4

Fanielle watched the Hysingrausen Wall slide past beneath the aircar’s wings. Running east to west across this portion of the central continent, the immense, forest-fringed limestone rampart was interrupted only by a succession of enormous waterfalls that spilled over the three-thousand-meter rim. Despite the heavy flow, most evaporated before they reached the ground. Only a very few, the offspring of mighty rivers that arose in the northern mountains beyond the Mediterranea Plateau, thundered against rocks at the base of the wall.

The majestic geologic feature had kept the thranx from making anything more than cursory explorations of the high tableland. Humans were delighted to be allowed to establish themselves in a sizable region the thranx had ignored, and many thranx were pleased to see humans making use of an uplifted portion of their planet that was to them the perfect picture of a half-frozen hell.

She sealed her field jacket as the aircar, once clear of the strong downdrafts that raked the wall, commenced a gradual descent. The afternoon temperature at Azerick Station was sixteen degrees C. Bracing to a human, unbearably frigid and dry to a thranx. Azerick did not receive many visitors from the heavily populated lowlands. Most of the thranx who were assigned to help facilitate the station’s development stayed down in Chitteranx, in the rain forest, where the humidity and heat were pleasantly overpowering. A few unlucky souls were assigned permanently to the human outpost. Being thranx, they rarely gave voice to their displeasure. Only someone like Anjou, who had learned to interpret many of their gestures, could tell how unhappy they were.

In less than two weeks she would have her meeting with the eint. She intended to be forceful but congenial. There were years worth of particulars that needed to be discussed, lists of individual items that needed to be addressed in detail. She would have to pick and choose carefully so as not to offend, or bore, or isolate her estimable audience. Haflunormet was a good soul, but during the time they had worked with each other he had been able to offer little more than sympathetic encouragement on issues of real import. Working at last with someone who could actually make decisions promised to be enlightening as well as effective.

There was so much to prepare. She worried about overwhelming the eint with minutiae before paradigms could be agreed upon.

The aircar set down gently amid the quasi-coniferous forest that covered the plateau. While the trees resembled nothing arboreal on Earth, at least they were green. Jeremy was waiting for her. They embraced decorously. Other moves would have to wait for greater privacy.

He took her bag as they walked through the terminal. “I hear you finally got your meeting with a higher-up. Some of us were beginning to wonder if any of the diplomatic staff here ever would.”

“You know the thranx.” They turned a corner, squeezing past chattering travelers outbound on the aircar that had just arrived. “Caution in everything.”

He made a rude noise. “It’s more than that. It’s deliberate. They’re trying to stay friends, close friends, without committing themselves to anything definite. The Pitarian War was an exception, brought on by exceptional circumstances. Now they’ve reverted to the hive norm.” Outside, he placed her bag in the transport capsule. In seconds, they were racing along a grassy trail split by the glistening metallic strip of a powerguide.

“I don’t think that’s the case at all, Jeremy.” Leaning back in the seat, she watched the forest whiz past. At this speed, details vanished in a green blur, and travelers could almost imagine they were speeding through the far more familiar woods of Canada or Siberia.

He shrugged diffidently. “Well, if anybody should know, it’s you, Fannie. You’ve spent more time among them than anyone else on staff. Personally, I don’t see how you stand the climate and the crowding inside their hives.” Reaching out, he took one of her hands in his and with a fingertip began to trace abstract designs on the back. “I’d rather have you spend more time here, you know. It’s not real great for my ego to think that you prefer a bug’s company to mine.”

She smiled and let him toy with her hand and fingers. Little sparks seemed to materialize with each contact. “Unfortunately, while humankind has conquered deep space, cured the most serious primitive diseases, and spread itself across a small portion of one galactic arm, we have yet to solve the unfathomable complexities of the male ego.”

His fingers jetéed up her arm. “Chaos theory. That’s the ticket.”

The darkened capsule arrived at Azerick with both passengers considerably relaxed in mind and body. Jeremy bid her a reluctant farewell, leaving her to compose the report she would present in person to the ambassador. Upgrading the embassy here to full settlement status was one item on the crowded agenda. The humans wanted it—for one thing, it would mean promotions all around—but the thranx were reluctant. Granting such status implied recognition of a condition existing between the two species that they were not sure they were prepared to acknowledge.

She showered and redressed, leaving off the field jacket since the station was heated to an Earth-ideal standard of twenty-two degrees, with humidity to match. Ambassador Toroni was anxious to hear her preliminary report. Details could come later.

