Silent Service

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ebooksonthe.net www.ebooksonthe.net Copyright ©2000 by Nina Osier First published in ebooks, 2000 NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

CONTENTS Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8

Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 ****

SILENT SERVICE Nina Osier

Chapter 1 It was so quiet now. Kate Landay lay still, and listened to the blessed silence after the relentless questions, and savored the absence of pain. Was she conscious, or was this a dream? Or was she dead, and this her first moment of after-life? Right now she didn't care. Later, if there was to be a “later,” the curiosity that had been landing her in difficult situations all her life would no doubt kick in; but for the moment she wanted nothing except to be left as she was.

That, of course, was too much to ask. She felt a touch that was human, or at least flesh against her flesh; she heard a voice speaking, that of another female. A voice that was familiar, that she'd never expected or even hoped she might hear again. "Kate. Kate, don't try to answer me. I'm monitoring you, I'm watching how you react when you hear me. You can go back to sleep in a just a minute, but I need you conscious for a few scans. Unless you're in pain—and you shouldn't be—just relax, just rest. You're safe now, and they didn't do anything to you that I can't fix." Amy's voice. Amy who had been at her side since Kate Landay was a plebe, a whole career and considerably more than half a lifetime ago. It really was all right, then; the lack of tactile sensation below her neck must be due to her body's being immersed in regenerative gel. Somehow she had survived, although she couldn't imagine how or why. "Dr. Salter?” Landay heard a second voice, this one masculine but also familiar. Familiar, yet so long absent from her life that for a moment she couldn't place it—or perhaps just didn't want to place it. And since she couldn't turn her head toward the sound, performing the incredibly difficult task of opening her eyes seemed pointless. “How is she?" "Conscious, which means you shouldn't be here,” Salter answered, with acid in her tone. But it sounded like forced disapproval, as if she said what a physician was supposed to say from habit rather than from real inclination. “But by now she's recognized your voice; see there?" Salter would of course be indicating the changes in her patient's brain activity, and the man who'd come into the room (or compartment? were they on a ship, or still on the Gateway planet, or somehow back on Earth?) would be looking at the monitor and understanding the readouts and nodding almost absently. His eyes would be on Landay's nude body as she lay suspended in the regen tank, and what he must be seeing would be disturbing even to a person who'd once served as a Ranger in the Sovereignty's defense forces. Would he be revolted, not just distressed?Landay wondered that almost idly. It had been so long, and her damaged body still had such a dim and tiny spark of life within it, that although she'd clearly just reacted to his presence she couldn't claim to be feeling excited about it. She wasn't feeling much of anything, physically or emotionally, because right now she simply wasn't capable of doing so. But she heard him when he spoke again, of course, and his voice held neither revulsion nor the pity that would have been worse. He said in a deceptively calm tone that she remembered well even after the passing of two decades in Terran time, “Looks like it was close, Doctor. I guess I almost wasted all those favors I called in." "Close? Close doesn't count, Joe.” Amy Salter uttered a gusty sigh. “She still looks like hell, but she's going to be fine. Kate, you can go back to sleep now. Everything checks out." "Pleasant dreams,” Joseph Costigan added softly, and Landay could have sworn that his fingertips brushed against her cheek as she drifted away into comfortable darkness. **** "What happens now, Doctor Salter?” Costigan waited until he was certain that the woman in the regen tank could no longer hear him before he asked that question. Kate Landay was still now, with peace on

her face, and that was an improvement over the way she'd looked yesterday when she'd been brought through the Gate. Then her face had been lined with agony she'd no longer been capable of feeling, but that had distorted her features for so long before it ended that her muscles remembered and held their positions even after clinical death had given her release. She still looked awful, there was no denying that, but already she was healing. The body he'd once known so intimately was twenty years older now, even if she hadn't been savaged inside and out by the Questioners’ procedures she would still have been changed by time's passing alone—but he could see that she'd remained very much the athletic woman he remembered. Still slender from rigorous physical training, not from vain self-starvation, he thought now as he noted the contours of muscle that were redefining themselves as the regenerative gel caused her body to remember what its tissues had been like before the Questioners began with her. In this far-off place beyond the Gate he hadn't seen even her image, not once in the twenty years since he had come through that portal himself as refugee and exile; but every line of the form in that tank was familiar to him nonetheless, she had matured but she hadn't truly changed. Not physically, anyway. Nor emotionally either, he suspected, or she wouldn't be here now in this condition. But would the ordeal from which she was now recovering alter her in anything like the ways that his own experience with Sovereignty justice had changed him? He could only wonder, because her new life hadn't yet begun. Wouldn't begin until Salter took her out of that tank, until Landay stood again on her own legs (weak and uncertain as those of a Terran horse's foal, if all the post-regen tales he'd heard were true) and let the healing gel be washed from her re-grown skin. Coming out of the tank and showering away the last glistening coating was often compared to the rebirth of ancient legend, and while Costigan was thankful he'd never had that experience himself he suspected the comparison might be an apt one. The life Kate had known was over, yes. The body in which she had lived her first forty-three years was to all intents and purposes gone, destroyed as punishment for the offense she'd been accused of committing against the Sovereignty and in hopes of gaining the Questioners information about her suspected cohorts. The body Costigan saw now was a new one, growing from the pattern of the other but sharing only the most basic of its structures. Brain, spinal cord, skeleton, major internal organs. Even the latter group of items would of course have been damaged by the energies to which the Questioners had subjected her, but they never harmed a victim's brain. They had wanted her to know, because without knowing there could be no true punishment; and they had wanted her to be able to communicate, even to the last moment. Amy Salter was straightening at last from the regen tank's control pad, and she was working her shoulders and sighing with relief. She asked acerbically, “Since when am I ‘Doctor Salter’ to you, Joe? We never liked each other much, I realize; but we've known each other forever, for gods’ sake!" "I didn't dislike you, Amy.” Costigan looked his old rival over, and he made no attempt to conceal the fact that he was doing so. “Kate hasn't changed much in twenty years, but you certainly have." "If you mean that I've learned how to open my mouth and say what's on my mind, you're right. I had to learn that, I found out fairly early in my first shipboard assignment that if I didn't kick ass when it needed kicking I'd never be able to get Explorer ship crews or Rangers or anyone else I had to take care of to take me seriously. And you sure as hell can't treat a patient who doesn't accept that you're a real doctor, so I just bit the bullet as the old saying goes and started playing the role. And after awhile it started to come naturally.” Salter had regen gel on her forehead, a glop that had landed there at some point when

she'd found it necessary to touch her patient and had then inadvertently touched her own face. It was harmless, of course; it didn't act on any organism that didn't need its help, but it was messy and she fastidiously wiped it away. "Kate always told me I didn't really know you,” Costigan acknowledged. “And that was true, you were in medical school most of the time that she and I were together; but I've got to admit, I never thought you'd last a year on active duty. Not from what I did see of you then." "And you still didn't like me very much. But that's old news, Joe.” Salter gave him a tired smile. “Now we both get out of here and let her sleep, if that's what you meant when you asked me what happens next. She's perfectly safe, if there are any problems at all the tank will alarm and I'll be back in here inside of a minute. She's progressing beautifully—I expect to have her out of there in a week at the most, possibly in as little as four days. But you know as well as I do that regen's a completely individual process, my job's to monitor and make sure that nothing interferes. Her body and the gel interacting are doing all the real work, she only needed me to set up the protocol correctly and get it started." "I mean after the regen's completed, Amy.” Costigan's gray eyes met Salter's dark ones, and although his tone was matter of fact his gaze was a demand. “I know something else about people who come back from injuries severe enough to cause clinical death, I know that I may not have done her a favor by pulling her out of there and that you may not be doing her a favor by giving her back a healthy body. It's bad enough when the person who's regenned got hurt in an accident, or was injured in a battle ... I never heard of bringing anyone back from a torture death before. Do you think she's going to make it?” He paused, and swallowed so hard that his throat moved visibly. “I don't mean is her body going to recover, I mean is she going to make it?" Salter turned away from him then, and looked at her patient. She studied Kate Landay carefully, as if this woman were simply an intriguing case and not the closest friend of her entire adult life. At last she sighed, looked up at Costigan again, and grinned a small and rather crooked grin. She said softly, “That's up to her, Joe. And in a way it's just as much up to both of us, don't you think? We're all she has now, there's nothing left of her old life here." "Or of yours,” Costigan said, realizing that fact for the first time even though it should have been plain to him from the moment when he'd asked Amy Salter if she would be willing to do this. “You could have stayed on the other side, Amy. You weren't convicted of any crime, you came through that Gate voluntarily—but you left everything familiar behind, too, and now you can no more go back than Kate can." "Or than you can.” Their eyes met again, and this time they locked in a moment of complete understanding. “We're stuck with each other, Joe. You, and me, and Kate. But then that's nothing new, is it?" **** If the Gate had been predictable, Amy Salter reflected as she scanned Kate Landay's body for the hundredth or more time since she'd come through that portal with her friend's stasis tube five days earlier, this haven would not have been available to them or to any of the thousands of other humans who lived here. Some scientists believed it was the far past or distant future of the barren Class M planet from which it periodically opened to a topographically similar, but far more hospitable, world; some theorized it was the same planet in a parallel universe, in another dimension; while others said it was simply very far away, perhaps in another galaxy within the same universe and the same time period inhabited by present-day Earth and its allies and its enemies. In any case the Gate opened without regularity, usually several times during each Terran-reckoned year but not in any predictable pattern; and it had been

