‘So I hear. What are you drinking, Donatella, my love? It’s been almost a year since I’ve seen you, you know that?’ He said ‘my love’ casually, as though it didn’t matter, but her heart turned over at the words, as it always had. He was thinner. His eyes were sunken. That once glowing face looked pallid. Even his lips were colorless. She shook herself and smiled, pretending not to see.
They ordered drinks. They talked. Little things. Inconsequentialities. Recent explorations. Link’s work as Explorer liaison to the Governor’s office. The recent announcement that the CHASE Commission was coming to Jubal.
‘What the hell is the CHASE Commission?’ she asked.
‘The Planetary Exploitation Council has set up a new commission to decide once and for all whether there is sentient native life on Jubal.’
‘Oh, I did know about it. I just didn’t remember the name. The services man talked about it last night. And somebody mentioned it at that reception I came down for, last time I was here in town.’ Donatella’s real reason for coming to Splash One had occupied her mind to such an extent that she had been barely able to focus on social rituals. ‘As I recall on that occasion I forgot who the Governor’s wife was and introduced her to someone as Gereny Vox.’
‘Donatella!’ He sounded genuinely shocked. By ho stretch of resemblance could the well-known mule breeder be compared in either face or figure to Honeypeach Thonks. Gereny was a completely genuine, if rough-edged, person of considerable charm. Lady Honeypeach was a self-created and ominous device.
‘It was just a slip of the tongue. I knew right away I’d got it wrong, and I apologized all over the place. She was very sweet about it, in a poisonous way.’ Don laughed unconvincingly. It had been a horrible gaffe, one she’d heard about later from the Explorer King and one that, in its way, had perhaps helped to obscure what else she might have been doing in Splash One. ‘Well, how are they going to go about deciding the sentience question?’
‘They’re going to hold hearings in a few weeks, just as they did fifty years ago, what else?’
‘Remind me what CHASE stands for.’
‘The Commission on Humans and Alien Sentience: Exploitation.’
‘Are they going to try to prove human sentience first?’ She choked with laughter. ‘I’ve had some question about that recently. I have a few nominees for no sentience at all, starting with the Governor.’
‘Hush, child. You make treasonous utterance. The Governor’s stepson is chairman of the commission. Ymries Fedder. He named the commission, I understand.’
‘Oh, yes. Honeypeach’s son.’ It seemed appropriate to say nothing more, and she contented herself with quirking one eyebrow at Link. He quirked back and she sighed. As always, they understood each other precisely. As always, she ached to hold him. As always, she mourned for him, longed for him. And as always, she kept a cheerful face and let none of it show. He had been in that chair for five years, ever since the trip on which an unexplored Presence blew with Link directly in the way. He should have died, would have died except for Don. Afterward he had accused her of sentencing him to life imprisonment, and she had offered to help him out of it. No Explorer could do less, no lover more. The offer still stood. He had not taken her up on it yet. Thank God.
And as always when she saw him, her mind went frantic, trying to think of a way for a rather minor employee of the Department of Exploration to lay hands on something like a hundred thousand chits. Which is roughly what it would cost to get Link to Serendipity and pay for regeneration of his legs. Half that amount would import a set of bio-prostheses, which would at least let him walk!
No sense thinking about it. She’d thought about it before. Ten years’ salary. Damn BDL and their priorities! Brou first, everything else second. And the Explorer Kings, who should be fighting for medical care as part of the contract, seemed content to piddle around with the amenities package. She kept her face calm, crying inside.
Two hours went by and she looked at the comp on her wrist. ‘Got to run, Link. In one hour I’ve got a date with my niece, remember her? Fabian? With the Planetary Welfare Office.’
‘I saw Fabian just last week. She came into the Governor’s office for something or other … what was it? Oh, I remember. She’s working on a settlement plan for the fringe people who get left behind when various military personnel are transferred out-system.’
‘Fringe people?’
‘Ah … what shall we say. Unofficial dependents. Uncontracted spouses. The troopers bring them in. Then when they ship out, they decide for one reason or another to go unencumbered.’
‘Unofficial divorce.’
‘In a manner of speaking. Kids, too, of course.’
‘Bastards,’ she said, with feeling. ‘Link. Thanks for the drinks.’ She took his hand in her own, casually, squeezed it, only for a moment, smiled and rose.
‘Donatella!’ He called her back. ‘You forgot your bag.’
She returned to the Chapter House to shower and change her clothes, entering by the back door and slipping up the stairs when no one was watching, not furtively, simply as though in a hurry. She had no particular wish to explain her unattractive garb to anyone, least of all Blanchet. By the time he arrived with the drink she ordered, she was showered and dressed for dinner, albeit less spectacularly than on the previous night.
‘Did you have good visits with your friends?’
‘Cousin Cyndal is not really a friend,’ she confessed with every semblance of candor. ‘Cousin Cyndal is a pain in the downspout. However, if I don’t see her when I’m here, my mother doesn’t let me forget it. Seeing Link Emert is also a pain, of a different kind. I keep remembering him the way he was before the accident.’
‘Ah.’ Blanchet was sympathetic. ‘Well, you’ll enjoy the evening more, perhaps.’
‘Oh, Lord,’ she