Smiles and congratulations awaited her in the main conference room. Outside, the forest of the Mediterranea Plateau, as the resident humans had come to call it, marched away toward distant high mountains. A smattering of applause greeted her rising. She did not blush, was not uncomfortable. The acclaim had been earned.

Spreading a brace of viewers out before her, she folded her hands and waited as the ambassador rose. There were eight other people in the room, most of whom she knew well. Living in an outpost on an alien world left little room for people to be strangers.

“First,” he said, “I want to extend my personal congratulations to Fanielle Anjou for securing what we had come to believe might never come to pass: an appointment to discuss, and to present, multiple items of diplomatic importance on which we have all been working for years. While the method of finally obtaining this long-sought-after meeting may have been unorthodox, I think I can say safely that no strenuous objections will be raised at higher levels.”

“Especially since ‘higher levels’ have no idea what a Bryn’ja request is,” Gail Hwang observed tartly.

“Funny, you don’t look pregnant.” From his seat next to the ambassador, Jorge Sertoa grinned down at her. “Who’s the father?”

“Probably that thranx she’s been seeing so much of,” someone else put in quickly. Laughter rolled the length of the table.

“I don’t think so.” Aram Mieleski pursed his lips as he rested his chin thoughtfully on the tips of his fingers. “The delivery mechanism involved is so different that . . .”

“Oh, shut up, Aram,” Gail chided him. “I swear, if ever anybody needed a humor transplant . . .”

“Emotional conditions cannot be transferred between individuals,” an unruffled Mieleski calmly observed, by his words confirming the necessity of her observation.

“What will you do,” Enrique Thorvald asked seriously, “if the thranx continue to inquire as to your condition?”

“They’ll be informed that I lost the multiple larvae prior to giving birth.” Anjou held one of her readers before her. “I’ve worked it all out. If anything, that should gain me even more sympathy. And it doesn’t hurt that Eint Carwenduved, with whom I am to meet, is female.”

“Yeah,” Sertoa muttered. “You can compare the glaze on your ovipositors.” While basically a good guy, Jorge Sertoa was among several outspoken members of the outpost staff who were less than enthusiastic about cementing deeper relations with their hosts.

“And I bet you’d like to be there to see that.” Her rejoinder prompted more laughter and defused what could have been an awkward moment. Putting the jovial banter to rest, she hefted the reader and commenced delivering her formal report. They would all receive copies in due course, but this way questions could be asked as soon as they were formulated. Ambassador Toroni was a firm believer in encouraging staff interaction.

When she concluded, less than an hour later, there were fewer queries than she had anticipated. Her accomplishment in securing the official meeting was duly applauded once again, but most of the questions thrown her way concerned maintaining the security of the ruse she had invented to gain the appointment rather than what she was actually going to discuss when it finally came to fruition.

“It all depends,” she commented by way of summation, “on how much authority I’m given going into the meeting.”

All eyes shifted to Toroni. Running a hand through his shock of white hair, he leaned back in his chair and considered. For an ambassador appointed to what was arguably the most important nonhuman populated world known, he was casual in manner and laid-back in his work habits. It was an attitude much appreciated by those who labored under him. Azerick was a lonely enough place to be stationed without being forced to toil for some inflexible martinet.

“If it were up to me, Fanielle, I’d give you permission to vet and sign treaties. But you know I can’t do that. I don’t have that capability myself. As soon as we adjourn here, I’ll get on the deep-space communicator and find out just how far the authorities on Earth are prepared to let you go. One thing you can be sure of: You won’t be allowed to negotiate anything controversial.”

“I already know that,” she responded.

“But we might be able to procure more authority for you than you think, by trumpeting the importance of this meeting, how it’s likely not to be repeated for some time, the sensitive nature of relations between you and this Eint Carwenduved—I intend to call in every favor and promise I’ve been stockpiling.” He leaned forward. “I want you to have as much autonomy going in as we can manage. This is the first real breakthrough we’ve had in months, and I don’t want to squander it.”

“Even so, sir,” Sertoa began, “we don’t want Fanielle to agree to anything hasty.” He smiled deferentially at her. “Careful perusal and dissection of any potential covenant is demanded before the authority to sign can be conferred.”

“Loosen up, Jorge,” she told him. “No matter what I manage to get the eint to agree to, I don’t think you have to worry about some thranx sharing your bathroom anytime soon.”

It was an exceedingly mild put-down, but whether for that reason or one unknown, Sertoa said nothing more for the duration of the meeting.