known to go dormant for months at a time, in fact its longest dormant period since its discovery had lasted a worrisome fifteen months. That was why instead of using the Gate for commercial travel between—dimensions? time epochs? galaxies?—whatever, after an initial period of exploration the Diet had decided that no one would be sent through whom society might actually want to get back. There was precedent for this sort of thing, plenty of it. Salter had studied human history as had any educated citizen, she knew about Australia—about the first colonies on the moons of Saturn—about the mines of New Siberia. And putting a prison colony, or sociological garbage dump to be more accurate in this case, beyond some kind of energy barrier or time portal wasn't a new idea either; she had read the fiction of Heinlein and other early speculative writers, she knew that such a “coventry” wasn't a brand new concept. It had been especially useful five years after the Gate's discovery, though, when the Diet had been obliged to figure out what to do with the remnants of a defeated rebel fighting force and that force's associated civilians. Dumping them through the Gate and figuring that they had a reasonable chance of staying alive in the world beyond it had been a way to treat such survivors of the Alba Five civil war as Joseph Costigan with some semblance of compassion; and of course before and since then many other undesirables had been similarly dumped. Once on the other side they weren't coming back, the high security installation on the Gateway world made sure of that; and it was beneficial to society to have a means of getting rid of people who couldn't or wouldn't be rehabilitated after having committed crimes, since now it was no longer legal to execute miscreants of any kind. It was no longer legal, but at times it was done by de facto means. Amy Salter knew that for certain now, she had seen the evidence when Kate Landay's body had been released from the Questioners’ section at the New Brixton Security Facility on Gateway. “Committed suicide during questioning by authorities,” the death record had said; that was what Landay's family had been told, and even Salter would have been expected to believe it if she hadn't been summoned into the office of New Brixton's commander and if once there she hadn't been greeted by the sight of a stasis tube floating on antigrav pads in front of that officer's ornate desk. Kate had been inside that tube, or what remained of Kate at least. In spite of her years of practice as a military physician, Amy Salter had looked through the transparent lid and had been obliged to swallow vigorously several times in order to keep herself from vomiting. And yet at the same time she had wanted to shout with gladness, because there was still the potential for life in that tube. Clinical death, yes; but by definition that could be reversed, her friend hadn't yet gone to a place from which she could not be reclaimed. And then the commander of New Brixton had been speaking to Salter, had been telling her that if she wanted to accompany her patient and commanding officer's body into exile beyond the Gate she would be allowed to do so. Someone over there wanted this woman badly. If Amy refused to go along, the prison commander continued, before she could leave here she would have to part with her memory of this conversation. The person who wanted Captain Landay was making it worthwhile for the Diet's appointees to accommodate his request; never mind how, never mind why. And that person said that Dr. Salter would recognize him if they were allowed to communicate with each other. Amy had agreed, numbly because this was overwhelming news coming on top of her friend's arrest and torture and now temporary, but potentially permanent death. The New Brixton commander had ordered a commlink to be set up between his office and that of someone he called “my counterpart on the other side.” And within seconds she'd found herself staring into the familiar face of Joseph Costigan, twenty years older than she remembered him but unmistakably Joe. "Will you come with her?” was the only question he'd asked.

For Amy Salter to answer in the affirmative would mean the end of her career, the end of her life as she'd always known it. A story of some sort would be concocted, given out to the press, told to her few remaining distant relatives back on Terra and to her friends and Explorer colleagues ... a story that would have to tie in somehow with Kate Landay's supposed suicide. Whether or not those who knew her would believe that tale wasn't Salter's problem. She did feel sorry for Kate Landay's family; Kate had such a thing, and while it was no storybook ideal her people cared about her and they would grieve for her. So, of course, would Kate's lover of the past ten and more years. But the only person who would really have grieved at losing Amy Salter lay dead in a stasis tube beside her, so giving Costigan an answer to his question hadn't been difficult at all. She'd only asked, “Can you provide me with the facilities I'll need to restore her, Joe? If you can't then there's no point to this, I won't bring her through the Gate and then lose her anyway." He had promised her the necessary medical technology, and he had delivered. And now Kate Landay, no longer Captain Landay of the Explorers although she might or might not realize that fact yet, was whole again in body and was carefully easing her weight onto her feet for the first time. The structures that had supported her when she'd walked into New Brixton's interrogation unit almost a Terran month earlier were gone, destroyed. The flesh and bone she wore now was almost entirely new, yet it had the tactile memories of that which it had replaced. Landay was as weak as any human who'd been inactive for medical reasons over a lengthy period of time, but she wasn't going to have to learn to control her body all over again; she leaned on Salter's arm for support and for balance, but she did so with the air of a cadet gaining artificial gravity “sea legs” rather than with that of a toddler attempting to walk for the first time. Joseph Costigan watched them on a security monitor from his office elsewhere in Government House, and although he felt a few twinges of guilt at invading their privacy by doing so he didn't seriously consider delegating the task or dispensing with it altogether. Covertly observing new arrivals was a necessary protocol, it simply had to be done; and if anyone was going to watch Kate when she was this vulnerable, then at least he was going to do it himself. He saw two human females of similar age, both in their early forties now. Amy Salter was an African woman of medium height; her black hair not yet graying, her face strong-featured with dark eyes that watched her friend with a familiar combination of affection and relief and professional concern. Kate Landay (how she had hated it when some self-appointed genius back at the Defense Academy had corrected her name on a class list once, making her into “Katherine Landry"! Costigan recalled with a smile) was of mixed European and Native American ancestry; a petite woman who didn't look as if she could possibly pick up a blaster rifle—let alone use it with appalling accuracy. Larger humans paired with her for the Academy's hand-to-hand combat courses had quickly learned just what a disadvantage overconfidence really could be, and Costigan himself had discovered when he'd been her training partner that she could compensate very well for her lack of reach. That small frame of hers carried steely muscles, she was a damned sneaky fighter, and her reflexes were swift. Oh, yes, she could fight. Well enough to lead a Ranger unit, although he now knew that she'd switched service branches after.... No, he wasn't going to think about that right now. He was going to sit here instead and be glad that Amy Salter was the kind of physician who remembered that stimulating regrowth of a patient's lost hair was a very useful way to boost that patient's morale during recovery from devastating injuries such as those

Kate Landay had endured. Kate's hair color was a warm brown, highlighted with hints of red or gold depending on the spectrum of light that happened to be playing on it at any given moment. Just now nothing like that was evident, of course, because the lights under which she moved were cold and unforgiving; but she looked much better with that crop of short hair than she'd looked with just frazzled wisps decorating her scarred scalp, a few days earlier when he'd seen her in the regen tank. Kate's eyes were hazel, and her face was fair-skinned and heart-shaped and—what? Not beautiful, that was a conventional word and Kate's looks weren't conventionally pretty. Yet she had always attracted her full share of attention from those human males who came within her orbit (and from some females, too). She certainly had caught and kept Joe Costigan's interest, when he'd met her during the long-ago time while they were both midshipmen. She had always looked so completely and confidently alive, that was it. But now she was tentative in a way he'd never seen her look before, except for one time only. A time he didn't particularly want to remember, but he could do nothing now to squelch that memory. He watched while the woman he'd once regarded as the love of his life made her unsteady way from the regen tank to a hand-held shower nearby, studied her nude body almost dispassionately because not even Kate could be erotically interesting to him while that nauseating gel was still coating her skin ... and he thought of her as he'd first known her, and wondered whether she could remember him as he'd been then with anywhere near the same clarity. **** Landay's thoughts at the moment were not at all similar to Costigan's. She was biting her lip as her new/old, strange/familiar body protested at being asked to move for what was essentially the first time. It wasn't exactly painful, but it was decidedly not comfortable. "Here, you're supposed to use the shower seat!” Amy scolded, her tone as acerbic as her supporting touch was gentle. “Sit, now. And let me handle the spray, your job's to just hold still." "That's about all I can do,” Kate answered in disgust. “I can't remember the last time someone had to give me a shower, this is ridiculous." She wasn't, of course, equating showers shared with Yoshi with this mild humiliation. Yoshi. Dear god, what had they told Yoshi? The water was warm on her skin. Until now the gel had kept her from feeling any real sensation wherever it had touched her; and it had enclosed her to her chin, covering even her scalp so that only her face was exposed. She was aware now that this chamber was cool, that she would be comfortable without clothes here only for as long as the water was flowing over her body. The warmth was relaxing, though, and being able to feel anything at all was a pleasure. Or she should have said, to be able to feel anything except pain. Those memories were still very close. She'd been roused a number of times while in the regen tank, and on each occasion the absence of torment had been less of a surprise than on the last; but she recalled little else about those awakenings. They had been necessary for Amy to configure her treatment correctly, and they'd lasted only as long as was required by that purpose. Yet she was certain that the first time she had awakened in that tank, someone besides Amy had been with her. Someone dear to her ... a masculine presence.

