“His wife will be with him, Alicia Stairnon Mercury. She’ll be interested in the danae. Keep it short. Stairnon tires easily.”
“Include the garden in the tour?” he asked.
“I was thinking of the Amber Forest,” Calla said.
“That’s pretty rugged going. Maybe a flyover in one of the zephyrs.”
Calla nodded in agreement. “I’ll have Marmion arrange a zephyr.” A trace of resentment at her exercising her prerogative to issue the order was evident in his eyes, but nothing like the seething rage she would have expected thirty years ago. When he nodded curtly, the anger was gone. “I don’t think I have to offer any advice about dinner. The food has been excellent.”
“Thanks. We try. Will you have your kitchen in operation before you bring the rest of your people down?”
“I think so, but we’ll have to raid your algae tanks for a few weeks.”
“That’s all right; we’ve been expecting it.” They came to the place where his people had been working on the trail. There was room now for them to walk side by side. The steps down the buttress were rough-hewn, the grip of her bootsoles adequate as long as she put her good leg first. She wanted to walk down them like he did, two at a time, but she never knew when the bad leg would fail her and she couldn’t bear the thought of him picking her up. It was bad enough that he waited after taking two steps. “We should put a railing here,” he said.
“I can manage,” Calla said.
“I was thinking of the Praetor and his lady.”
“Liar,” she said, thinking to make him smile as he used to when she teased him. But he didn’t smile, because it’s too much an issue with him, she thought. He does not know how to deal with me because I am old.
Calla heard someone on the trail behind them. She looked back in time to see Marmion coming down the stairs. He saluted casually, gained on them rapidly.
“I think you want this,” Marmion said, unclipping the charger off his holstered sidearm and handing it to Jason.
“What kind of monsters did you find in Red Rocks,” Jason said taking the charger. He slipped the flatscans out of the end of the cylinder, nodding to Calla to indicate the seal was unbroken. He started walking again as he looked at the scan images. Silently he handed them to Calla. “You’re clean. I’ll give you a new charger when we get to Round House.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Nineteen of the images were of a boulder that became progressively smaller in each image. Three were of sky, two missed birds, and . . . “What’s this?” Calla asked, staring at the last image.
“Chimera. Nasty little buggers. You’re lucky you got him, Chief, or you might have gotten hurt. They’ve no respect for size and their claws are as sharp as razors.”
“He was headed the other way,” Marmion said.
“I noticed,” Jason said dryly, “and if you’d missed, he would have turned.”
The creature was furred and six-legged, but Calla could see nothing in the scan to give her a bearing on its proportionate size. “How big?”
“Cat sized,” Marmion said.
Calla tucked the scans in the pouch on the front of her stellerator. “And when did you have time for target shooting?”
“During lunch. Checked the pipes out the back doors. They look fine.”
And the water would carry the acids and chemicals, his report had said, as long as the flow remained as voluminous as it was now. But it was spring, and the runoff from the high-country snows would slow down soon. She shook her head. Jason had to finish the tunnel first, then she’d suggest doing something about the pollution they were going to dump into the canyon stream.
“Can you tell me, sir,” Marmion said over Jason’s shoulder, “if you’ve discovered a way of distinguishing the old danae from the young? Everyone tells me that the gall in the young ones is very small.”
“And you don’t want to waste your kills for small crystals, right?”
“Well, yes sir.”
Jason shoved his hands in his pockets as his big shoulders stiffened. She thought he might just shake his head and refuse to talk about the danae, but he nodded thoughtfully and said, “Yes, sometimes you can tell. Nothing so obvious as gray hairs or wrinkles, and they don’t seem to slow down any, at least, not enough for me to notice. But the ones who have lived a long time tend to be more scarred than the others, just because they’ve had more time to acquire them. The scars are most noticeable in the wings, purple marks in the membrane. But sometimes you’ll notice them in the body where scales didn’t grow back. Of course, if you do find a scarred danae, I’m not guaranteeing that it will be old. Could be your bad luck to find some youngster who’d been in some really bad scrape.”
