"egeneh," she said, looking for something to wash an un pleasant taste from her mouth.
"Hansie doesn't serve it."
The 'bot was still thinking about it; she turned to face the human voice that had answered. It was a tall, rather fashionably dressed man with a half-full plate in one hand and an empty Corcyran crystal goblet in the other. A waiter's tray hovered nearby; in a smooth and no doubt long-practiced motion he set the goblet onto the tray and then extended his hand to clasp hers. "My dear commodore. Such a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance."
"You have the advantage of me, sir," she replied, taking his hand.
"I beg your pardon. Commodore, my name is Ian Kwan. Ian Thomas Kwan. I have the rather dubious honor of being posted to the trade mission here as a representative of the Confederated Press."
"A reporter. You're a reporter."
"That's what my résumè says. And if I do say so myself, I do have something of a nose for news." He reached up without looking and snagged a full glass from another tray as it passed. "And I smell a story."
"If your sense of smell is so accurate, why are you posted here?"
"I'm interested in asking you the same question."
She turned her attention back to the buffet table. "None of your damn business." She added several items to her plate almost at random, fairly sure she wasn't really interested in eating them. "What do you want?"
"What do you think I want? A scoop, Commodore. I've heard so much about you—"
"Oh?" She looked at him sharply. "What have you heard?"
"It's all flattering." Kwan did his best impression of a sincere smile. "I didn't mean to offend. Let me buy you a drink and we can relax and talk. You're among humans now."
She thought about protesting but decided it would do no good. "Very well, g'rey'l and orange juice, if you have it," she said to the 'bot.
Turning on her heel, she took her plate and made her way to a small table near the edge of the room and sat down. Kwan followed shortly, a tray with the drinks just behind him. While she waited, Jackie was able to locate the source of the flickering light: a fireplace with a real fire burning merrily. Several guests were hovering near it, soaking up warmth in the artificially chilly room. Outside, it was almost thirty degrees—a stifling night, even by Cle'eru standards—while it felt like autumn in the Livingston Mountains in Sir Johannes Sharpe's drawing-room.
Her expression must have been evident to Kwan as he sat down. "Beautiful, isn't it?" he asked, jerking his thumb toward the fire. "Hansie must've spent half a million getting it here. And the wood—a couple hundred for every log, at least. Like burning money."
"Pointless extravagance."
"Conspicuous consumption, rather. Appearances must be maintained. It's the envy of every human on the planet. Almost," he added quickly. "Guess it doesn't do much for you."
"What do the zor think?"
"Who gives a damn what the zor think?"
"It's their world."
"It's our world. We just let them occupy it, 'cause it's too damn hot. But Cle'eru, every square meter of it, is part of the Solar Empire. Has been since the war. You of all people should know that."
"The High Nest might disagree with you."
"Humans, Commodore. You're among humans. The niceties need not be observed. Look around the room. Go ahead." He gestured with his glass, handing hers to her as it emerged from the hovering 'bot. "Do you see a single zor here? Even one!" He waited for her to take a look. "No. Of course not That's be cause Hansie"—he lowered his voice conspiratorially—"Hansie hates the sons of bitches. And he's not the only one: most of the people in this room feel the same way. The zor were the enemy eighty-five years ago; now they're clients. But never equals, Commodore. Never. To the emperor," he concluded, clicking his glass to hers and downing half of it in a series of gulps. "Aaah. Hansie only serves the best."
She held herself back from throwing the contents of her glass in his face. Instead she sipped the drink, trying to look impassive. At least he's right about one thing, she thought, appreciating the quality.
For several more minutes, Kwan sought to extract information from her. It was challenging, but her reticence at last bested his inquisitive nature. Good reporters allow themselves avenues of retreat, of course, in hopes of advancing along them in future. At last he withdrew, leaving her alone.