"Was Yoshi here, earlier?” She knew, somehow, that wasn't the case; but who else could it have been? A male physician or other caregiver, some colleague of Amy's, wouldn't have left this resonance of emotional connection behind him in Landay's mind; and none of the other men with whom she'd felt such closeness could possibly be nearby. Her adored grandfather was on Terra, and wherever this was it wasn't Earth. Her father had gone out of her life long ago. Her brother (half-brother actually, but all the sibling—and in a sense, all the child—she'd ever had, and therefore more precious to her than were most women's younger brothers) couldn't have been mistaken for anyone else, because if the El'kah'th/human hybrid Clifton Bradley had touched her there would have been nothing vague about the memory. And while it was possible that she, the criminal—the traitor, the cashiered Explorer captain—might have been sent into exile after somehow surviving her ordeal in the Questioners’ hands, there was no way Amy Salter had done anything that would have caused the authorities to send her through the Gate too; so she couldn't have heard Joseph Costigan's voice or felt his fingertips brushing against her cheek. Assuming that Costigan was still alive beyond that Gate, of course, and this many years after he'd been sent through it to exile that was a very large and probably unwarranted assumption. Oh, she was confused! And she hated confusion so much; she'd spent her whole adult life (and her adolescence, and most of her childhood) unraveling mysteries and solving puzzles because to know was her passion. "There, that's the last of the glop,” Amy was saying inelegantly. “There's no warm-air dryer here, I'm afraid; Joe's given us all the essentials but not many of the amenities. So we'll get you dried off the old-fashioned way, and then into some clothes." "Joe?” Landay asked. Suddenly she was alert. She still couldn't remember much of what she so desperately needed to recall, but at least her perceptions of the present were clear now. She sat up straight, grasped the towel that Salter was about to wrap around her, and began to rub her wet body with as much vigor as she could muster. “Tell me what happened, Amy. I remember a hearing, not a legal court-martial but a closed debriefing. At the end of that I was told I had to be taken to the Questioners, and I expected it to be easy because they were going to use truth dope on me; and I knew as soon as they had the truth I'd be out of there and on my way home to Yoshi. But I woke up from the dope with someone telling me they couldn't get past the barrier in my mind, and that they were going to have to break down that barrier ... and after that.... “Landay shuddered, and for a moment she clutched the towel and closed her eyes. "Shhh.” Salter knelt at her friend's side, wrapped a second towel around her shoulders and put both arms around her. “Of course there wasn't any barrier for them to break down. You told them the truth with and without the serum, but they just didn't want to believe it. So they kept up the Questioning until you died. Clinically, anyway. And then they put your body into stasis, and thank all that's holy they did it soon enough." "Why did they put me in stasis?” The shudders stilled after a moment, but Landay didn't try to disengage herself from the other woman's arms She leaned against her friend instead, and her eyes remained closed. “Were they going to regen me so they could start all over?" Now, that was a thought so horrible it hadn't entered Amy Salter's mind. She said honestly, “No, Kate. That wasn't the idea, not at all." "What, then? I know how far a full Questioning can go before the subject dies, there can't have been

enough left for me to live again without the regen no matter what you or anyone else did for me.” She put her head down onto Salter's shoulder. She must be getting her friend wet, but right now she didn't care; and Amy didn't seem to care, either. She put up a hand and smoothed Kate's hair instead of trying to move fastidiously away. "The idea was to send you through the Gate to Joe Costigan,” Salter said, and waited a moment when she felt the smaller woman's body stiffen in her embrace. “He's not only survived over here, Kate; he's acquired some kind of power, a lot of influence. Enough so that when he contacted people he knew on the other side—and I know that's supposed to be impossible, but it isn't because I saw him do it!—he was able to get your body released intact into exile instead of having your ashes sent home to your next-of-kin, and he asked me to come with you and do the regen. So of course I did, and now here we are. That was five days ago, you've always been a fast healer." "What did they tell my family? What did they tell Yoshi?” There was a measurable interval before Landay asked those questions, and when she did so her voice was hushed and reluctant. Whatever the answers were they couldn't be good ones, she already knew that; but still she must ask, and still Salter must tell her. "They said that you committed suicide to avoid giving the Questioners the information they were seeking.” Salter tightened her arms, almost fiercely tucked her friend's head closer into the sheltering curve of her shoulder. “That's what Yoshi's been told, what your family's been told. I'm not sure how they explained not having your body or your ashes to send home, but after Joe contacted me I stopped caring about that because I was busy taking care of you. But I'm sure the bastards thought of something, they always do." "Yes. They always do.” Landay swallowed what sounded like a sob, and one more powerful shudder rocked her body. Then she deliberately lifted her head, pulled back against Salter's arms and waited to be released. After which she put up her hands and began toweling her hair, nonchalant in her physical nakedness now that she'd successfully covered her painfully exposed emotions. She said, “I remember thinking I heard Joe's voice once, I think it was the first time I woke up in the regen tank. I even thought he touched me, on my cheek because that was about the only place I had available to touch right then. When I woke up later I was sure it must have been a dream ... but he really was there, wasn't he?" "Yes. I think he had to see you and touch you to make sure he'd really got you away, and that you really were going to live and get well. He hasn't been back since then, but he's called me often.” Amy smiled her relief. This was the Kate Landay that she knew, and the one everyone else knew too. She was glad her friend could trust her enough to let her see that other Kate, the vulnerable one who'd rested quivering against her body just a few moments earlier; but getting this woman back had been the whole point of the past five days’ efforts. **** "She's small,” a voice said quietly at Joseph Costigan's shoulder. “You realize you haven't told me a damned thing about her, really? But I did expect someone physically larger. I don't see how that little thing ever got through Ranger Basic." Costigan didn't start, because he had been aware of it when his life partner had entered the room that he fondly referred to as his office. This world beyond the Gate had been occupied by humans for a full generation, so although it was still very much a frontier it now had some fair-sized settlements; and the woman who stood behind his chair was his partner in the leadership of this particular settlement, the

oldest and largest one on this planet. He wouldn't tell Hanna Leone that actually she reminded him of Kate Landay, that their similarities as he perceived the two women were why he'd been attracted to Hanna two decades ago when he had been thrust through the Gate along with 796 other people. That sounded like a huge group, of course; it was enough to populate a village, enough to crew the largest of starships. But it was a pitiful remnant, to be all that remained of the human element of a once-thriving colony. He'd become that remnant's leader by default, because though the Sovereignty had characterized them as a “rebel force” most were civilians; and although he was only in his early twenties then, he was an experienced military officer. A Ranger, which meant that he was used to small units and dangerous but short-term assignments—he hadn't had the training of a starship command officer or Explorer, and he really didn't know much about organizing a group like that one and getting its members settled into life on a new world. But what else could he do, when they were looking to him and to the several former enlisted men and women among their number for guidance and protection? And how in bloody hell was he or anyone else supposed to protect them, anyway, when the world to which they'd been so unwillingly sent was already occupied? The Gate had been open on that day at its widest possible expansion, which was serendipitous because its functions were in no way controllable by the New Brixton staff—and the opening's unusual breadth had at least allowed Costigan's people the doubtful protection of being able to keep together, instead of being forced to form a column whose individuals could be picked off. He'd thought they might be attacked like that immediately, because they had been allowed to bring along food supplies and his notion of what lay beyond was one of deprivation and anarchy. And they had been met at the Gate; met by an armed band, one that had held them there while he and the other former military people had battled their own urges to resist and had firmly controlled those among their civilian charges who had seemed close to panic. Then Hanna had appeared. She'd been little more than a girl, in those days her much older (and by then reclusive and dying) lover had been the leader of a settlement that had coalesced out of those who had been dumped during the five years since the Gate's discovery. There hadn't been as many previous arrivals as he had expected there would be, and that was probably why they were far better organized than he'd anticipated. There was a main group, a settled village where families who'd been exiled together had set up rude homes and where couples who'd joined themselves after being exiled had done likewise. There were other, smaller groups—some settled, some nomadic—of people who couldn't or wouldn't fit into the main village. From time to time the more violent of these raided the more peaceful, and that was why (as Hanna Leone had explained to the newly-arrived Joseph Costigan) it had been not only possible but absolutely necessary for those in the main settlement to establish leadership and to create defenses and especially to monitor who or what came through the Gate whenever the damnable thing self-activated. Usually it brought them just a few new citizens-to-be, people who'd done something the societies on the other side of that portal couldn't tolerate and that they themselves couldn't repent of ... but sometimes it brought psychopaths, and while weapons were never officially allowed through they did make it occasionally in spite of all supposed safeguards. The refugees from the disbanded colony on Alba Five created a major problem for the Gateway world's existing population, because they numbered more than half as many as its main settlement's residents and because they were a cohesive group. Assimilating them quickly was vital, that Hanna Leone had been able to see immediately and that she had recommended to the community's leader. And of course the

