by John Dalmas
His eyes shifted to Lord Rothka, whose face was stone hard now. "I cannot prove that a non-human fleet will not emerge from hyperspace in this system three years from now. Or tomorrow. Any more than I can prove that Kargh will not strike you with lightning three years from now. Or tomorrow.
"But the odds that the Confederation will someday find and attack us, if we do not move first, are much greater. And it is that probability that I wish to forestall."
He exhaled gustily and looked around. "Well. Are there more questions? If there are, I hope you don't throw them at me like poison darts."
At the weak humor, laughter rippled thinly through the Diet, a release of tension. Then, for the next half hour, the Kalif answered questions dealing mostly with feasibility-mainly logistics and cost predictions. He also answered complaints about the suggested military contributions to come from the various planets. His figures on logistics and costs came from SUMBAA, he said, and SUMBAA had indicated they were feasible. As it had the military contributions tentatively assigned the separate sultanates. But he'd be glad to discuss either of these matters before requesting an appropriation, and to adjust them if they threatened an unfair hardship.
Then he excused himself and left. Jilsomo would show him the video record of anything in the meeting that he needed to see and hear.
***
Tain had become considerably more outgoing and animated since their wedding-a development that pleased her husband very much. But this evening at supper, she ate slowly, silently, and little. At first he didn't intrude, respecting her privacy. At length, though, he questioned her.
"You're quiet. Is anything wrong?"
After a moment she answered. "Someone left something for me today. A video cube. With a note telling me to play it."
"Oh? And what was it?"
"It was of you. You were giving a speech to the people. About invading the Confederation."
He looked to his cup, and took an unwanted sip of tea, avoiding her eyes for the moment. "What did you think of it?"
"It hurt. It hurt to hear that my husband wants to make war on my home world. Even if I don't remember it, the memories are there. Of the people, my family, friends… Memories I can't see, but that sometimes I can feel."
"Ah. And how do they feel to you, those memories? Are they happy, do you think?"
"It seems to me they are. More happy than otherwise."
"Do you feel that the government of the Confederation is a good government? Kind? Just? Or do those hidden memories reflect a good home, a loving family, dear friends?"
Her answer was soft, monotone. "If it does-During your invasion, what will happen to that family, that home, those friends?"
The question stabbed him-somehow he'd never thought of it! How had he not? he wondered. But it showed only as a brief flicker in his eyes. "And what kind of government do they live under?" he asked quietly, then answered his own question, or seemed to. "By the evidence, one that can put a uniform on a young woman, a girl, a beautiful girl with her life before her, and send her to war, perhaps to be killed."
She picked idly at a salad leaf, not answering.
He got up. "Will you walk in the garden with me? Or sit by me in the roof garden?"
Tain got up, too. "The roof," she said. "Where I can see more stars."
He nodded and they went up together in their private lift tube. It was approaching full night. There was no sign of the moon. Stars vaulted upward from the east, past the zenith and down toward the silver of a fading sunset. Husband and wife sat down side by side, shoulders almost touching, and when his hand found hers, she did not withdraw it. After awhile he spoke again.
"What are you thinking? If you tell me, I will not argue with you."
"Why must you invade my homeworld? Why not send a diplomatic mission?"
He absorbed the question before answering, attention inward, fingers massaging the silver sextant on his chest as if to gain wisdom from it. When at last he spoke, it was slowly, choosing his words. "First there are matters of principle," he said, "which in this case tend more to set limits than to dictate actions. A state of war exists between the Confederation and Klestron. I cannot send a peaceful embassy to an entity at war with an imperial world. The Diet and the sultanates wouldn't stand for it."
Her lips parted as if to object, but he went on. "Not even when the war was brought on by Klestron's own military; political principle is not always just or logical.
