Horizons

SEVENTEEN

AS THEY MADE THEIR WAY TO THE CONTROL CENTER AND Dane’s bower, Li Zhen’s son gained ability in microG at an amazing rate. Ren, he told Ahni when she asked his name, but it went with a complex mix of image and sensation that Ahni guessed was his nonverbal name for himself. Like Koi’s family, he seemed to be more at home with nonverbal communication and spoke rarely. His happiness in the microG garden bathed Ahni in a golden glow as they made their way though the planted tubes. Good thing Kyros knew the way, she thought, because she was lost.

They reached the bower at last andAhni froze. Someone had slashed through the woven network of tubes and plants, leaving a gaping opening. Shredded leaves and bruised blossoms drifted, alive with feasting frog things. Beside her, Kyros muttered an oath. “Get out of here,” he said softly. “Right now.”

She didn’t argue, spun, yanked Ren tight against her chest pushed off hard. They would have scanners if they were there. CSF? Fear filled her heart. Kyros was right behind her, breathing hard, his anger and fear a sour reek in the air. Frightened, Ren had wrapped his legs around her waist, his heels digging into her kidneys as she shot through the thick leaves. The dense plantings wouldn’t fool a scan and she felt naked, utterly visible.

Koi, she thought with a pang of fear. What had happened to Koi? And as if in answer, a slender shape shot across her path, somersaulted off a thickly planted tube was suddenly streaking along beside her.

Koi! She nearly shouted his name, flinched at the white-hot turmoil of his distress.

“Dane?” She let herself slow, a fist of pain clenched in her chest. “Koi, tell me what happened?”

“They killed… they killed…”

“Not Dane?” She whispered it, could not say the words out loud. But he was shaking his head. A flash of image and voice briefly filled her mind — a slender shape tumbling, limbs ugly and slack… “They took him away.” Koi’s words emerged as a howl of grief. “Down!”

A dozen shapes burst from the greenery, Koi’s family, darting and spinning in agitation.

“Koi, where are the people who took Dane?” Ahni asked urgently. “Are they here?” He didn’t need to answer. Images flooded her mind, glimpses of blue clad figures seen through a screen of leaves, flashes of motion and waves of fear. Dizzy, Ahni closed her eyes, sorting out the kaleidoscope of image. “Are they up here?” she gasped. “Koi?”

“Yes.” His milky eyes were wild and blank. “That way. Far.” He pointed with his chin. “They have nets.”

“Kyros, they’ll have scanners.” Anchoring herself on a tube, she faced the miner.”We have to get them out of here. Safe.”

Kyros was shaking his head.

“There has to be someplace they can go… not on the plattform, Kyros. Outside!”

“Maybe, yeah. There is.” His eyes narrowed. “Let’s go. It’s going to be damn crowded, but I don’t think we have time for two trips.”

Ahni looked around for Ren, discovered him hanging from Koi’s waist as he pushed off to follow Kyros.

The school of Koi’s relatives darted along on either side of them, sleek androgynous shapes twisting effortlessly through the green jungle. Suddenly, with a single fluid motion, Koi stripped Ren from his back slung him precisely into Ahni’s arms. She barely managed to grabthe kid and push off from a tube as his momentum slammed her off course.

Koi vanished and a moment later, she heard an exclamation.

Felt someone’s shock.

Oh, damn. Caught? She stretched her awareness, feeling for that hunter’s-focus, for searching CSF, felt only Koi and he felt…pleased.

A moment or two later, he appeared, towing a body after him.The Administrator.

“I’m okay,” he was saying thickly. “Let go of me, Koi. I can swim.”

Koi released him and the man floundered, grabbing for the nearest tube, still disoriented. Koi must have hit him hard, she thought, and felt a small satisfaction at that.

“Sweet Buddha, you’re all here?” He was looking around at the hovering shapes of the Koi’s family.

Then he focused on Ahni. And Kyros.”You, huh? Well, I guess we’re all on the same side for sure.”

Ahni wasn’t sure to whom this last was addressed, but Kyros grunted, and he wasn’t at all happy about this.

“Let’s go.” Still no CSF close, but that could change in a heartbeat. “Move, Kyros.”

“I don’t know—”

“Look, the rules have changed,” Laif said urgently. “I’m out, I’m not Admin anymore. Anything I see, I don’t see as Admin, remember, okay?”

