Star Song and Other Stories

The Art of War

You know how it ended, of course. Or at least you know the official version of how it ended, which isn't quite the same. I imagine all the parties involved would have preferred to completely bury that first incident; I know for my part that I was instructed in no uncertain terms to keep quiet about what I knew.

But you can't completely hush up a debacle that cost sixty-three men their lives.

Especially not when one of them was a Supreme Convocant of the United Ethnos of Humanity.

So you know more or less how it ended. It's time you learned how it began.

It began with my eighteenth birthday, and my parents' desire to do something really special for my nineteenth year. The Year of YouthJourneying, we called it on New Ararat: a brief interval between the end of Institute and the beginning of life as adults. Most of my friends were going the traditional routes: taking career-sample apprenticeships, joining volunteer groups, doing YouthJourney tours around New Ararat, or—for the more adventuresome—signing aboard starfreighters to travel the whole sector.

My parents outdid them all. Somehow, I still don't know how, they wangled me a

one-year appointment as aide to Magnell Sutherlan, Convocant from New Ararat to the Supreme Convocation of the UnEthHu. My friends were all kelly green with envy; naturally, I milked it shamelessly for all it was worth.

It didn't take long for the shine to wear off, though. Zurich was crowded and noisy, with a crime rate probably a thousand times that of our whole district back home. The Convocation Complex itself was huge, practically impossible not to get lost in, and populated by some of the most snidely condescending people I'd ever met. And Convocant Sutherlan, far from being a respected, sharp-edged lawmaker the way the newspages always portrayed him, was old, tired, and completely detached from what was going on. Just treading water, really, until this final term was over and he could go home.

It was not exactly an atmosphere that bred enthusiasm. As a result, whenever there was travel to be done—whether secure document delivery, repre-meetings, or personal errands—I was always the first of Sutherlan's aide corps to volunteer.

A fair percentage of those first few months were spent crisscrossing Earth in a

suborbital or hopping between various planets of the UnEthHu in one or another of Sutherlan's official half-wings.

And so it was that, four months into my tenure, I found myself two hundred parsecs from Earth on the Kailth world of Quibsh.

Everyone in the UnEthHu knows where Quibsh is now, of course, but back then even most professional politicians had never heard of the place. No real surprise; Quibsh was a fairly useless border world, with an unimpressive list of resources and an outer crust that was a staggering collection of tectonic instabilities.

The Kailth had put a couple of minor military outposts there to watch over a population of a few million hardy colonists, about half of whom resided in a single city in one of the more fertile valleys. The Kailth and UnEthHu had made contact about ten years previously, but with the Dynad's main attention focused on the ongoing Pindorshi trade disputes, we hadn't given the Kailth much more than passing notice.

The diplomatic corps had installed a one-man consulate in the main Quibsh city, where I was supposed to pick up some research documents Convocant Sutherlan had ordered as a favor to a constituent. The pilotcomp landed the half-wing behind the consulate—it had its own drop beacon—and I presented my ID and request to the consular agent, a wrinkled man named Clave Verst who, like Sutherlan, seemed to be marking time until retirement. He got me the documents, and I was preparing to head back to the half-wing when I took a second look at the request form and noticed a hand-written note asking me to also bring back a case of Kailth mixed cooking brandies. There wasn't a single shell of the stuff to be had in the consulate, the nearest potables dealer was a kilometer away, and Verst made it abundantly clear he wasn't about to waste his own time on such a

frivolous errand. So, armed with a fistful of detailed instructions and a stomachful of queasiness, I headed out alone.

The spider-web maze of streets was surprisingly crowded—I thought more than once that the entire population must have decided to go out walking or driving that afternoon—but I'd bumped shoulders with other species before and it wasn't as bad as I'd been afraid it would be. For a small fraction of the pedestrians I seemed to be a minor curiosity; for the rest, I was something to be ignored completely.

I had just turned what I hoped was the last corner when I spotted Tawni.

She was probably the last thing I would have expected to see out there among all those lizard-skinned, bumblebee-faced Kailth. A human woman, of medium height and slender build, with an exotically cut cascade of black hair that at the moment was obscuring most of her face as she leaned into the open engine compartment of what looked like an ancient Pemberkif Scroller. The vehicle was parked beside the curb, or else had summarily died there. On all sides, completely oblivious to her plight, streams of Kailth shuffled past, breaking around her like a river around a rock.

Protocol probably dictated that I call back to the consulate, report the situation, and then continue on with my errand while Verst handled it. But she was a human, and in trouble, and I was an aide to a UnEthHu Convocant. More importantly, I was nineteen, and what I could see of her looked pretty attractive. Working my way through the traffic, I headed over.

I got through the last rivulet of pedestrians and stepped to her side.

"Having some trouble?" I asked inanely.

She looked up, giving me my first look at a face that more than met my expectations: young and beautiful, in a dark and distinctly exotic way, though at the moment she was almost at the point of tears from the frustration of her situation. A delicate line—scar or tattoo, I couldn't tell which—arched almost invisibly from the bridge of her nose over her right eyebrow, curving around her cheekbone and past the corner of her lip to disappear into the dimple at the point of her chin. From one of the frontier Ridgeline worlds, I guessed, where humanity's races had been mixed in unusual combinations and body ornamentation could get a little bizarre.

And where, I belatedly remembered, Anglish was not always the language of choice. For a second she just gazed up at me, her face not seeming to register my question; and I was trying to figure out a Plan B when my words suddenly seemed to click. "Yes," she said. Her accent was soft and delicate and as exotic as the rest of her. "Can you help me?"

"I can try," I said, peering into the engine compartment. It was a Scroller, all right, though from the looks of it whoever had traded it to her had gotten the better end of the deal. I was just reaching in to check the motivor cables when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the pedestrian stream falter and looked up to see what was going on.

Rounding another corner, heading across the intersection, were a pair of Kailth warriors.

I'd seen pictures of Kailth warriors at the Convocation Complex, vids secretly taken by SkyForce Intelligence at the Chompre and TyTiernian pacifications near the edges of the Kailthaermil Empire. We hadn't tangled with them yet ourselves, but there was a widespread feeling in the Complex back rooms that it was just a

matter of time before we did. The Kailth controlled a lot of territory, with a

fair number of non-Kailth under their control, and that almost always spelled trouble.

Besides which—the more cynical argument went—the Pindorshi situation wouldn't last forever, and wars and conflicts were too politically useful for politicians to stay away from them for long.

Watching the SkyForce reports in the safety of a Zurich screening room, I had hoped those cynics were wrong. Standing there in the middle of a Quibsh street, I desperately hoped they were wrong. On telephoto vids, Kailth warriors were impressive; up close and personal, they were damn near terrifying. Armored up to their headcrests in full combat suits, walking in lockstep, they were straight out of a xenophobic newspage docu-diatribe. Or straight out of hell.

The two warriors spotted me at roughly the same time I spotted them, and in perfect unison they shifted direction toward us. Instinctively, I moved closer to the girl—some chivalric idea about sticking together, I suppose—and I threw her a quick glance to see how she was handling this.

And paused for a longer look. She was gazing at the warriors, but the look on her face wasn't the knee-shaking trepidation I was feeling. She was smiling, the tension lines in her face already starting to smooth out.

It was a look of relief. Maybe even adoration.

"You," one of the Kailth said in passable Anglish. "Human male. What are you doing?"

My tongue tangled momentarily over my teeth. "I—she's having trouble with her Scroller," I managed. "I stopped to help."

He held out his right hand. "Identify."

I fumbled out my ID folder and handed it over, wondering nervously whether a UnEthHu Convocation ID would be an asset or a liability here. My eyes drifted to the lumpy black weapon strapped to his left side, not much bigger than the 5mm slugkicker pistol I used to plink targets with when I was a kid. At its highest setting, this particular sidearm could allegedly drop a two-story brick building with a single shot.

The warrior studied the ID for what seemed like an inordinately long time.

Then, closing it, he handed it back and turned his insectine gaze on the woman.

"Does he bother you, Citizen-Three?" he demanded.

"Not at all, Warrior-Citizen-One," she said, bowing her head. "It is as he said: he paused to help me."

I stared at her, suddenly almost oblivious to the warriors. Citizen-Three?

"Do you wish our assistance?" the warrior continued.

The girl looked at me. "No," she said. "I will be fine. Thank you for your concern."

The warrior threw one more long look at me. Then, in lockstep once more, the two of them passed us by and disappeared down another street.

I looked at the girl, my stomach churning. "He called you Citizen-Three," I said. "Citizen-Three of what?"

"Of the Kailthaermil Empire," she said, as if it was obvious. "I and my people are third-citizens." She reached up and touched the tattoo line on her face.

"Your people," I said, dimly realizing I was starting to blither like an idiot.

But I couldn't help it. "But you're human. Aren't you?"

"Yes," she said. "My people were saved from invaders by the Kailthaermil many years ago. For that we will forever be grateful to them."

I frowned harder... and then, with a sudden jolt, I got it.

She and her people were verlorens.

"Would you be willing," I asked carefully, "to take me to your people?"

For the first time a shadow of uncertainty seemed to cross her face. But then the shadow passed, and she smiled. "Of course," she said.