best way to assimilate them promptly was to combine authorities, for her to bring Joseph Costigan and his comrades together with their local counterparts. The alternative would have been to help them establish their own separate community, and to do that as quickly as possible so that competition for resources couldn't spark conflict between the two groups. They had chosen to meld their people into one settlement. It hadn't been easy, there had been countless conflicts and arguments for the leaders to mediate or arbitrate. But it had worked, and when the original community's leader had died part way through the process Hanna Leone had settled the succession issue by assuming her dead partner's role and then taking Joseph Costigan as her new mate. If she hadn't been attractive to him then, Costigan thought now as he turned in his chair and looked up at her after almost two decades of life at her side, he would have been in deep trouble. But although she wasn't like Kate physically—she was taller and more generously built, fuller of breast and broader of hip—she had the same air of being in control of her surroundings, and the same vitality shining in her eyes. Brown eyes, much darker than Kate's eyes. Black hair, as black as Joe's own. No, she didn't look a blessed thing like Kate Landay except that both were adult human females; but she had the right spark, he had been able to want her and take her and make a life with her all those years ago. And he still cared for her now, if only with the affection of a long-time friend ... and she'd never attached much importance to the physical part of their relationship anyway. When they were younger she had expected him to want her from time to time and probably would have been insulted if he hadn't, but now he no longer touched her in that way and she had never thought it necessary to initiate such contact. That was one way in which life with Hanna Leone was completely unlike life with Kate Landay. Kate, Joe Costigan recalled with an inward smile, had been the initiator just as often as he had during the long-ago time when they'd been mated. And she had been a tender and enthusiastic lover, although too often distracted even during intimate moments by the demands (both real and perceived) of duty. Old married couple, or just friends and allies who'd at one time also been lovers? Costigan wondered that briefly about himself and his current partner, as he left his chair and gave her an embrace that was warm and tender but not the least bit sensual. He said, “Kate's little, but don't put your money on that if you ever have to fight her. A lot of people have made that mistake, and not all of them are still around to talk about it." "I'll bet!” Hanna said, and she kissed his cheek and she laughed. “Be careful, Joe. I don't mind that she's here, I'm glad you got her out. From what you told me, no one's ever had a worse exit from the other side than she did! But now that she is here, she and that friend of hers have got to fit in and make themselves part of what we've built. Either that or they'll have to do what the misfits always have to do, and find a place in one of the villages or among the nomads. If she's a threat to our people here, I'll handle her the same way I've handled all the others. I'll expect you to do the same, and what she was to you twenty years ago had better not make a difference." Leone drew back with that statement, and looked into Costigan's face without having to look up at him as Kate Landay had always been obliged to do when they stood like this. They measured each other, brown eyes meeting gray eyes in what wasn't quite challenge but had never been full harmony either; and after a time both heads nodded in agreement. [Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter 2 It had been twenty years since she'd seen this man; because that moment of semi-consciousness in the regen tank didn't count, not now. Kate Landay was determined to take that attitude, anyway, because she still felt a bit embarrassed about knowing he had seen her like that. Not that she'd been naked, that was hardly a problem; not that she'd been injured and anything else but attractive, they had been first cadets and then Rangers together and he'd seen her in about every unlovely state the human female body could achieve unless one insisted on counting childbirth. She hadn't done that with him, they'd come close in a way but it hadn't happened. And never would happen for her now, she supposed. She and Yoshi had been just about to take that step at last; after her final field assignment Captain Landay had been expecting promotion to flag rank, and she had reluctantly agreed to accept shore duty. She called it that like the daughter of generations of Navy officers that she was, like the Maine coastal girl she also was. The only reason she'd made up her mind to that sacrifice was so that she and Yoshi could have their family together before it was too late for that, before her body reached the age at which conceiving would require medical intervention. At forty-three she was still fertile during monthly cycles when she didn't deliberately suppress that fertility, and the physician she'd discreetly questioned during her last off-ship physical two years ago had told her that she probably would continue to ovulate regularly for up to ten more years. She could have children naturally now, or she could have them with what that physician had euphemistically called “a little help” later; she was healthy, so as long as her intended partner was able to cause conception there shouldn't be any problem at all in achieving pregnancy. "Achieving” pregnancy. How Landay had laughed at that choice of words, once she was away from the examining table and able to think through all the implications of what that doctor had told her. Amy she hadn't consulted about this matter, even though Amy was her ship's surgeon and had taken care of her for what seemed like forever. Those physicals conducted during base visits were always done by a physician the Explorer or Regular ship captain didn't see regularly, just to make sure nothing slipped by; so she hadn't had to hurt her friend's feelings by seeking out other care, she'd been required to do that anyway. She knew that the entries in her medical file which resulted from that checkup wouldn't include any references to her conversation with the doctor about her prospects for motherhood, that sort of thing didn't get recorded unless there was something unusual about it. And there was nothing the least bit unusual about a female Explorer in her middle years thinking about settling down at last, personally as well as professionally, and as part of that process considering her options for belatedly starting a family. That was one thing Yoshi simply wouldn't do for her, patient though he'd always been with his Explorer captain's long absences and unpredictable assignments. As long as she held a field post he would not knowingly have a child with her, because he wasn't interested in becoming a father whose wife might on almost any day leave him a widower. Kate had understood why he felt that way. She'd been a service brat herself, she remembered the terrible upheavals of being moved from base to base and being cared for in her earliest years first by one parent and then by the other; almost never by both of them at once. When at last the marriage had ended and her father had gone out of her life, and her mother had decided that the only way she could provide a stable home for ten-year-old Kate and newborn Clifton was to leave the youngsters in her own parents’ care on Earth, Kate had been sad only until she'd discovered what a joy it was to know from month to month what bed she was going to sleep in and what school she was going to attend and whose faces would greet her at breakfast each morning. She, and Grandpa Bradley and Gram Landay (who like most

Terran married couples used their own names, with Kate and her mother calling themselves “Landay” because they belonged to the female line and with Clifton using Grandpa Bradley's surname because Kate's father hadn't been willing to give his name to his wife's second child) had become a family, the most secure family Kate had ever known. She'd looked forward to making her own family with Yoshi, and now that was never going to happen. And once, long ago, she'd sacrificed her chance to do so with the man who was coming into her room now ... she wondered whether he'd forgiven her for that yet, or if the wound she'd given him was still unhealed. It didn't matter. She turned toward the door when she heard his voice, and she held onto the back of a chair because she was still unsteady on her feet and because she'd always needed something to do with her hands when she was nervous. Damn him, why should seeing him make her nervous? This was ridiculous. They hadn't parted as enemies, and she was here now because for some reason he'd found it useful to save her life. Amy had explained that to her; and while there had to be much she didn't know about it yet, the facts she did know were enough to be reassuring. "Hello, Kate.” Costigan was holding out his hands to her. Both hands, the greeting clearly that of an old friend and not the formal welcome of local official to—immigrant? Refugee? Just what was her status in this place, anyway? She let go of the chair and reached out in response. His hands had always engulfed hers, he was a big man and she a small woman. They'd laughed about that fact many times, it had always amazed them that their bodies fit together so perfectly when at first glance they appeared to be so mismatched.... Wrong thought, Kate; now you're blushing.She used speech to push the unwanted images away, said firmly, “Hello, Joe. Thanks, Amy told me what you did." "Not as much as what you did for me once.” Gray eyes met hazel ones, and now Kate Landay's face flushed in earnest. "I didn't think you knew!” she said, and drew an audible breath. “I didn't think anyone knew, the deposition I gave for your trial was recorded under seal." "I was allowed to view it, though.” Costigan smiled thinly. “You took one hell of a risk, Kate." "Yes. But I couldn't do anything different. If I'd identified you as a deserter you'd have been court-martialed and sent to the Questioners instead of being tried as a civilian, and I couldn't be responsible for that. I was glad I made that choice at the time, and now that I know what I would have been sending you to—now I'm gladder than ever. You were exiled along with the rest of your people—but you lived, and you never had to face Questioning.” Her hot face was cooling now, and as the flood of emotion subsided she felt her knees beginning to tremble. She wasn't well just yet, no matter how much she wanted to pretend otherwise. "You're not on a goddam bridge!” Costigan said almost angrily when he saw her swaying. “You don't have to put up a command front, for god's sake sit in that chair before you fall on your face.” And he took her shoulders in his hands and saw to it that she did so, handling her as easily as he might have handled a child.

Right now that was fine with her. As he'd said, she wasn't on the Sparrowhawk' s bridge any longer; in fact she wasn't Captain Landay any longer, either. She never would be again, not unless the people of this outcast colony could someday create the technology that would be necessary for them to start exploring their own part of space. Costigan sat on the edge of the bed that was the room's only other piece of furniture, except for a stand that held a light-source and a few medical supplies. To be in a private space at all was a privilege here, of course, but more than likely Landay didn't realize that yet. He waited until some color came back into her face (she'd gone from being red with embarrassment to white as a Terran cloud from weakness with barely a moment's transition), and then he spoke to her much more gently than before. "Kate, I owed you. I would have tried to get you out of there for that reason alone, but it wasn't the only reason. I also care about you. I've been with someone else for a lot of years now, but you were the first real partner I ever had; and even before that, you were my friend. I want to get you and Amy started on a new life here now, and I need you to help me figure out the best way I can do that." "Maybe you should start by explaining what this place is like.” Landay sat up a bit straighter in the chair, which was comfortably contoured and padded but didn't automatically accommodate itself to her shape. That was part of what she'd left behind, and as an Explorer she understood that much already. That was how she must think about this place to which she and her friend had come, she must treat it as she had treated all those other new worlds ... as another intriguing new assignment, a place she must get to know and learn to understand. Only this time she wouldn't be doing that on behalf of the Sovereignty, for the benefit of settlers who would soon follow her onto an empty M-Class world; or to ensure the safety of business people who would want to establish trade relationships with the citizens of an inhabited alien system. This time she and Amy would themselves be the settlers, and from now on this world would be their world. Joe Costigan had faced this same prospect two decades earlier, but he'd come through the Gate with more than half a thousand of his own people accompanying him. In a sense he had brought his society along, and in a way that must have been terribly difficult—it was the kind of responsibility for other lives that Captain Landay knew only too intimately!—but in a way it must also have been reassuring. She and Amy were alone here; they had each other, and to some extent (apparently) they had Joe Costigan. But that was it, everything and everyone else that was familiar to them had been left behind forever now. "We call it Arcadia,” Costigan said simply, and then paused to see whether she would recognize the allusion. “Just one of many names for ancient mythical Terran paradises ... I suppose whoever gave it to this place originally was joking, but those of us who live here now don't see any reason why it has to be a joke. It's a good world, Kate. The worst thing wrong with it is that the Gate doesn't operate on a predictable schedule, and there's no other way to get back to where we came from. If this planet were located where people could reach it by starship, there's no way in hell people like us would be allowed to live on it at all—let alone have it to ourselves, to develop as we see fit." "Then you're happy here? Amy said you were one of this place's leaders, that was how you had enough power to do what you did for me.” Landay regarded her former lover, and was glad when he looked at her frankly instead of hooding his gaze as she recalled that he was altogether too capable of doing. She wanted the truth from him now, and if the truth wasn't pretty she wanted it just as much as if it were pleasant. But he knew that, they'd been comrades before they'd been lovers; and although he'd been a Ranger rather than an Explorer, he also understood the overriding importance of knowing the facts about a new world where a human being was going to be expected to function successfully. He nodded and let her