Kyros grunted, still not happy, pushed off. There wasn’t time to argue. Koi scooped Ren away from her, which made the boy giggle, and tlley took off once more. The trip back to the dock seemed much longer than she remembered, With the fear of CSF breathing on her neck.

Together, they packed Kyros’s ship like fish in a can. Squeezed next to Laif with Koi beside her, Ren still clinging like an infant monkey to his back, Ahni caught her breath. As the ship cleared the lock she twisted to face Laif. “What about… Dane?” Her voice caught on his name.

“I think they took him straight down,” Laif grated. “And the… body. They killed one of them. By accident, I think.”

“They’ll do a DNA scan… that’ll clear him.”

“I hope so.”

His doubt chilled Ahni. She fixed her eyes on the holofield in front of Kyros. It displayed their path as if seen through a window. The ship arrowed away from the platform and she kept her eyes on the angle of their path, the view of Dragon Home in the distance, the plant’s bulk, storing it all in short term memory.

Just in case.

Thick silence filled the small craft, the only sound that of Laif’s harsh breathing. Ren hid his face against Koi’s shoulder, and his family merely… waited.

“We’re almost there.” Kyros’s voice finally broke the thick siilence. “It’s pressurized, but pretty stark.

Not a fun place but noobody’s gonna look for us here.” He didn’t quite look at Laif.

“I have a very short memory for places,” Laif said sharply. “And a long one for friends. Okay?”

Kyros didn’t say anything, but he relaxed a bit. A moment later, a tiny jar suggested that they had docked and a brief vibration shivered through the ship as the lock pressurized. “Wait,” Kyros snapped.

“Be right back.” He wriggled through the press of bodies to the hull, which melted open for him, giving Ahni a brief glimpse of total darkness and nothing more.

“How come you were in the hub?” Ahni asked Laif softly.

“Looking for Koi. I apologize for getting rough with you. We ran out of time, anyway.”

The hull melted open again, a larger hole this time, and cold, dry air flowed into the ship. Weak light glowed in the distance but it merely accentuated the utter darkness. “I’ve turned up the heat, but it’s going to take a while to warm up,” Kyros said.

Koi went first and his family followed. Ren still clung to Koi, curious and unafraid as they passed through a wide lock door and into a cavernous space, made larger by the shadows streaking the spherical hull.

The light came from a couple of emergency globes tethered to the hull. The air was cold — not freezing cold, but winter cold. Ahni made out odd, bulky shapes also tethered to the hull in nets, but couldn’t make out the contents. A matte black plate on the hull radiated heat and they gathered around it, their breath visible. Ahni noticed Laif’s eyes on the netted goods, saw him lift a shoulder in a shrug and smile crookedly.

Smuggler’s warehouse, she thought. Kyros’s stock?

“Well, there’s some food here. Not fancy, but you won’t starve. Water. Enough air.” Kyros was looking at her, Ahni realized. “It’ll even warm up eventually. So, now what?”

“I go back to New York Up.” She glanced at Laif. “Unles there’s a reason I shouldn’t?”

“Don’t know.” The Administrator gave her a cold look. “I had no warrant out for you. What the hell can you do?”

“Li Zhen is going to look for me there. He’s the only lever we have and Koi, he needs to see you again.

He needs to talk to you.”

Koi flinched.

“He’s not going to hurt you. Or your family.” She reached out to touch Ren’s dark head lightly. “This is his son, Koi. He doesn’t understand yet, and he needs to understand.”

Koi looked down at the boy, who smiled up at him, his arm tight around Koi’s waist. Looked back at Ahni, still scared, lifted one shoulder. Reluctantly. She touched him lightly.

“What is Zhen up to?” Laif grumbled. “He takes care of his own yard and doesn’t mix with the neighbors.”

”We’re on the same side.”

“I hope you’re as right as you think you ary.” Laif clearly doubted that. “And how does this brother of yours fit in here, anyway?”

“I don’t know. What happened to that data dot that I gave Dane?” She eyed Laif. “Was there anything on it?”

“Gods, I forgot about that.” The Administrator shivered, drifting with his arms wrapped around himself.

“A kid named Noah has it. I sent him up to the hub when the CSF boarded. I don’t know what the hell happened to him or the dot.”

“I can find Noah.” Hopefully. Surely the CSF had no reason to arrest him. “Kyros?” She looked at him.

The miner… smuggler… shrugged. “Might as well try someething.” He gave Koi a grim smile. “You and your family would do real well out in the Belt. We just need ships for you is all. That can be arranged. Let’s go.” He jerked his head at Ahni.