The encounters left her annoyed. It must have showed; no one else approached her as she sat and sipped her drink, occasionally sampling something from her plate. She had learned some thing, however: there was a huge distance between humans and zor here on Cle'eru, something she could grasp, but simply could not understand. She had learned, also, that Kwan—and the consul—and probably every third person in this room—had a good source of information on her, a fact that made her very uneasy. Who could have given them so much to go on?
She had her answer suddenly, just by looking across the room to the fireplace. A familiar gesture, a face tilted at the right angle to catch the dancing firelight. It was too uncanny to be a mistaken resemblance; she had stopped believing in coincidence some time ago. Besides, it answered too many questions.
With a firm determination she stood, set her glass half-unfinished on the table and walked purposefully across the room. She hardly saw the faces of the other guests who parted in her path. The chatter in the room seemed to quiet suddenly as her objective turned to face her.
"Hello, Dan," she said, the words coming more easily than she would have expected.
"You're looking fine, Jay." The familiar nickname, unused for so many years, struck a note within her as if a weight had been suddenly placed on her chest. She shrugged it off.
"You've been telling tales out of school, Dan."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Did you put that slime Ian Kwan on me? He seems to be remarkably well informed. Even with contacts within the fleet—which I doubt he has—he had to have been briefed on me somehow."
"Jay, don't make a scene."
"Don't patronize me, Dan McReynolds." She grabbed his elbow and steered him away from the fireplace and into an alcove away from the crowd. "It's been years. You went your way and I went mine. I got over you a long time ago, and the universe is a very big place. Now my world's been totally screwed with and you crawl out from under some rock somewhere and I cross your path. You want something. What is it?"
"Why do I have to want something? Maybe I'm here to do you a favor."
"I don't need any favors from you."
"Jay . . . Jacqueline. You don't need to ask; someone else asked for you. I came here from Adrianople, just like you did. I understand"—another conspiratorial sotto voce tone—"you want to cross the line."
" 'Cross the line.' "
"Go outside the Empire. To a place the Navy calls Sargasso."
"What do you know about Sargasso?"
"I've been there. Lots of us . . . gray-market merchants"—he smiled; an old, familiar smile—"trade there regularly. I have—how shall I put it?—a landing permit."
Jackie didn't speak, but in her mind, she shouted: Th'an'ya!
I am here, se Jackie.
Is this a servant of esGa'u? Can you tell?
I believe that he is not, se Jackie. He is what and who he seems to be.
"Jay, are you all right?" It echoed as if from the bottom of a deep well. Dan's voice echoed concern with some hint of affection. He reached out toward her and she reflexively stepped back, not wanting him to touch her.
"I'm . . . I'm fine. I may have drunk a bit too much," she lied. "Maybe we should get out of here. Take a walk in the fresh air."
"I'm not interested in some sort of romantic—"
"Neither am I. This is business, and this is hardly the place to discuss business. Don't you agree?"
***
"I've been out of the Service for four years. I left the Torrance to command the Horace, but after a few years I started getting ready for life on the beach. There's more to the Empir
e than dress uniforms and spot inspections: Did you ever think about that, Jay? I made enough contacts to be pretty well set up when my hitch was done."
Dan McReynolds leaned on the railing of a little bridge that crossed a stream. It was part of a man-made garden that formed part of Hansie Sharpe's little principality. Above, silhouetted in the moonlight, the fairy towers of zor architecture stood guard.
"In the Navy everything is on the straight and narrow. Look at you, for instance: it's twenty-eight degrees out here and you're wearing a long-sleeved blouse, a uniform jacket and your dress gloves. Appearances are critical because you're a commodore. When I was a captain I had to do the same, and not just with uniforms: my wardroom table had to compare with others in the fleet, I had to participate in the right forums, make the right appointments. For a country boy from Mothallah, it was a different world . . . a different life. I hated it, and I was glad it was over."
"Even the part you spent with me."
"Of course not the part I spent with you. That's old territory, Jay, and we left it behind years ago. But we always were different. You never saw the real world, what's out there beyond the borders, across the line. You probably never will."
