Lyon's Pride

by Anne McCaffrey

  “We don’t have all that much substantive detail,” Mallen said, “but the ’Dini do maintain that the Hivers haven’t changed their modus operandi in centuries. Comparing the installations on Xh-33 with those on Marengo and Waterloo shows that they use the same general structures and agricultural schemes—at least on those three planets.”

  “And on the other two I probed,” Kincaid said, relaxed enough now to lean forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together. “They pick sites well inland, as if they don’t like, or maybe are even afraid of, large bodies of water.”

  “They irrigate fields…” Zara put in.

  “I want to see what sort of hydro pumping units they have…” Asia put in. “Did you see any?”

  Kincaid smiled at her. “Asia, I wouldn’t know a pump unless it had a big sign written all over it—Pump! But where agricultural activity had been started, there were irrigation ditches which I can recognize. On the ecologically poor planet, the third one, Talavera, these were just straight gutters of some material, full of leaves or dirt and sand. Very sad to see. Very desolate.”

  “But nothing to show why the planet was ecologically slain?”

  Kincaid shook his head. “If the Hivers fumigate every planet they want to colonize, they may not restore the necessary ecological balance. If it can be saved, it’d be a lovely place,” and his face took on a wistful expression.

  “We’ll damn well try!” Zara said and made a face at Jesper when she saw him regarding her with a slightly supercilious expression. “You just wait and see.”

  “Are you going there first?” Kincaid asked with a hint of eagerness in his voice.

  “That’s the plan,” Flavia said.

  He leaned forward more urgently. “But that system’s very close to the one the Hivers are active on.”

  “Don’t worry, Kincaid,” Flavia replied with a confident smile, sending him a mental reassurance as well.

  With an impatient gesture, he waved that off. “That planet’s dangerous. They’ve a ship. And you’d be in range of their scouts.”

  “Squadron B’s armed with the new missiles, Kincaid,” Mallen said, though he did not dismiss Kincaid’s obvious alarm. “And the complement includes one of the fast ’Dini destroyers.”

  “What bothered you so about that planet, Kincaid?” Laria asked in a conversational tone.

  He glanced over at her, took a long breath and expelled it.

  Flavia was empathic enough to pick up his rising anxiety, and to know that Laria was deftly calming him and carefully shielding his reaction. A quick touch at Zara, and Flavia realized that the highly empathic young therapist had been diverted. Zara would mean no harm, but Kincaid had not completely recovered from whatever had depleted both mental and physical resources.

  “The frantic activity, the almost desperate urgency with which the Hive creatures pursued what, for any other culture, would be done with…energy…but not such frenetic turmoil.”

  “Was it the spring of the planet’s year?” Jes asked.

  “No. I would have understood that!” Kincaid shook his head and began twisting his hands together.

  “I know what bothered you,” Zara exclaimed, bouncing on her chair. “The sting-pzzt!”

  “The what?” Kincaid stared at her and then, almost accusingly, at Laria when she began to laugh.

  “No one would have known to tell you, dear friend,” Laria said, briefly laying her hand on his shoulder, “but all Talents get a curious reaction from proximity to Hivers and especially Hive metals and artifacts. We named it ‘sting-pzzt’ because that’s the way it echoes in our heads. It leaves a nasty, an unmistakably metallic taste in the back of the throat and tends to make Talents very irritable!” To everyone’s surprise, Laria then tousled his hair, laughing with relief. “Going through all those Hive buildings and ending up on an active Hive world, you had a massive overdose of it.”

  “Sting-pzzt?” Apparently oblivious to the hair-mussing, Kincaid repeated the term in a witless fashion, obviously trying to relate it to his experiences. “The taste I had ruined anything I ate, which was bad enough to start with…and I was certainly…irritable…”

  “And a good bit beyond mere ‘irritable,’ I’d say,” Laria remarked. “What a stupid I’ve been not to have seen what’s been bothering you. You must have thought you were going mad with the reactions.”

  “Yes,” and both Kincaid’s expression and his tone echoed his amazement, “yes, I did think I was going insane.” He looked at the other Talents. “And you’ve all experienced the same reactions?”