"Beyond that, there is military tradition that defeat in battle must be avenged if possible. In recent millenia it's lost much of its force; few would argue now that we need to fight so large and distant an adversary to save Klestron's face. I doubt that even Sultan Rashti would urge it for no more reason than that. But it's enough to prohibit sending a peaceful embassy. If anything is sent, it must be military, not diplomatic.
"Of course, none of that requires that I send anything, and I must tell you that many would prefer I don't. There are other reasons favoring an invasion over doing nothing." He proceeded then to repeat the arguments he'd given the Diet.
"And were it possible to send an embassy," he went on, "we wouldn't know for five years what the results were. Meanwhile, the Confederation could continue to arm; to send an embassy would be very dangerous for us." He shrugged.
"I'm the Kalif," he finished. "I can't sit back and say to someone else, I cannot decide, I cannot act, I will not accept the responsibility."
He pressed Tain's hand. "That's my answer to you. I realize it may well seem inadequate; no doubt it would be to me, if our places were reversed. That's why I said nothing to you earlier."
Her reply was calm and cool. "You have answered my question, but you haven't eased my distress. Now that I see your reasons more fully, I've lost the bitterness I felt, but it will be difficult to feel toward you as I did before. It will take time. I do still love you, but there is a wound now."
She paused, but he kept silent, knowing she had more to say. After a long and meditative minute she went on. "On the other hand, I'm thinking how remarkable it is that I'm here. In the empire. And that you found me and wanted me, and that you love me. If you still do. You the Kalif, and I a prisoner of war.
"It seems to me that someone I've known, sometime, somewhere, would tell me there was a reason for that. Whether the will of Kargh, or something else. A reason and a purpose."
She fell silent then, and when, after a minute, she'd said nothing more, he squeezed her hand slightly. "I do love you," he said. "Very much. I always will."
After another moment she spoke again. "In your speech, you mentioned those who wished to block you. I can only hope they succeed. Not for lack of loving you, but for love of what I once knew as home." She peered at him in the darkness. "How does that seem to you?" she asked. "Treasonous?"
"No. No, I cannot fault you for feeling that way. As for me, I love this empire which Kargh has given me to rule, and it seems to me that what I propose to do needs to be done. That's a feeling I've rationalized before the College and the Diet, and the reasons I gave them are true. But the feeling goes deeper than that, as if Kargh had ordered it."
It struck him then that neither to the public nor the Diet had he invoked Kargh as his inspiration. He wondered why; Kargh was the force behind the throne. He'd make a point of it the next time he spoke.
"Well then," she said, "if the Diet doesn't dissuade you, I suppose I won't be able to. At most I could destroy your feeling for me. So I shall pray to Kargh to change your mind. And if he doesn't, then I shall pray to my husband to be merciful and just to my people as far as war allows. Perhaps that's why I'm here; perhaps it's Kargh's will that I lighten the heel of war upon them."
While they'd talked, the last ghost of sunset had disappeared; it happened quickly, so near the equator. And on Varatos-on any world in the empire-brightly lit signs, displays of ornamental lights, banks of floodlights that made buildings glow in the dark, none of these had been seen since the beginnings of the kalifate. For The P
rophet, that long-time mariner, had said that the night sky was the glory of Kargh, his greatest work of art. Thus, although there were streetlights and headlights and lights in windows, many stars still were visible.
On the open roof, they lent a sense of solitude, and it occurred to Coso that if Tain was isolated here on Varatos, in a very real way so was he. As Kalif, he could hardly be close to people, even Jilsomo. Even Yab, Sergeant Yalabiin, with whom he drilled almost daily with the saber. There might be moments of closeness, as when Thoga had bared his soul, but those were brief when they happened at all.
When they'd married, he and this involuntary exile from her people, they'd formed a bond strengthened by their mutual isolation, a bond stronger than their vows.
Behind them the nearly full moon was rising, glinting on the windows of taller buildings. He raised Tain's hand and kissed it, and when she did not resist, he turned in his chair, leaned toward her and kissed her lips. She had half turned to face him, and kissed him back, but the kiss was cool, and he let be.