”You are coming back, right?” Laif’s face looked strained.

“Maybe.”

Laif shrugged and closed his eyes.

Kyros relented. “There’s a link. It’s with the water and food.”

He jerked his chin toward one of the hammocks. “Don’t use it unless you have to. I’ll be back. I don’t plan on getting dead.” He turned and pushed off toward the dock.

“What was this?” Ahni asked as she pushed into the ship on his heels.

“They called ’em lighthouses. Ask Dane why, I don’t know my Earth hystory. Early rock jock hangout, maybe. Way back when. Primitive. Rock jocks live good, now.” The ship shivered as it left the dock.

“You really think Li Zhen is going to do anything but take you apart slowly for stealing his kid?”

“I hope so.” She made it light.

She had expected Kyros to take her to a new dock, but when the ship hull opened for them, she found herself on the hub dock they had left from.

“I know the CSF can’t see this one,” Kyros said, in reply to her questioning look. “The private elevator is close, so you got a good chance of getting down to skin without getting netted. Have a story ready.”

He wasn’t coming with her. Ahni wondered briefly if he would stick around or just take off for the Belt and forget that he knew anybody down on the platforms. No, she decided. Dane had considered him a friend. “I’ll need to bring Li Zhen to the lighthouse.”

“Yeah. Right.” Anchored to a handhold, Kyros extended his hand. “Palm it.”

She hesitated only an instant, laid her palm against his. Yeah, he was hardwired, too, and their hardware talked. She felt the tingle in her flesh as his system overrode her interface. That shocked her. She’d dismissed Kyros, she realized, as a peasant who only knew ice and rocks. Turned out his software was a hair better than hers.

She laughed out loud as the link surfaced in her personal interrface.”You paid a lot for that upgrade,”

she said.

”Yep.” He lifted one shoulder, turned back to his ship, hesitated, then looked over his shoulder. “Luck,”

he said.

“Thank you.” She pushed off then, arrowing through the thick green light and the brush of leaves/fruit/seed to the small private elevator that Dane had used. Took it down to the level where Noah sold his grilled lunches.

The corridors hummed with tension. The marines had landed Ahni thought sourly and wished she could read exact thought and not just emotion. Knots of natives clotted the corridor space, their anger burning like scalding currents from a deepwater volcanic vent. She could almost smell the sulfur. The park was thick with bodies and the sour/sulfur stink of rage. No sign of Noah, but he could be right next to her and how would she know it? She pushed her way through the crowd, feeling as if the currents of rage coupled with the marginal gravity might bounce her right to the ceiling at any minute.

At least she hadn’t been spotted as a downsider. Ahni reached the far side of the park. Turned back to try again. ·Why had she thought she’d find Noah blithely peddling his food to a normal crowd? Stupid.

She thought about the scrum field, but he wouldn’t be playing. She passed an artfully crafted carved-rock bench, heading for the elevators, thinking that getting out in one piece was an achievement at least. A young, skinny native was haranguing the crowd about th excesses of the CSF and Laif’s government as well. While a lot of folk weren’t paying attention to him, some were, and the crackle of their anger sparked through the crowd. Time to get out of here.

“Geeze.” Fingers dug into her arm. “Are you nuts?”

Noah. He smiled into her eyes, his face a few centimeters from hers, his expression that of a man who has just encountered a long lost good lay. Scared and furious.

”You want to die? What the hell are you doing down here?”

“Looking for you.” I love you, darling, she said with her body language, crooking her arms around him, pelvis tilted forwar head back, throat exposed. “Let’s go somewhere.”

“Damn good idea.” He hooked an arm through hers, his smile totally believable while his anger/fear/grief burned her like acid.

Didn’t say anything more as they strolled through the crowd, but he did a nice job, keeping up the fake of a man with his chica on his arm, worrying about her.

As they passed a public restroom, he did quick up-and-down to check the corridor, palmed them both in, then pulled a tiny black box from his pocket, stuck it on the door.

It would kill any security ear as well, she was willing to bet. Ahni glanced at it, then up at him. He knew about Dane, she felt his grief. Closed her eyes, opened them.”Noah, what about the dot?” She couldn’t keep the urgency out of her voice. “Did you get it figgured out?”

He hated her for not speaking of Dane. But what was there to say, and what would it do besides to fog the moment?

”Yeah, I did.” He spat the words.”What does it matter now?”