“I’ve been working on proceeding to the next step in securing a stronger alliance among our respective species.” Holding up her reader, she touched a contact and waited the couple of seconds necessary to transfer the relevant documentation to everyone else’s handheld. “If the eint doesn’t dismiss it out of hand, I intend to at least broach a number of possibilities for future discussion.”

“Such as what?” Hwang asked with obvious interest.

“A lasting, permanent alliance. Nothing held back. Military presence on one another’s worlds, mutual command of tactics and weaponry, joint colonization of which this plateau and the Amazon Basin are only the most preliminary sorties.” Someone whistled.

“You don’t want much, do you, Fanielle?” Genna Erlich observed.

“You’re talking about the kind of treaty that would require not only a vote of the full Terran Congress, but approval by majorities on all the settled worlds.” Mieleski’s tone was somber. “It’s a very adventurous program.”

“What are we here for, if not to press for closer relations?” Toroni smiled paternally. “Though you’ve certainly chosen an ambitious agenda for yourself, Fanielle.”

“Everything depends on the eint’s reaction to my prefatory suggestions,” she replied a bit defensively. “Depending on how things go, I might not even have the chance to make known my more elaborate proposals.”

“Quite right.” Rising, Toroni indicated that the conference was at an end. “I look forward to reading all the details of your report, Fanielle. With luck, we should within a couple of days have some guidelines from Earth detailing how you will be allowed to proceed. I myself am optimistic, and intend to frame the request for those guidelines in the most anxious manner possible.

“In the meantime, we all of us have much to study, and to digest. I take it you are amenable to criticisms and suggestions, Ms. Anjou?”

“Always,” she replied, at the same time hoping there would not be too many. Putting what had previously been an informal succession of guidelines into presentation format was going to take most of the time she had remaining until her meeting with the eint. The last thing she needed was a flood of well meaning but essentially superfluous advice.

Only when word came back from Earth that she was to have essentially a free hand in making proposals—though she could not commit to anything more significant than, for example, the Intercultural Fair about to get under way on the colony world of Dawn—did she realize how truly important the encounter would be. Though usually an island of calm amid her often frazzled colleagues, she finally had to take some minor medication to still her nerves.

I am going to go in there, she told herself, as the chosen representative of my entire species, knowing that I have gained that access on the back of a lie. But while the burden was making her increasingly uneasy, she would not have turned the meeting over to one of her colleagues for all the suor melt on Barabbas.

As the time for her to return to Daret drew near, she found herself relying more than ever on Jeremy’s strong, self-assured presence. A microbiologist, he had no diplomatic ax to grind, nothing of a professional nature to gain from her success or failure. He was interested only in her and their future together; not in her mission. It was a gratifying change from the characteristic infighting and arguing that took place within the highly competitive diplomatic hierarchy.

When the day scheduled for departure finally did arrive and she had little to take with her but her hopes and anxieties, he took time off from his lab work to join her for the brief journey in the transport capsule that would convey her to the settlement airport.

Once more, the great green forest of the Mediterranea Plateau was rushing past outside the transport’s port. To the thranx, it was their deepest jungle, the most biologically mysterious region left on their homeworld. Visiting human researchers, strolling about comfortably in pants and shirts, were making valuable reports and passing on the results of their research to their thranx counterparts, who would have required special gear and attire simply to survive in the temperate-cool lower oxygen environment humans found perfectly amenable. Similar revelations were being made by thranx researchers stationed in the deep Amazon and Congo Basins on Earth. Of such serendipitous exchanges of data and knowledge were scientific alliances, if not diplomatic ones, strengthened.

During the high-speed commute they held hands and talked. Jeremy’s research was going exceptionally well, and everyone at the outpost was talking about Fanielle’s breakthrough in securing a meeting with a thranx who ranked high enough to actually make decisions as well as recommendations.

“I’m not going to be able to get near you when you get back,” he told her teasingly. “You’ll be blanketed by representatives of the media.”

“If this visit is a success,” she reminded him.

“There are noifs where you’re concerned, lady-mine.”

“Maybe not where I’m concerned, but diplomacy is something else again.” Why, she wondered, did someone who was perfectly comfortable trolling the corridors of interstellar power suddenly and so frequently in this man’s presence devolve to the maturity level of a sixteen-year-old? She had long ago become convinced it was due to a recessive gene on the Y chromosome.

“Just like you’re something else again.” Leaning forward, he kissed her as passionately as the time remaining to the airport conveniently allowed, then rose. “I could use something to drink. Do you want anything before—?”