"Thank you." I cleared my throat. "By the way, my name's Stane Markand."

"Stane Markand," she repeated, bowing her head as she had toward the Kailth warriors. "I am Tawnikakalina."

"Tawnikakalina," I said. It didn't sound nearly as melodious as when she said it. But with any luck, I figured I might just have a chance to practice. We spent the next half hour kluge-rigging the Scroller back to health, then nursing it over to the consulate. There I had it loaded aboard my half-wing, informing the pilotcomp and Consular Agent Verst that I'd be making one more stop on Quibsh and postponing my departure from the planet for a day or two.

The pilotcomp, programmed with flexibility in mind, took the change in plans in stride. Verst obviously couldn't have cared less.

It was about two hundred kilometers to where Tawni's people had been settled in a scattering of small villages beneath a line of squat volcanoes. We put down on a section of lava flow near Tawni's village, and by the time we had the Scroller rolled out, a small mob of her people had gathered around the half-wing to see what was going on. She explained the situation to them in a few musical sentences, and with a dozen enthusiastic young men pushing the Scroller ahead of them, we all went down to her village.

I don't know how widespread the term verloren ever became around the UnEthHu.

It was mostly an academic word, borrowed from the Old German word for lost, that was used to describe the phenomenon of Earth-born human beings or their relics discovered dozens or even hundreds of parsecs away from Earth with no apparent way for them to have gotten there. Genetic and linguistic studies were inconclusive, but they suggested that the original ancestors of the groups had left Earth some six to ten thousand years earlier. Whether the colonies had been deliberately planted by some unknown starfaring race, or whether the verlorens were the equivalent of white rats discarded after an experiment, no one knew.

There were thirty-one known archaeological digs that showed evidence of a long-past human presence, another dozen or so scatterings of primitive humans at Iron Age level or below, and three genuinely thriving verloren societies.

With Tawni's people, I'd apparently discovered a fourth.

"Our history on Sagtt'a goes back to the Great Rain of Fire," she explained as she showed me around her village. "Our ancestors sought refuge from the fire inside a strange mountain. When they came out, the land and the stars had changed."

I nodded. Two of the other verloren cultures also had a Rain of Fire in their histories. "That must be when you were taken from Earth."

"Yes, though it was many generations before we realized what had actually happened," Tawni said. "Not until after the first invasion."

"The Kailth?"

She shook her head, her hair shimmering in the sunlight with the movement.

"No, the invaders were called the Orraci Matai," she said. "Large creatures with many fish-like fins. They occupied Sagtt'a for four generations before they were overthrown by the Xa, who ruled us for thirty years before they were in turn overthrown by the Phashiskar. They stayed three generations before they were conquered by the Baal'ariai, in a terrible battle that killed a quarter of our people."

It was an old, old pattern: innocent people caught in a trade route or strategic power position, being fought over by every ambitious empire-builder who came along. "So the Kailth are just the latest batch of conquerors?"

"The Kailthaermil are not conquerors," she said. "They are liberators. They forced the Aoeemme from Sagtt'a, but then pulled their own warriors back to orbiting stations and proclaimed that our people were once again free to rule ourselves."

"Ah." Another old pattern, though one that was far less frequently seen: conquerors who were smart enough to allow local self-rule in exchange for cooperation and the payment of tribute. It was more efficient than trying to run everything directly, and you could always go in and stomp them if they tried pushing their autonomy too far. "This was in exchange for certain rules of conduct from your society?"

"All societies have rules of conduct," she pointed out.

"Of course," I said. "How much tribute do you pay each year?"

She stopped and frowned up at me. "Why do you persist in thinking ill of the Kailthaermil?" she asked. "Have they done ill to you?"

"Well, no, not exactly," I had to admit. "Actually, we don't know all that much about them yet. But we know they've conquered a large number of other races and peoples, and we've seen enough conquerors to know how they usually behave."

"But you do not know the Kailthaermil," she insisted. "They do not demand our lives or our property. Only some of our artwork. And for this they give us safety."

Aha, I thought, there it is. Artwork. "What artwork?" I asked.

She pointed toward a squat volcano with a wide crater. "I will show you.

Come."

I was not, to say the least, thrilled at the prospect of climbing into a volcano crater, particularly one that was smoldering restlessly with sulfur and the occasional burst of steam from some vent or other. Tawni's people obviously felt differently: there were already five others moving briskly around the crater at various tasks as we entered through a gap in the side of the cone.

"This is our curing chamber," Tawni said at my side. "Over there—" she pointed to a rough shelf along one side of the wall—"are our calices."

I stared at them, forgetting the sulfur corroding my lungs, forgetting even that I was standing inside a volcano. The calices were that riveting. Roughly spherical in shape, about twenty centimeters across each, they were composed of intricate twistings of brilliant gold metal fibers interwoven with equally slender twistings of some richly dark-red material. There were eight of them lined up on the shelf, with the kind of small variations that said they were individually handmade.

"Come," Tawni said softly, taking my arm. "Come and see."

We walked across the uneven rock to the shelf. Up close, I could see that the dark red strands were some kind of wood or plant fiber, not quite as flexible as the metal wires but with a stiffness that introduced a textural counterpoint into the design. At the very center of the woven threads was some kind of crystalline core that reflected the gold and red that swirled around it, as well as adding a pale blue-white to the color scheme.

It took me a while to find my voice. "They're beautiful," I said. My voice came out a husky whisper.

"Thank you," Tawni said. She took a step closer to the shelf and gently ran a hand down around the top of one of them. "They are unique, Stane, among all the worlds. Or at least those worlds visited by the Kailthaermil. The wood is from a

tree that grows in only five places on Sagtt'a, and the crystals and metal are nearly as rare. Each calix can take a crafter a year to create."

She lowered her hand, almost reluctantly. "But the result is so beautiful. So very beautiful."

I nodded. "And this is what the Kailth take as their tribute?"

"They take a few," Tawni said. "No more than a tenth of those we make." Her face took on a slightly stubborn expression. "And for this small price they give us protection from all who would invade us, and leave us otherwise in peace. Do you still wish to speak ill of them?"

As tributes went, I had to admit, this was a pretty minor one. "No," I conceded.

"Good." The stubbornness vanished and she smiled, the sun coming out from behind a threatening storm cloud. "Then let us go back to the village. The Elders will wish to speak with you." I wound up spending nearly two days in Tawni's village. Her people were amazingly open and trusting, willing to let me see anything I wanted and to answer any question I could think to ask. This group had only recently been brought to Quibsh from their world of Sagtt'a, I learned, though the Kailth had previously set up other human colonies on worlds that had the necessary volcanic activity for the calix curing process. Among the six hundred people in this colony were twelve calix artisans and twenty apprentices, of whom Tawni was apparently one of the most promising.

It was clear that there was an enormous amount we needed to learn about these people, but it was equally clear that I had neither the time nor the expertise to handle the job. So after those two days, I reluctantly told Tawni I had to leave. She thanked me again for rescuing her from her balky Scroller—which the village mechanics still hadn't gotten working yet—extracted a promise from me to come back if I could, and offered me a parting gift.

A calix.

"No," I protested, holding the sculpture up to the sunlight. It wasn't nearly as heavy as I would have expected, with a pleasantly tingling sensation where I held it. "Tawni, I couldn't possibly take this. It wouldn't be right."

"Why not?" she asked, that stubborn look of hers threatening to cloud her face again. "You are my friend. Can a friend not give a friend a gift?"

"Of course," I said. "But won't the Kailth be angry with you?"

"Why would they?" she countered. "They will receive those they are due. They do not own all calices, Stane. Nor do they own us."

"I know, but—" I floundered. "But this is just too much. I didn't do enough for you to justify a gift like this."

"Do you then reduce friendship to a balance of plus and minus?" she asked quietly. "That does not sound like a friendship to be cherished."

I sighed. But she had me, and we both knew it. And to be honest, I didn't really want to give up the calix anyway. "All right," I said. "I accept, with thanks.

And I will be sure to come visit you again some day."

It was a four-day voyage back to Earth. I spent a fair amount of that time dictating my report on this new verloren colony, adding my thoughts and impressions to the running record the half-wing's sensors had taken. I spent an equal amount of time studying the calix.

I'd seen right away, of course, the ethereal beauty that had been frozen into the sculpture. But it wasn't until I began spending time with the calix that realized that there was far more to it than I'd realized. There was the metal-work, for starters: a filigree of threads far more intricate than it had appeared at first sight. I found I could spend hours just tracing various lines from start to finish with my eyes, then seeing if I could track them backwards again without getting sidetracked by one of the other loops or branchings.

The intertwined wood fibers were just as fascinating. Virtually never the same color twice, they had a varying texture that ranged from smooth and warm to sandpapery and oddly cool. After the first day, my searching hands found two spots on opposite sides that seemed to particularly fit my palms and fingertips, and from that point on I nearly always held the calix that way.

Then there was the crystal that peeked out from the center. Like the wood and metal, it never seemed to look quite the same way twice. From one angle it would look like nothing more esoteric than a lump of quartz; from another it might seem to be pale sapphire or diamond or even delicately stained glass.