  “Not me,” said Jes and Mallen shook his head but both Zara and Asia emphatically reassured him.

  “We summered on Deneb, you know,” Zara said, “and even if our parents and aunts and uncles and cousins had already found most of the Hive metals from the original two scout ships that got strewn over the planet, we’d occasionally smell out a piece or two.”

  Kincaid turned to Flavia. “But you were at the Base going through the Refugee…”

  “Not inside it, Kincaid,” she said, smiling. “We’ve been supplied with some protective clothing that’s supposed to reduce the sting-pzzt effect on Talents. We’ll tell you how well it works.”

  “I could just kick myself,” Laria was saying, wallowing in remorse about such an oversight on her part. “Small wonder you had such a miserable time of it, Kincaid.”

  Don’t overdo it, sis, Zara said on a thin line to her older sister. But it’s sure taking the angst out of him. A deep one is your Kincaid.

  He’s not my Kincaid, Zara, and never likely to be.

  More’s the pity, sis. He’s got a real nice aura. But Vanteer, for all he’s a rover, is more your style.

  Vanteer? Zara Raven-Lyon, you stop therapizing me, right this instant! D’you understand me?

  Before Zara realized how angry she had made her sister, she found herself out in the dawn heat by the multiple carrier.

  I can take a hint, she said apologetically. Laria? I’m sorry. Really I am. And I’m going to be gone for ages.

  Good, was the unequivocal reply. Oh, all right. I forgive you but don’t try that sort of stunt around me again. Understand!

  Yes.

  You don’t do meekness well. The others are coming.

  The complex doors slid apart and the rest of Zara’s team moved quickly through the warming air to the capsule, eager to be away before Clarf’s sun rose to give them a more intense sample of its power.

  Zara’s natural buoyancy sustained her during the awkward moment when the others joined her inside the capsule.

  Good luck…all of you! Keep in touch! said Laria. Granddad says I’m to put you aboard the Vadim.

  Thanks, Zara, Kincaid added.

  Then the capsule was ’ported to join the Second Expeditionary Force and Squadron B, which hurtled on its way to Talavera, third planet of the Tau Ceti VI system.

  * * *

  When the generators wound down from thrusting the large carrier to the point where David of Betelgeuse and his son, Perry, could ’port it the rest of the way, Kincaid sat up and slid his feet to the floor. Keenly aware that Zara’s revelation about the sting-pzzt had been a breakthrough point for her Tower partner, Laria pushed herself upright and faced him.

  “There should have been some sort of announcement about such a reaction to Hiver stuff, shouldn’t there, Laria?” he asked in a reasonable tone of voice.

  Behind that, Laria could almost hear his mind shouting with relief, a boiling anger that he hadn’t been briefed on that one very important detail and a roiling of other ancillary regrets and recriminations he might never vocalize.

  “The sting-pzzt…”

  Mild words to describe the effect the damned stuff has on the unsuspecting! His mental tone was savage.

  Shut up and listen, “Kincaid,” and Laria ended up speaking aloud in the tone of a teacher whose pupil continually interrupts. Kincaid gritted his teeth and glared at her. “…has been until very recently lim
ited to Deneb, which is the only Human planet to have received Hiver attentions. Probably the only one that ever fought back successfully. True, all the Primes involved were aware of it when my grandparents focused the two merges that destroyed the Hive ship. But over the ensuing decades, no one has, thankfully, had much contact with Hivers.

  “You,” and she pointed her finger at him, “were by way of being an experiment in FT&T communication possibilities when your Squadron was diverted to follow one of the outbound spheres. It wasn’t anticipated that you would be asked to probe Hiver-occupied planets and the Fleet still doesn’t half-believe sting-pzzt is valid. Then there was so much going on, what with the Great Sphere being found, then the queen pod—when, it is true,” she held up her hand when he had a cogent interruption to make, “more people became aware of this reaction, but not anyone directly in touch with Squadron C. Granted?” He nodded, his anger slowly subsiding, but not, Laria noticed, some of his other confused and roiling emotions. “Then the Xh-33 happened and the focus was off Squadron C until Earth Prime reassigned you here.