As they rode the lift tube back down, her hand was still in his, and he could almost wish with her that his opponents would defeat him. But he would not back away, of that he felt certain. For truly it seemed to him that the future of the empire and its people was at stake.
Twenty-nine
That night Tain dreamed. In the dream she was petting Lotta, and as she petted her, Lotta grew, became a fullgrown cat, then larger than a cat, until she was as large as a person-as large as Leolani. She was still a cat, still orange with green eyes, but now she looked sleek, her hair short like orange velvet.
Lotta spoke to her, not with her mouth but with her mind. ‹Welcome to your dreams,› Lotta said. They were not in the garden anymore, but in a place dark and indistinct, and vaguely threatening. Tain didn't think she'd ever been in that place in all the times she'd dreamed before, and felt ill at ease. Lotta told her it was all right; that whatever happened, she'd be all right.
‹Are you ready?› Lotta asked. A place seemed to take shape around Tain, and she realized she was inside a spaceship.
And Coso was there with her. ‹Your homeworld is just ahead,› he said. ‹It's called Iryala. We'll be there in a little while.›
She watched out a window, wondering how he'd known the name of her homeworld when she didn't. It was as if they were traveling on a houseboat, with clouds below them. The ship settled through the clouds, and when they came out beneath them, there was a cottage, the house she'd grown up in, though it used to be an apartment. About twenty people were in the yard, her parents and other relatives, all waving and calling to her.
Coso opened the glass doors for her and they went out together. Her family hugged and kissed both of them, and she felt strange about it because Coso had come as a conqueror. She wondered if perhaps they didn't know.
Her mother poured them cups of some hot drink, and told her they all loved Coso, that people had been waiting for him to get there, and that his palace was all ready for him. And Tain had thought, of course. He's a good person. It had all seemed so natural.
They started to walk to the palace on a path that went through a beautiful garden. Tain felt happier than she had in her whole life before, and it seemed to her that she could remember all of it, her entire life, right back to infancy, that it was waiting for her to look at whenever she had time. Then she and Coso walked into the palace, and it looked just like their palace on Varatos.
‹That's right,› he told her. ‹Your father had it made like that so I'd feel at home.› Then he kissed her, and it was the sweetest kiss she'd ever had. She felt so happy, it seemed to her she could never be unhappy again.
There was a meow then, and she looked around and Lotta was there, too, cat-sized again. She jumped onto Tain's lap, and as Tain petted her, Lotta began to get bigger and change again, till she looked like she had before, large and sleek.
‹Are we going somewhere?› Tain asked.
‹Yes,› Lotta told her. ‹You have more dreams to dream. I'm here to guide you.›
Tain wasn't surprised at all when a spaceship took shape around her. Coso was there, steering as if it were a car. It was dark and foggy out, and hard to see. ‹We're lost,› he told her. ‹This isn't Iryala. I don't know where we are.› After a little while they came to a village, and he stopped in front of a restaurant. A man came over to the car and Coso asked if this was Iryala.
The man was friendly and jovial. He said no, it wasn't, and asked them to come inside and have something to eat, so they went in. Inside were a lot of soldiers, and they grabbed her and Coso and tied their hands, and the soldiers' faces weren't human. They looked like pig faces. They took her and Coso back outside and stood them against a concrete wall, talking and laughing the whole while.
The one who'd brought them in was an officer, and he asked if they had any last requests. Tain told them she wanted to kiss her husband, but the officer just laughed and walked to where the soldiers were lined up.
"Ready!" he said. She could hear him say it. "Aim!" The pig-faced soldiers raised their guns. The guns didn't have any holes in the ends, and she thought it would be a joke on them when they tried to shoot them. "Fire!"
Beams of sizzling light came from the ends of the guns, and she watched from above as the beams burned her body up, hers and Coso's. The soldiers all laughed then; they thought she was dead, she and Coso. Coso grinned at her. "Next time we'll find it," he told her.
