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  Sharana’s mood savaged his heart, and he stifled a groan. This had to stop.

  “Servant!” he called. “Summon my apothecary.”

  While the servant did as he was bid, the Monral opened the message from Major Russell.

  Earth Central Command extends an invitation to the honored heir and ambassador of the province of Monralar to preparatory negotiations at the Central Command Embassy, Capella Free Station, time yet to be determined, it said. There followed several hundreds of words of security measures and restrictions on movement.

  He shook his head. Complications, always complications, when it came to the humans. Something inside him exploded, and he hurled the tablet at the nearest wall hard enough to score the stone and break the tablet into three pieces. As if Central Command would have any say in his son’s movements.

  The ornate door of his apartments opened, and his apothecary walked in.

  “Speak,” the Monral muttered.

  The man was not one to engage in conversation. Without comment, he sat in the next chair, probing with healer’s privilege while his medical scanner hummed about the Monral’s aching head. Then he pulled a vial from a pocket in his robe, unsealed it, and held it out.

  “Drink,” he said.

  The Monral took it and quaffed its contents in one swallow, shuddering at the taste. After a few moments, the pounding in his head lessened. He met the apothecary’s eyes. “I need a way to function.”

  “Reconcile with your bond-partner.”

  He scowled. “You have a drug you use to suppress your own empathic response when treating patients in pain. I want access to a supply of it.”

  The healer’s eyes narrowed. “High one?”

  “This turmoil with Sharana renders me unfit to attend to my duties, and she refuses me. I cannot court her if she will have nothing to do with me.”

  “Conflict between a bonded pair is always short-lived—”

  “Will the drug work for this purpose?”

  “I believe it could be used to relieve such distress, but high one—”

  “Prepare a supply.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Laura heaved a sigh and leaned her chin on one hand at the desk in her sitting room, her tablet propped before her. “The Paran has been insanely busy.”

  “Sounds like the Sural.” On the tablet’s small screen, Marianne’s face held bland disinterest. “They couldn’t do this while an Earth Fleet flagship orbited most of the time, so it’s the first Kekrax trade mission in more than five of their years. There are several dozen provinces involved, and from what I understand, the Kekrax are eager to see what shinies they have on offer after all this time.”

  “What the lizards have to bargain with in return is beyond me—Kekrax Main is a ball of mud. The Paran is sparkling with glee, though. He must have gotten something he wanted.”

  “The Sural traded for some of that weird clay they have. Tolari artisans love it.”

  “Not this Tolari artisan.”

  Marianne laughed. “How are you getting along? Double the hormones, double the fun?”

  “Not really. I never did have much trouble with that anyway.”

  “Lucky!”

  “Now, now. Would it help if I said I haven’t been able to draw much?”

  “What? No! Why?”

  Laura lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. I planned to draw a portrait of the old man who did the whale sculpture, but I haven’t been able to finish it. I spend a lot of time reading instead.”

  “That’s too bad.” Marianne’s eyebrows creased. “What are you reading?”

  “A little of this, a little of that. I don’t read very fast, but mostly romances and colony planet adventures in the library you gave me. I’ve started reading some Paranian stories, too, and the Paran put some of his own poetry on my tablet.”

  “Oh how nice!”

  “What about Rose? Do you have her reading yet?” Laura stuck her tongue in her cheek.

  Marianne sputtered a laugh. “No, but she’s a precocious little weed. Four months old—I think—and crawling all over the place already. At least she’s finally stopped squawking every time I have a strong feeling.”

  “That was good for you. Built character.”

  “Built stress is more like it.”

  Laura giggled. “Enjoy the adventure.”

  “I’m trying.” A crash sounded in the background, followed by a shriek. Marianne started. “The adventure continues!”