  “When you arrived, you were in no condition for any debriefing, so it never occurred to me you didn’t know, hadn’t taken into consideration, the good ol’ sting-pzzt that gives every Talent the willies.”

  “I thought I was going crazy as well as everything else,” he said, holding their eye contact.

  “I’m not just your Tower chief, Kincaid. I’m your friend. So are Lionasha and Vanteer, because we’re already a team. Much more so than we were with those two misfits my grandfather thought I’d be able to work with.” Laria gave an indignant huff.

  “I’m not a misfit?” Kincaid asked drolly.

  “You can be as gay as Dick’s hatband in your private life, but you fit so much better with me, Lio and Van that we’ve done everything we can to ease you in…”

  “Even to taking me to Aurigae?”

  Laria caught the thread of indignant suspicion and made a face at him.

  “You needed a change and were well enough to enjoy a vacation. It was Granddad’s idea, not mine. And he was trying not to be too obvious with his matchmaking.”

  Kincaid sat straight up in protest. “He knows I’m homo.”

  Laria laughed. “Sure he does. We all do, but he wanted Flavia paired with Thian and I could have told him she was far more interested in Jesper Ornigo.”

  Wry humor caught the edges of Kincaid’s thin lips. “I figured she already had calculated on someone other than Thian.”

  “Flavia’s calculating?”

  Kincaid grinned at her surprise. “In a nice quiet way, Flavia Bastianmajani knows exactly what she wants and she’ll find the best way to achieve it. But you’d want that in a T-1.”

  “I need it in my T-2, Kincaid Dano. Do I have it? Will you give me the friendly support I need to do my job on this stinking hot planet amid aliens I mostly admire and sometimes fear, because sometimes their alienness overwhelms the Human in me? Will you grab me and shake me out of doing something stupid? Will you be my good friend?”

  Kincaid rose to his feet, held out his hands to her and lifted her to her feet. As he looked down at her, Laria saw flickering emotions: incredulity, surprise, gratitude and something less definable which made her feel grateful and quite humble.

  “I can be your friend, Laria,” he said, oddly sad, “and I could wish there was more to share with you.”

  Surprising her even further on a day of many unusual events, he embraced her, one hand pulling her head to rest against his cheek. Then she knew the full story of what had happened to him during the voyage, how he had been emotionally abused in a contest of two very strong-willed men who had thought more of denying the other of his company than of how their passion battle was wracking him who admired them both.

  She tightened one arm about his shoulders and, with the other, pressed his head into her cheek. She doubted even Elizara, for all her skill, could completely heal Kincaid’s wounded and tormented psyche. But she was here and he was wide open so she could try! And did.

  They released each other by degrees, for the rapport had been a complete sharing.

  “Vanteer may be a rover, Laria, and love many women fervently but not forever. But he would come back to you time and again because you would never hold him. Now, if Humans could do a ’Dini split and produce a male you, it would be the best of all conclusions,” Kincaid went on, finally slipping his fingers out of hers, “but we haven’t even figured out how to clone so I will continue to admire, respect, and love you as my very good friend.”

  The generators began to spin, recalling them to the day’s duties.

  “Damned sting-pzzt!” Kincaid muttered as he stretched out again on the couch.

  “It really is the most appalling nuisance,” Laria idly agreed, aware of the new tranquillity in her partner and much relieved to know that he was finding balance.

  * * *

  One Constellation, two Galaxy-class ships and two speedy destroyers now comprised Squadron B for Backtrack. Captain Vestapia Soligen was Squadron Commander and captained the Columbia; Hyner Steverice, the Valparaiso; Li Hsiang, the destroyer Valiant; while Captain Hptml had the KMTM and an unusual bronze-colored Mrdini, Klml, had the ’Dini destroyer-equivalent, the KVS.