see another kind of smile, the kind she remembered all too well, for just a moment before he said, “'Happy’ may be too much to ask for, Kate. But I'm contented here. This place has challenged me, but it's also given me a chance to build a life I never could have had if I'd been able to stay in the Sovereignty but had to leave the service." "And your wife? You said you've been with someone for years now, and if I know you that someone's got to be female.” Landay smiled. This time she didn't blush, because there was nothing embarrassing about reminding Joe Costigan that she knew his sexual preference and that hers complemented it. They'd been good together, they really had. But that was long ago, she'd had years of intimate life with Yoshi since then, and she was genuinely thankful to realize that Joe had experienced the equivalent of that with some other woman. He deserved to be happy, he deserved fulfillment ... and she hadn't been able to give him those things, not in the way he had needed. "She's my mate, but we never had a commitment ceremony because people don't do that here. It's never become our custom. If you ask one of the old-timers why, they'll give you a dozen different reasons but none of them will really make much sense. ‘We just don't do that here’ is probably the best way to explain it, and I guess you've heard that before if you've been an Explorer for the past twenty years.” Costigan grinned again, this time not quite as briefly. “Anyhow, her name is Hanna. Hanna Leone; she came here as an eighteen-year-old girl, and when I arrived three years later she was already second in command to the leader of the largest group of settlers. ‘Settlers’ is what we call ourselves, by the way! Never exiles, never prisoners, certainly never criminals. Hanna took over as leader when her first partner died; and she took me as her partner after that. That's become another custom here, there are always two leaders in any group and they're always partnered to each other. It's not always male/female, but it's always a personal pairing and not just a formal captain/first officer kind of relationship. The only exceptions are a few very remote bands that have almost no contact with the rest of us, except to trade or to fight from time to time." "So you've been with her since then.” Landay nodded. She'd heard of much stranger leadership arrangements and succession customs. It was amazing what developed when a group of humans became cut off from regular contact with their larger society and that isolation persisted over years. Particularly if the isolated group didn't expect to be reunited eventually with the larger civilization, if its members knew they might be on their own for a very long time—or even, perhaps, forever. “Are there children, Joe?" "No. And don't ask me why, it just never happened. Here we don't have enough surplus medical supplies or equipment, or even enough trained doctors, to waste those resources trying to have children when nature doesn't just send them along.” Costigan kept his tone easy deliberately, schooled his face into nonchalance; or at least into something that wasn't pain or regret. “What about you, Kate? Before you got here I knew from communicating with New Brixton what crimes you were supposed to have committed, and Amy's given me the background on why the charges against you were upgraded from insubordination to treason; but other than that I don't know a thing about how you've spent the past twenty years. Except, of course, that you stayed in the service and switched from Ranger to Explorer and made four-stripe captain." "I was planning to go back to Terra after one last assignment, if I hadn't been arrested and sent to New Brixton and the Questioners,” Landay said, and she made no effort to be casual. “I was on the promo list to make rear admiral, and I was going to let them stick me into an office at HQ. Then I'd have quit using birth control, and Yoshi and I would have started living together officially for the first time." "Yoshi?” How just one word, just a man's name, could carry so many questions within it was beyond either of them; but it did. It carried a whole lifetime's worth of inquiries, in fact.

"Yoshi Sakagawa. Professor of Naval Architecture at Dalhousie University College of Engineering in Halifax.” Kate smiled gently then, because somehow talking about Yoshi always made her smile. “We hadn't figured out how we were going to handle that part of it, of course. Someone was going to have to commute, that admiral's office I just mentioned was going to be on Luna and I can't imagine Yoshi leaving his house on the South Shore for anyone or anything! But we'd have worked that out, we always worked things out." "Unlike you and me,” Joe Costigan said, and he didn't smile. "Are you still mad at me because I didn't have that baby, Joe?” Landay lifted her head, and when her eyes met his the challenge in them was familiar. "No. I wasn't mad at you then, not for not wanting to have a baby when the timing was all wrong. I was just mad at what happened to it, and removing the embryo into stasis until we both were ready to be parents should have been such a simple procedure. Dammit, that kid shouldn't have died!” Costigan started off calmly enough, but his face flushed darkly while he spoke. Now he was clearly agitated. “She'd be a grown woman by now, Kate, if we'd left her where she was and if you'd had her eight months later." "Yes. And for what it's worth, I've wished a thousand times I could go back and change that decision. I probably would have regretted it if I had, I probably would have wound up hating you and hating her too ... but I still wish things had been different, I didn't want it to be the way it was.” Landay closed her eyes for a moment. She was using up her strength now, strong emotions were draining her even more rapidly than physical activity. “Joe, we're supposed to be talking about how Amy and I fit into this ‘Arcadia’ of yours." "Yes. We are, and that means I need to introduce both you and Amy to Hanna. I wanted to see you alone first, Kate, because we needed to talk about all the things we've been talking about; but Hanna's the boss, one leader has to be senior and that's her. And of course whatever we come up with when we start making decisions is going to affect Amy just as much as it's going to affect you.” The change of topic was taking effect now. Costigan was breathing easily again, and his dark face was almost back to its normal hue. “One thing's for damned sure, we can use another doctor. And an Explorer ship's captain should fit in easily, too; I know you've got skills we need here, and I know you'll be able to transfer them to a new set of tasks." He got up from the edge of the bed then, and moved the scant two steps that brought him to Landay's chair. He reached down and lifted her out of it, not picking her up in his arms but nevertheless supporting most of her weight as he guided her to the bed and firmly placed her on it. “But right now you're about to collapse in a heap, and that's not going to do either of us any good if Amy finds you like that and blames me. Rest for awhile now, Kate. I'm not going anywhere, Hanna's not going anywhere, and neither are you and Amy. One thing we always have here on Arcadia is plenty of time." [Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter 3 "We use mostly solar power. The generators that the earliest settlers were able to bring through the Gate are still functioning, and from time to time we manage to bring through additional components,” Hanna

Leone explained to Kate Landay and Amy Salter. She'd sent Joe Costigan off on other business after introductions had been made; she wanted to form her own opinions about these two newcomers to her small realm, and that had required discreetly removing Joe from the picture. “Whenever we get that kind of opportunity we concentrate on solar tech equipment, with medical running a close second. We've come a long way in the past quarter-century, we can fabricate some substitutes for manufactured goods now and once we get a piece of equipment we can nearly always find ways to keep it running; but we can't refine ores into metals yet, and that's so basic that learning to live without it has been one of the hardest things for us." "I noticed that almost everything was made from wood or stone or brick, or some other natural building material, even in the room where you had the regen tank set up,” Dr. Salter said, and her brow knit in puzzlement. “Just how did you manage that, anyway? From what I've heard talking with your physicians, that's the first regen tank that was ever set up on this side of the Gate. I had to show it to the doctors who were trained here, they didn't believe me when I described how it works and what it can do." Kate shot a look at her friend, because although she realized she'd been at first incapacitated and then convalescent since arriving here it hadn't really occurred to her that Amy had had time to do anything except attend to her care. Yet of course there would have been such time, and if there was one thing she knew about doctors it was that they always managed to find each other and that they always talked incessantly after they did so. Hanna Leone nodded, not the least bit disturbed. She said, “You probably thought that communication wasn't possible except when the Gate happens to be open; and until recent years that was true, but scientists on your side finally solved that puzzle. There's a resonance that continues between the times of opening, Joe explains it as being like a carrier wave between the two locations. And since Joe had been working on the same idea from this side, he was the one who received the first message that ever came through with the Gate closed—and his having been in your military when he was young came in handy, because the people who established communication with him recognized his name and decided to keep him as their regular contact. Since then it's been common knowledge on this side that we can talk to the screws, although I doubt that the screws have let anyone on their side know about it who doesn't have to. It's in everyone's best interest if we're prepared to deal with whoever or whatever they send through when the Gate opens, and the screws often accept payment from transportees and their families to make special arrangements that we carry out once they get here. In return we get certain—ah—compensations from them." "So sending me through in stasis, with the regen tank and Amy to operate it, was one of those compensations? A quid pro quo , you could say?” Kate Landay tilted her head thoughtfully. "You could call it that, Captain Landay. I was a young woman when I came through the Gate, I'd finished my basic education on the other side and I remember that Latin phrase; but I'd advise you not to say anything like that to anyone who's Arcadian-reared. They might think you were ridiculing them, and that wouldn't be good at all.” Leone smiled thinly. “They might also think that it was a huge waste of quid pro quo for Joe to arrange to bring you here, so I wouldn't mention that to anyone either." "I'm not ‘captain’ anymore.” Kate spoke matter-of-factly, and her eyes were steady as they met Hanna Leone's. “And Amy just said that she's already talked to other physicians here, so isn't what happened to me common knowledge?" "Not exactly. That you were Questioned to your death is known; that will give you a lot of respect in the eyes of other settlers, by the way, because those of us who remember the other side usually don't remember it very fondly and it's a sort of legendary hell as far as our native-borns are concerned. That