  The link cut off. Laura chuckled and stuffed the tablet in a pocket, then glanced out the window into the darkened garden. A thrumming satisfaction flowed through her from the Paran. He took real delight in the Kekrax trade mission underway. Shaking her head, she headed out of her quarters and into his suite, where she stretched out on a divan to lie in wait for him. The man had to sleep sooner or later.

  * * *

  The Monral pinched the bridge of his nose and stifled a curse. The trading went well—the Kekrax seemed to favor Monrali pottery over Nalevian—but the apothecary’s drug took a toll on his ability to keep up with the strange little odalli. He returned from a brief walk to shake off the fatigue only to find the Paran had pulled a promising trade right out from under Monralar.

  His apothecary had warned him he would experience undesirable symptoms if he used the substance for more than a few tens of days. He wasted little thought on the matter. He needed empathic distance to function, and the drug provided the most effective means of achieving it. Undesirable symptoms or no, he preferred fatigue to continuous emotional turmoil.

  Sharana had left her apartments to take up quarters in the city. She had refused to allow a guard to accompany her, and the Monral understood the message in that. It was a measure of how well the apothecary’s drug worked that he could consider the implicit rejection with dispassion.

  He wrenched his thoughts from that path. He needed to keep his attention fixed on the present. And for the present… He quit his chair and left the open study, heading for the bottommost level of the stronghold, buried deep in the bedrock.

  When he arrived, his son, five guards, two servants, and an apothecary, all carrying shoulder packs, gathered near a circle about a man’s stride across on the stone floor: the portable phase platform left five years earlier by Ambassador Russell and his… wife. Monrali engineers had modified it to work with Kekrax technology, and now it provided a perfectly adequate way to transport Farric off Tolar. With so much trading, so much communications, so much flow of goods to and from the Kekrax ships in orbit, the extra activity generated when Farric and the guards left would go unnoticed.

  He met his son’s eyes. Nothing stirred within him. “My heart follows you, my son,” he said.

  Farric bowed.

  “You have all you need?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Fair journeys, dear one, honored companions. You will return to a better world.”

  The guards, servants, and apothecary bowed, murmuring, and crowded onto the platform with Farric. Someone hissed and clicked into a tablet in Kekrax Trade. A hum filled the air.

  The nine men disappeared.

  * * *

  CCS-52-0317

  Memorandum

  FROM: Adeline Pearson Russell

  SUBJECT: Tolar activity

  On 11th February 2553, field operatives observed the arrival of a member of the Tolari ruling caste and eight companions at the Kekrax trade hub, Gliese 877. (See CCS-42-4726 for index of known Tolari castes.) There they boarded an A’aan’ transport bound for Capella Free Station.

  Three field operatives (dossiers attached) continue surveillance under strict no-contact protocols. Diplomatic branch will be notified should it prove necessary to take the Tolari into custody.

  (signed) Adeline Russell, Major, Central Security

  Head of Field Operations, Inner Sector

  * * *

  Unlike the Kekrax station, which stank of mud, the A’aan’ ship smelled as if its air had recirculated th
rough a bed of flowers. Farric took a deep breath of it, and his nose itched. A faint bite of metal and machine lubricants underlay the pleasant scent. He had spent the five day transit attempting to identify the source of the floral odor, but asking the odalli crew proved fruitless. The A’aan’ treated olfactory information as deeply private. His questions had come close to giving offense.

  The journey neared its end, now. Surrounded by three guards, he stood at a viewport on the ship’s spacious observation deck, waiting for the shift into normal space, his eyes on the starless dark. Greater dangers existed within it than the races of the Trade Alliance yet knew, but it hid secrets as well—the trade fleet of Tolar, put into stasis, stored away when his people stopped starfaring and turned in on themselves, its location lost long ago. What a surprise that would have caused, if Tolari ships had appeared at the odalli trade stations with their storage areas full of goods no race suspected his world capable of producing.