  Captain Soligen, her science officer and two more of the specialists welcomed the Talent contingent aboard with proper ceremony. The Columbia’s captain was not what Flavia had half-expected, considering her request for female Primes. Flavia told herself to find out why at some convenient moment. Now she found herself instantly liking the woman: Soligen’s face was unlined and pleasant though certainly not a pretty one. She had wide-spaced light eyes which seemed to alter between blue or green, under sharply arched dark brows. Her figure in the ubiquitous shipsuit was trim and athletic without losing essential femininity. Flavia recognized behind the “pleasant” expression a strong personality and a shrewd mind. She grinned, without showing her teeth, as she acknowledged the introductions to Asia and Zara, Rhodri Eagle, Mallen Bastianmajani and Jesper Ornigo.

  “Glad to have you aboard, ladies, gentlemen, lieutenant. Let me introduce my science officer, Wayla Gegarian: she’s also my official ’Dini interpreter. I’ve never been able to advance from garble to greeting…”

  “Captain,” Zara said instantly, her hands on the sloping shoulders of Pal and Dis, “my ’Dinis are top-notch tutors. There’s nothing they like better than a real challenge to their abilities.”

  “We teach you…” Pal began.

  “You understand all you need to hear…” Dis put in.

  “More important, all you need to say,” Pal finished.

  Her science officer smothered a cough and the captain raised her eyebrows, her light eyes sparkling bluely.

  “I like…personages who accept challenges,” she replied. “And,” she pointed a finger at Dis and Pal who wiggled with pleasure, “I warn you, I’ll be a challenge. But I’m determined to try. There’s…”

  Flavia caught her almost say something else and veto it.

  “…There’s plenty of time, despite the almighty push we got out this far, for me to learn a few phrases and understand more.”

  Then the tall lean man, who had been rocking impatiently from side to side, shoved a hand at Flavia which she gracefully ignored by dropping her carisak, which he graciously retrieved from the deck and handed to a yeoman, obviously on hand to manage impedimenta.

  “I’m Dr. Tru Blairik, team biologist. This is my assistant who’s the team archivist as well, Mialla Evshenk.”

  I keep telling Tru that Talents don’t make casual physical contacts, Mialla said, as she smiled and bowed slightly from the waist to acknowledge the introduction. “There are more of us, but you’ll have plenty of time to get to know which is who. We’re delighted to have Talents to help.” Not that I’m likely to be much but I thought I’d see if you can hear me. I’m not strong.

  Strong enough, and greetings, Mialla, Flavia responded. “Nice to meet you, Evshe
nk.”

  “There’ll be drinks in my quarters this evening at 1930, Primes, gentlemen,” the captain was announcing. “Wayla’ll take you to your quarters.”

  “We could…” Blairik offered.

  “Anyone but you, Tru,” Mialla said in a gentle tease.

  “Be advised,” the captain said ruefully. “My electronics officer’s designing a special locator for Dr. Blairik.”

  “You won’t need that,” Zara said, “with us aboard. I could find Dr. Blairik anywhere.”

  He gave Zara such a blank stare that it bordered on the hostile.

  “Absolutely discreet, I assure you.”

  But Zara’s assurances were no more welcome than her original suggestion.

  Leave it, Zara, Flavia said. “In any case, locators should be available for use on any planetary excursions.”

  “Indeed they will, considering the number of experts and guards needed to do any significant exploration,” Captain Soligen said briskly, “the distances to be covered and the fact that your Talents,” and she smiled to show she was making a play on the word, “cannot be spread too thin.”

  There was a brief silence while Zara coped with the embarrassment of her gaffe, which Asia broke.

  “I’m a qualified engineer,” she said in such a timorous voice that Dr. Blairik regarded her with surprise, “and, if it wouldn’t upset anything, I might be able to help with the fabrication.”

  “Your help would be very welcome, Prime…”

  “I’m not Prime, only a 4,” Asia corrected Wayla Gegarian in her apologetic way.

  “Four, three, five or six, the chief will welcome a qualified engineer,” Gegarian replied heartily.

  “So I’ll leave you in Gegarian’s capable hands then,” the captain said and departed in a brisk fashion.

  “Sakers, Perley,” Wayla said, gesturing toward the luggage, which was quickly gathered up even as Wayla led the party from the hangar bay.