“It might matter a lot.” She drew a deep breath, because he had no intention of giving it to her. “Dane could end up a scapegoat. They’re going to blame somebody for this and they have him. Historically, that has been a damn good way to end up the public spectacle everybody wants.”

“He didn’t do it.” Noah’s eyes burned at her. “He didn’t make those people in the hub.”

He didn’t call them kids. Interesting. “That might not matter.” Ahni held his stare. “They might not bother to mention that before they execute him.” She said the words harshly, brutally, saw Noah flinch, even as she stilled her own reaction. Held out her hand.

He fished a small data disc from his pocket, slapped it into her palm.”What are you going to do… for Dane? You’re a wildcard. You can do anything you want.”

She ignored that. “If there’s anything you can do to keep the situation from boiling over into violence, do it,” she snapped. “If CSF starts shooting, nobody is going to be able to fix things.” She met his glare, held his stare. “I think I have a lever, but it won’t work if CSF are killing you all. It can’t start, Noah. If it does… whether Dane gets out of this alive or not, everything that matters to him is lost.”

Noah looked away, his expression tortured. “He’s on there.” He jerked his head at the disk in her hands.

“The guy who does the agitating. There’s a couple of other people on it, too.”

Ahni tilted her head. Sensing guilt. ““What about the Con, Noah? That was a lot of the problem. Is it still being manipulated?”

He jerked as if she had stuck a blade into him. “Cleo,” he said softly. “She didn’t realize… what would happen. Didn’t think it through.”

Cleo. Ahni blinked. The scrum player. His lover.

“I… we got it straight.” He kept his back to her, his tone bleak.

“They got used… the ones who were doing it. They thought Dane was… you know… too careful.

And the guy who conned ’em was real slick. I should have caught it.” This, bitterly. “But Cleo knows how I work. Too late.”

”Not too late.” She grabbed his arm. “Get everyone you can and work on keeping the lid on. Use the Con.”

“They shut it down.”

“Get it back up again. It worked to get everybody hot, cool ’em off with it. I told you — I’ve got a lever.

If you give me time to use it–we have a chance to stop this.” No time to argue now, she headed for the door. Noah was looking at her with the first faint light of hope in his eyes. He jerked into motion, scooped the lock from the floor.

A1ull shoved through the door and into the corridor, the disk safely stowed in her singlesuit, headed for the elevator, felt Noah’s hand on her arm, his presence beside her. Convoy. But nobody bothered them, and at the elevator he turned away, vanishing into the crowded corridor before the doors closed.

She rode the elevator to skin level. Three CSF stood in the elevator plaza, stun guns at their belts, watching the elevators with narrow, cold eyes. Two unselected Latino-types, one unselect Vietnamese.

The Vietnamese woman stepped forward, glanced at a small handheld reader. Her eyebrows rose and she gave a tiny shrug… stepped aside with a nod.

Ahni headed to her hotel. CSF blue filled the corridors. A slender African-euro mix approached, blue and white light fiber woven into his braided hair. “Ma’am, this level is safety-curfewed,” he said with a heavy West Indian accent.”You need to return to your hotel.” He radiated annoyance. “You did not hear the announcements? We will provide transport to the Elevator for you.”

“I’m on my way to my hotel right now.” She smiled timidly for him. The last thing she needed right now was to end up in protective custody somewhere. “I’m sorry. I was visiting an old friend and I didn’t hear the announcements.” She put on dumb blonde tone and body language. “Thank you for being here. I feel very safe now.”

He grunted noncommittally at that, but she caught a whiff of belief in her story. Still, he walked with her, keeping an eye on her, which was all right. She didn’t need to go anywhere else anyway. Li Zhen would come to her.

At the hotel, the doorman had been replaced by a CSF, a young female Private, who exchanged quick hand-sign with her convoy. The African-asian man nodded to her, gave Ahni a brief courtesy bow.”You must remain in your room, ma’am. Until we can escort you to the Elevator.”

“I understand.” She watched another exchange between the pair. Probably instructions about making sure she stayed put. His belief in her story only went so far. She marched straight to her room, her attention focused on the CSF behind her, hoping that they didn’t decide after all that she would be better off somewhere else. It wasn’t until she stepped through the doorway that she realized the room hadn’t greeted her. An instant too late, she started to leap back, but a hard hand caught her arm, spun her in the direction of her automatic reaction, then flipped her neatly onto the floor. She hit the carpeting hard, shoulder tucked automatically to roll, but the edge of a hand chopped across her neck. She went down again, red light flashing in her vision this time, going limp to let her attacker yank her to her feet, then pivoting to use his triumph and certainty to throw him across her.

