For Love and Glory

Lissa tautened. “If they don’t, we won’t.”

“Are you certain?”

Hebo’s hand chopped air. “Friends,” he said, “at this stage those aren’t questions, they’re gabble.”

Yes, he can think, Lissa thought.

Hebo rubbed his chin. “But, y’know, this does seem a little odd. Sure, stations on yonder ball would have all the power, free, they’d ever need. But one hell of a set of background counts too. Sure, the instruments can filter out the noise as well as quantum mechanics allows. But would that satisfy? Especially when other sites are available as well. I say we should look wider, as long as we’re here.” He paused. “Might even find things we can look at close up.”

His companions agreed. While Hulda retreated outward, Lissa sent a hyperwave message home. Whatever happened, their discoveries must not be lost. She sent it encrypted, though, addressed to her father with a request for secrecy. Not wise to publicize the expedition at once. Too many unknowns, rivalries, tensions.

Why couldn’t humans, and other mortals, simply get on with the business of understanding the miraculous universe that was theirs and becoming one with it?

Maybe because they were mortals?

She shrugged. More urgent and interesting questions lay at hand.

Hulda leaped and peered.

Yes!

Activity, not identical with that at the inner world, but as clearly technological, on another planet, nearly a hundred AU from the great sun.

Hebo nodded. “Makes sense. Long-base interferometry. And you can take advantage of the low temperatures to do stuff you couldn’t easily do close in. They complement each other.”

Dzesi leaped in microgee, caromed off two bulkheads, came to a midair stop in a crouch as if readying to attack a foe. “We can land there!” she cried.

“Maybe, maybe,” Lissa said, though the idea thrilled in her too. “Let’s take a rest—we certainly need one— and then talk about it.”

She never did quite get to sleep. Maybe her shipmates didn’t either. Well, Dzesi. …

The decision was to go, carefully, calling home again in the course of it. To shed their velocity, they would hyperjump to a point from which they could back down on their goal, decelerating at one-half gravity: more slowly than they left Sunniva, but giving more time and space for forewarning of danger. This enterprise was chancy at best.

The crossing from emergence to destination would take about seventy hours, almost three standard days and nights. That would also let them prepare themselves.

XLV

At their second meal after that, when Dzesi had finished the food suitable for her biochemistry, she rose and said, “I go to kshanta.” She slipped aft, currently down, to the dorm section. Lissa and Hebo heard the soundproof panel of her cubicle slide shut.

The man got up too. “Let’s sit more comfortably,” he suggested. Lissa nodded. They used the rungs along the bulkhead to climb the passageway to the control compartment. Behind them the table and benches retracted, converting the saloon to a small, cramped exercise area.

Settling into her chair, with no need for safety harness, Lissa looked out the viewscreen. Interior light was dimmed, making more stars than usual visible, gems of frost strewn through a crystal darkness. How often had she beheld this? Yet it never failed to stir awe deep within her.

Hebo took the seat on her right. All four were close together. For a moment she heard only the whisper of ventilation. Full health on a long trip required weatherlike variations in air. At the present stage of the cycle it bore a slight, electric tinge of ozone.

“What’s, um, kshanta?”

“I don’t know,” Hebo answered.

She glanced at him. The rugged profile turned and the blue gaze met hers. “You don’t?” she exclaimed. “After how many years with her?”

“Not steadily. Off-and-on partnerings. Total, maybe twenty years. And, no, I don’t.”

“Hasn’t she done it before when you were there?”

“Now and then. It involves being alone for several hours. She’s never said more, and I haven’t pried. Could be something private or religious or— I don’t know.”

“I imagine human xenologists have noticed it among her kind and tried to investigate.”

His smile twisted wryly. “Somehow, the casualty rates of xenologists on Rikhan planets went pretty high. They got discouraged after a while.”

She nodded. “That’s a fierce and touchy race.”

“Let’s just say that many people in it are. I wouldn’t call anything except their biology true of every culture and every individual in any race.”

Yes, he thinks. And he can sympathize. “Agreed,” Lissa said. “Seafell—But no, that’s merely another Asborgan House, nothing alien about it. And the members aren’t all alike by any means.”

“The basic biology really is basic, though. Also to ways of thinking, feeling, picturing reality. Has any human ever figured out how the sexual machinery of Susaians affects their psychology?”

Dear Orichalc—“We can be good friends.”

“But not like two humans, or, I suppose, two of them. The, uh, the aspects of nonhumans we can sort of understand and interact with in ways that sort of make sense, they’re those that happen to be enough like aspects of us. And vice versa, of course.” He spoke not intently, but earnestly, as if opening himself to her, something she hadn’t quite heard him do before. “For instance, I’ve gathered that Dzesi, Rikhans generally, can’t comprehend our idea of the Incarnation of God.”

Your idea, Lissa thought. It puzzles me too, a bit. I’d like to know more—because it is yours?—Veer off!

“So maybe Dzesi realizes I’d never understand her kshanta, however hard she tried to explain, and doesn’t bother,” Hebo finished.

“As I imagine you haven’t preached at her.”

“Or at anybody else. Who am I to say what relationship they have to God? Besides, I’d be lousy at it.”

Another archaism? Well, I catch the drift. He’s tolerant. By nature? Or did he have to learn to be if he was to survive as long as he has? I’d like to find out.

“She and I do have working knowledge of each other.” Hebo laughed. “Could be, she’s simply made an excuse to give us some privacy.”

“What?” Lissa murmured, and felt the blood in her cheeks and was angry with herself.

“She can be very tactful,” Hebo said. “Armed and dangerous folks had better be, most of the time.”

“But—you and I—”

“Our first chance to talk freely, just us two, isn’t it? And days ahead of us.”

Wariness: “Had you something particular in mind?”

“Yes,” he admitted cheerfully. “However, that’s up to you.”

“What do you mean?” As if she didn’t know full well.

“Don’t worry. I won’t repeat my mistake on Jonna. That’s one memory I made sure I’d keep.”

She didn’t reply at once. The air rustled, cooling off, smelling more and more like a rainstorm drawing nigh. He waited.

I could be evasive, she thought, but I don’t want to. Nor do I want to charge blindly ahead. Once was enough.

She met his eyes again and softened her tone. “You’re really a rather lonely person, aren’t you?”

He lifted a palm. “No, no, I can always have company when I feel like it.” He grinned. “I’ll bet you often do when you don’t feel like it.”