“How do you get them to stand still long enough to see if they have any scars? They’re so fast!”
“Well there’s where a little human cunning comes in. Don’t be overly eager, Chief. You know, of course, that you can’t take any of the danae from around here.”
“Oh, of course, sir. They’re protected for the study at Sylvan Amber.”
“Right. So you go to one of the unprotected areas and spend some time watching the danae, spotting the one or more that are scared. Keep your weapon handy, too, just in case you do get an opportunity to get off a good shot. They can’t hear, you know, and if you stay downwind, sometimes you can sneak up on them.”
Marmion chuckled. “Bet that’s rare with that eye in the back of their head.”
“True, but not impossible. And if you’re quick with your weapon . . . I always like to keep it out and handy . . .”
In plain sight, you mean, Calla said to herself, smiling inwardly, right where the smart danae will be sure to notice it.
“And keep the power low,” Jason advised. “They may be paying as if the crystals were diamonds but they’re nowhere near as hard. Destroy the body and chances are you’ll destroy the gall, too.”
“Thanks for the advice.”
“Any time,” Jason said, and he began whistling as they walked.
***
Jason had chosen a round table for supper and dismissed her officers and his so that they could dine alone with Praetor D’Omaha and Stairnon. The table and the intimacy of the dinner were both highly irregular in terms of ordinary ceremony, but seemed to suit the Praetor and his lady. Calla was further surprised to discover what an amiable host Jason could be, for he’d always disdained anything that sounded “official.” He’d even worn his green silk ranger’s cape fastened to his stellerator with silver moons of his rank. He’d shed the apparatus for dinner, of course, and she noticed that the moons on his collar were polished and gleaming, his khakis spotless. Someone had trimmed his black curls and his face and neck were recently depilated, all of which seemed to make the gray of his eyes sharp and penetrating.
“More wine?” Jason said to Praetor D’Omaha.
“No, thank you.” He was tall even in his chair, the lean body type preferred for generations. His hair was slate gray, his eyes very blue.
“My lady?” Jason said, offering to fill Stairnon’s goblet.
Her hair was white and no amount of curling it could disguise that it was thin. She too was lean, but seemed frail in comparison to the Praetor.
“Just a few drops. It’s very good wine, and such lovely goblets. Not military issue, I’ll wager.”
“No, my lady. They’re mine, from Sinn Hala. A crafter who claims to have Picasso genes made them in the style of the ancients.”
“Hand blown?” Stairnon raised the goblet to see it better before sipping the wine Jason had added.
“Well, so claims the freetrader I bought them from. But I bought them because they were beautiful, so I don’t care if he lied to me.”
“Exquisite,” she said, taking another sip. She put the goblet down, holding the stem to trace the etching. “The entire meal was exquisite . . . the whole day.”
“Thank you, my lady.”
“Could you call me Stairnon?”
“Leave it that way,” she said, “or I won’t be able to walk home under my own power.”
“We can arrange a zephyr.”
“I could use the walk,” the Praetor said. “It didn’t seem very far.”
“A kilometer, Praetor,” Calla said.
He shrugged. “Do you feel up to that, my dear?” he asked his wife.
“It sounds lovely. You’ve pampered us so nicely today, Jason, that I feel quite refreshed. You won’t mind if we walk? Calla can show us the way.”
“As you wish.” He took it as a signal that the meal was ended and he excused himself to fetch their stellerators and wraps.
“Calla, he’s charming,” Stairnon said behind her hand. “Was he always that way?”
Calla shrugged. “I think he’s acquired some social acumen over the years.”
“How has it gone for the two of you?” the Praetor said carefully. Because he was Calla’s backup, she knew he had studied her records carefully and knew of her involvement with Jason so long ago.
“As I expected,” Calla said lightly. “It has been thirty years; it’s not the same.”