"You might be surprised." She had all she could do not to tell him: I've already seen what's out there. It took my form. It killed my people.
saShrne'e. The shroud has been pulled aside, the voice inside her head said.
"I doubt it," he replied, not seeming to notice the anger in her eyes. "There's lots of action out there, lots of money to be made. Lots of risks to be taken. Jumping to a system that's been charted by the Grand Survey but hasn't been visited by humans is damn dangerous, but finding a source of valuable raw materials, or something to exploit, pays off handsomely.
"I qualified for a decommissioned two-man explorer ship when I mustered out. Now, a few years later, I have twenty times the tonnage and I'm a very rich man. Most of my business is across the line, Jay. I know where Crossover—what you call Sargasso—is; I've been there. I've even seen the Negri Sembilan there, the one the Navy has listed as gone missing."
"You've seen the Negri?"
"Sure have. It was taking on cargo and was outbound. It crossed the line, Jay, and word has it that it took out the ship that came looking for it. It's a big player out there, supposedly in the pay of one of the big bosses."
"I don't believe you. I've known Damien Abbas for most of his career; he'd never turn pirate."
"Believe what you like. If he wouldn't take the Negri Sembilan across, maybe some junior officer would. Maybe there was a mutiny."
She had been about to reply, Not on an Imperial ship, but thought better of it. There had certainly been mutinies before: The Solar Empire had been founded on the mutiny of Admiral Willem MacDowell, the first Solar Emperor. And then, of course, there was Admiral Marais.
"Is that the only Imperial ship you've seen there?"
"The only one I know of. The Navy doesn't seem to have followed up. There would've been some pretty serious shooting if any decent-sized force ever came across a pirate haven the size of Crossover."
"A decent-sized force did get there . . . or so we thought."
"Never happened."
"They got somewhere. Every Sensitive on board those ships committed suicide or was killed by his mates; most of the crews went insane. They witnessed something, or met something, so horrible that . . ."
She found herself running out of words, though the images continued to flash through her mind: the Noyes-creature . . . the destruction of one of Barbara MacEwan's fighter wings . . . the octopuslike thing during her mind-link with Ch'k'te. Maisel's death, like a switch being turned off.
Shrnu'u HeGa'u, He of the Dancing Blade.
saShrne'e, the voice inside her head said, the echo of it seeming to thrum in her ears. You are pulling aside the shroud to reveal the awful face of the Deceiver, who never speaks except in lies and whose truth is falsehood. To defeat him, you must descend to the Plain of Despite. To return, you must pierce the Icewall.
The Icewall seemed to rush up to meet her, and she put her hands up to shield herself—
—and found her gloved hands grasping pavement, as she looked up from her knees to see Dan McReynolds stooping to help her. Summoning all her will, she shook her head and pulled herself of her own accord to her feet. "You really did drink too much."
"No," she said, placing her hands on her now aching temples. "No, I think it's a lot more complicated than that."
***
"Reporting as ordered," Ch'k'te said when she opened the door to her hotel suite. She had called for him as soon as she returned from the party. She and Dan had hardly exchanged a word after their conversation in the garden, agreeing to meet the next day to discuss the plan to cross the line.
She gestured to a perch and with a voice-command lowered the lights to accommodate him. "Ch'k'te, what does the word saShrne'e mean to you?"
"It is a metaphorical expression, se Jackie." He moved his wings into a different posture. "It refers to an act of honesty, of discarding pretense and dissembling in favor of naked truth."
" 'Pulling aside the shroud.' "
"An acceptable translation. In The Legend of Qu'u, it refers to the hero's realization that esGa'u is abroad in the world and that the servants of the Deceiver walk freely in 'The World That Is.' "
"The voice"—she tapped her left temple with an index finger—"told me that I was pulling aside the shroud to reveal the Deceiver, 'who never speaks except in lies, and whose truth—' "
" '—is falsehood,' " Ch'k'te finished the quote. "From The Lament of the Peak. Your voice is well versed in the epics."