Sometimes even when I returned to the same angle the crystal would look different than it had before.

But the most enigmatic part of all was the way the calix hummed at me.

It was a day before I even noticed the sound, and two more before I finally figured out that what it was doing was resonating to the sound of my voice.

Like everything else about the sculpture, it never seemed to react quite the same way twice, though I spent a good two hours at one point talking, humming, and singing as I tried to pin down a pattern. If there was one there, I never found it.

I reached Zurich, explained my delay to Convocant Sutherlan, filed my report, and sat back to wait for the inevitable flurry of attention that the discovery of a new verloren culture would surely stir up.

The inevitable didn't happen. Oh, there was a ripple of interest from the academic community, and a couple of government-endorsed artists stopped by to look briefly and condescendingly at the calix. But for the most part the Supreme Convocation could only come up with the political equivalent of a distracted pat on the head. With the Pindorshi situation still dominating the firstlines in the newspages, the Convocants were apparently not interested in anything so mundane as a long-lost human colony.

I can't tell you how frustrating it was, at least at first. This was, after all, probably the only shot I would ever have at interstellar fame. But gradually began to realize that all this official indifference was probably for the best.

The alternative would have meant a horde of Convocant aides and factfinders descending like locusts on Quibsh; and having worked with some of those aides, that wasn't something I would wish on anyone. Particularly not the friendly, naive people of Tawni's village.

So I did my best to philosophically put it behind me, decided to concentrate instead on finding a way to get back to Quibsh some day soon, and settled back to endure the remainder of my appointment.

Until the day, two weeks later, when Convocant Lantis Devaro came into the office.

The newspages painted Sutherlan as an elder statesman, and they lied. They painted Devaro as an aspiring future leader, and lied again, only in the opposite direction. To say Devaro was aspiring was like saying a Siltech Brahma bulldozer can push dirt around. Devaro was a charismatic man; clever, powerful, and almost pathologically ambitious. Rumor was that his ultimate goal was to challenge the blood-line tradition of the Dynad long enough to claim one of the two seats for himself, something that had never happened in two centuries of Dynad rule. The private backrooms consensus was that he had an even-money chance of making it.

I don't know what exactly he came to Sutherlan's office for that day. In hindsight, though, it was obviously just a pretext anyway. Even as he announced himself at the outer receptionist's station his eyes were surveying the aide room; and when he emerged from Sutherlan's private offices ten minutes later, he crossed directly to my desk.

"So," he said as I scrambled to my feet, "you're the one."

"Sir?" I asked, not entirely sure what he meant and not daring to make any assumptions.

"The young man who discovered that new verloren group," he amplified. "Good work, that and excellent follow-up."

"Thank you, sir," I said, trying not to stutter. Praise for underlings was almost unheard of in Convocant Sutherlan's office.

"You're quite welcome." Devaro nodded toward the calix, sitting on a corner of my desk where I placed it every morning when I came in. "I take it that's the sculpture you brought back?"

"Yes, sir," I said. "It's called a calix. Uh... would you like...?"

"Thank you," he said, crossing around behind the desk. Sliding a hand beneath the calix—he was wearing informal daytime gloves, I noticed—he picked it up.

For a long moment he gazed at and into it. I stood silently, fighting the urge to plead with him to be careful. He turned it around one way and then the other, then set it back on its stand. "Interesting," he said, turning to me again.

"Your report said the Kailth accept these as part of the verlorens' tribute."

"According to Tawni, it's all they take," I told him, breathing a little easier now that the calix was safe. "They must like art."

"Yes," he murmured, gazing at me with a thoughtful intensity that made me feel distinctly uncomfortable. "Interesting. Well, good day."

"Good day, Convocant Devaro," I said.

I watched him stride out, feeling the other aides' looks of envy on the back of my neck as I basked in the warm glow of triumph, small though it might be.

Finally, someone in authority who'd actually noted and appreciated what I'd done.

The warm glow lasted the rest of the day, through the evening, and right up until I opened my eyes the next morning.

To find the calix gone from my night table. There were four separate reception stations along the approach to Devaro's inner offices. I strode past all four of them without stopping, to the consternation of the various receptionists, and was about two steps ahead of Convocation Security when I shoved open the ornate doors and stomped into Devaro's presence.

"Ah—there you are," he said before I could even get a word out. "Come in; I've been expecting you."

"Where is it?" I demanded, starting toward him.

"It's perfectly safe," he assured me, his eyes shifting to a spot over my shoulder. "No, it's all right—let him be. And leave us."

I looked behind me, to see two guards reluctantly lower their tranglers and back out of the room. "Now," Devaro said as they closed the doors. "You seem upset."

"You had my calix stolen from my apartment," I said, turning back to glare at him. "Don't try to deny it."

His eyebrows lifted slightly, as if denial was the furthest thing from his mind.

"I had it borrowed," he corrected. "I wanted to run a few tests on it, and that seemed the quietest way to go about it."

My heart momentarily seized up. "What kind of tests? What are you doing to it?"

"It's perfectly safe," Devaro said again, standing up. From across the office a

door opened and two white-jacketed women stepped into the room. "Don't worry, we'll return it to you soon. While we're waiting, we'd like to run some tests on you."

"What sort of tests?" I asked, eying the doctors warily.

"Painless ones, I assure you," Devaro said, crossing to me and taking my arm in a friendly but compelling grip. "You'll need to sign some forms first—the doctors will show you."

"But I'm supposed to be working," I protested as he led me over to the door where the doctors waited. "Convocant Sutherlan is expecting me to be at my desk—"

"I've already taken care of Convocant Sutherlan," Devaro said. "Come, now.

You won't feel a thing." I didn't, but that was probably only because the first thing they did when we got to the examination room was put me to sleep.

I woke to find myself lying on a rolltable moving down a deserted corridor.

There was an empty growling in my stomach, an unpleasant tingling in my fingertips and forehead, and a strange difficulty in focusing my eyes. One of the two doctors was riding along with me, watching my face as I came to, and considered asking her where we were going. But I didn't feel like talking, and anyway her expression didn't encourage questions.

A few minutes later we passed through a door and I found myself back in Devaro's office. The Convocant was sitting in his chair, feet propped up informally, gazing at his desk display. "Ah—there you are," he said as the rolltable crossed to him. "That will be all, Doctor."

"Yes, sir," she said, waiting until the rolltable had come to a halt beside the desk before stepping off and disappearing back through the door.

"It's been a long day," Devaro commented. "How are you feeling?"

"A little groggy," I said, carefully sitting up on the edge of the rolltable.

There was a moment of dizziness, but it passed quickly. "How long was I out?"

"As I said, all day," Devaro said, nodding toward his window. To my shock, I saw it was black with night. "It's a little after eight-thirty."

No wonder my stomach was growling. "Can I go home now?" I asked.

"You'll want to eat first," Devaro said. "I'm having some food sent up. Tell me, have you ever had a brainscan done before?"

"I don't think so," I said. "Is that what they did to me in there?"

"Oh, they did a little of everything," he said. "A complete brainscan, including a neural network mapping and a personality matrix profile. Do you always hold the calix at the same spots?"

"Usually," I said. "Not always. Why?"

"Did your friend Tawnikakalina ever tell you how she and her people learned Anglish?"

The abrupt changes of subject were starting to make my head hurt. "She didn't know," I told him. "All she knew was that the Kailth had some of her group learn the language when they decided to set up a colony on Quibsh."

Devaro's lip twisted in a grimace. "It was the Church," he said, spitting the word out like a curse. "One of those illegal little under-the-table deals they're always making with alien governments. The Kailth apparently took a group of priestians in to Sagtt'a a few years ago to inspect the verloren colony."

"I see," I said, keeping my voice neutral. The Convocation and Church were always going head-to-head on something, usually with the Church taking the government to task for violating some basic humanitarian principle. The fact that the majority of UnEthHu citizens generally supported the Church on those issues irritated the Convocants no end. "So then you already knew about those verlorens."

"Hardly," Devaro growled. "The Church hadn't deigned to tell us about them. I did some backtracking after your report came in and was able to put the pieces together. Tell me, how does the calix make you feel?"

Another abrupt change of topic. With an effort, I tried to think. "It's soothing, mostly. Helps me relax when I'm tense."

"Does it ever do the opposite?" he asked. "Invigorate you when you're tired?"

"Well..." I frowned. "Actually, yes. It does, sometimes."

"In other words," Devaro said, his eyes hard on me, "it creates two completely opposite effects. Doesn't that strike you as a little strange?"

It was odd, come to think about it. "I suppose so," I said, a little lamely.

"I guess I just assumed it was mirroring my moods somehow."

He smiled, a tight humorless expression. "Not mirroring them," he said softly.

"Creating them."

The skin on the back of my neck began to crawl. "What do you mean?"

He reached over and swiveled his desk display around to face me. There was a graph there, with a bewildering array of multicolored curves. "We did a full analysis of the calix," he said. "Paying particular attention to the places where you say you always hold it. We took some five-micron core samples from the wood fibers there; and it turns out they have an interesting and distinctive substratum chemical composition."

His face hardened. "A composition which, after it's been run through the proper chemo-mathematical transforms, shows a remarkable resemblance to the neural network pattern we took from you today."

