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  “I can’t permit that. You’d say the same, if our positions were reversed.”

  He was silent a moment. Then he said, “Close out the monitors but remain as a witness. Monitor us yourself.”

  “Perhaps . . . unless you’re contemplating holosex. Entirely too boring.”

  “It is boring,” Jameson agreed, and Hanna said, “What?” but he went on, “It’s something I’d rather Hanna heard from me. Not mission-related. Nothing you don’t know.”

  “The Commission situation? I suppose I could anticipate just a little . . . All right. I’ll start organizing a search for Edward. Congratulations, Starr.”

  “Premature,” he told her, and a bewildered Hanna wondered if they had started speaking a language she hadn’t been taught.

  “I think there might be some difficulty starting the monitor systems up again,” Murphy said, and her image winked out.

  Hanna understood that. Murphy was giving them a chance to talk without listeners for the first time in months.

  And she didn’t care. She would have a few minutes of privacy, precious minutes outside Fleet discipline and mission protocol. She knew exactly how to use them.

  “Mickey?” she whispered. “Can I see Mickey?”

  • • •

  It would take Thera a few minutes to wake Mickey. Jameson took advantage of them. “Try to pay attention,” he said, because Hanna kept looking past him, where Mickey would appear. “Did you hear what Andrella said about trying to find Edward?”

  She had heard but hadn’t understood; she shook her head. Mickey was more important than anything about Vickery could be.

  Jameson said with a trace of exasperation, “Please listen. It looks like Edward’s cut his throat for good. There’s been a move toward a council vote on dismissing him; some councilors who supported him agreed to change their positions tonight. He might have staved it off a bit longer, but he’s disappeared. No one knows where he is, what he thinks he’s doing—being out of touch with a first contact imminent! A commissioner must be able to respond to a crisis instantly. There won’t be many crises if the Commission is a good one, but they happen. I’m leaving for Heartworld as quickly as I can.”

  She knew what was happening then, and her stomach turned over. She was abruptly wide awake. She said, “Why are you going there?”

  “There will be meetings. Some of them will be very private. And I must be physically present for the confirmation vote.”

  “Don’t take Mickey,” she said. Too many people on Heartworld thought poorly of her, even contemptuously. She didn’t want Mickey exposed to them.

  “Hanna . . .” His face softened, finally. “It will be better for him to come. He’s done quite well with your absence, but I don’t want another adult in his life to turn into archived holo. You won’t either, when you’ve had time to think. I promise you he’ll be perfectly safe. And Thera will be there, of course.”

  “But . . .”

  She hesitated another moment. And then she almost laughed.

  “You are going to the most traditional, the most reactionary, of the Polity’s societies, expecting to regain the highest position your council has to offer—with your D’neeran mistress’s bastard son in tow?”

  “They’ve gotten used to it,” he said with assurance. “Why do you think I insisted that you meet as many important people as possible? Including a number from Heartworld I didn’t particularly enjoy entertaining? Besides,” he said, with a smile Hanna did not like, “I’m thinking of starting a rumor that you plan to leave me when you return to Earth, and take Mickey with you. That will allow people to feel sorry for me while being secretly relieved. What do you think?”

  “I think it sounds exactly like you,” she said. “I think everything I don’t like about being with you is going to get worse.” Echoes came back: I must end this, I really must . . .

  But then Thera appeared with Mickey, and there was no room in her mind for anything except the sleepy, beautiful child smiling at her as if she were a happy dream.

  Chapter VII

  TIME FRAGMENTED.

  • • •

  She slept in spite of the urgency of the situation. Possibly the wasted hours would have some grave import for the fate of all humanity, but probably not. Why not enhanced sleep, save some time, said Metra, and others, and Hanna told them she wouldn’t let medics root around in her delicate telepathic brain. It was no more delicate than anybody else’s, but she was wary of arousing curiosity about the anomalies she knew were there; the way she had shut out the other telepaths, the strength of that block, had already attracted too much attention. The anomalies were not likely to be noticed, in fact, in the routine production of enhanced sleep, and she knew that, too. But uncertainties were closing in from all sides. She didn’t need another one distracting her.

  • • •

  “Not a trick of the Demon. The words could be a trick but not the images they send. I have seen these creatures. I look through my past-eyes and remember.”

  “Maybe the Demon was there too, and makes up these images. Maybe one of his commanders does! You could think up something like this, could you not?”

  “The Demon was not there on that world and none of his commanders were there. Of those who went, only I survive. The not-Soldiers ask only for a meeting, a small party in one landing craft, their ship will remain in space.”

  “Or Quokatk’s mad brain has come up with some final trick. But if he is still this good they will not need you in Wektt!”

  “I ask you with all my eyes to believe this is not his work. And though I saw no weapons in that place where the not-Soldiers lived, surely weapons exist. Should we not acquire them?”

  • • •

  Awake, cranky, sullenly accepting a cup of tea, feeling better once it was down. “I tapped into something down there in my sleep, a dream that wasn’t a dream,” she told Metra, but refused to say anything more until Jameson could hear it.