"It's the first time the voice has ever spoken to me like that, as if directing me what to do. If I weren't so frightened, I would be angry."
"Have you asked li Th'an'ya about this?" His voice seemed almost level.
"She claims to know nothing about the voice," Jackie answered. "Besides, it usually speaks more cryptically. It told me that in order to defeat . . . esGa'u I must descend to the Plain of Despite, and to return I must pierce the Icewall. But it didn't tell me how I'm supposed to do it."
"seGa'Mrha'u," Ch'k'te said. "Descent to the Plain. More literally, 'flight through the Wind of Despite.' A chilling metaphor."
To a zor, of course, "chilling" implied "extremely frightening."
"It told me I must do this."
"We already knew that, se Jackie. In imitation of the descent of Qu'u to the Plain of Despite, we must travel in search of the lost gyaryu."
"Dan McReynolds was at that party."
"Your former mate?"
"Yes," she said after a moment. "While I was with him, the voice spoke to me."
She recounted the details of what she'd learned from him: about "crossing the line," as he put it; about the traders' haven at Sargasso; and about the Negri Sembilan now supposedly plying the spaceways out there as a pirate. Her intense mind-link with Ch'k'te weeks ago on Cicero, when Th'an'ya's hsi was awakened, had already explained Dan to Ch'k'te. The brevity and precision of her exposition surprised even Jackie—she had expected to be more emotional about Dan, especially meeting him like this after all this time.
"Did he indicate how he came to be here? What part he in tended to play?"
"He said he came here from Adrianople and that he was here to do me a favor. He knew I was here. He may know about the rest of it—about everything else. I know—I have it on good authority—that he is not a servant of esGa'u."
"Then it will all become clear in due time. If you were one of the People, se Jackie, I would counsel you to meditate and commune with esLi." He gestured toward the shrine. As it is . . ." He fluttered his wings and lowered himself to the floor. "I can give you no advice on your own consolation." Politely Ch'k'te excused himself and left Jackie to her thoughts.
The Lord esLi asks for your service, and yours alone, she heard in her head as she sat alone. Ultimately it is your path to tread.
***
She awoke to the sound of piano music softly filling the room. Recorded from an actual manual instrument centuries ago, a gift from Big Fredericks, it traveled with her in her personal effects and was currently installed in her hotel-room comp. With a word she softened its gentle tones and rolled out of bed.
"Schedule," she said to the comp, and it appeared in the air above a corner table. A message signal blinked, indicating calls that had come overnight.
She expected to see more of the usual traffic from the human community on Cle'eru, and wasn't disappointed. Her appearance at Hansie Sharpe's house the previous night had excited even more interest than when she had accepted the invitation; it was as if every human on the planet had issued her an invitation. Breakfast arrived while she was still wading through it all, and she worked away at both dutifully.
Two-thirds of the way down the list of messages, she saw a zor glyph that belonged to S'reth. She pointed to it and re quested a display.
"Greetings, Mighty One," the ancient zor's voice sounded through the air. There was no visual. "I have contemplated the matter which mutually concerns us. We should now discuss matters further. If your busy schedule allows, I should like to meet with you and your companion just before Father Sun crosses the meridian—or, as you might say, in the late morning. Military procedures notwithstanding, there is no need to confirm this appointment, as you will be welcome when you come. esLiHeYar."
After three days of waiting, it might have been a command from the Admiralty. Her immediate thought was to push aside breakfast, throw on clothes and rush over to S'reth's residence. But ingrained habits and discipline kicked in. A soldier rarely passes up a meal when it's already placed on the table, and S'reth had told her to come around noon local time. An order was an order.
After breakfast, she worked it off for two hours in the hotel's gym, which, while equipped primarily for winged visitors, was adequate enough for her needs. After a shower and a change into fresh clothing, she considered herself refreshed and ready for whatever S'reth might have for her.
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