For Love and Glory

XLVIII

Hulda curved slowly and cautiously toward a construction site in a low northern latitude not far east of the sunrise line. Lost to naked-eye visibility, the Susaian ship maneuvered to her station while always keeping the Asborgan in line of sight.

The three sat in the control compartment under a slight weight of deceleration. The silence between them seemed to thrum. Finally Hebo cried, “Oh, Christ, Lissa, I’m so sorry!”

The woman looked at him and raised her brows. “For what?” she asked.

“Getting you into this mess.”

“Don’t blither. You know damn well I got myself into it. And I’m not sorry. See what I’ve gained.”

They leaned as closely together as harness allowed. Arms encircled, lips clung. To hell with the fact that they weren’t alone. This could be their last time.

They let go when Dzesi said, “We are not foredone yet.”

Hebo regained a measure of balance. “No, by God,” he agreed. His fist smote the arm of his chair.

“Although if we are,” the anthropard murmured, “can the Ulas Trek somehow, someday know how we died, and that we died well?”

It oddly touched Lissa. What other wistfulnesses lay behind that tigerish face?

“Incoming communication,” Hulda announced.

Lissa’s pulse fluttered. “Accept,” she directed.

Romon Kaspersson Seafell’s image appeared on the screen. Hebo stiffened, Dzesi bared teeth. Lissa met the gaze. It was surprising that the man was not triumphant, but white-lipped, unkempt, and a tic at the right corner of his mouth. “Yes,” she acknowledged icily, “Ironbright said you might call.”

“What do your keepers allow you to tell?” Hebo jeered. “And is it the truth?”

Lissa shook her head at him. “No sense in quarreling,” she whispered. He scowled but nodded.

Although the pickup scanned all of them, Romon’s eyes were wholly for her. His voice stumbled. “I’m free to answer—most questions.… Lissa, Lissa, I never expected this!”

She caught the undertone of a trans rendering their Anglay into a Susaian tongue. “What did you expect, then?” she demanded.

“I— My House— You know what loyalty to one’s House means.”

“And status in it,” Hebo couldn’t help snorting, “power, personal profit.”

It stung, maybe, but it also stiffened. “Yes,” Romon gave back, “I spied on you. Why not? I’d always suspected you had some ulterior motive, above and beyond the profit you claimed you craved. When the chance came to learn more, the situation suggested that there was in fact something to learn, something you’d kept hidden from your backers, your partners.”

“My own business.”

“Must you humans always make those smug noises?” Dzesi muttered.

Romon spoke again to Lissa. “I should think you, at least, would understand. House Seafell needs an advantage. The big ones like Windholm have dominated our politics, our world, too long.” Hastily: “No offense to you, though, none, I swear.”

“Enough self-justification on both sides,” she snapped. “What did you do?”

He drew breath. “I took my information to the Seafell magnates. What else? It looked far-fetched to them. And yet, who knew? Our House couldn’t send an expedition. And if we did have the means, how could we keep possession of whatever we found? Nor did we want to bring in some rival House. Besides, yes, Torben, you were right about how that would have meant endless delay and debate and publicity, giving the game away to anyone ready to take prompt, decisive action.”

“Meaning the lizards,” said Lissa with scorn.

He showed more pain than anger. “That sort of insult is unworthy of you.”

“All right, the Dominators of the Great Confederacy. But I’m no friend of theirs,” as I am of those Susaians they have persecuted. “Nobody ought to be.”

“Why? What threat have they ever been to us? What might be gained by cooperating with them instead of denouncing them and intriguing against them? Why not try to win their amity and trust?”

“As the chickens wondered about the foxes,” said Hebo aside. His archaism went by.

“It seemed reasonable,” Romon insisted. “Didn’t it? After all, as Ironbright explained, they have a legitimate grievance. This could make it good.”

“Well, nobody’s judgment is perfect,” Lissa admitted, mainly to encourage him to go on. Ours, for instance, dashing off the way we did, she thought. But at least we can still live with ourselves. He sounds like being on the verge of breakdown.

“Esker Harolsson strongly recommended the idea when I consulted him,” Romon said. “In fact, he was afire with it; he insisted he should go too.” The tone wavered. “He— In spite of everything, he’s been horribly lonely.”

And here was possible new fame to win, Lissa thought. And glory attracts some women to even the most repulsive men.… No, I’m being unfair, maybe downright cruel. I could never stand him personally, but he is brilliant in his field, he’d have much to give us if we let him.