He was ready for that, deflected the force at the last second and locked up her arm, slamming her back against the wall.

Li Zhen.

She recognized him through the haze of adrenaline and pain response just as the wall slammed the breath from her body. For an instant he pressed close, his forearm across her throat, cutting off her breath, his body pressed against hers, fury burning in his eyes. Then he yanked her away, twisting her past him and down. She didn’t try to fight him, broke her fall as she hit the floor, gasped as he landed on her back, twisting her wrists behind her, binding them. He dragged her to her feet, flung her backward onto the bed and straddled her hips, breathing hard, rage burning in his face, his thighs quivering against her hips.

Almost gently, he took her chin in one hand, twisting her head up and back, while his other thumb stroked lightly, delicately across her face.

Laid his palm against her temple.

She sucked in a strangled breath as pain sheeted white across her vision, blurring out the room, the hardware in his palm battering her nervous system. Retreated into the center of her being to wait while it peaked… faded. Stared up into his face as her vision returned.

“You took him.” The words came out as the gentlest breath. “I want him back. Now.” He pressed his palm against her face again.

She breathed slowly, focusing on that muscle response, the rush of air into and out of the alveoli, until the white-out avalanche of pain passed through her, over her. Her muscles trembled with reaction as it left her. “I… came here to wait for you.” She managed to get the words out nearly coherently.”To take you to him.”

“You will do that.”

Once more the pain avalanche crashed through her and she let it obliterate her. This time, as it receded, the trembling made her teeth chatter. Her eyes focused finally, and she stared up into his face, into eyes like black ice, read her death in them.

Good.

For a moment, he merely stared down at her, his lips tight, his face carved from stone. “Do not play games with me.” The threat made Ahni shiver inside. He reached out with one finger, traced the line of her cheek and jaw, down the curve of her neck, then rolled off her abruptly, with quick grace. Hauled her to her feet.

Her legs barely supported her, but she forced herself to stand straight as he released her hands. “We need a ship,” she said, her voice only slightly unsteady. “He’s not on the platform.”

Li Zhen jerked his chin at her and she left the room, dropping briefly into Pause to stabilize her biochemistry as she stepped into the courtyard garden. The CSF private on duty looked from her to Li Zhen behind her, then looked away. They had their orders. Ahni walked past them, scorched by the furnace heat of Li Zhen’s controlled fury behind her.

They passed the elevator, still locked down, and Ahni saw CSF escorting several people through the halls, their body language suggesting that these were arrests. She hoped Noah was getting the Con backup.

Li Zhen stopped her outside an unmarked door and palmed the lock plate. It was another of the small, private docks. The craft inside was small, but sleek and gleaming, an elegant cousin of the courier’s craft.

A port melted open in the hull as they approached and she climbed through at Li Zhen’s sharp nod.

Inside, he bound her hands again, and strapped her into one of the two seats, slid into the other and activated his control field. The small craft shivered as the lock evacuated and its hull faded to transparency. Smoothly, the ship drifted out into the darkness beyond the plattform hull.

Li Zhen looked at her silently.

Ahni closed her eyes briefly, dropping into Pause, replaying the trip in Kyros’s ship, running the memory image through her mind, fixing reference points, the platform, satellites, the planet, and moon… Opened her eyes and superimposed the map briefly on her view of Earth’s blue and white vastness, the star-glitter and black, and glare of sun. “That way.” She pointed with her bound hands.

She directed him, running a comparison with the view and angles she had called up from memory to the images that surrounded her. For a terrible instant she thought she had made a mistake or that somehow the lighthouse, as Kyros had called it, had moved, but it was there, just hard to see in Sol’s harsh light.

Li Zhen’s face didn’t alter as she pointed out their destination, but she caught his flicker of relief.

The small ship slid neatly into the dock and as it pressurized, the hull blanked to opacity.

As the engine shut down, Li Zhen pulled himself over to drift above Ahni. She stilled her reaction as his palm brushed her cheek. “This is not a trap?”

“It’s not a trap.” She held his dark stare. “I want you to see something. I don’t think you understand… about your son.”

She braced herself at the white lash of his rage. But he did nothing, merely drifted lover-close above her until the white-knuckled clench of his fists on her seat had relaxed. Then he pushed away from her without releasing her, drifted toward the opening port, reaching for a racked piece of equipment as he did.