 

She became aware of the pain as vision returned. It seemed to increase in proportion to the intensity of the light that splashed across her retinas. Memory loaded in increasingly large chunks: who she was, where she ought to be, what she was supposed to be doing. Too much of it failed to jibe with what she was feeling and seeing. Though the first words she heard were in themselves entirely innocent, their import was uncompromisingly ominous.

“She’s awake.”

She recognized the voice. Ambassador Toroni had a distinctive, measured way of speaking, slightly nasal but memorable. It matched his face, which moments later was smiling down into her own. There was relief in his countenance, but no humor.

A voice she did not recognize said, “I’ll leave you alone with her for a while. Her vitals are fine, but she’s liable to be less than completely coherent until the comprehensive neural block has fully worn off. The aerogels will keep her comfortable. If anything untoward occurs, or something doesn’t look right, just hit the alert.”

“Thank you, nurse.”

Nurse.Anjou liked the sound of that even less than the absence of humor in her superior’s expression. She struggled to sit up. Reading the relevant cerebral commands from the patch fastened to the back of her skull and ascertaining that rising did not contradict her medical profile, the bed complied.

Sitting up, she found that the light did not hurt as much. In addition to Toroni, Sertoa was also present. He did not even try to fake a smile. “Hello, Fanielle. How—how are you feeling?”

“Sleepy. Confused. Something hurts. No,” she corrected herself, “everything hurts, but something is muting it.” Looking past them, searching the hospital room, she did not see a third face. Especially not the one she sought. “I’ve been in an accident.”

Toroni nodded, very slowly. “What’s the last thing you remember, my dear?”

“Packing to go to Daret. No,” she corrected herself quickly, inspired perhaps by their stricken looks. “I was already on my way there. On the transport to the airport. With—” She looked past them again. “—Jeremy Hyguens.”

“He was a good friend of yours,” Sertoa commented softly.

“Yes. We are—” She broke off as Toroni threw the other man a look of quiet exasperation.

He was. That was what Sertoa had said.He was. She sank back into the cushioning aerogel, wishing it was solid enough to smother her. When she had finished crying, when the tears had subsided enough for her to form words again, she believed that she heard herself whispering, “What . . . happened?”

Bernard Toroni sat down on the edge of the bed, the transparent aerogel dimpling under his extra weight. He wanted to take this exceptional young woman’s hand, to hold it tightly, to make things better. But that was not a procedure allowed for in the diplomatic syllabus, and circumstances dictated that he keep a certain distance. He did not want to keep his distance, though. He wanted to hold her the way he had once held his own children back on Earth, before he had begun to receive assignments to other worlds.

“You were on a transport capsule in line for the airport. There was an empty cargo carrier on the strip ahead of you. No one knows exactly how it happened, but there was a program failure. The cargo unit’s drive field reversed. The two capsules hit very hard.”

“The kinetic energy released—” Sertoa started to say before a look from Toroni silenced him.

“Once engaged, transport capsule fields don’t ‘reverse.’ The programs are designed to be fail-safe. At worst, onboard in-line safeties should have cut its drive. Had that happened, your capsule’s onboard sensors would have had time to detect the failure ahead and bring it to a stop prior to impact.” He paused for reflection. “There were a total of twelve people on board the capsule you were traveling in. You and a fellow named Muu Nulofa from Engineering were the only survivors.”

“Jeremy—” She did not swallow particularly hard, but her throat was on fire.

Toroni shifted his position on the edge of the bed. No one else had been willing to pay this first visit. “The lifesavers who extricated you from what was left of the capsule found his body sprawled across yours. They theorize that the extra . . . padding . . . is what saved your chest from being crushed when the front wall of your cubicle caved in. There was nothing they could do for him. Cerebral and internal hemorrhaging.” He hesitated. “I did not know the man, but I have since spoken to some of his colleagues. They all describe him as a fine human being who was dedicated to his work. And to . . . other things.”

Her eyes rose to meet his. He did not enjoy the experience, but he respected the woman in the bed far too much to look away. “Did they also tell you we had been discussing marriage?”

“No.” The ambassador’s lips tightened. “No, nobody mentioned that to me.”

She relieved him by turning her head to one side, letting the warm aerogel supply the support her muscles no longer cared to provide. “We didn’t talk about it much except among ourselves. There were too many other distractions. Professional—” She choked softly on the word.