Romon continued in a rush, words he must have rehearsed: “Our message was carefully nonspecific. We just told that we had certain interesting clues to the Forerunners, which the Susaians might like to discuss with us confidentially. We anticipated months of negotiation back and forth. Instead, they responded within two weeks. They offered to send a ship for our representatives.

“Of course I volunteered. This was my doing, in a way, and—I am a man.” He was looking straight at Lissa. She saw the hunger and realized, faintly amazed: Why, he’s in love with me. How long has he been, and not dared speak because that would most likely bring his flickery hopes to naught?

Romon’s voice steadied. “Esker came along. No one else. We supposed this would be only the first meeting, only a mutual feeling out. But—almost immediately, the Dominator committee proposed an equal partnership with House Seafell, provided that our news proved worth following up. We had to decide virtually on the spot; they said hyperwave consultation with Asborg posed too big a risk of the secret escaping. Esker and I thought this might well be so, and took it on ourselves to reveal what we knew. Again, it was stunning how fast they moved. In a few days they had outfitted Authority and dispatched her.”

“I wouldn’t have been surprised,” Hebo said. “That government’s been wallowing deeper and deeper into trouble. The Old Truther emigration is a minor symptom. All their traffic and communication restrictions, all the light-years around them, can’t quite hide economic breakdowns, provincial unrest, armed coups—” After a moment he remarked quietly, “Well, human or nonhuman, totalitarian regimes aren’t any more stable than democracies, often less. The Dominators must be near the point where they’ll try damn near anything.”

This rough-hewn man has lived through a great deal of history, Lissa thought, and he’s studied a great deal more in his spare time. I’d like to learn how deep his thinking runs.

“We came to this sun,” Romon stated flatly. “We cruised about as you did. Finally we made for this planet.”

“And you were ordered off, and your hyperwave decommissioned, same as with us,” Lissa said. “Why didn’t you head straight home?”

“Why didn’t you?”

“We were about to. But whatever becomes of us, they know in my father’s council that we arrived and explored a little.”

“As they know about us in the Dominance. However, Ironbright is determined to do everything possible before giving up. If we are destroyed, others will follow.”

“A warrior soul,” Dzesi said. “My compliments to her.”

“Pretty inconvenient for us, though,” Hebo added sardonically.

Romon’s resoluteness cracked. “Lissa, if I’d known! If I could have warned you!”

“What actually happened?” she asked sharply.

Still shaken, he regathered himself. “We withdrew, but didn’t leave the system. We cruised at a distance, observing whatever we were able to. Nothing pursued us, nothing called to us, we detected nothing alien in space except the one guardian, keeping near-planet orbit. Esker, especially, got some more data. He has ideas. Ironbright’s reasoning was that if the machines were—mortally serious—about us, they’d probably let us know by less than lethal means. That’s when we’d depart. Otherwise our duty was to linger and look till we weren’t learning anything further.”

“Like us, sort of,” Hebo put in, “except she’s willing to gamble an expensive ship and a whole crew.” He shrugged. “Well, the Dominators never did set much of a price on individual lives.”

Romon gulped. “And then,” he continued harshly, “we detected you, and followed your progress.”

Hebo nodded. “Naval-quality instruments. Naval doctrine. It didn’t occur to us. Damn!” he sighed. “Too late now.”

“If, if I’d known you were aboard, Lissa,” Romon stammered, “I’d have—” He broke off in futility. What could he have done?

“So friend Ironbright guessed that we’d get the same reception she did,” Hebo said. “Your ship kept watch from a few light-minutes away and pre-matched velocities to ours before she jumped.”

“To blast the guardian was daring indeed,” Dzesi said.

“Ironbright—she’d concluded the Forerunners are, or were, probably very peaceful,” Romon tried to answer. “They wouldn’t have foreseen a,, a devotion like that.”

“Besides, she’s got us to bear the risk,” Hebo said. “At gunpoint.”

“A plan doubtless made as fast as everything else the lizards have done,” Lissa said. That word didn’t really taste bad. “Yes, Torben, I agree, desperate people are dangerous.”

“Small consolation to us if the Dominance collapses in ten or twenty years,” Hebo replied. “Unless we’re alive to enjoy the circus.”

“Lissa,” Romon pleaded, “believe me, believe me, I—

“We are close to final approach,” Hulda interrupted.

“Till later, then, Romon,” Lissa said. “Maybe.” She shut off the com and the sight of his anguish.