I didn't know what half those words meant. But they sounded ominous. "What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means that the 'gift' your friend Tawnikakalina gave you isn't a gift," he said bluntly. "It's a weapon."

I gazed out the window at the black sky over the city, my empty stomach feeling suddenly sick. A weapon. From Tawni? "No," I said, looking back at the Convocant. "No, I can't believe that, sir. Tawni wouldn't do something like that to me. She couldn't."

He snorted contemptuously. "This from your long and exhaustive experience with different cultures, no doubt?"

"No, but—"

"You'll be trying to tell me next that it's the Kailth who are behind it all," he went on. "And that the verloren artists themselves have no idea whatsoever what it is they've created with these calices of theirs."

I grimaced. I had indeed been wondering exactly along those lines. Hearing it put that way, it did sound vaguely ridiculous.

"No, it's a grand plot, all right," Devaro went on darkly. "And if the Kailth are taking ten percent of the verlorens' calices every year, they must be using them pretty extensively. Maybe as a prelude to all their conquests." He shook his head wonderingly. "Artwork used as a weapon. What an insidious concept."

I shook my head. "I'm sorry, but I still don't understand. What is the calix doing?"

Devaro sighed, swiveling his display back around toward him. "We don't know for sure. If we had a brainscan record for you prior to your trip to Quibsh—but we don't. All we have to go on is this." He waved a hand at the display. "And what this says is that, through your contact with the wood fibers, the calix is changing you into something that matches its own pre-set matrix. Turning you into God alone knows what."

The room seemed suddenly very cold. "But I don't feel any different," I protested. "I mean... I should feel something. Shouldn't I?"

He leaned back in his seat and steepled his fingertips together. "You ever try to cook a frog?" he asked. "Probably not. Doubt anyone has, really, but it makes a good story. They say that if you drop a live frog into a pot of boiling water, it'll hop right out again. But if you put it in cold water and slowly heat the pot to boiling, the frog just sits there until it cooks. It can't detect the slow temperature change. You see?"

I saw, all right. "Is that what the calix is doing? Slow-cooking me?"

He shrugged. "It's trying. Whether it's going to succeed... that we don't yet know."

The room fell silent again. I stared out the window, mentally taking inventory of my mind, the way you would poke around your skin checking for bruises. I still couldn't find anything that felt strange.

But then, maybe the calix hadn't heated the water up enough. Yet. "Why me?" I asked.

"A mistake, obviously," Devaro said. "The Kailth probably assumed you'd give the calix to Convocant Sutherlan instead of keeping it for yourself. Or else they thought you were more important than you really are, though how they could make that kind of blunder I don't know."

"So what do we do?" I asked. "Do we—" I hesitated "—destroy the calix?"

He eyed me closely. "Is that what you want?"

"I—" I broke off, the quick answer sticking unexpectedly in my throat. Of course we should destroy it—the thing was clearly dangerous. And yet, I felt oddly reluctant to make such a decision. It was such a magnificent piece of art.

And it had been a gift from Tawni.

"Actually, it's a moot point," Devaro said into my indecision. "I'm not sure destroying it would do any good. The places where you hold the calix have clearly had the greatest effect on you; but you said yourself you've touched other spots on it, so you've probably already picked up at least some of the programming embedded there."

Programming. The word sent a shiver up my back. "What are we going to do?"

"Three things," Devaro said. "First of all, we don't panic. You've been affected, but we're on to them now, so we can keep an eye on you. Second, we need to get more information on these calices in general." He cocked an eyebrow.

"Which means you're going to have to go back to Quibsh and get us some more of them."

I felt my mouth drop open. "Back to Quibsh?"

"You have to," Devaro said, his voice quiet but compelling. "You've met the people there—you're the only one who can pretend it's just a social visit.

Moreover, they gave you a calix, so it's reasonable you'd be back to buy more as gifts."

This was coming a little too fast. "Gifts?"

"Certainly." Devaro smiled slyly. "What better way to guarantee their cooperation than to tell them you want calices to give to prominent members of the Convocation?"

There was a tone at the door, and a rollcart came in with two covered dishes on it. "Ah—dinner has arrived," Devaro announced, standing up and pointing the rollcart toward one side of the room where a bench table was now unfolding itself from the wall. "Let's eat before it gets cold."

"Yes, sir," I said, sliding off the rolltable and heading over. The delectable aromas rising from the plates made my stomach hurt even more. "You said there were three things we were going to do."

"Yes, I did," he said, setting the plates onto opposite ends of the table.

"The third thing is for us to learn exactly what the calix's programming does.

Unfortunately, core samples and structural analyses can get us only so far.

Which leaves only one practical approach."

I nodded. I'd already guessed this one. "You want me to keep the calix," I said.

"And let it keep doing whatever it's doing to me."

"We'll start that phase as soon as you get back from Quibsh," Devaro said. "But don't worry, we'll be with you every step of the way. We'll take a complete brainscan once a week—more often if it seems justified—as well as monitoring your general health."

It made sense, I supposed. It was also about as unpleasant a prospect as I'd ever faced in my whole life. "What about my work?"

"This is your work from now on," Devaro said. "You're on my staff now—I made the arrangements with Sutherlan earlier today."

"I see," I said, walking over to the table. The aromas didn't smell quite so good anymore.

"You have to do this, Markand," Devaro said quietly. It was, as near as I could remember, the first time he'd ever called me by my name. "It's the only way we're going to get a handle on this Kailth plot. The only way to protect the UnEthHu."

I sighed. "Patriotism. You found my weak spot, all right."

"It's a weak spot many of us have," Devaro said. He gestured to the table.

"Come; let's eat. We still have a great many things to discuss." Four days later, I was back on Quibsh.

I'd spent the whole trip worrying about how I was going to hide from Tawni the sudden change in the way I now perceived her and her people. No longer as friends, but as enemies.

Fortunately, the issue never came up. I'd barely stepped out of the half-wing into the late afternoon sunlight when Tawni was there in front of me, all but knocking me over as she threw herself into an enthusiastic full-body hug, chattering away in my ear in an exuberant jumble of Anglish and her own language. When she finally broke free and took my hand a half dozen of her people had joined us, and amid a general flurry of greetings we all tromped together down to the village. By the time we got there, I found myself slipping back into the old friendly, easygoing mode.

But only on the surface. Beneath the smiles and pleasantries I was on nervous and cautious guard, seeing everything here with new eyes. Behind every verloren face I now searched for evidence of hidden cunning; beneath every word strained to hear a tell-tale echo of deceit.

And yet, even as I tried to keep Devaro's stern face in front of me as inspiration, I could feel doubts draining my resolve away. Either their deceit was so ingrained, so expertly hidden that I couldn't detect even a breath of it, or else Devaro's assessment about them was wrong. Perhaps they were indeed just as they appeared, open and honest and innocent. Perhaps they really didn't know what the calices did, or else the programming aspect was something the Kailth had covertly introduced into the original design.

Or perhaps it was that same programming that was the true source of my doubts.

The calix, whispering to its frog that the water wasn't warm at all.

It was an hour before the last of the greeters drifted away. I was feeling a little squeamish about being alone with Tawni, not at all sure I could fake the friendship and affection I'd once felt for her. Which I still wanted to feel for her. Fortunately, that moment was put off by her wish to show me the changes that had taken place in the fruit tree grove bordering the village while we still had the afternoon light.

"I am so pleased you came back to see us," she commented as she led me along a

twisting path between the trees. "You had said you might not be able to return for a long time."

"Things just happened to work out this way," I said, impressed in spite of my dour mood at what had happened to the grove. Once little more than branches and pale green leaves, the trees had exploded all over into brilliant, multicolored flowers.

"I'm glad they did," Tawni said, taking my arm. "I was sorry to see you go."

"I was sorry to leave," I said, covering her hand with my own and feeling what was left of my resolve weakening again. Tawni was only my age, eighteen years old—surely she wasn't this accomplished a liar already. Besides, she was only an apprentice calix artisan. It would make sense for her leaders to hide the deeper secrets of their agenda from her until they'd confirmed both her skill and her dedication.

A small part of my mind told me that was rationalization. But suddenly I didn't really care. Tawni was there beside me, warm and affectionate, and there was simply no way I could believe she was my enemy. Whatever the Kailth had programmed the calix to do to me, I knew she would stand beside me in fighting it.

And if I lost that fight, that same small part reminded me soberly, at least Convocant Devaro would have the final data he wanted.

Speaking of Devaro, it was time I got down to the task he'd sent me here to do.

"As a matter of fact," I said, "it was your parting gift that's responsible for me being back so soon."

"Then I am even more pleased I gave it to you," she said cheerfully. "How did this happen?"

"Well, of course I showed it to everyone in my office and around the Convocation," I said, a fresh twinge of guilt poking at me. I'd convinced myself that Tawni was on my side; and now here I was, lying to her. "They all thought it was beautiful, of course."

"I am honored."

"Anyway, some of them wanted to know how they could get one for themselves," pushed ahead. "One of them—Convocant Devaro—asked me to come back and see if they were for sale."