  Other passengers occupied the room, some human, some not. Like him, they had come to watch the visual effects that accompanied the transition to normal space. Occasional flickers of curiosity shot through the humans when their attention focused on him, but no darker intent. The three Central Security operatives had not chosen to join the touristas. He and his guards had identified the spies easily enough while learning the layout of the passenger vessel. The guards had also accomplished the more difficult task of securing codes which allowed them access to the human and Den data-nets. Farric had not asked them how.

  A chime sounded. The smell of flowers grew stronger. A voice filled the air, making what Farric supposed was an announcement in one of the A’aan’ languages. A Terosha melody followed, and then hissing, clicking Kekrax Trade.

  “It approaches the final destination. They prepare for normal space. Haste for watching the transition!”

  The door slid open, and a large group of Kekrax charged into the room in a many-legged rush. From the size of them, chest high rather than waist-height, Farric guessed they were all Slash Second, the Kekrax equivalent of males. The reptilians slipped through the observers and took up alert, upright postures at the viewports, tails held high and waving. Then all around them, the humans smiled and relaxed, confirming his guess. Farric allowed one side of his mouth to lift. The sedative pheromones that male Kekrax released did not affect him or the companions he brought with him, not with the neurochemical treatment Father had ordered. The unsuspecting odalli, however, began to radiate a cheerful mood.

  Beneath his peds, the floor plating vibrated. A brilliant multi-colored light illuminated the darkness outside, lasting many heartbeats, and the observers sighed, cooed, or hissed, depending upon their species. As the light faded, stars flared into view, filling the background around a pair of giant yellow suns in close orbit about each other. Somewhere in the space behind them, not visible from the ship’s observation deck, two more small red companions spun about each other in a wider orbit. Ahead, a small crescent of light marked the hollowed-out planetoid its Den foci owners designated 15-347-2 and which humans called Capella Free Station.

  The small crowd broke into conversation and began to drift out the door, the Kekrax scattering to weave their way through the disparate groups like mottled grey-green ribbons. A few passengers lingered near the viewports, among them an aged and childless pair of humans who had frequented his table during meals. Their tales of adventures among the human aristocracy, much of which seemed to involve various vices and brushes with legal and moral authorities, had both entertained and educated him.

  “Ah, Farric,” said the woman. She wrinkled a smile as she approached, one gloved hand outstretched. In contrast to the loose tops and trousers she had worn during transit, today she wore a garment called a gown, gathered just below the breasts and flowing to the deck in cascades of filmy dark green fabric. Combs studded with green gems held her white hair in piles atop her head. “Do tell us how you enjoyed the light show.”

  A guard stepped between Farric and the old woman’s hand.

  “Evie,” her husband grumbled. Stray wisps of white clung to his shiny, spotted scalp, above masses of thick facial hair, including an improbable curl on each side of his upper lip. He, too, wore clothing Farric recognized as formal, in various shades of brown, with a bright blue strip of cloth folded around his collar and secured with a metal pin.

  “Oh pooh,” she said, but she withdrew her hand. “When in Rome and all that, Rupert. Well-bred young men always kiss a lady’s fingers.”

  “And well-bred ladies don’t insist.” He turned toward Farric. “Forgive my wife. She’s been like this since her friends started to have grandchildren.”

  “Well, perhaps he’ll take a turn with me about the room, then.”

  A subtle insistence tinted Evie’s tone. Farric gestured the guard out of the way and offered his arm. “Of course.”

  Rupert huffed and pulled at one of the curls on his upper lip. “Women,” he muttered, and turned away to gaze out the viewport.

  Farric led Evie, her presence now lit with excitement that did not show on her face, toward the other end of the observation deck. He was unsurprised when she slipped a bit of paper into his palm.

  “Smile, nod, and murmur, my dear,” she said in a low voice. “We’re just chatting, you know.”

  He slipped the object up his sleeve and affected a pleasant smile. “You surprise me, Evie.”

  “I surprise a lot of people.”

  “Do you have a message for me?”

