must find the courage to see that we finish what we've begun.' She opened her eyes, wiping her face as though she were rousing out of her own black dreams.
Moon looked down through a sea of air, away at the screen, where no Gate lay before them now, but only the ruddy candle glow of a thousand thousand stars, of which the Twins were only two ... the sky of home, of Tiamat. 'The worst is behind us now, Elsie. Everything else will be easy.'
But Elsevier made no answer, and Silky looked only at her.
Chapter 24
'BZ, I wish I didn't have to hand you this duty; but I've put it off as long as I can.' Jerusha stood at the window of her office, looking out, confronted by the sight of the blank wall that was all her view. Boxed in. Boxed in ...
'It's all right, Commander.' Gundhalinu sat at attention in the visitor's chair, the benign acceptance in his voice warming her back. 'To tell you the truth I'm glad to get out of Carbuncle for a while. Certain people have been leaning a little hard on 'shirkers' ... it'll be a relief to breathe fresh air, even if it turns my lungs blue.' He grinned reassurance as she turned back to him. 'They don't bother me, Commander. I know I'm doing my job ... and I know who uses personal incompetence as an excuse to make you look bad.' Disapproval pulled his face down. 'But I have to admit sharing the company of inferiors — wears on one.'
She smiled faintly. 'You deserve a break, BZ, the gods know it; even if it's only to waste your time chasing thieves across the tundra.' She leaned against her desk, carefully, trying not to dislodge a heap of anything. 'I just wish I didn't have to send you to oversee star port security because I don't know how the hell I'm going to manage here, without your support.' She glanced down, a little ashamed to be admitting it; but her gratitude at his unshakeable loyalty would not leave it unsaid.
He laughed, shaking his head. 'You don't need anybody, Commander. As long as you've got your integrity, they can't touch you.'
Oh, but I do ... and they do, every day. I need that encouraging word, like life needs the sun. But he'd never really understand that. Why couldn't she have been born with the sense of supreme self worth that seemed to be bred into a Kharemoughi? Gods, it must be wonderful, never having to look to anyone else for the reassurance that what you did was right! Even when she had promoted him to inspector, he had never questioned that it might be for any reason other than his competence as an officer. 'Well, it's only a matter of
— months, anyway.'
'And only a matter of months until it's all over, Commander. Come the Millennium! Only months until the Change comes, and we can clear off of this miserable slush ball and forget about it for the rest of our lives.'
'I try not to think that far ahead,' dully. 'One day at a time, that's how I take things.' She rearranged a stack of petition cards absently.
Gundhalinu stood up, concern coming vaguely into his eyes. 'Commander ... if you need somebody who'll support your orders while I'm gone, try KraiVieux. He's got a hard shell, but he's got at least half his mind working — and he thinks you're trying to do an honest job.'
'Does he?' surprised. KraiVieux was a veteran officer, and one of the last she would have expected to feel even the slightest willingness to accept her. 'Thanks, BZ. That helps.' She smiled again, only straining a little.
He nodded. 'Well. I suppose I'd better start packing my thermals, Commander... Take care of yourself, ma'am.'
'Take care of yourself, BZ.' She returned his salute, watched him go out of the office. She had a sudden, wrenching premonition that it was the last time she would ever see him. Stop it! You want to wish him bad luck? She reached into her pocket for a pack of iestas as she moved back around her desk; answered the chiming intercom with an unsteady hand.
Chapter 25
Arienrhod sat patiently, resting her hands on the veined marble of the wide desk top, as the latest in the day's progression of local and off world petitioners stated his proposals and laid down his plans. She listened with half an ear as he mangled the language — a native speaker of Umick, from D'doille, she decided — without letting him lapse into his own. She knew Umick, among the nearly one hundred other languages and dialects she had absorbed over the years; but she enjoyed forcing the off worlders to speak her own when they came to court her favor.
The merchant droned on about shipping costs and profit margins, gradually becoming invisible. She found herself looking through him, back along an endless procession of echoes, others like him-different, but the same. How many? She wished suddenly that she had kept count. It would give the past proportion, a sense of the absolute. It all became gray with age, dust-gray with disuse; a blur, stultifying and meaningless. Just once she would like to have brought into her presence a new off worlder who did not look at her and see a woman before he saw a ruler, a barbarian before an experienced head of state...
'...time in — uh, sallak — transit. That means I couldn't much make a good profit on the salts, anyway, which is why I cannot offer but only—'
'Correction, Master Trader.' She leaned forward across the desk top. 'The transit time from here to Tsieh-pun is in fact five months less than you claim, which puts you exactly in synch with their collody cycle. That makes the shipping of our manganese salts to Tsieh-pun extremely profitable.'
The merchant's jaw twitched. Arienrhod smiled sardonically and popped the presentation disc out of her tape reader. She tossed it out, letting it slide across the polished marble into his outstretched hands. They might come to her expecting a naive weakling once; but they never did it again. 'Perhaps you'd better come back when you've got your facts straight.'
'Your Majesty, I—' He ducked his head, afraid to look her in the eye: an arrogant aging whelp with his tail abruptly between his legs. 'Of course, you're so right, it was a stupid — uh, oversight. I can't think how I could do such a mistake. The terms you offer would be — agreeable, now that I see my mistake.'
She smiled again, with no more kindness. 'When you've seen as many 'mistakes' made as I have, Master Trader, you learn not to make many of your own.' She looked back into the distant beginning, when she had stumbled over every lying 'mistake' the off worlders had thrown in her path — when she had had to consult her Starbucks about every decision, no matter how great or small, obvious or obscure. And the kind of information they had brought her was not always the kind she needed... But as the months, years, decades went by, she had seen the cost of her mistakes; and the lessons she had learned from experience she never forgot, the mistakes were never repeated. 'Well, since you've seen the error of your calculations, I'm inclined to go against my judgment and grant you the shipping and trade agreements. In fact—' she waited until he was looking directly at her again, hanging on each word, 'I might even have a little added business I could direct your way, now that I think of it. To our mutual benefit, of course. I know of a trader just in who has a small hoard of ledoptra that he intends to carry to Samathe.' But only as a last resort. 'Ledoptra would bring a much higher price on Tsieh-pun, as you know.' And so does he, but he doesn't know you're in port. 'For a reasonable commission, I'd be willing to convince him that you'll gladly take the ledoptra off his hands.'
Greed licked the trader's face, and doubt. 'I am not sure I have enough — cargo stabilizers for such a soft — uh — fragile load, Your Majesty.'
'You would if you left the computerized library system you're transporting to Tsieh-pun here on Tiamat instead.'
He gaped. 'How did you ... I mean, that would be — uh, unlawful.'
All the more reason why such a resource belongs here, where it's really needed. 'An accident. An oversight. It happens all the time in shipping goods across a galaxy. It's happened to you before, I'm sure,'
