The Dragon Never Sleeps

— 118 —

It took a week to get loose. The Pioyugovs had to do some fancy talking and, Jo suspected, had to grease a few palms. Station could get away with screwing aliens easier than humankind.

At P. Jaksonica 3 they collided with bureaucracy grinding its finest, for reasons not immediately clear. Station said that since Jo and AnyKaat had no documentation, they could not be permitted egress from the Traveler. But hundreds of people ought to be able to identify AnyKaat. And Station Master Magnahs and STASIS Director Otten should remember her. But Admin played the game as though what mattered was not people but papers. They wouldn't even let AnyKaat see her mother or son. Wouldn't notify them that someone claiming to be AnyKaat had arrived.

The people responsible bulwarked themselves behind a claim for need of a clearance from Sector General Secretariat.

Jo's patience cracked. She established herself in the Traveler's lounge, told a steward, "Tell Amber Soul I want to see her as soon as possible."

Amber Soul came immediately.

Jo had found she could communicate with her more completely than she could with Seeker. They had Merod Schene in common. Emotionally Jo shared little with Seeker but goals.

She told Amber Soul, "I've lost patience with these dinks. They're tearing AnyKaat apart. I want to go twist some arms. I want you to go along and scare the shit out of anybody who gives me any grief. Can you do that?"

Yes. As simple as that, understanding bridging the gulf.

"Let's go." The opposite of bureaucracy. Decide. Do it.

Jo did not see what Amber Soul showed the STASIS guards dockside. They took off howling. What if somebody got scared and did something stupid and lethal?

They had no trouble reaching the hub, and got there fast enough to catch Gitto Otten as he was sneaking away from his office. Amber Soul put a fear in him that welded his feet to the deckplates.

Jo said, "I came up to deliver a message. We're pulling out on the tenth. Headed for Starbase. I estimate a max thirty-two day turnaround. You recall how Guardships get about respect? I think you'll see one here about the twelfth of next month. Unless something really upbeat happens here before the tenth. You get my drift?"

Otten gulped, looked over her shoulder, over his own and found no help there. "Are you threatening me?"

"Damned straight."

Otten sputtered.

"Think about it. Get advice from Master Magnahs. You don't have much time." She headed back to the Traveler.

AnyKaat's son and mother reached the Traveler twelve hours after Jo visited Director Otten. The boy was pale and anxious, probably armed with only the vaguest memories of his mother. With them came a nervous Admin clerk who handed over "emergency" documentation for AnyKaat and Jo. He delivered a hasty, mumbled admonition about getting final approval from Sector General Secretariat, then fled.

Jo hung around as long as it took to be introduced, then withdrew. She took a lot of pain back to her cabin. After calling Otten and delivering a polite "Thank you," she lay down in the dark to stare at an overhead she could not see, wondering why that reunion filled her with hurt when she should be pleased for her friend.

Next day AnyKaat took advantage of her new mobility to go in search of friends. Jo watched her go. She looked troubled. Like she had not found what she wanted with her mother and son.

Jo knew. You could not go back. She had been through that time warp. A bad case of divergence shock awaited her now. She had evolved since last she was aboard VII Gemina.

The Guardship would not have changed.

That face of the future terrified her.

Amber Soul caught her at the exit hatch, in her dark musing. Seeker would consult with you, Jo Klass.

Startled, Jo grunted, recovered. "Of course." He must be getting impatient.

It was her first visit to the suite the aliens shared. The smell hit her like a blow, made her eyes water. It was like a place overpopulated by untrained pets.

They had brought a little of home with them, murky lighting, odd furnishings, the smell that was mostly just of themselves, a chill to the air. Their only concession to her comfort was humanlike appearance. Jo realized she'd never seen them in their true shape.

Those who carry wickedness across the Web, who have made themselves the enemies of my people, which has not known violence since before yours evolved, have begun to move in more dangerous directions. They have found new weapons.

Jo pictured the Outsiders armed with Hellspinners. She did not take into account the imprecision with which her brain rendered what it received. She rubbed the tears away, tried to breathe shallowly. That did no good.

Time is a luxury no more, Jo Klass. They are planning moves. They are sufficiently pressed that they are not discussing those moves across the Web. They are afraid. Those who fear are doubly dangerous, and those who serve them nurture their fears, for they have a broader investment in their philosophical symbiosis.

"Wait a minute. Those methane breathers can read each other's thoughts clear across the Web?"

Yes.

"And your people can tap into that? And you never told us?" Maybe Seeker had, she reflected, back when he'd had his first interview with WarAvocat. The implication had been there.

We are old as a species and as individuals. Our young are rare and precious, as is our solitude. Once we had our hour on the galactic stage, our time of exploration and adventure, but ages ago we turned away and returned home to contemplate what we had learned. We knew the Web well. It continued to be a source of news. We let the players on the galactic stage be. Most have been perceptive enough not to trouble the aged. Till your kind sprang up here and there, inexplicably, like fungi, and as often as not faded as quickly.