It was quiet in the room. No one spoke for many minutes: the two men remaining silent out of respect, the woman because she no longer had anything to say. Behind her eyes, something had gone away.

“It’s very interesting,” Toroni finally murmured. When she failed to react, he added, “Unprecedented, certainly.”

Moving with a slowness that had as its source something deeper and more profound than medication, she rolled her head back in his direction. “What is?”

“The expression of concern. On a personal level. From our hosts.”

She frowned ever so slightly. “I don’t understand.”

“Some of the recently communicated terminology is unique to our translator’s experience. I am told there are nuances involved they have never before seen expressed.” He mustered a fatherly smile. “There are several from your contact Haflunormet, as well as from other contacts you have made among the locals. Of particular note is the one from Eint Carwenduved. Not only are deepest regrets expressed, but she wishes to assure us that as soon as you are able to resume work, she looks forward now more than ever to making your acquaintance.”

“Your meeting is still on.” Sertoa looked pleased. “You’ll carry into it with you the extra benefit of added sympathy.”

Her mind stirred, roiled, thoughts and emotions crashing into one another before slipping away in opposing directions. “No I won’t,” she responded tersely.

Toroni blinked. “I’m sorry, my dear?”

The look in her eyes was very different from the one that had commanded her countenance only moments earlier. “I won’t be carrying sympathy or anything else into that meeting because I’m not going to be in attendance. I’m not going, Bernard. I’m finished here. Finished with Hivehom, finished with the bu—with the thranx, finished with everything.” She turned away, until all she could see was the aerogel support. The portion in front of her face opaqued when she closed her eyes. “I want—I need to go home.”

The ambassador considered. In the course of his distinguished career he had been faced with similar situations before. Some had even been inflected with highly emotional overtones. But never before anything like this. Never. That did not keep him from pressing forward as he knew he must.

“Fanielle,” he told her as tenderly as he could, “youhave to do this. No one else here at the mission has managed to achieve as intimate a rapport with our hosts. No one else is as facilely comfortable with their ways, with their habits or mannerisms.You are the best qualified to take this meeting. That’s why you were given the assignment of trying to secure it in the first place. It’s your moment of triumph. You have to take it.”

From the vicinity of the aerogel came the agonizingly stillborn response. “I don’t want it anymore.”

Hating himself, Toroni refused to let it, or her, go. Both were too important. “It’s not a question of you wanting or not wanting it. You have to do it because no one else can do it as well. This is a highly sensitive moment in the development of relations between our species and the thranx. Perhaps even a milestone. We won’t know until we see the fruits of our labors begin to blossom. The fruits of your labors, Fanielle. Do you really want to cast aside everything you’ve worked for here?”

“I’ve already cast it, Bernard. Find somebody else to go. Find somebody else to take my place.”

Swallowing determinedly, he leaned toward her, careful not to initiate a significant disturbance within the highly responsive aerogel. “Don’t you think, Fanielle, that if I felt someone, anyone else, was sufficiently qualified I would have assigned them to the task already? Before coming here to see you?”

Deep within, a certain component of her shattered self was pleased by the sincere words of a man she greatly respected. But like so much else that was Fanielle Anjou, that part of her was hiding now, isolated and shunted aside by the nightmare that had overwhelmed her life.

“I told you, Bernard. I don’t care. It’s not important anymore.”

He nodded slowly, even though she was not looking at him. Or at anything else. The ensuing silence lasted longer than its predecessor. Once again, it was the ambassador who broke it.

“Program failure. Transport capsule drive fields just don’t go into reverse. The system is replete with fail-safes—every one of which failed. The engineers are working on it, working hard. They’re good people, but they’re baffled. They cannot afford to be, because we must know what caused the accident. If we don’t know, then we cannot with any certainty prevent a repetition. Of the accident. If,” he concluded concisely, “it was an accident.”

It was enough to turn her head. “Bernard?”

Sertoa took his turn. “Fanielle, you know as well as any of us that there are elements, some of them with substantial backing, both among the thranx and our own kind who will do anything to prevent the kind of union between our species that the enlightened among us seek. I’m not talking about the great mass of undecideds on both sides. I’m talking about the kind of blatant, old-fashioned fanaticism we thought we had evolved beyond.”

Slowly, she digested what her colleague was saying. Contemplated it from an assortment of viewpoints. In the end, every one of them was equally ugly.

“You think someone deliberately reprogrammed that cargo capsule to reverse and smash into the one that was taking me to the airport?”