“Only ten years for him.”
Don’t remind me, Calla thought. He went away, and I can’t forget him, not even after thirty years. But after only ten . . . no, it was over for him before he left. Maybe he even left because it was over.
“I’ll see you to the trailhead,” Jason said, returning with the stellerators and capes and handing them over. When they were ready, he led the way to the door into the staging area and across to the ramp-tunnel that took them to the surface. “Praetor D’Omaha, forgive me for having to ask, but might you be the same Praetor D’Omaha who was serving in the Decemvirate a few years ago? My nomenclator said nothing about it, but I have the feeling, a memory of you in those chambers.”
Praetor D’Omaha paused, then said, “Yes. I retired recently.”
“But decemviri never quite really retire, do they, sir?”
Jason glanced at Calla as if to say, why didn’t you tell me? Hosting a Praetor is trauma enough without discovering he’s decemvir as well. And D’Omaha looked at her, too, in an entirely different way. Politically unobservant, eh? his raised brow seemed to say.
“Anything he says now will be a lie, Jason, or at best a half truth,” Stairnon said. “I’ll tell you the whole truth. He’s a hanger-on. He can’t bear being cut off from the center of things, so he hangs around. It’s not too hard to figure out that when the active decemviri become tired of him they know exactly what to do. They send him on a junket. And here we are, Jason, way outback where they can’t hear him.” She took Jason by the arm as they approached the ramp. “But it’s a nice outback. Sylvan Amber was one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen on any world. Are the other danae villages as lovely as that one?”
“Even more lovely,” Jason said. “You seem to appreciate beautiful things. Perhaps you would enjoy having this.” He handed something to Stairnon. When she opened her hand to examine it herself, Calla saw it was a tiny skein of thread. Color danced like a rainbow in the thread. Stairnon raised her hand, to the light Calla thought at first. But Stairnon sniffed the skein.
“It smells like the scent you’re wearing, Jason.”
“It was the esters in the thread you detected. They’re too strong to be pleasant when they’re fresh, but after boiling, like the thread you’re holding, they leave a pleasing scent. A little skein like that makes a nice cachet.”
“I could embroider my handkerchiefs with this,” Stairnon said looking brightly at D’Omaha. She had been worried about how she would spend her time on Mutare without Aquae Solis to occupy her.
“The smell will be gone the moment you launder them,” Calla said, not particularly impressed.
But Jason shook his head. “The scent molecules are soluble in hot water, but cold-water washing or sonics won’t harm them. They seem to last forever, almost like crystal itself.”
“It’s a heavenly aroma,” Stairnon said. She sniffed the thread again. “Slightly spicy, but sweet. A pity there isn’t enough to make a scarf.”
“I have a pillow full of the stuff, and there’s plenty more where that came from. It’s just ravelings from cocoons I’ve found after the danae have emerged. I’ll see to it that you have as much as you need,” Jason said.
“Why, thank you.” Stairnon and Jason started walking again.
Calla and the Praetor followed them silently, listening to Stairnon’s engaging questions and to Jason’s dutiful but sincere replies. Outside, in the light of a nearby galaxy of stars and a few distant moons, she took her husband’s arm and thanked Jason again for a lovely day, dismissing him with certainty. He bowed slightly, unnecessary but a gesture sure to please, then went back the way they had come.
“The whole truth was really too unkind, Stairnon,” the Praetor said to his wife when he was sure Jason was far enough away to hear. But he kissed her cheek and hugged her very close. Calla always liked seeing these two together, for their love for each other was evident. Both of them were older than Calla, yet Stairnon would shiver with excitement when D’Omaha looked at her or touched her, even though he’d been looking at her and touching her for half a century.
“Do you think I told Jason too much?” Stairnon asked, looking under D’Omaha’s arm to Calla.
“Don’t worry about Jason. I all but told him outright that we are here to make elixir. To his way of thinking that is more than reason enough for your being here,” Calla said.