You excited a small, renewed outward interest because you were so absurd.

You came from nowhere, headed nowhere. You do not have one unique quality but the qualities you do have exist in paradoxical juxtaposition. You are capable of rejecting the evidence of science and reason in order to believe the impossible, yet you are so curious about hows and whys that you keep picking at a scab concealing a secret even knowing that it will devour you. You are lawless, predatory, capable of eating your own young in the search for profit, yet you created something unprecedentedly lawful in the Guardship fleet. That is flawed, skewed, even internally aberrant, but it is evolving toward what it should be. At the moment the messengers of shadow believe the Guardships are invincible. But soon they will be shown the truth.

I must find your WarAvocat and make him see. Amber Soul and I must make available the wisdom of our kind while the Guardships remain capable of becoming what they should be.

Jo did not know if something was getting lost or if she was just stupid. That had been Seeker's longest and most revelatory communication ever and, she suspected, his most carefully rehearsed, but she did not think she had gotten the true sense of what he wanted to convey. She sensed his disappointment. She said, "If it's that critical why waste time looking for VII Gemina? Go to Starbase."

The warning must be presented to someone with the capacity, even the inclination, to listen. Will I find such a person at Starbase?

"Probably not."

Then we must find the man who will listen. There is not much time. You must tell the other one.

What she had expected. Telling them to get their butts in gear. "I will."

When AnyKaat came back, Jo figured it would be just to gather whatever she wanted to take with her. She went to the lounge to make up her mind if she would put herself through a farewell scene or just let it slide.

She had a drink. It did not help. She concocted another with twice the firepower, but then just sat there nursing it.

"There you are. I thought you'd disappeared."

The moment had come. But AnyKaat did not look like she was going anywhere. Looked ragged as hell, in fact. "Hi." Glumly. "Got a message for you from Seeker."

"He wants to get moving. Don't take much genius to guess that." She sat down.

"You got it. How'd it go?"

"It didn't. Jo, I can't talk to my own mother. She doesn't have the slightest idea what I'm telling her. The things she tells me all seem shallow and trivial after Merod Schene. And my son doesn't know who the hell I am and doesn't trust me enough to want to find out. My old friends are scared of me. Degas's people aren't the least bit shy about telling me it's all my fault he isn't here. Era's people aren't talking at all. The department is in a tizzy because the back pay they owe us, with the interest setup we had, will screw the budget for a couple of years. They wrote us off and stopped figuring us in. Not to mention what my accrued seniority might mean if I get plugged back into the system."

Jo mixed her one of her favorites. "Chew on this."

AnyKaat took a gulp. "I would've been better off if we hadn't gotten off V. Rothica 4. Hell. Everybody would have been better off. They wouldn't all hate me for turning up alive and making them feel guilty about how they feel."

Jo grunted. She could not think of anything to say to that.

"It hurts, Jo. Even when you understand what's going on. All that time hanging onto a thread, and here wasn't here anymore when I got here."

"I know. I've been through it. And it's all I have looking at me when I catch VII Gemina."

AnyKaat fiddled with things not there. "So how do you cope with it?"

"I don't know. After a while we just avoid attachments and commitments. We put everything into being a good soldier."

AnyKaat closed her eyes, expression momentarily surprised. Jo suspected she had realized that a certain Guardship soldier had formed an attachment despite herself. She hoped AnyKaat would not want to talk about it. That was when things got strange and scary and misinterpreted and turned into things they were not.

"I told Otten we were pulling out on the tenth. That's about as long as Seeker will be patient. He's real worried."

AnyKaat took the offered escape hatch. "How come?"

"I don't know. He don't always make sense even when Amber Soul helps him try."

"She's weird. She gives me the creeps."

"She gives herself the creeps. She's lived through what you're suffering right now, a hundred times worse."

"Yeah." AnyKaat reached across, touched the back of Jo's hand. "Thanks, Jo."

"Hunh? What?"

"Nothing. I got to check some things out."

Jo watched her leave, puzzled.

AnyKaat was aboard Dawn Watch when the Traveler undocked. Her face was puffy from crying. She could not forget all she had chosen to leave behind, though she had lost it long ago. Jo left her alone.

Jo did not think she could have walked away rather than cling to the edges of the once known....

Seeker had a vague notion where to start looking, almost two months of hard running beyond the Rim. The crew did not argue. However they were being paid, it was enough to make them bite down on their fear.

With unavoidable stops, misnavigations, and evasions, four months elapsed before Dawn Watch reached its destination. VII Gemina was not there. There was nothing in that system but the leavings of an old skirmish the defenders had not won. Seeker would have to continue spying on the methane breathers till he extracted a hint where to move next.