"I am certain that can be arranged," Tawni said, turning us onto another path that led deeper into the grove. "Come, we will ask permission."

"Permission?" I asked, frowning, as she led us around a particularly bushy tree.

"Who in here do we need to—?"

I broke off, my breath catching in my throat as we stepped into a small clearing. In the center was a small cookstove, with something flat and gray sizzling on the grill-work at its top. Arranged in a neat circle around it were a half dozen sleepbags, with antenna-like posts sticking out of the ground beside each one.

And standing in a line between the ring of sleepbags and the cookstove, facing our direction, were six Kailth warriors.

I froze. It was probably the worst, most guilty-looking thing I could have done, but I couldn't help it. I froze right there to the spot, Tawni's grip on my arm bringing her up short as well. She blinked at me, obviously bewildered by my reaction, and tried to pull me forward—

"You," one of the Kailth said. "Human male. Come."

I wanted to run. Desperately. To run back to the half-wing and get the hell out of there.

But they were all wearing those lumpy sidearms, the ones that could bring down a

two-story building with one shot. So instead I let Tawni pull me across the clearing to them.

"What do you wish here?" the warrior demanded when I was standing right in front of him.

"He is my friend, Warrior-Citizen-One," Tawni said. "He would like to purchase some of our calices."

There was a long moment of silence. "You were on Quibsh before," the warrior said at last. "You are a clerk to Convocant Magnell Sutherlan."

"Yes, that's right," I managed. "I mean, I was. I'm working for Convocant Lantis Devaro now."

"Why do you clerk now for Convocant Lantis Devaro?"

"He hired me away from Convocant Sutherlan." I had a flash of inspiration—"He was the only Convocant who was really interested in finding out more about Tawni's people. Since I'd met them, he thought I could be of help."

There was another silence. I felt the sweat collecting on my forehead, wondering if the Kailth was suspicious or merely having difficulty sorting through the Anglish. "Were you?" he asked.

Was I helpful? What exactly did he mean by that? "I tried to be," I stammered.

"I—he did send me back here to see them."

"And to purchase their calices."

"Yes," I said, bracing myself. This was going to be risky, but it might just add the necessary bit of verisimilitude to my story. "He was very upset when I refused to sell him the one Tawni gave me," I told him. "I told him it was a gift, and that I wouldn't give it up under any circumstances."

The warrior eyed me, and I held my breath. If the possessiveness I really did feel for Tawni's calix was part of its programming, then the Kailth should conclude that it was doing its job and let me go about my business.

And apparently, it worked. "How many calices does Convocant Devaro wish to purchase?" the warrior asked.

I started breathing again. "He would like to buy three or four," I said.

"Though that would depend on the price—he only gave me twenty thousand to spend. He wants to give them as gifts."

The warrior turned to his comrades and said something in the Kailth language.

One of them answered, and for a moment they conversed back and forth. Then the first warrior turned back to face me. "He may have three," he announced. "They shall be gifts, without payment required."

Gifts. At least, I thought, the Kailth had the class not to require the UnEthHu to pay for its own destruction. "Thank you," I said. "You are most generous."

"The generosity is not for you," the warrior said. "Nor for Convocant Devaro.

It is for this citizen-three who calls you friend."

It was a line, of course, something to allay any suspicions I might have about getting such valuable artwork for free. But just the same, it dug another sharp edge of guilt into me. Tawni had indeed called me a friend to her overlords, and here I was using her against them.

But then, the Kailth were using me as a pawn, too. It all came out even.

Maybe.

Tawni bowed to them. "I am honored, Warrior-Citizen-One," she said. "Thank you."

"It is our pleasure," the warrior said. "You may take the human male to where he may choose."

She bowed again and pulled gently on my arm, and together we turned away and left the clearing. It wasn't until we were out of the grove and heading up the slope of the volcano that she spoke. "You still think ill of the Kailthaermil," she said quietly.

My first impulse was to deny it. But I'd done enough lying for one day. "I don't trust them, Tawni," I told her. "They're conquerors. Who's to say they aren't going to take a shot at the UnEthHu next?"

"But you are not like the others they have fought against," Tawni said. "You do not enslave other peoples, nor do you seek to impose your will on them."

That was true enough, I supposed. Preoccupied with our own internal squabblings, the UnEthHu generally ignored the alien races we came across except to get them involved in the arcane labyrinth of our commerce. "You weren't bothering anyone on Sagtt'a either," I pointed out. "Yet you have Kailth war platforms orbiting overhead."

"That is not the same," she insisted, shaking her head in exasperation. "The stations are there for our protection." She made a clicking sound in her throat.

"You choose not to see. But someday you will. Someday the Kailthaermil will prove their true intentions."

"Yes," I murmured. "I'm sure they will. Tell me, what were those warriors doing in the grove?"

"They have brought a new shipment to us," Tawni said, still sounding a little cross with me. "They will stay another few days before departing, and prefer to sleep outdoors."

Bivouac practice? "Why in the grove?"

She shrugged. "I am told they enjoy the scent of the flowers."

I stared at her. "You're kidding."

"Why should I be?" she countered, throwing a puzzled look up at me. "Can Kailthaermil not enjoy the small things of life as well as you or I?"

"I suppose so," I conceded. "It's just not something I would have pictured warriors doing."

"The Kailthaermil are not like other warriors," Tawni said. "Someday you will see."

We reached the volcano and went in through the crack in the cone... and for the second time that day I found myself stopping short in shock. There on the wall shelves, where a few weeks ago there had been only eight calices, were now nearly fifty of the sculptures. "Tawni—those calices," I said stupidly, pointing at them. "Where did they come from?"

"That is what the Kailthaermil brought," she said, as if it was obvious.

"They believe this volcano to have unusually good curing characteristics. They have decided to test this by bringing calices here from other artisan colonies."

"I see," I said, getting my feet moving again. "You've never told me how long the curing process takes."

"They will cure for fifteen days," she said. "When they are done, the Kailthaermil will bring more in. They say the complete test will require a hundred days and three hundred calices."

"I see," I said, gazing uneasily at the glittering sculptures. Three hundred calices, suddenly and conveniently moved here to a minor border world.

A border world which the Dynad and Convocation just happened to be paying virtually no attention to. Coincidence? Or could the Kailth plan be further along than Devaro realized?

"Will you choose your three calices now?" Tawni asked as I hesitated. "Or shall we spend a pleasant evening together first, and a night of sleep with the others, and you may choose in the morning?"

With an effort, I shook off the sense of dread. If the Kailth were planning these calices for a prelude to invasion...

But what difference could a single night make? Besides, it occurred to me that if Devaro proved the calices were weapons, this would likely be my last trip back here.

My last chance to see Tawni.

"Morning will be soon enough," I told her, turning us around again. "Let's go back." In the morning I selected my three calices, wearing gloves while handling them as Devaro had instructed, and in a flurry of good-byes and farewell hugs I left Quibsh.

Devaro was grimly pleased with my report and his new prizes. "Three hundred of them, you say," he commented, gazing at the three calices lined up on his desk.

"Interesting. Did any of the other verlorens seem upset that Tawnikakalina told you about that?"

"I didn't hear her mention it to anyone," I said. "I know I didn't say anything.

But don't forget the Kailth themselves sent me to the volcano to pick out your gifts."

"Waving the red flag under our noses," Devaro grunted, running a gloved finger thoughtfully along one of the metal strands in the middle calix. "Or else Tawnikakalina and the Kailth both assumed you were sufficiently under your own calix's influence that they could do or say anything in your presence without you noticing."

I shifted my shoulders uncomfortably beneath my jacket. In Tawni's presence I couldn't think of her as a threat. In Devaro's, I couldn't seem to think of her as anything but. "Could they have been right?" I asked. "Could the calix have made me forget something significant?"

"If so, it won't be forgotten for long," Devaro said. "I've scheduled you for another brainscan for tomorrow morning. If there are any suppressed memories from the trip, they'll dig them out."

"A brainscan can do that?" I asked uneasily. That wasn't what they'd told us about brainscans in Institute bio class.

"Of course," Devaro said. "We can pull out strong or recent memories, personality tendencies—everything that makes you who you are. That's why it's called complete." He lifted an eyebrow sardonically. "Why, is there something about this last trip to Quibsh you don't want me knowing about?"

"Well, no, of course not," I said, suddenly feeling even more uncomfortable.

My conversations with Tawni—and the more private times with her—all of that was going to be accessible to them? "It's just that—I mean—"

"This is war, Markand," he said coldly, cutting off my fumbling protest. "Or it will be soon enough. I don't know what you did with Tawnikakalina out there, and I don't especially care. All that matters is the defense of the UnEthHu."

"I understand, sir," I said, feeling abashed. "And I didn't do anything with her. What I mean is—"

"That's all for now," he cut me off again. "Be in the examination room at seven o'clock tomorrow morning, ready to go."

And I was dismissed. "Yes, sir," I murmured.

He was gazing thoughtfully at the three calices as I left the room. The brainscan the next morning was just as unpleasant as the first one had been.

So was the next one, a week later, and the one the week after that.