you were sent through with the regen tank is also known, and I'm not going to try to keep that knowledge within our medical community because that would never work. It's reusable, after all, so no one will think it's odd that we wanted to get our hands on it. What isn't known is that Joe called in favors and pulled strings until he made your rescue happen, that it was you he was after and not the tank—and if we're all wise we'll make sure that knowledge remains private to the four of us. It wouldn't be a good thing for our settlement if people realized just how connected Joe's become to the universe on the other side of that Gate. To our native-borns that's an unimaginable place, and to most of the rest of us it's somewhere we want to forget all about." They'd been sitting in Leone's work space; unlike her mate she did not dignify it by referring to it as her “office.” It was a simple room with a few chairs, a table that served as her desk, and a compact and rather antiquated computer. That computer had once been a Ranger's mobile unit, probably about a decade ago if Landay was judging its vintage correctly ... how it could still be operating was a mystery, its designers would no doubt have been astounded. Now the Arcadian leader rose and walked to a window, and she pushed back its covering and drew in a breath of outside air. “Ah! It's crisp today. Autumn's almost here, and our winters at this latitude are the equivalent of nine Terran months long. Rather like those of Canada or Russia back on Earth, I think, from what I've read. But my first home was Canovan Four, and of course that world had no temperate zone. It was just too close to its sun, and we all had to live in its polar regions." "Why did you settle here, then, instead of where the climate's better?” Amy Salter wanted to know. That was the sort of utterly practical question she always asked. She left discussions about customs and protocols to Kate, while she zeroed in on those things that were necessary for life and comfort. "Two reasons. The obvious one is that we originally settled near the Gate because we hadn't the means to travel very far away from it; since then we've explored many areas of our world, though, and we could have moved our main settlement elsewhere if we'd thought it would give us a better place to live. But the tropics aren't habitable here for reasons other than the climate. The insect life in the frost-free parts of this world is deadly to humans, so in order to live here safely we have to stay where there's a good hard freeze every year. Far enough into those latitudes, in fact, so that the tropical insects don't wander up here during the months when the weather is warm. We lost a whole band of nomads years ago when they camped too far south during the summer. Hopefully we all learned our lesson then and that won't ever happen again." "That's the kind of thing Explorers usually are able to find out before a new world is settled,” Landay said, and once again she forbade herself to sigh. That life was over now, and she wouldn't devalue the second chance she'd been given by wasting time being sorry she couldn't go back to her old existence. She would allow herself to regret being separated from Yoshi, but he believed she was dead. He was grieving for her, no doubt, but in time he would heal; and he would find someone else to love him and share his life. She felt the same way about her family, her grandparents and her mother and her little brother. Losing her was hurting them, of course, but it was something they'd always known might one day happen. They would survive, and would remember her in all the ways she wanted to be remembered. But did she regret not being part of the service any longer? No, she couldn't feel the smallest spark of sadness about that. Her own had put her into the Questioners’ hands, and then they had left her there until she was dead. Hanna Leone was nodding, looking away from the window again and back at Landay. She said, “Yes, and we could have used a whole shipload of Explorers when Arcadia was new and I was still just a kid! We could have avoided a lot of missteps, saved a lot of lives that learning the hard way cost us. But we

didn't have that luxury, we had to explore our world the best way we could and take our losses along with our gains; and that's how we did it. Now, Captain Landay—Kate, that's what I really will have to call you—we don't have starships and shuttles here, but we have plenty of uses for your other skills. We have uses for every new settler's skills, it's just a question of figuring out where the best ‘fit’ between the individual and the task set is going to be." **** Amy Salter defected early in the tour of Gateway City, as its inhabitants had named the settlement that was nearest the portal and that was Arcadia's largest population center. As soon as they reached the city's hospital she was gone. She'd taken care of Kate Landay in a chamber of Government House that for security reasons had been fitted out for that purpose, so this was her initial chance to see for herself the state of Arcadian medical science. As she had said earlier, she'd been allowed to have contact with local physicians during her patient's recovery; but they had always come to her—always carefully screened by Joe Costigan—and much as she'd wanted to share her knowledge freely and find out what they had to teach her in return, she'd had to keep the conversations and the tank demonstrations brief. She wouldn't have to restrain herself like that now. The hospital's chief of staff swept her up the minute she walked through his office door, and soon Kate Landay and Hanna Leone were looking at each other with mingled amusement and resignation. Doctors! that glance said with plain exasperation. Until a month ago Landay had been an Explorer captain and Leone was chieftain of what amounted to a small city-state; but both women had been exercising military or quasi-military authority all their adult lives, and both of them understood that physicians could be as frustrating as they were necessary. So they proceeded without Amy, and in a way that was good. As they walked together from building to building they could speak now without being constrained by anyone else's presence, and although having Amy there hadn't limited Kate in the least she suspected that it had limited Leone. The Arcadian woman asked as soon as she was sure they weren't being overheard, “Just what did you do, anyway, Kate? Joe told me you were suspected of treason, but that word can mean a lot of things. When I asked him just what it meant in your case, he clammed up; and when Joe clams up, I only make him tell me what I want to know if I really have to know it. Getting that man to do something he really doesn't want to do has a high price, I learned that a long time ago!" "You noticed that about him, did you?” Landay lifted a sardonic eyebrow. “I wondered how he might have changed, it's been a long time since he and I were mated. But I guess he hasn't changed that much, after all!" "Probably not.” Leone grinned, and there was real humor in her eyes. “Are you going to tell me, or is avoiding a question you don't want to answer your version of Joe's going to silent running?" That was a starship term, borrowed from Earth's long-ago submarine service and used now in much the same way it had been used then. There were times when hiding a ship's location from the enemy meant shutting down every system that generated sound waves within or a plasma trail without, or anything else that might register its presence on that enemy's sensors. The ancient submariners had, in fact, been nicknamed the “Silent Service” because in the earliest years before sonar was invented their vessels had glided along under the surfaces of Earth's oceans without being seen or heard by those above; and their spiritual descendants of many years later, the Kate Landays who served aboard another kind of ship but who like those submariners depended for life itself on the integrity of a fragile metal shell and the dependability of the technology within it, were often called by that same nickname. If anything it suited them far more accurately, because the oceans of Earth were a positively noisy place when compared to the silence of space.

That was a silence that Kate Landay knew she would never experience again. She sighed inwardly, braced her shoulders, and prepared herself to give Hanna Leone an answer since she honestly felt that she owed one to this woman. And a crude but very effective alarm, some kind of klaxon, sounded through the city's streets. Leone's face went pale, and her features tightened; and Landay recognized immediately the look of a military commander faced with the prospect of an unanticipated battle. The Arcadian woman's hand went to her hip and brought a handheld comm up to her face. She said into it tensely, “Report!" Landay couldn't hear the response, partly because that comm was an antique and partly because the klaxon hadn't shut up. People were running—she'd had an idea this place was well populated, but she hadn't realized just how well until she saw so many of them dashing from one place to another in what was clearly a response to the planet-bound equivalent of a starship's “all hands to battle stations” order. But Leone didn't run, she stood still and listened to whatever the person on the other end of her comm was telling her. And then she put it back onto her belt and she said, “Damn! This isn't how I wanted to welcome you, Kate, but I hope you're up for a fight. It's a raiding party from the north, they're hitting one of our outlying farms and we can't afford to lose part of our crops to them this season. It's been a poor one, or we'd be trading instead of getting raided—but I don't have to tell you about what scarcity of resources does to a peace that's fragile at its best. Hopefully they're not after more than that, but we'll be ready if they do try to move in closer." With that she began walking swiftly and purposefully, but she still didn't run. She didn't need to, because something that Landay hadn't seen before on this world—an aircar, antiquated but miraculously functional like just about all of Arcadia's other technology—swooped down and landed so near them that Landay flinched even though she'd piloted as recklessly as that herself when the need had presented itself. Leone scrambled aboard, and Landay followed. **** Joseph Costigan was piloting the aircar. It was just that, a civilian conveyance that probably dated from the settlers’ earliest days on this world. Like that internal monitoring system at Government House (so grand a name for so rude a building!) that Kate had detected during her first minutes outside the regen tank, it was so old that it seemed crude to someone newly arrived from the other side; but also like the monitoring system, and like Hanna Leone's comm unit, the aircar functioned with all the efficiency of equipment lovingly cared for and skillfully maintained. “When it's all you've got you make it do” was a maxim familiar to Rangers and Explorers alike, and clearly that was a way of life where technology was concerned on this side of the Gate. Nevertheless consternation must have showed on Landay's face, at least to the eyes of someone who'd once known her well, because Costigan shot her a bemused look and said understandingly, “It's a heap, isn't it, Kate? But it's armed, it didn't come from the factory that way but it got retrofitted for fighting PDQ once it was brought through the Gate! And although it hasn't got the range we'd like and it's slow compared to the in-atmosphere combat shuttles we used to fly, it's damned swift compared to a human's own feet or even to a horse's four feet." "Not that we have many of those,” Leone said, with the air of someone correcting a misconception before it could take hold. “Up in the mountains there's one group that has a whole herd of them; but all the progenitors of those horses came through the Gate when it was new, before it started being used to dump people the screws didn't want on their side. There were a few settlers who actually were sent through as settlers, and they had decent equipment and supplies. And animals, too. But,” and she glanced