  When she saw him he did not look—the holographic projection did not look—tired at all. He was probably using a stimulant himself. Undoubtedly, if he wasn’t already doing it, he would. Hanna disapproved. She disapproved of all such substances, especially when he was the one using them. So he never did when she was entangled in his life. So why was he reverting now? Because he was reverting to being a commissioner? Talking of his imminent return to power he had been—for him—overexcited. Someone should tell him to calm down. She ought to be the one to tell him.

  “I want to talk to you alone,” she told him, and he said, “Sorry—” and waved a hand indicating he couldn’t do anything about that now. They were in a half-real-half-virtual conference room, the Endeavor and Admin halves jarringly mismatched. Hanna was one of six people on the Endeavor side, Jameson one of only four at Admin. Murphy was there, and Zanté, and a man Hanna knew only slightly but had no reason to distrust: Adair Evanomen, head of Contact’s commerce division. Nobody had mentioned commerce, so what was he doing here?

  There had been no reply from Battleground while Hanna slept. Jameson said, “You want to tell us about a dream?”

  No, I want to tell you about it, only you, she thought. She felt tricked. She hadn’t even decided if she really wanted Jameson, but she was certainly going to lose him. To the Commission; to the Polity. Something shifted under her feet. Bedrock slipping, she thought, but she told them about the dream. And about its implication: that the Commander, personally, had seen New Earth.

  “There was a hint of it in the first contact with him,” she said. “I didn’t mention it because I wasn’t certain. Now I am.”

  “Because of a dream?” Metra said.

  “A dream like this, from Hanna, carries some weight with me,” Jameson said, “and that judgment is based on experience. Andrella? Do you remember?”

  “Oh, yes,” Murphy said. “And anyway, if it doesn’t have
some correlation to reality, where did she come up with that ‘past-eyes’ phrase?”

  “She’s used it before, but the meaning isn’t clear,” Jameson said.

  Hanna growled.

  “What?” said Murphy.

  “I said, I’m here. You can ask me.”

  “All right. What does it mean?”

  Hanna said perversely, “I don’t know. The second pair of eyes has something to do with memory, but I don’t know what—yet.”

  Jameson’s eyes rested on her warily. Maybe he was thinking of her reputation for instability. Maybe all this holo wasn’t such a good idea after all, and level, controlled voices would be better.

  we were just a useful tool once, whispered the ghost. She wanted to ask Jameson, Am I to be a tool again?

  But she couldn’t say it in front of all those people. So she got up and walked out.

  • • •

  An hour later Communications reported a response, a senseless garble that nonetheless showed signs of striving toward a systems match, and Hanna went there quickly. She had picked Joseph and Bella to accompany her to a meeting on Battleground, and they went with her. The months of waiting had shrunk to minutes.

  • • •

  Metra and her officers and other people who were not usually there had come to Communications too, but Hanna’s closest companion was invisible. She and the ghost watched a Communications monitor that showed just what was going out to the desert-splotched planet ahead of them: a mélange of the kinds of images Species Y did not transmit—families at play, physiological diagrams, works of art, landscapes and cityscapes, pictures of flora and fauna (but only cuddly fauna). The audio content was in the language Linguistics had deciphered and was

  much the same as i sent before me to Zeig-Daru, said the ghost, who seemed somewhat comforted by the acceptance the true-humans in Communications extended to Hanna.

  much the same as i sent before me to Uskos, Hanna said.

  Cheers erupted from the main station in Communications, and Hanna listened.

  “We’ve got a clear response! We’ve got them! We’ve got them!”

  it says “you are guests,” said the ghost.

  it won’t be that easy, said Hanna.

  it never is, said the ghost.

  Chapter VIII

  THE MAN WHO NEVER RAISED his voice was shouting.

  “Mission protocol calls for at least three on the surface at all times, and together! At least three! Never one alone! Never!”

  Light-years apart, they paced.

  “You know I meant to take Joseph and Bella,” she said. “It’s not my decision to go alone. The decision belongs to these beings.”

  “It does not. That’s the demand they made. The decision, in fact, Hanna, the decision whether or not to acquiesce, is mine!”

  “And that’s exactly the trouble, isn’t it? I’ve never, ever seen you lose your temper before! I’ve never seen a decision do this to you! What is wrong with you?” Hanna yelled, realized she was yelling, and shut up.

  In the silence, across the gulf, they stared at each other.

  After a minute Hanna sat down. “I see,” she said.

  Jameson was shaking his head. At himself, possibly. He sat down too, his control back as fast as he had lost it and locked in place. He said, “What do you see?”

  “Would you amend mission protocol to send Dema or Arch alone? To send anyone but me?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “The same reservations would hold.”

  “But maybe not as strongly?”

  She didn’t mention his guilt.

  He didn’t mention her ghost.

  She said, “None of the New Earth colonists ever felt threatened. Certainly none of them was hurt.”

  “Individual lives mean nothing here, Hanna. You’ve had a concrete illustration of that.”