Some kind of scanning device, Ahni guessed, wondered if he would leave her there. Her heart sank as she ran the Administrator’s potential reactions through her mind. But in a few moments, he returned, racking the scanner, pushing over to her to release the webbing that held her into the seat, leaving her hands bound. He wore a stun gun. She let him tow her, offered no resistance. Light from within the ship cast a path in the utter darkness of the lock and faintly illuminated the lock plate beside the entry door. Li Zhen studied her for a moment, then released her hands. “Open it.”

She laid her hand on the plate, her palm tingling as her hardware overrode the lock ID.

“Light off,” Li Zhen murmured, and the glow from within the ship winked out.

The door irised open releasing a breath of warm air.

The emergency lamps at the far side of the spherical space cast a wan light streaked with moving shadows. Koi and Ren played with two of his family in the dim light, diving, looping, pushing off from one another or the netted goods with breathtaking precision, no momentum wasted, every change in direction perfect. Among them, Ren looked clumsy, but his moves had improved dramatically in the brief time since Ahni had seen him last, clinging to Koi’s back.

They were teaching him. Ahni watched Koi dive across the space. glance off one of his relatives, angle neatly off to somersault off a hammock full of bundles, spilling his momentum just enough so that he drifted perfectly back to where Ren waited with another member of his family. Ren kicked off from her thigh, gliding on a slightly wobbly version of Koi’s path, body twisting as he tried to keep to the trajectory. He somersaulted as Koi had, but had lost too much moomentum and began to drift before he made it back to Koi. One of the sisters zoomed past him, snagging him, flipping him into a driving flight toward the hammock again. This time, Ren’s somersault was nearly perfect and he arrowed back to Koi, slightly off target, but close enough that Koi could reach out and snag his outstretched wrist with one long-fingered hand. The pair spun counter-clockwise, momentum spilling, slowing to drift slowly toward Ahni and Li Zhen.

Ren laughed a single crystalline note of pure joy.

Beside Ahni, Li Zhen flinched.

As if someone had called his name, Ren’s head came up and he turned to look in their direction. With a wordless cry, he kicked off from Koi’s thigh, sending him drifting backward as Ren arrowed toward Ahni and his father. Li Zhen made a small sound in his throat, stretched out his arms, and caught his son, arms tightening around him, tumbling backward to bump into the lighthouse wall. Koi and his two sisters followed cautiously to hover a few meters from father and son.

“Koi, come here,” Ahni said softly. “It’s all right.”

Koi gave a complex shiver that sent him drifting slowly, gently nearer, until he was close enough to touch Li Zhen. Arms around his son, who was grinning and making small excited noises, Li Zhen fixed narrowed eyes on Koi. His glance shifted to one of the feemales, who had drifted close behind Koi, curious and wary.

“Make me understand this,” Li Zhen said hoarsely.

“They’re the new version,” Ahni said softly. “Same DNA, not mutations, not engineered. Not birth defects. You know that, because you sampled Koi.”

“Why?” He didn’t look down at his son, who had wrapped arms and legs around his father’s torso, the same way he had clung Koi before.

“Dane thinks because we need to… evolve. To live out here.” Li Zhen shook his head, darkness filtering into his thoughts.

“They can’t even talk.”

“Tell him, Koi,” Ahni said in English. “That you can talk”

“Yes.” Koi spoke up finally, his voice reedy with tension. “We can. You just don’t listen.”

“I don’t believe you.” Li Zhen switched to English, his eyes narrowed. Koi’s sister nodded suddenly, looked toward Ren. He shook his head, apprehensive suddenly, looked up at his father’s face.

If this was a test, they were about to fail it. Then Li Zhen’s eyes widened slightly and he stared at his son.

Ahni picked it up easily–the visual account of his meeting with Ahni and Kyros, told in image, sound, the smell of Ahni’s hair as he leaped into her arms, and only the occasional word…

The swell of Li Zhen’s reaction overwhelmed his son’s images. With a cry, Li Zhen clasped his arms tightly about his son.

Koi was right, she thought. He hadn’t listened. Drew a deep breath. Laif and the rest of Koi’s family were headed their way now. “The CSF found them,” she said. “They shot one. It never occurred to them that this thing was a human being. That’s how they would look at your son.” She spoke harshly, felt his reaction and realized suddenly who had told the Council where to look. “The only way to keep them safe is to be separate. A nation with the power to protect its own.”

Li Zhen looked at her and didn’t speak. But Ahni’s heart leaped. They had their ally.