target for assassins.”
“Perhaps that problem can be avoided, this time,” Martil retorted. “Chayo?”
The Niandian prince didn’t look as callow as he had when Renee had first seen him there in the rain-drenched stone alley. And he was considerably slower to pounce on a suggestion. “Of course I would like to go home. And you? Do you dare to return to Niand, after the abominable treatment accorded you there?”
Martil nodded. “We have shown you much during your stay among the Arbiters. Our medicine, technology, leisure activities, and most of all, our peace. Benefits the Niand Federation may one day enjoy, if you survive your present crisis.”
“That is why you have displayed these things, is it not?” Chayo said, a wan smile brightening his face. “To educate a savage.”
“Hardly a savage! But we hope the experience will better enable you to convince the matriarch, your mother, of our good intentions — and of our power.”
“Makes sense,” Renee put in. “Your colonies regard the mother world, and the mother world’s matriarch, with total reverence. And you are her son.”
“You exaggerate my influence,” Chayo said.
“No, I don’t. She cares for you, more, I imagine, than she’s supposed to in Niandian society. She was worried that you might have been hurt in the explosion at your apartment, and she broke up that fight between you and Vunj.”
A glimmer of hop
e shone in Chayo’s pale eyes. “Do you really think …?”
“Yes! At least try. Aren’t billions of your people worth it to you? They would be to me. They are, to me.”
He drew himself up straight, some of his former puppy-dog enthusiasm in his manner. “I will do my best to earn your trust, my Lady Renamos.”
“No! Not to please me. To please yourself. To do the right thing by Niand, and by the Green Union, too.”
Martil nodded his approval and said, “The two of you need to change to other clothes.” Chayo picked up the boots and cloak he’d worn when they arrived on this planet. Renee involuntarily stiffened. She wasn’t used to this procedure, even yet.
The grass and the parklike scenery vanished. There was a fraction of a second when Renee seemed to feel her heart stop its beating. Total blackness. Total … nothing.
And then they were in a room with polished white walls. A section of Arbiter Central, as Renee was learning to think of it. They had just leaped — via the Ka-Eens — across a distance that made NASA’s and JPL’s longest journeys resemble flea hops.
“A skimmer is more fun,” she muttered, glancing down to make sure that all of her, and her clothes, had come through intact. That was another reflex she hadn’t been able to shake, an emotional defense against what her intellect was accepting. “I must admit, though, that a Ka-Een certainly provides some wonderful bonuses.”
Chayo sniffed disdainfully. “Niand has had matter-relay units for several generations.”
“Those are a trifle more limited in range than the Ka-Een,” Martil said dryly. “Perhaps someday, when conditions are more settled and peaceful, you can demonstrate your civilization’s so-called matter-relay units to Renamos. For now, however …”
They fanned out to their respective quarters. Standard pattern, when returning from one of these daily excursions. It was almost down to a routine now for Renee. She was actually beginning to enjoy being yanked hither and yon all over the Arbiters’ interstellar complex. These few days had been a dazzling sequence of sights, sounds, and discoveries.
Her motel room, as she thought of it, was an all-purpose circular area fifteen feet in diameter. One of the giant hassocks served as both bed and chairs, and if she needed one, a table always appeared out of one of the wall panels, whichever one was closest to her at that time.
She shucked out of her sweaty exercise suit and the room became a sonic shower. It left her feeling invigorated, clean down to her toenails, and the recipient of a complete sauna and a massage.
Renee sat on the hassock. It molded itself to her behind a lot better than those egg vehicle’s seats had on Niand. Gradually, as the euphoria generated by the shower abated, Renee grew thoughtful. She cupped her Ka-Een pendant in both hands. It had remained suspended on its chain, nestled between her breasts, throughout the shower, of course; she never took it off. No one possessed by a Ka-Een could. Once — and only once — Renee had tried to remove the chain and the glowing, caged jewel. The stomach-churning despair that gripped her then terrified now, even in retrospect. It had been an all-enveloping panic, totally unlike anything else she’d ever experienced.
A gray-green-gold entity, encased in a cage that resembled gold, but wasn’t. What was a Ka-Een? Alive? Definitely. But not an animal. Pulsing, though not with a heartbeat.
“Do you like waterless showers, too?” Renee asked softly. She gazed intently into the gray-green-gold fire. In private, one could talk to a piece of living jewelry and not feel quite like an utter idiot. “Do you have a name?”
“Haven’t you asked yours that before now?”
Renee choked down an urge to scream something very unladylike. Martil was leaning against a nearby wall. She cursed the silent efficiency of the room’s doors; he’d managed to enter without making a sound.
The Arbiter had changed clothes, even though he hadn’t worked up a sweat on the Health and Fitness world. He’d donned a fairly plain outfit, for him: silver-flecked black pants and shirt and serviceable boots. Comparatively businesslike.
Sighing, Renee rose and headed for a wall her instincts or her Ka-Een, told her contained a wardrobe. The closure slid open and she began to dress, knowing the closet would hand out to her whatever she should wear for the next activity on her schedule. “Look,” she said sourly, “don’t charge in here without knocking, huh?”