at Costigan as if she'd abruptly realized she might be telling their new arrival far too much while Landay's loyalties were as yet neither formed nor tested, “this is the only aircar on Arcadia! That we know for certain. And it's how we get leadership to the scene whenever we have an incident like this one. The arms we're carrying don't matter half as much as Joe and me just letting ourselves be seen." Landay nodded. This she understood; she'd learned early that while there were times when command meant keeping one's own person safe, there were also times when a captain or other leader simply had to appear quite literally at the battle's front. And she also knew that although such theatrics weren't often necessary in a technologically advanced conflict, when you were fighting under primitive conditions and with primitive weapons a distant authority figure could quickly be dismissed as no authority at all by those in the field. "Hell, it'll be over by the time we get there,” Costigan said, but he was pushing the aircar for all it was worth even while he was rendering that opinion. “Either the Rusties got one of the containers and made off with it, or they didn't. The one thing neither side's willing to do, you see, is destroy food! So they try to attack just when there's a full container powered up on antigravs and ready to be guided into the city. I've been working on a way to remotely deactivate the antigrav units, but so far I haven't got that puzzle solved; and until I do get it figured out, the Rusties are probably going to go on getting at least one full load of grain from our harvests during any autumn when things are lean." "'Rusties'?” Landay asked. Her forehead puckered as she did so. She didn't like the way Costigan had said the term, although of course the word itself was innocent enough. "Short for ‘rustics,’ country people, backwoodsmen.” It was Leone who answered, her tone even. “Or for ‘rusticators,’ a very old Standard English term for tourists. By which the person using the word usually means that the Rusties are lazy, letting our people grow the crops and then stealing them from us." "The ones who live furthest north don't have a growing season long enough for any Terran grain crop that can survive in Arcadia's soil.” Costigan's tone was also even, but in a way that hinted at reproof. “If they can trade with us for what they need to get through the winter, they're always willing to do that. And we need the things they bring us from the mountains and the tundra, we'll miss those goods this winter." "But we can't trade away grain during a poor harvest!” This was an old disagreement between this long-mated couple, clearly. And Leone was the boss here, even if Costigan hadn't already said so that would have been plain from the way she spoke and from the look she gave him. “The people wouldn't stand for it, we'd have a revolt on our hands. I know, I know, we always lose at least one container and we get nothing in return for it—which we would if we traded, and just cut back on the volume—and we sometimes lose good people during the Rusties’ raids. But still, we just can't change our people's minds about this." She's a good politician, Landay thought as she watched the taller woman. She knows what her supporters expect and she gives it to them, and to hell with every other consideration. But I'm not a politician, and I'll bet from the look on your face that you've never learned how to be one either; have you, Joe my love? You hate this. You've learned how to live with it, but you've never learned to accept it—and you never will. "Look, Kate,” Leone said, and gestured to direct her companion's attention. “This is the most remote of our farmlands, and of course it's the area that has to be harvested first because it's located farthest north. And that's why we can count on its getting raided at least once in any year that we have no surplus grain for trade—"

Whatever else she'd intended to say didn't leave her lips. The aircar's engines died, and it dropped like a stunned bird to the plain over which it had been flying. [Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter 4 "Careful! Father wants them in one piece.” That was the next sound Kate Landay heard. It was a woman's voice, and of course it was unfamiliar to her; she wondered idly whether either Hanna Leone or Joe Costigan would recognize it. She felt sore, as if her newly regenerated flesh had been pounded unmercifully during the time while she'd been unconscious. And unconscious she certainly must have been, because now she was no longer in the aircar; she felt cool outside air on her skin, and she felt the warmth of Arcadia's sun. Autumn in the northern hemisphere of an M-Class planet, a contrast between crisp air and hot sunshine ... if she kept her eyes closed and imagined a salt tang to this air, she could almost think she was back home on the eastern coast of North America. The rocky, northern part of that coast, a region that had bred generations of mariners and that was still breeding them today in starship officers like Kate Landay. This air wasn't salty, instead it smelled of cut grass (the newly harvested grain crop, perhaps?) and of some sort of sweaty animals. Just what sort, she couldn't determine by scent alone; but Landay wasn't familiar with horses, oxen, or other traditional draft animals. Her experience with four-footed Terran creatures had been pretty much limited to Grandpa Bradley's beloved Tyler Tomcat, who throughout Kate's late childhood and her adolescence had kept the greenhouses free of vermin even though organic fertilizers like fish emulsion of course attracted scavengers to the family's traditionally operated plant nursery. Ty and his successors were gone now, and Grandpa had decided getting another cat this late in his and Gram's lives didn't make sense; so their house was empty now of pets as well as of children. But that was the home Kate's wandering mind recalled as she lay in an Arcadian grain field under the warmth of an alien star. Of course she had no real home of her own to think about; an apartment near Headquarters on Luna was what she called by that name, but it was empty during the months and sometimes even years while she was on assignment elsewhere. Yoshi had a house outside Halifax, on Nova Scotia's beautiful South Shore ... Kate had thought that might become “home” to her, whenever she finally found herself able and willing to settle down. And Grandpa and Gram still insisted on calling her visits to them “coming home"; she suspected they would go right on doing that, even if they could live so long and so independently that they would still be in that familiar place when Kate herself was an old woman.... No. She wasn't going back to Roseway, Nova Scotia; or to Castine, Maine; or to Luna City. Right now it would seem like a homecoming if she could just get back to Gateway City in one piece, because now her mind was clearing and she realized that she was trussed helplessly by sturdy thongs (rawhide? yes, that was what the material felt like as she tested its strength and felt it cutting into her wrists). The ground underneath her felt hard, and she heard someone groan nearby and that finally made her open her eyes. She'd been out only a short while; she could tell that because she could detect no change in the sun's position. Even the most seasoned space traveler still tended to think of it that way while on a planet's surface. She knew perfectly well that the planet orbited its sun, not the other way around; but that made no difference, she still used the ancient phrases in her thoughts and even spoke them aloud sometimes. She was able to lift her head now, it ached but moving it didn't make her feel sick. That was good, that

was very helpful. "Ready with the antigravs!” ordered the same voice that had spoken a few moments earlier. Something enormous lifted from the ground nearby, something so large that it cast a shadow and completely blocked Landay's view of the sun. “Great. Now get our prisoners on board, we can't risk bouncing them around on horseback all the way home. Father'll be furious if they arrive really damaged, he expects a few bruises but being forced to ride when you don't know how and riding when you're not able to balance yourself on your mount are both pretty good ways to get pounded into a pulp. Or chafed into raw meat. And neither had better happen to these two, so they get carted even though that slows us up! Did you check the wreckage again for bodies, Chiara? Are you sure there's no sign of the Leone bitch?" Landay couldn't hear the reply, but she distinctly heard a derisive snort from the first speaker. “Figures,” the voice that gave orders said in disgust. “She must have been conscious and mobile when that aircar hit dirt, so she ran and left her husband and her guest behind. That's great hospitality, isn't it?" Landay closed her eyes and made her body go limp again. She was aware of being lifted by two sets of hands, one person grasping her shoulders and the other her ankles. She was carried a short distance, then placed more or less gently on a surface that was hot from the sun and unyielding beneath her bruises. A moment later she felt solid human contact as someone else was placed beside her—or rather, dumped beside her. She'd been handled very gently by comparison, while whoever had just joined her was simply tossed there. But the person was either unconscious or able to avoid crying out, because he made no sound. He, definitely. She was certain of that. Joe Costigan? If Hanna Leone had survived the aircar's crash without injury and had fled (which in Landay's opinion showed not cowardice but good sense), then there really was only one other person who was likely to have been captured with her. She'd seen from the air, just before the crash, that the field under attack by the “Rustie” raiders had been abandoned by Leone's and Costigan's people. But she had to know, so Landay turned her head just enough to let her see her companion by peering cautiously through her eyelashes. Joe. Yes, he was there beside her; and while his eyes were closed and his nose had bled all over his face, he was breathing and the blood was drying. And he had to be the person she'd heard groaning, although he was still and silent now. She felt whatever was under them lifting. She heard commands being given, but couldn't make them out. And then the motion became too much for her still-woozy head, and consciousness left her once more. **** Landay woke to find herself lying in a bed, or at least on a cot. She was in the same clothing she'd been wearing when the aircar had crashed, but it was cool wherever this was and the blanket that covered her felt good. She felt fine all over, in fact. She should have been aching with bruises, she should have had a magnificent headache; but instead she only felt tired, as if she hadn't had quite enough sleep before being asked to wake up for the day. She opened her eyes and looked around her, and saw a rocky surface far above. The area was lit in some manner that managed to illuminate without harshness, it reminded her of lumipanels such as were used aboard Sovereignty shuttles and other small spacecraft ... and when she turned her head and looked

at the nearest wall, she saw that lumipanels were exactly what was providing the lighting here. Government House hadn't had lumipanels, even the hospital in Gateway City hadn't had them. But this chamber, this cave if she wasn't much mistaken, had them in good and sufficient numbers—and it was a medical facility of sorts, she knew that because dispensaries and hospitals and even field medstations always had the same smell. She tried sitting up, and although she felt a bit stiff doing so wasn't a problem. She swung her legs over the edge of the cot, throwing back the blanket as she did so, and surveyed the chamber properly. "She's awake,” a voice said then. A man's voice, with a thick accent that Landay couldn't place. “You'd better get your father, Francesca." "You call him,” answered the same female voice that Landay had heard giving orders when she'd been taken captive after the crash. “I'm getting out of here before he sees her, because he's going to be mad as hell. She isn't the woman he thought, she's too young—and he's not going to like that. I only hung around this long because that was what he told me to do, to stay with her until she woke up after you finished treating her injuries." "I'm awake,” Landay announced. She lifted her head and looked directly at the woman who was standing near the foot of her cot, regarding her with the sort of cool gaze that she herself had often directed at prisoners. “Where's the man who was captured with me?" "The medic's working on him now, we had orders to tend you first,” the woman said, and she smiled tautly and without the slightest hint of warmth. “Not that you took long, you were just banged up and shook up from the crash and then from being hauled on an antigrav cart behind a team of horses at top speed for two hours." Two hours. How far could horses travel “at top speed,” while pulling a load, in two hours’ time? Landay had no idea, but somehow she doubted that it was long enough to reach the mountains from where they'd been when she had lost consciousness. Yet they must have reached the mountains, there couldn't be caves like this one nearer to Gateway City than that ... or could there? She knew so little about this world as yet, its topography or its geology or much of anything else. The woman called Francesca was no taller than Landay herself, and she also had a pair of penetrating hazel eyes. Her hair was lighter, though, and her face was sharper of feature and her skin contrastingly swarthy. She looked at Landay for another moment, and when the former Explorer captain opened her mouth to ask another question Francesca turned deliberately and stalked away. She almost ran head-on into a man who was coming toward them along the chamber's edge, having entered on its other side (which seemed to be a respectable distance away) and then having walked around the patient treatment area. The man grabbed the young woman by her upper arms, bent his silver head and kissed her cheek. He said in a deep voice that somehow sounded eerily familiar to Kate Landay, “Good work, girl! Keep going, I'll take it from here. Go join the celebration." Francesca seemed glad to do as she'd been told. The newcomer ignored the medic who was in the treatment area working on a patient—a patient who had to be Joseph Costigan, Kate thought although she couldn't see the face of the person who lay on the treatment table. And much as she wanted to get up and go to him, or at least to ask the medic about his condition, when the man who'd kissed Francesca approached her Landay knew she had to deal with him first. So she stood beside the cot, and was glad when her legs agreed to support her weight without unsteadiness or trembling. She waited, because