Devaro had me into his office after each test to talk about the results. But as I think back on those conversations, I realize that he never really told me very much about what the doctors had learned. Nor did he say anything about the parallel tests they were performing on my calix. I assumed they were taking more of the five-micron core samples he'd mentioned, but I wasn't able to see any marks on the calix and he never actually said for sure.

Gradually, my life settled into a steady if somewhat monotonous routine. I worked in Devaro's outer office during the day, sifting reports and compiling data for him like the junior aide that I was. Evenings were spent alone at my apartment, giving myself over to the calix and letting it do whatever it was doing to me. Oddly enough, though I'd expected to feel a certain trepidation as I handled the sculpture, that didn't happen. It still soothed me when I was tense or depressed, invigorated me when I felt listless, and generally felt more like a friend than anyone I'd yet come across in Zurich.

And late at night, in bed, I would gaze at the lights flickering across the ceiling and think about Tawni and her village. Wondering endlessly how such an open and friendly people could be doing all this.

But there was never any answer. And the night after my sixth brainscan I finally realized that there never would be. Not as long as I was trying to solve the puzzle with my own limited knowledge and experience. What I needed was more information, or a fresh perspective.

And once I realized that, I knew there was only one place I could go.

I called Devaro's chief of staff the next morning and, pleading illness, arranged to take two days off. An hour after that, I was on the magtrans heading south.

And three hours after that I was walking into the Ponte Empyreal in Rome. The heart, soul, and organizational center of the Church. They left me waiting in an anteroom of the inner sanctorum while word of my errand was taken inside. I sat there for nearly an hour, wondering if they were ignoring me or just drawing lots among the junior clerics to see which of them would have to come out and talk to me.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

"You must be Mr. Markand," the elderly, white-cloaked man said as he stepped briskly through the archway into the anteroom. "I'm sorry about the delay, but I

was in conference and I've just now been told you were here."

"Oh, no problem, your Ministri, no problem," I said, scrambling to my feet and trying not to stutter. Some junior cleric, I'd been cynically expecting; but this was the man himself. First Ministri Jorgen Goribeldi, supreme head of the Church. "I've been perfectly fine here."

"Good," he said smiling easily as he waved me toward the hallway he'd emerged from. It was, I realized with some embarrassment, a reaction he was probably used to. "Come this way, please, and tell me what I can do for you."

"I should first apologize for the intrusion, your Ministri," I said as we set off together down the hallway. "I wasn't expecting them to bother you personally with this."

"That's quite all right," Goribeldi assured me. "I like meeting with people—it's too easy to get out of touch in here." He shrugged, a slight movement of his white cloak. "Besides, I'm one of the few people in the Ponte Empyreal at the moment who can help you with your questions about the Sagtt'a colony."

"Yes, sir," I said, feeling my heartbeat pick up. "Am I right, then, in assuming that the Church did indeed send a delegation there?"

"Certainly," he nodded. "At the direct invitation of the Kailth, I might add.

They had noted the Church's passion for the well-being of humanity, and wanted to demonstrate their good-will by letting us visit the humans living under their dominion. We found no evidence of cruelty or oppression, by the way."

"Yes, I've talked to some of them," I agreed. "They seem to think of the Kailth as liberators."

"Apparently with a great deal of validity. So what exactly do you wish to know?"

"It's a little hard to put into words," I said hesitantly. "I guess my question boils down to whether they could be so deeply under Kailth influence that they could appear open and honest to other people while at the same time actually being engaged in a kind of subversive warfare."

"In theory, of course they could," Goribeldi said. "Humanity has a tremendous capacity for rationalization and justification when it comes to doing evil against our brothers and sisters. They would hardly need to be under Kailth influence to do that. Or the influence of propagandists, megalomaniacal leaders, or Satan himself. It's a part of our fallen nature."

I nodded. "I see."

We had reached the end of the hallway now and a doorway flanked by a pair of brightly clad ceremonial guards. "But in this specific case," Goribeldi continued, pausing outside the door, "I would say any such worries are probably unfounded. Our delegation found the Sagtt'an society to be a strongly moral one, with a long tradition of ethical behavior. I'm sure they still have their share of people who can lie or steal with a straight face; but as a group, no, I don't think they could say one thing and do another. Not without it being obvious."

"All right," I said slowly. "But couldn't the group on Quibsh have been hand-picked by the Kailth for just that ability? Especially if it was drummed into them that the UnEthHu was their enemy?"

"I suppose that's possible," Goribeldi conceded, nodding to the guards. One of them reached over and released the old-fashioned latch, pushing the door open in front of us. "But I would still think it unlikely. Why don't you come in and I'll show you some of the relevant portions of the priestians' report."

We stepped together through the doorway. Goribeldi's private office, apparently, if the comfortably lived-in clutter was an indication. In the center of the room was a small conversation circle of silkhide-covered chairs and couches, to the right a programmable TV transceiver console, and to the left, beneath a wall of privacy-glazed windows, a large desk.

And sitting prominently on a corner of that desk was a calix.

I stopped short, my heart freezing inside me. "No," I whispered involuntarily.

"What is it?" Goribeldi asked, frowning at me.

I threw a quick glance at him, threw another out the door at my only escape route. But it was already too late. At my reaction the guards had suddenly stopped being ceremonial and were eying me like a pair of tigers already coiled to spring.

It was over. All over. And I had lost. The Kailth had gotten to First Ministri Goribeldi... and whatever the calix was supposed do to him had surely already been accomplished.

And knowing my suspicions about them, he certainly couldn't allow me to live. would just disappear from the Ponte Empyreal, with no one ever knowing what had happened.

Goribeldi was still frowning at me. "The calix," I said, with the strange calmness of someone who has nothing left to lose. "A gift from the Sagtt'ans?"

"No," he said. "From your superior." I blinked at him. "My superior? You mean... Convocant Devaro?"

"Yes, of course," he said, frowning a little harder. "He sent it here—oh, four or five weeks ago. A thank-you gift for my sending him a revised copy of our Sagtt'a report. Why, is there a problem?"

I looked at him, and the guards, and the calix. Then, as if moving in a dream, walked over to the desk. Devaro had ordered me not to touch any of the three new calices on my way back from Quibsh, and I hadn't. But I'd had four days to study them en route, and I had.

Goribeldi was right. This was indeed one of them.

I turned back to face him, feeling vaguely light-headed. "But why?" I asked.

"Why would he do this? It's a weapon."

Goribeldi shook his head. "I'm sorry, but I don't follow you."

"A weapon," I repeated. "It's programmed—programmed by touch. Whenever you hold it, it starts affecting you. It turns you from human into something else."

The guards took a step toward me. "Sir?" one of them murmured.

"No, no, it's all right," Goribeldi said, waving them back. "I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion, Mr. Markand, but you have it precisely backwards.

The calix doesn't affect you. You affect it."

I stared at him. "What do you mean?"

"It's your presence that changes the calix, not the other way around," he said.

"Your touch and voice affect the wood and crystal, altering the sculpture into a

sort of echo of your own personality. A beautifully unique art form, far more individual than anything else you could possibly—"

"Wait a minute," I interrupted him, fighting hard to keep my balance as the universe seemed to tilt sideways beneath me. "You know this for a fact? I mean, it's been proven?"

"Of course," Goribeldi said. "The scientists in our delegation studied it thoroughly. In fact, 'calix' was actually the priestians' name for it, coming from an old term for the Cup of Communion. Holding a reflection of your soul, as it were. I hadn't realized the Sagtt'ans had picked up on the name."

I looked back at the calix. "I'm sorry, your Ministri," I said, my face warm with a thoroughly unpleasant mixture of embarrassment and confusion. "I guess I—" I broke off, shaking my head. "I'm sorry."

"That's all right," Goribeldi said, waving the guards back to their posts.

Apparently, he'd decided I wasn't crazy. Me, I wasn't so sure. "Come, let me show you the priestians' report."

I still wasn't sure half an hour later when he escorted me back to the anteroom and thanked me for coming. One thing I was sure of, though: the calices did indeed seem to behave exactly as he had said they did.

Which meant they weren't the weapons that Convocant Devaro had thought they were. Surely if he'd read the Church's report he already knew that.

But he'd had that report at least a month ago. If he had read it, why was he still subjecting me to weekly brainscans?

Unless he still wasn't convinced the calices were harmless. But in that case, why would he risk giving a potentially dangerous weapon to First Ministri Goribeldi?

I puzzled over it as I headed down the street toward the magtrans station. I was still puzzling, in fact, right up to the point where the two large men came up on either side of me and effortlessly stuffed me into a waiting car. There was the tingle of a stunner at my side, and the world went dark. I awoke aboard a half-wing already driving through space. The two men who'd kidnapped me were aboard as well, the three of us apparently the only passengers. As jailers they initially seemed rather amateurish; aside from the control areas and their two cabins I had complete freedom of the ship. But after two days of searching for weapons or escape routes or even information, I came to realize they weren't so much amateurish as just casually efficient. They completely ignored my questions and occasional frustrated demands, and only spoke to each other in clipped sentences of a language I didn't recognize.

Finally, three days of flight, we came alongside an unmarked military-style full-wing floating quietly in space. A transfer tunnel was set up and I was sent through, where I was met by a pair of hard-faced men in SkyForce uniforms. No chattier than my jailers had been, they escorted me silently to the command observation balcony above and behind the bridge.