“A member of the Sisterhood of the Nine Worlds, a victim of primitive modesty?”
“Drop the body-pride propaganda. Just say I’m part of a species culture with reservations about nudity, to paraphrase the lecture you gave Chayo under somewhat different circumstances.”
“What is its name?” Martil wondered.
Renee had wriggled into a brown body stocking and put on the orange dashiki-style tunic the closet had placed in her hands. Niandian fashions, those clothes. Was that a clue to what was coming next? She finished tidying up and growled, “Will you quit making fun of me?”
He looked surprised. “I’m not. Be sure to do the hair, as well.” Renee moved to the other side of the room and let a gadget in the ceiling do quick, arcane, and flattering things to her now squeaky-clean mop. Martil went on.
“Renamos, I was not being amused at your expense. If anyone has the rapport necessary to learn a Ka-Een’s personal term of address, it is you.” He stroked his own pendant fondly, his finger rings twinkling around the gray-green-gold within the nonmetal cage. “It is a great privilege to be possessed by one of them. A privilege, and an enormous responsibility. They are most particular about a joining of their essence.”
There was a time — seemingly ages ago — when “essence” had suggested perfume to Renee, and very little more. Lately, she’d been reminded often that there were other definitions of the word, in use long before the perfumers and Mad Avenue people had moved in on it. “Essence” was the fundamental nature of something. That was an intriguing way to describe the Ka-Eens. They didn’t appear to have physical substance of the sort Renee was familiar with. The Ka-Een could translate — language and solid forms, to employ both definitions of that word. And they communicated, after a fashion, on wavelengths so deep and subtle Renee couldn’t always be sure an idea was her own or something insinuated into her brain by her pendant.
Martil continued to stroke his Ka-Een and said, “I have worn one so long, I cannot imagine life without it. No one truly possessed by a Ka-Een can.”
Goosebumps raised on Renee’s arms and spine. “They — they do sort of grow on one, don’t they?”
“Indeed. And your quick, total affinity with a Ka-Een which was literally forced upon you is unheard of.” Martil stared intently at her. “Such has never happened among us. And the Arbiters’ Ka-Een and non-Ka-Een relationships have endured for a considerable time.”
“I won’t ask you to tell me how long in Earth’s terms,” Renee said, trying to make a joke of the conversation. The effort fell flat. “Sometimes … it scares me. It’s like suddenly developing a twin. More than a twin. A second part of me. The sensations are so constant, I feel I could touch them. But there’s nothing to touch. Not physically.”
“No. I suspect Chayo does not feel these things nearly so acutely as you and I and Tae do.”
“He still has a home to go back to,” Renee said, yielding to self-pity. “I don’t. So I adopted the Ka-Een wholeheartedly.” She studied Martil curiously. “Do you and Tae have homes? I mean, besides the Arbiter worlds.”
“Not in the sense Prince Chayo does. You are correct in that summation, and in a remarkable number of others.” There was a heavy silence for fifteen seconds or so. Then Martil said, “Your affinity and adaptability are why your activities, these past few days, have differed substantially from Chayo’s.”
Renee regarded him with suspicion. “We’ve both been given the grand tour and had daily workouts, haven’t we?”
“Yes. But Chayo’s sleep has been unaltered. He has not been instructed during his non-waking periods. Nor has he been absorbing a steady diet, as i
t were, of subliminal information and viewpoint-shifting from his Ka-Een.” Martil let his words have their full impact.
“He’s a guest. I’m a — what? An adoptee?”
“Undetermined,” Martil said, looking uneasy. Renee got the impression he’d plunged into these explanations with misgivings. Was he breaking the Arbiters’ rules in doing so? It had spelled out things she’d wondered about — like why Chayo hadn’t grasped some of the implications of the places they’d visited and the Arbiters and staffers they’d met. The tours had been much more than mere sightseeing, to Renee. Apparently all of it was just marking time for the prince. He’d enjoyed, for example, his physical-fitness training sessions, but they’d lacked the cram-course accelerated-learning quality Renee had been aware of. She’d known intuitively, or through her Ka-Een, that she was acquiring in days abilities that would have taken her months to master, back on Earth. Without the Ka-Een — and whatever the Arbiters were injecting into her mind and her physical processes while she slept — none of that would have been possible.
The whatsis in the ceiling had long since finished giving Renee a hundred-buck trim, set, and comb-out. Martil offered her a hand, and she moved closer to him, slipping her fingers into the curve of his palm.
And for a moment, there was a strong, unmistakable electricity flowing between them. The power of the unexpected reaction rocked Renee back on her heels. From Martil’s widened eyes and startled expression, she guessed that he had been taken equally off guard.
Renee jerked her hand away, unprepared to deal with such a response on short notice.
The Arbiter didn’t move. He was staring at her, and she sensed that he was trying to survey — calmly and dispassionately — their mutual confusion. “Uh … this was not planned for,” he muttered.
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