  “Only that Earth’s government is not the friend they’d like you to think they are. I’m sure you already know that. But perhaps you don’t know that others wish to see you and your world remain free of Central Command.”

  “Indeed?”

  Evie smiled and waved at Rupert. “I understand your skepticism. What’s in it for us? Nothing, for the present. We take a long-term view, however.”

  “I see.”

  “Are all of your people so terse?” She patted his arm and steered him along the back wall. “The card I gave you has a name and contact information. I think you’ll find you can trust him, and by happy coincidence, he’s loafing about on Capella Free Station. It can’t hurt to talk to the man, can it?”

  He lifted an eyebrow.

  “You’re so young,” she said, and patted his cheek. “So is Bertie. I’m sure you’ll get along famously.” She dropped his arm. “Rupert!” she called. “I’m thirsty.”

  “You’re always thirsty,” the old man growled, but he came away from the viewport and reclaimed his wife.

  “Yes, and don’t you love it?” She beamed a bright smile. “It gives you an excuse to drink more brandy.”

  They headed out the door, arm in arm, continuing to bicker. Farric hid a grin, until the senior guard positioned himself for notice, forehead creased.

  “She is aged, and weak, and harmless,” Farric said, in Monrali.

  “She touched your face! Had there been poison on her glove—”

  “But there was not.”

  “The Monral your father—”

  “—is not here. Do you doubt my capabilities as does he?”

  The guard pressed his lips together.

  Farric pulled out the small rectangle of stiff paper Evie had given him. Lord Albert St. John Rembrandt, Esq., it said in ornate, difficult-to-decipher letters. Private Wealth Advisor. Licensed Capital Ventures in the A’aan’ Empire, all V’kri Planets, the Den. Below that, small, plain print gave the location of an office on Capella Free Station. He handed the object to the still-frowning guard.

  “I want to know everything you can discover about this human.”

  “Yes, high one.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Behind Farric, the door closed with all the weight of Capella Free Station behind it.

  His guards remained on the other side.

  Before him stood the only other occupant of the human embassy office, a representative of Earth’s vaunted diplomatic corps: Eran K’Tree Kalli
nikov, Subcommissioner for Trade Affairs, a woman of apparent middle age, who possessed an incisive mind but who held a rank well below that of ambassador, an unsubtle insult to both himself and Father. Three days ago, the subcommissioner had assured him of his welcome and of the interest Central Command had in the offer he had come to extend.

  That there had been issues to resolve first—well, he had expected that. It gave his guards time to learn to plumb the depths of the human data net on the station, using passkeys provided by the Kekrax in return for five handfuls of Monrali gemstones.

  Kallinikov handed him the growing stack of written sheets that comprised the agreement she and Farric had crafted over the past three days. He had insisted on a physical copy of the document, though he was certain the humans monitored and recorded these sessions; the Den laws under which the negotiations had taken place allowed either party to insist on a tangible artifact as a proof of a final agreement. He summarized it once again, more for the hidden recorder than for the subcommissioner.

  “Tolar agrees to the construction by Earth Central Command of a self-contained station to be located approximately 1.2 light years from Tolar, within the exclusionary space adjudicated to Tolar by the Boundaries Council of the Trade Alliance. Based on information provided at fair cost by the Terosha, the substellar mass at that location provides a gravity well suitable to form reliable K-space jump-points, with navigation waypoints as follows…”

  The failed star they offered to Earth, a “brown dwarf,” was certainly appropriate, and Tolari astronomers had charted it before the Terosha entered the neighborhood several hundreds of years earlier. The Monral his father had insisted on this location, and directed him to offer other concessions if necessary to ensure that the humans chose the desired spot.

  In return, Earth’s government would open a trade corridor for Tolar at their own expense, moving goods to and from Beta Hydri—with all of it funneled through Monralar and two of its close allies. The profits in prestige and money, the abstract marker humans used in lieu of trade goods, would be considerable.