“We don’t know that.” Toroni was relieved to see some small flicker of alertness return to his junior colleague’s expression, even if it was thus far focused entirely on concern for something unconnected to professional interests. “At this point it is only speculation. But I am not the only one to have considered it. Azerick Authority is pondering the possibility with utmost seriousness. If, and I caution if, the hypothesis should turn out to have any basis in fact, it would mean that our entire modus here will have to undergo the most strict review. We will continue to press forward with our work, of course. More fiercely than ever. But we will have to do many things differently.”

She heard everything he said, but in manner muted. Her own thoughts were churning. “Somebody would kill a dozen innocent people just to get to me, to keep me from a stupid meeting?”

“Not stupid.” The strength of her response allowed the ambassador to employ a stronger tone of his own. “Highly important. Possible milestone.”

“And maybe it wasn’t someone,” Sertoa added. “Maybe it was some thing.” He eyed her sternly. “The thranx have their own fanatics, remember.”

“But to resort to killing a diplomat . . .” Her voice trailed away into disbelief.

“Why not?” Turning, Sertoa began pacing slowly, waving his hands to emphasize his words. “If successful, they set back our efforts until we can find someone else capable of achieving your kind of personal rapport with their kind. If discovered, word reaches Earth that thranx have carried out a mass killing of humans here on Hivehom. Either way, they achieve at least one of their ends.”

“Which is why,” Toroni went on, “no word of our suspicions is being allowed to go beyond Azerick. Officially, there was a programming failure. A transport accident. Nothing more. Unofficially, desperate unease is being bounced between worlds at high speed and without regard to the cost.”

She was silent for a moment, wrapped in a cocoon of conflicting concerns. “What will you do if the investigating authorities determine that the crash was no accident, and that thranx were responsible?”

Bernard Toroni had been in the service all his professional life, had ridden the currents of diplomatic ebb and flow until all the rough edges had been knocked off him long ago, leaving him polished and smooth. Nothing surprised him; nothing could crack his learned demeanor; nothing could get a grip on his emotions. For the first time since he could remember, maybe for the first time ever, he was shaken.

“I don’t know, Fanielle. I don’t think anybody does. The reaction on Earth, among the colonies . . .” He swallowed hard. “It would result in . . . a setback.”

She nodded, the movement a barely perceptible stirring against the aerogel. “If it’s true, then someone—” She glared disapprovingly at Sertoa. “—someone, will go to any length to keep me from meeting with Eint Carwenduved.”

Toroni’s face betrayed nothing. “To keep you from doing so, yes. You specifically, Fanielle.”

She gazed back at him evenly, more awake now than at any time since the two men had first entered the room. “You’re a very cunning man, Bernard Toroni.”

He shrugged, his face a perfect blank. “I’m a professional in the diplomatic service, Fanielle. Nothing more.”

She turned her gaze to the ceiling. It displayed a soundless, peaceful holo of drifting clouds. In the distance was a small rainbow. She did not see it, just as she no longer saw peace. That had been taken from her. Forever? She chose not to think about it. Forever was a very long time.

“How soon will they let me out of here?”

The ambassador’s tone was glib, controlled. “In a day or two, if you like. Then there will need to be a period of rest. You are one bipedal contusion from head to toe. But nothing significant was damaged. Nothing was broken.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” she whispered wearily. “So . . . I will follow through with the lie, and make the meeting. You must be pleased, Bernard.” Seeing the look on his face finally gave her the means to again consider the feelings of others. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair.”

“It doesn’t matter.” He rose from the side of the bed. “I’m used to it. It’s part of my job.” He hesitated briefly before continuing. Noting his superior’s expression, Sertoa nodded solemnly and left the room. “There is one other thing. At least you will no longer have to worry about lying when you refer to the Bryn’ja request.”

She did not reply: just stared up at him.

“The staff here knows nothing is broken or damaged because when you were brought in from the wreck you underwent the most thorough medical scan the facilities here are capable of rendering. I am more sorry than I can ever say, Fanielle, but there is no point in keeping it from you. Truth always seems to emerge before it is convenient for us to have it do so. When you meet with Eint Carwenduved you will be able to do so as someone who has not obtained an encounter on the basis of a prevarication.”

She examined the implications of his words from a distance. It only made her that much more determined to confound those who might have done this to her. To her, and to one other, and to a future that now would never have the chance to be.

Her voice as taut as duralloy stressed to the point of destruction, she gazed up from the bed out of damp eyes and asked him softly, “Do they know how long I’ve been pregnant?”