“Does he know about the traitor, too?” Stairnon asked.
“No, nothing about that. He’ll be genuinely surprised when our decemvir friend arrives.”
“I will, too,” Stairnon said, sounding worried. “No matter which one of the Decemvirate it is, it will be someone I know. I still can’t conceive of anyone of them doing it, let alone try to guess which.”
“One did,” Calla assured her. “He went to a great deal of trouble to keep this new fabrication plant secret from the full Decemvirate, not to mention the Council of Worlds. Only an active decemvir has such power.”
“And only one who was fully involved in the rebellion would have a reason to do it. It would have ruined all the probability studies if this place had successfully been kept secret from the rest of the members. They never would have known that the rebellion had its own supply of elixir when the war started.”
“I keep worrying about what else we don’t know,” Calla said.
Stairnon leaned her head on D’Omaha’s arm for a moment. “I just wish I could understand the thought process that makes you positive the traitor will come to Mutare. What’s in those genes of yours that makes you know?”
“Common sense,” D’Omaha said with a laugh.
“To an uncommon degree,” Calla added, and an incredible perception for how humans behave, she thought both singularly and in groups; put ten of D’Omaha’s kind together and they were nearly soothsayers and foreseers. But she also knew that individually they were not infallible.
They walked silently for a while, Stairnon and D’Omaha hand in hand. The night was cool, but not too cold to stroll leisurely and listen to the calls of night insects. The way was lighted by footlights set between carefully placed border rocks on either side of the trail. Calla was sure that neither the lights nor rocks had been there the day before. Jason was having his people spend a great deal of time improving and beautifying what was supposed to be only a temporary trail, time that should have been spent on the construction of the tunnel, which was important to the entire facility’s security.
“Something wrong, Calla?” D’Omaha asked.
She must have been frowning. “Maybe, but I’ll take care of it tomorrow.”
“Is it Jason?” he asked, persisting.
“Yes, but not what you’re thinking,” Calla said. It was D’Omaha’s persistent probing all during the trip
from the Hub to Mutare that had made Calla admit to him and to herself that she still cared for Jason, even though for decades she had pretended it was not so. She had told D’Omaha that she did not expect Jason in the flesh to measure up to her memory of him. She was far too practical to expect that, too ready to put the ghosts aside. Not wishing to bring up the problem of the tunnel, which, because she did not know what the problem was, could put her in poor countenance with the Praetor, she said to him in an easy-sounding voice, “As I have said before, it has been thirty years. I’ll cherish the memories as I guess I always have, but I can’t pretend those thirty years haven’t gone by.”
“I told you before that it could go either way, but not if you continue to insist that your age difference separates you. If you do that, it will keep you apart.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I’m decemvir. It’s my job to understand what cannot be understood. Besides, who could understand better than one whose circumstances are nearly identical?”
Stairnon was older than he, much older because for all the years that he served the Decemvirate he’d had a steady supply of elixir to keep him young. Calla knew he had offered time and again to share his supply with Stairnon, but she would not accept it. The rigors of the office were so harsh that some decemvir aged somewhat or came to poor health despite the elixir. Still, it was not the same for them. “You have been together all these years, adjusting gradually.”
D’Omaha nodded. “And if you’d let yourself, I know that you, too, can adjust, quickly and happily. I told you that when we were still aboard Belden Traveler. The question never was you, Calla, not if you wished it to happen.”
“Jason,” Calla said. “You studied his personnel file and still you could not tell me. With all your experience in knowing how to predict human behavior, you said it could go either way.”
“It’s easier to predict how a group of people will behave; lots of statistics to base it on. I told you that if we had a hundred people very much like Jason and in similar circumstances, half of them would be willing to rekindle the love, the other half would not. I simply couldn’t tell which ones would do which. I didn’t know which group Jason would be identified with. Now I have some added data, for I’ve met him.”
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