Waiting for me there, as I'd rather expected, was Convocant Devaro.

"So," he said without preamble. "Here you are."

"Yes, sir," I said. "Here we both are."

For a moment he studied my face. "You've figured it out, haven't you?" he said at last. "Something the priestians at the Ponte Empyreal said to you."

I looked past his shoulder through the balcony's twin-sectioned canopy.

Directly ahead, the view over the bow of the full-wing showed that we were coming in toward a planetary darkside; ahead and below, I could see down into the bridge and the SkyForce officers and crewmen at their stations. "I saw the calix you gave to First Ministri Goribeldi," I said. "He told me it wasn't a weapon." I looked back at Devaro. "He was wrong, wasn't he."

Devaro shrugged. " 'Weapon' is an unfairly loaded term," he said. "I prefer to think of it as a tool."

"A tool which you're using to invade other people's privacy," I accused him.

"Giving someone a calix is really no different than doing a brainscan on him.

Except that he doesn't know it's been done. All you have to do is give the wood fibers enough time to adapt to his personality, then take your five-micron core samples and read his personality matrix right off them."

Devaro laughed, a short animal-like bark. "You make it sound so easy. You have no idea how much time and sweat went into developing the proper chemo-mathematical transforms to use."

"I think I have some idea," I said stiffly. "After all, I was your guinea pig in the whole thing. If you hadn't had my weekly brainscans to compare with the calix's chemical changes you'd never have been able to work out your precious transforms."

He shrugged carelessly. "Oh, we'd have managed. It just would have taken longer, and required us to get hold of a calix on our own. Your providential return from Quibsh merely made it simpler." "Well, enjoy it while you can," I bit out. "When we get back to Earth, I'll see you in prison."

He lifted his eyebrows. "On what grounds? You signed a legal authorization before each of those brainscans."

"What about the calix you gave First Ministri Goribeldi?" I countered.

"A thank-you gift. Perfectly legal."

"Except when the gift's part of an illegal brainscan."

"What illegal brainscan?" Devaro countered calmly. "A brainscan is performed with a Politayne-Chu neural mapmaker or the equivalent. There's no such device in a calix."

"You're splitting hairs."

"I'm staying precisely within the letter of the law," Devaro corrected.

"That's all that counts."

I glared at him. But even as I did so, I could feel my position eroding out from under my feet like loose sand. I had no idea how the brainscan laws were worded, but I had no doubt that Devaro had studied them thoroughly. "So where within the letter of the law does destruction of the Church come?" I demanded. "I presume you are planning its destruction?"

"Eventually," Devaro said off-handedly. "But that's a long way in the future.

There are other more urgent matters that need to be attended to first."

"Such as?"

"Such as the threat posed to the UnEthHu by the Kailthaermil Empire," he said, his voice suddenly hard. "And our moral responsibility to protect fellow human beings wherever they might be found."

I blinked. "What are you talking about?"

"Your verlorens of course," he said. "Conquered and enslaved by the Kailth, along with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of other races. The UnEthHu has stood by idly for ten years now. It's time we took a stand against such tyranny."

I glanced at the dark planetary surface now rolling by beneath us, a dark suspicion digging into my stomach. "This is Quibsh, isn't it?" I said.

"You're going to attack Quibsh."

"We're not attacking anyone," Devaro said. "We're liberating a human colony from alien overlords."

"And while you're liberating them, you'll also liberate their collection of calices?"

"The calices are evidence of their enslavement," Devaro said evenly.

"Fabulous works of art, routinely and ruthlessly stolen from them by their alien overlords."

"Which you'll no doubt be giving to other high-ranking UnEthHu and Church officials," I said, a bitter taste in my mouth. "And senior SkyForce officers—"

I stopped short, suddenly remembering where we were. On an unmarked military full-wing with SkyForce personnel aboard... "You used a calix to blackmail the SkyForce?"

"Don't be absurd," Devaro sniffed. "A Supreme Convocant hardly needs to stoop to anything as crude as blackmail. Let's just say that when I presented my request to Admiral Gates, I knew the right words to use to persuade him to my point of view."

"Yes, I suppose you did," I said, thinking back over all the conversations I'd had with Devaro during the past few weeks. How he had always somehow managed to say just the right things to keep my suspicions of Tawni alive, even against the evidence of my own eyes and heart. At times, usually late at night, I'd wondered at my inability to make my own decisions and stick to them. Now, too late, I understood what he'd done to me.

The intercom twittered. "We're approaching the target site, Convocant," a voice said.

"I'll be right there," Devaro said. "You're welcome to stay here," he added to me as he stepped over to the lift plate leading to the bridge below.

"This could start a war," I warned quietly. Trying, I suppose, one last time.

"Are a few calices worth that much to you?"

"The calices are power," he said simply. "If you haven't already figured out what that means, you're either too naive or too stupid for me to explain it to you now." He shrugged. "Besides, I've already told you that war with the Kailth is inevitable. If it starts here, so be it."

He touched the control and dropped away through the floor. The opening sealed again, and I was alone.

I walked over to the canopy, a hundred painful thoughts and useless plans and bitter self-recriminations chasing themselves through my mind. Devaro was on the move, with his long sought-after seat on the Dynad in his sights. Only now he had a secret weapon that might just get it for him.

And I'd been the one who'd given it to him. That was what galled the most.

Not only had my brainscans provided the key to his scheme, but I'd even trotted obediently out to Quibsh and gotten him the extra calices he wanted.

He'd used one of them to talk a SkyForce admiral out of a military full-wing and crew. Another was waiting like a hidden time bomb for an eventual attack against the unwanted moral criticisms of the Church. I was afraid to wonder whom he'd given the third one to.

I stepped up to the canopy. We were approaching the terminator now, the hazy line marking dawn on the planet below. Just into the lighted area I could see the familiar chain of volcanoes that bordered the little group of verloren villages.

A motion below me caught my attention, and I looked down into the bridge.

Devaro and two of the officers were gazing to the right; even as I watched, one of them shoved the Convocant into one of the chairs. Frowning, wondering what they were looking at, I leaned my head against the canopy and peered in that direction—

And was slammed bodily against the curved plastic as the full-wing abruptly skidded into a hard right-hand turn.

I peeled myself off the canopy and dived toward one of the balcony's chairs, grabbing the safety straps and pulling myself into it. Ahead now I could see what had gotten everyone so riled up: a pair of aircraft heading our way. I tried to figure out if the direction was right for them to be coming from one of the Kailth bases, but I was so turned around now I didn't know which way was which. I threw another glance down at the bridge—

And flinched back as, at the edge of my vision, a burst of fire flashed out from the full-wing's bow.

I looked up again. The missile was heading straight toward the incoming aircraft, its drive blazing like a miniature sun against the lightening sky.

I held my breath, thinking of those awesome Kailth weapons, and waited for the aircraft to return the fire.

But they didn't. Instead, they merely broke formation, veering off sharply to either side. The missile split in response, one half targeting each of them, and the race for survival was on. One of the aircraft vanished into the darkness behind us as our full-wing swung back around toward the terminator line ahead.

The other aircraft was driving directly away from us toward the rising sun, the missile rapidly overtaking it. I scanned the ground ahead, trying to reorient myself—

And suddenly I jabbed at the chair's intercom switch. "Convocant Devaro! That aircraft—it's heading straight for the group of villages!"

The only verbal response was a curse; but abruptly the full-wing leaped forward, driving hard toward the doomed aircraft. A laser flashed out, sweeping dizzyingly as the gunner tried to lock onto the missile.

But it was too far away. And it was too late. The two exhausts coalesced into one; and with a surprisingly small flash of blue-white fire the aircraft disintegrated.

I watched helplessly, hands clenched around the safety straps. The full-wing, down to treetop level now, was driving swiftly toward the impact point. I could see a reddish glow ahead, mixing with the dawn light.

And suddenly we were there, swinging around again and sweeping over the area.

I could see the string of villages now, with a scattering of burning debris from the aircraft strewn around and among the buildings.

But that wasn't where the red glow I'd seen was coming from. The main body of the aircraft had slammed into the cone of the nearest volcano, and just below the point of impact a new lava vent had opened up.

I reached for the intercom again, but Devaro beat me to it. "Markand, is that the volcano where they keep the calices?" he snapped.

"Yes," I confirmed. "That lava flow—it's headed toward Tawni's village—"

The intercom cut off. But I didn't need to hear Devaro's instructions to the captain to know what he was going to do next. The aircraft's crash had clearly shaken up the whole unstable region; plumes of smoke were beginning to appear from several of the other nearby volcanoes. If Devaro wanted the calices, he would have to get them now.

Even if it meant abandoning Tawni and her people to burn.

The full-wing was coming around back toward the volcano as I threw the bright red lever that opened the balcony's emergency drop-tube door. I dove inside, spun around and hit the "eject" plate. The door closed, the stasis webbing wrapped around me, and with a stomach-churning lurch I dropped free.