She turned and there was Lotta, as big and sleek as the times before…
***
Tain awoke to pale dawn, and the singing of birds in the garden outside their window. For brief seconds she wondered if this was going to be more of the dream, then decided it wasn't. It didn't feel like a dream, although she was disoriented, wasn't sure if she was still on Varatos, or if they'd already gone to Iryala.
Still only half awake, she closed her eyes again to sort it out. There'd been one dream after another it seemed to her, all night long. They'd gone to Iryala and been welcomed; and gone to Iryala to find all the cities destroyed and everyone there gone, leaving their killed bodies behind. And gone to Iryala to find the imperial army all killed; she and Coso had been put into a prison there that was just like a cottage, and they'd made love, a strange ethereal love that was like listening to beautiful music. Afterward she'd lain there and watched her belly get big and round, and she'd given birth to-Lotta! She remembered that, and then they'd been in a spaceship again. Time after time, good and bad, they'd gone to invade Iryala, so many times it was blurred, and all of it had seemed all right, win or lose.
Something moved on the bed beside Tain, startling her wide awake. It was Lotta, purring loudly. She climbed onto Tain's chest and began to knead a breast with tiny paws; Coso had gotten up and left the garden door open. Gone to drill with Sergeant Yalabiin, she thought, and putting Lotta aside, got up and went into the bathroom.
She tried to look at the dreams again, but they'd slipped away. Something about she and Coso going off to invade the Confederation. Something long and rambling, and not upsetting at all. Now in their place were the realities of yesterday and last evening.
The afternoon before, when she'd finished watching the cube, she'd felt deeply betrayed. The feeling was gone now, and it seemed that the dreams had something to do with that. But Coso had already weakened it, dulled it, when he'd talked with her last evening; there was something about Coso when he talked. When they'd come down from the roof garden, the feeling of betrayal had still been there, though she'd tried to push it away, but it had been much weaker.
She groped again for the dreams, without success. Then, tentatively, she tried to recreate the sense of betrayal. Not that she wanted to experience it again, but to see if she could get it back. Tentatively wasn't enough though, and she didn't really want to have it, so she didn't carry through with it.
She wouldn't worry about it, she told herself. After a stinging shower, she dressed and called for breakfast. She'd go to the library, sh
e decided, and learn more about this place, these people, and indirectly about her husband.
Thirty
"Colonel?"
The marshal of the guard turned to see who'd called; rarely did a female voice speak to him inside the Sreegana. It was the kalifa. He'd never before seen her closer than eighty or a hundred feet. She was even more beautiful close up; it was almost intimidating.
"Yes, your ladyship?"
"I was right then. Those are a colonel's insignia."
"Yes, your ladyship."
Her smile, though subdued, froze his brain for the moment. "You're the guard commander, aren't you?" she asked.
"Yes, your ladyship."
"May I speak with you?"
"Of course, your ladyship."
She turned and led him down the broad corridor to a small, open-sided room, a largish alcove in the side of the broad corridor, with a simple, backless bench. He felt ill at ease, receiving the private attention of the Kalif's beautiful wife. When they were seated, she spoke again, and her smile was gone.
"There are people who dislike my husband very much, aren't there?"
"I-suppose so, your ladyship. But there are more who love him."
"Are there also some who hate him then? Enough to do him harm? To kill him?"
"There are always such, your ladyship. It's part of being a ruler."
"Is-my husband in danger of his life?"
Her question made him want to assure her. Without lying. "Your ladyship, every man is in danger of his life; simply some more than others. As for the Kalif, I do not think his danger is anything to worry about. No man is better guarded. No one can even enter the Sreegana without a pass." He paused, then spoke in a tone of confidence. "You know, of course, that the Kalif was once a marine colonel."
She nodded. "He's mentioned it."