  The spacious room behind him, in his personal suite at Admin, was dark. The contact teams on Endeavor had shifted to the Holy Man’s time (or maybe the Demon’s) and it was not in synch with Standard. He did look tired, now; maybe he hadn’t taken up the old habits after all.

  He said abruptly, “I would rather send someone else. Your own people don’t let parents of young children take hazardous duty. You ought to be spared this mission on that basis alone.”

  “My people aren’t yours. Listen.” She sat forward, as if it would actually bring them closer together. “I’ve seen you torn before, between me and what’s—expedient. It cannot have escaped your attention that in matters of first contact you and I are perceived as a unit. That my credibility rests on my willingness to take risks—and yours on your willingness to put me at risk.”

  He said quietly, “No. It hasn’t escaped my attention.”

  “What do you think these important people on Heartworld will say if you send one of my students to Battleground instead of me? They will say that your most vicious critics are right about you and me. That you can’t be objective where I’m concerned, that your emotions override your judgment.”

  He was silent.

  She said, “And I have a stake in appearances, too. If I don’t prove myself of continuing value to the Polity, if I stay safely on Endeavor and let Bella go in my place, how long will it be before the restrictions on my freedom are softened? I hope for amnesty, and the Commission can give it to me, but not even Andrella would support it only as a favor to you. All of them have others to answer to. As will you. There will have to be justification, something to point at to prove I’ve earned it. This—” She fumbled for words. “I know you want to protect me. It’s been a conflict for you since we met. But this time protection could harm me. It could harm both of us.” Transcripts, she thought suddenly, and said, “My God, how many people are hearing this?”

  “None,” he said. “The appointment hasn’t been confirmed, and if there were a Commission vote I couldn’t cast a ballot, but in most matters I can do as I like. That includes restricting access to my communications. No one’s listening, no one’s recording.”

  He looked at her for what seemed a long while, eyes unreadable. A subtle change came finally over his face. Resignation, Hanna thought.

  He took a deep breath and said, “I’ll put it on record that your request to go alone is approved.”

  PART THREE

  ROWTT

  Chapter I

  HANNA HAD MADE FIRST landings on other worlds with curiosity and wonder. She had done it first, on Zeig-Daru, with the conviction that she would not return alive; some years later she had done it on Uskos, with hope and (somewhat misplaced) confidence. This time wonder was elusive. She had borrowed too many Battleground eyes and seen too much that was gray. She fell through heavy cloud toward the underground complex called Rowtt and thought she saw—though of course they were not there—tendrils of fog seep into the capsule, Endeavor’s smallest (least threatening) shuttle.

  They are all special cases . . . A whisper. Joseph’s touch. Look, he whispered, only look.

  She broke through the clouds and slowed. Tiny, camouflaged spyeyes had scouted the site and she saw what she expected to see. This view did not excite wonder either. Expansive fields riddled with holes—impact craters, perhaps, created not by meteors but by bombs. A few wheeled vehicles in haphazard clusters. Dirt and concrete shoved into mounds that sprouted scraggly weeds, the only visible life.

  The pod touched down. The hatch fell open to form a ramp, and Hanna walked down it into desolation. The air tasted of dust.

  She knew she was watched. The Y beings had specified that she would be watched.

  She was dressed, by design, in a coverall as tight and flexible as her skin. If the Y beings had paid attention to the anatomical images sent them, they would know she hid no weapons. She had even relinquished the unpredictable ring to Bella’s keeping—but it might have been a comfort now, the jewel a p
iece of sky. She missed it. The ghost did not seem to have accompanied her, either.

  She kept her hands open, away from her body. The translator components had been described and detailed images shown to the beings of Battleground—microscopic circuitry at the ears, sound manipulation bank tenuous as mist shadowing her mouth, held in place by a net finer than spider-silk so that huge (by comparison) human hands could handle the network; the processing module was behind one ear, subcutaneous. Communications had explained it all to the Y beings ahead of time. Several times, very carefully. Hanna agreed with Hope Metra on one thing: if you were a stranger approaching a military base, you did not want to show up with a surprise.

  Soft footsteps sounded behind her. From where in this blasted field the being could have come, Hanna couldn’t imagine. But this had been specified too: one individual would greet her. Low-ranking, they had said without apology. In other words, expendable.

  Check.

  It stopped behind her and she did not turn, but extended her arms for the specified search. Fluid hands ran over her back and sides, seeking weapons that were not there. A scent the Report to Archives had not mentioned drifted around her, cutting the dust smell with a blend of cinnamon and cardamom. There was a fleeting impression of sinuous motion, and now the being faced her.

  It finished its examination. Check.

  Then—not planned, at least by the humans on Endeavor—it slipped behind her and started the whole process again. Hands-on. This time the long fingers sought something specific that was not there. Some difference in anatomy that clothing hides? she said to Joseph, and sensed that he made a note. The touches were different now: intimate, and sensuous. And suddenly she knew what the creature was doing. This was sexual foreplay.

  H’ana?!! Joseph was shocked. Interspecies sex had not been addressed by Contact Education. Perhaps it should be.

  She broke silence at last. “Why do you touch me as a mate would, host?”