Ten seconds later I was down, the tube toppling delicately onto its side and popping open. I scrambled to my feet and looked around, trying to figure out where exactly I was. I couldn't see the light from the lava flow, but the wind was acrid with the smell of burning vegetation, so I knew it had to be somewhere close. A three-meter-high ridge of basalt cut across in front of me; unmindful of what the sharp rock might do to my hands, I slung the tube's survival pack over one shoulder and scrambled my way to the top.

There, no more than a hundred meters away, was the lava flow, making its slow but inexorable way down toward the sleeping villages below. At the top of the cone, its edges glowing a fiery red with reflected light, the full-wing was easing downward. Devaro, apparently unwilling to waste even a second, was taking the entire ship into the crater.

And then, even as I watched, a second source of light suddenly flickered from the full-wing's edges. A glow coming from inside the crater itself.

The volcano was getting ready to erupt.

"Get out of there," I whispered urgently to them, squeezing hard onto the basalt. Fumes were beginning to rise, and the glow was growing brighter. If they didn't leave right now...

But they didn't. The full-wing continued down, its dark shape disappearing below the rim of the crater. I held my breath, for some perverse reason counting the seconds.

And as I reached eleven, it happened. Abruptly, the crater belched out a huge plume of smoke and ash and red fire, lighting up the ground even as it darkened the sky. Three seconds later it was eclipsed by a second burst of flame, this one the clean and brilliant blue-white of the full-wing's missiles exploding.

My stomach wanted desperately to be sick. But there was no time for that now.

That first lava flow was still headed toward Tawni's village, and they were going to need all the help they could get if they were to evacuate in time.

Easing my legs over the ridge, I braced myself to jump.

And paused, as something near the leading edge of the lava flow caught my eye.

Someone or something was moving down there among the burning vegetation. I squinted, fumbling in the survival pack for a set of binoculars—

And nearly fell off the ridge as the front of the lava flow erupted in a flash of green flame.

I fought for balance as a second flash followed the first, a fresh surge of horror stabbing into me. That was the flash of a Kailth hand weapon.

And there were only two reasons I could think of why anyone might be firing into the gloom down there. Either he was shooting at another survivor from the full-wing, or else he thought that was where I'd gone down.

My hand had been hunting in the survival pack for a set of binoculars. Now, it moved instead to the butt of a SkyForce-issue 12mm pistol. Gripping it tightly, I swung my legs back to the far side of the ridge again—

And found myself looking down into the face of a Kailth warrior.

If I'd taken even half a second to think about it I would have realized how stupidly suicidal the whole idea was. But I didn't take that half second. I hauled the 12mm out of the pack, flicked off the safety, and fired.

The weapon boomed, the recoil again nearly knocking me off the ridge. But the Kailth was no longer there. Without any preparatory movement whatsoever he had effortlessly leaped up to straddle the ridge beside me. Even as I tried desperately to swing the pistol around toward him, he reached across my chest and plucked it from my hand. "Human male," he said. "Come."

"Come where?" I asked, my voice trembling with reaction. "Why?"

The bumblebee face regarded me. "That you may understand." There were two other Kailth warriors standing by the lava flow when we arrived.

Two Kailth, and Tawni.

"Stane!" she burst out, running to my arms as soon as she saw me. "Oh, thank the God of Mercy—you are all right. You are all right."

I looked past her at the two Kailth, finally seeing what all the shooting was about. With those awesome handguns they were blasting a trench in the hard igneous rock of the volcano cone, diverting the slow-moving lava away from the villages below. "Yes, I'm safe," I murmured, holding Tawni close. "For now."

"For always," she insisted, drawing back to look into my face. "They have promised me your safety."

"Have they really." I looked at the warrior standing silently beside us and nodded toward the two Kailth digging the trench. "Is this what I need to understand?"

The Kailth stirred. "You must understand all that has happened."

I snorted. "Oh, I understand. All of it."

"Tell me," he challenged.

I glared at him, knowing that it was over. But at least before I died Tawni would get to see what her adored liberators really were. "You used me," I said.

"You got Tawni to give me a calix to take back to the UnEthHu. Which you've now used to kill Convocant Devaro and everyone aboard that full-wing."

"We regret the loss of the other humans," the alien said. "As we also regret the loss of the Kailthaermil warriors aboard the flyers which were destroyed. But their deaths were of Convocant Devaro's devising, not ours."

"How can you say that?" I demanded. "If I hadn't taken that calix back with me, none of this would have happened."

There was a soft hissing sound. "You do not yet understand, Stane Markand," the Kailth said. "If not for the calix, it would indeed not have happened this way.

But it would still have happened."

I shook my head, my brief flash of defiance draining away. "You're not making any sense," I said with a sigh. "It was the calix that brought Convocant Devaro here."

"No," the Kailth said firmly. "It was Convocant Devaro's desire for power over others that brought him. The calix did nothing but bring that desire into focus."

"You did not seek to use my gift for such purposes," Tawni added earnestly.

"For you it was a joy, and a blessing. It was only Convocant Devaro who sought to use it for his own gain."

I gazed back at her face. "So you knew all along," I said. "From the beginning was nothing but a pawn in this."

Her mouth twitched as if I'd raised a hand to her. But she held my gaze without flinching. "I gave you a gift from my heart," she said. "For friendship. It was not part of any plan."

"The Citizen-Three is correct," the warrior said. "Our plan was to begin there."

He pointed up at the bubbling fire of the volcano. "Tawnikakalina's gift was indeed only a gift." He regarded me thoughtfully. "If you were no more than a pawn, we would not tell you this."

"So why are you telling me?" I countered. "What do you want from me?"

"I have said already," the Kailth said. "Understanding." He reached out an armored hand to touch Tawni's shoulder. "There is ambition that drives one to be the best one can be," he said. "That is the ambition Tawnikakalina has for her art. Perhaps you have such ambition as well."

He lowered his hand. "But there is also ambition that seeks power over others, and does not care what destruction is left in its wake. We have seen this cruel madness in the Phashiskar, and the Baal'ariai, and the Aoeemme. And we see it now in the humans.

"And when such ambition threatens the Kailthaermil, we must offer it the means to destroy itself."

I looked over at the other warriors still cutting their trench. "Convocant Devaro said war with you is inevitable. Is that what you mean?"

"No," the Kailth said. "We have no desire for war with the UnEthHu. You do not subjugate the other beings within your boundaries, but treat them with justice.

Nor are there fundamental human interests or needs which demand conflict with the Kailthaermil. War will come only if individual humans choose to create it for their own purposes."

I glanced up at the volcano. "Men like Devaro."

Tawni's grip tightened on my arm. "I do not wish war with your people, Stane," she said quietly.

"I don't want it either, Tawni," I said, looking at the Kailth warrior again.

"But it seems to me that the war may have already begun. Whether or not Devaro did this of his own free will, the fact remains that it was the Kailth who provided the calix that tempted him down that path."

"You are correct," the Kailth said. "The war has indeed begun."

Reaching into his armor, he pulled out the pistol he'd taken from me. I caught my breath, feeling Tawni shrink against my side. "But it is not a war against humans," the Kailth continued. "It is a war against meaningless and unnecessary war."

He held up the pistol. "This is such a war, Stane Markand, the war Convocant Devaro sought to create against the Kailthaermil Empire for his own purposes.

It may be stopped thus—"

He grasped the barrel with his other hand, and with a sharp crack of broken gunplastic snapped the weapon in half. A squeeze with the armored hand, and the barrel shattered into splinters.

"Or it may be stopped thus." Reaching into the shattered frame with two fingers, he gave a sharp tug and pulled out the firing pin. "It is a war that must be fought, or many innocent lives will be lost," he said quietly, handing me the pin and what was left of the ruined gun. "Which way would you choose for us to fight it?"

I looked at Tawni. She was gazing back up at me, the skin of her face tight with quiet anxiety. Waiting to see how I would react to all this.

Perhaps waiting to see if she had lost a friend.

"What about Tawni's people?" I asked the Kailth. "Devaro gave his calices away to others. If any of them tries to use them the same way he wanted to, they may come here to get more."

"The Kailthaermil freed us when we had no hope," Tawni said quietly. "To help them free others, we willingly accept the danger."

"Perhaps," the Kailth said, "you can help make them safer."

I looked down the slope, toward the villages below. "Yes," I said. "Perhaps I can."

And with a lot of help, I did. Ten months later, in a precedent-shattering treaty, Quibsh became joint colonial territory of the Kailth and UnEthHu.

Three years after that, convention was again shattered as the humans of Quibsh and Sagtt'a were granted full joint citizenship between the two races. Over those three years, six SkyForce officers and five more Convocants figured out Devaro's brainscan trick and attempted to use the calices to amass power. All of them either died in the attempt or were politically destroyed.

And in the midst of it all, in the greatest miracle of all, Tawni became my wife. And later, of course, your mother.

And so, as we stand here on the eve of the Fifth Joint Kailthaermil-UnEthHu Expedition into the unknown areas of the galaxy, I wanted you to know how my Year of YouthJourneying came out. It was the year I learned about politics and war, about ambition and selflessness, about art and death and love.

The year I grew up.

Our hopes and blessings go with you, my son, as you leave with the expedition tomorrow. May your nineteenth year be as blessed as mine.

With love, Dad.