although speaking first could be a good way to establish dominance she had a feeling that this man would not react well to that ploy. Undeniably she was on his turf, and acknowledging that fact was in a sense only a reasonable courtesy. Francesca had referred to what had happened to her as a “capture,” but that didn't mean she was here to be harmed. The way her injuries had been healed made her think otherwise, in fact; at worst she was a hostage now, and at best she might become ... what? A negotiator, a prospective ally? Because this man had to be the leader of one of Arcadia's smaller villages or nomadic groups, and Landay already knew he was responsible for her being here. The man was frowning at her now in clear puzzlement. His silver beard hid almost all of his lower face, blending with his hair where it hung down to his shoulders; his eyes were clear and intelligent and just now very troubled, and she knew she'd seen eyes like those ones before. But where? And when? And why had his voice also been familiar to her, with just such an ancient echo? "Kate,” the man said softly. “It's you, and not Serina. Gods, but I'm glad I gave clear orders to keep you alive and take care of you if you were hurt when my people captured you!" "Serina? That's my mother's name,” Landay said, and did not allow herself to take a step backward although right now her body almost demanded that she do so. “Who in hell are you? And why did you think you were capturing my mother? She's still on active duty someplace on the other side of the Gate, unless what I'm supposed to have done has messed things up for her so much that she's had to retire at last." He looked honestly puzzled. “The information I had was that an Explorer captain named Landay had been brought over to Gateway City in stasis and regenned back to life after she'd died under Questioning at New Brixton We monitor every comm transmission that we can pick up from Gateway, that's also how Francesca knew that you'd be with Leone and Costigan on that damnable aircar of theirs when they came sightseeing. And I did wonder what connection either Costigan or Leone could have had with my ex-wife, because when Serina took lovers of either sex she wasn't one to rob the proverbial cradle. I thought perhaps one of them had been one of her protégés, she always had a younger officer or two that she took under her wing and mentored. I'd given Francesca standing orders that she should watch her chance whenever she went raiding near Gateway this autumn and try to bring me the Landay woman, I wasn't going to pass up seeing her and finding out how in hell she managed to get herself banished ... but Katydid, I sure as hell wasn't expecting the Landay woman would turn out to be you." Katydid. Kate Landay had what was usually a nickname as her legal name because her father's first commanding officer had despised her own given name of “Katherine,” and had forbidden Carsten Marstallar to name his newborn daughter in her honor unless he chose a shorter version. Kate had never allowed herself to be called anything else, not since she was ten years old; and one reason for her refusal to answer to “Katie” or “Kat” or any other pet name, however warmly intended, had been that the one person who had owned that privilege had gone out of her life during that year. That year when she had her tenth birthday, when her mother was with her for much longer than usual because her mother was expecting another child; when her little brother had been born, and then Kate and baby Clifton had been settled in with Grandpa and Gram on Earth so that Mother could leave again. She'd been “Katydid” to that one person only, and somehow that person was here now behind a concealing silver beard and it was her own hazel eyes she saw staring back at her from this man's face. She knew now why the voice was familiar. But she was human, and she could not help sounding tentative as she asked softly: “Dad?"

She had always called him either “Dad” or “Daddy,” she hadn't been old enough to switch to a more formal title when he had vanished from her universe. Her mother had stopped being “Mama” when Kate had been an adolescent, but with her father she'd never experienced that transition time. He nodded. But the familiar things she'd identified about him only made him seem stranger to her, somehow, and she was glad when he made no effort to move closer; for an instant she'd been terrified that he would sweep her into his arms the way he had always done when he came back to her after an absence during her childhood, and that was the last thing she wanted right now. She ought to be so happy, she should be overjoyed; and instead she was furious. Damn the man, to pop up alive now when she'd buried him emotionally so many years earlier! She'd done her grieving, she had let him go and the time had come when she'd convinced herself that he must be dead. That he had to be dead, because nothing else could have caused him to stay away from her, even though she understood that his relationship with Mama was over and that her much-loved baby brother wasn't Daddy's child. And now here the bastard was, looking at her with eyes exactly like hers and plainly feeling just as nonplused as she did. And probably not one bit happier, either, she realized as she stared at him and watched as he braced broad shoulders that had slumped and lifted his whisker-hidden chin and stuck out his jaw. She knew someone else who did that whenever she didn't know how else to face a strange and possibly hurtful situation. She was doing it right this minute, in fact ... forming a small and feminine mirror-image of this big man's body language, and the realization struck her with such force that she laughed aloud. She said again, this time with certainty and even with a trace of warmth in her voice, “Dad. It is you, isn't it?" At that moment they both heard the sound of apologetic but ostentatious throat-clearing, and both turned toward the medic at the chamber's center. That man inquired, “Captain Marstallar, just how much treatment do you want me to give this patient? He has a severe concussion, and with the power supplies on our neural scanner failing I could heal him today and then have to let one of our people die tomorrow if that scanner's needed again before I can get it recharged." Kate Landay drew a breath, and then reminded herself that she wasn't in command here—and that even though the person who did have that authority was her father, he was also a complete stranger who might very well be offended if she spoke up right now. Then she waited to see what Carsten Marstallar would say in response to the medic's question. She was relieved to her core when she heard him say gruffly, “We didn't risk hanging around after that raid to bring down the Leone bitch's aircar and capture these two so we could let one of them die now, Doctor. That's Joseph Costigan, he's valuable. You're going to do whatever you can to get him healthy again. Understood?" "Understood, sir,” the medic answered, although he didn't sound happy about it. Carsten Marstallar turned back toward his daughter and said quietly, “We can't talk here, Kate. Come with me, Costigan's under my protection and he'll be safe until I tell my people otherwise." [Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter 5 "I thought you were dead.” It sounded so trite, or maybe melodramatic, or maybe just ridiculous now that he was right here in front of her and now that she no longer had any trouble believing it really was him. But what else was there to say, how else could she start this conversation that she'd never expected to have? They were sitting in what looked like a military commander's field office, in another chamber of the same cave system that sheltered the medical facility where Joseph Costigan was being treated. Kate Landay had set up such offices for her own use many times, on many other worlds, during her career as an Explorer officer. She'd been too junior during her Ranger days to merit such a luxury or to need it, either, of course; but she recognized the small differences between this and what she had used as an Explorer team leader, and those differences indicated that Carsten Marstallar still thought of himself as a Ranger captain. Explorers used weapons when necessary, but fighting wasn't what their careers were about. It was what a Ranger's life was about, and this was definitely a Ranger's headquarters. She sat on the guest's or subordinate's side of the desk, and Marstallar sat on the commander's side. They regarded each other, and she finally spoke simply because someone had to. And then she had to utter an inanity like that one. "Was that what your mother told you?” Marstallar wanted to know. There was no bitterness in his tone, none of the anger that Landay had expected would be there when her father spoke of his former wife. "No. She just said that you didn't want to live with her anymore. That she hoped you'd come back to see me sometimes, but she couldn't promise because you didn't want anything to do with her or with Clifton. And of course she was right, you didn't come back; and after awhile I decided you had to be dead, because I couldn't believe you'd stay away from me forever by choice.” Kate found herself having to swallow, hard, before she continued. “When I first got access to service records, after I was grown up and earned my commission, I looked up yours. What I found out was that you'd vanished—your file said you went missing during a mission on New Pitcairn, and when I read that entry I just thought that now I knew for sure what I'd believed in my heart all along. And it got a little bit easier then, after that I didn't think about you as much as I had all the years before." "You were only ten years old. I thought you'd forget about me before you turned eleven.” Marstallar shifted in his chair; plainly what he'd just heard was making him uncomfortable. “I figured that after I left your mother would take up again with that Elkie bastard who'd gotten her pregnant, I figured you'd be calling him ‘father’ and maybe even go to live with his other kids on his world—and if I hung around I'd just make your life harder than it really had to be. So I went away and I stayed away. And when the war with the Elkies came, that finished any hope I might have had that I'd see you again because I was sure Serina would go to El'kah then if she hadn't before." "Elkie bastard.” Just when had Kate first heard someone, someone who was also a Defense Services officer, refer to her mother's friend and Clifton's biological father by using that disparaging phrase? Not long before the complex peace agreement between the two species, human and El'kah'th, had been shattered. At which point the lone El'kah'th who had entered the Sovereignty Defense Services had been “released,” which young as she'd been at that time Kate had realized meant “expelled,” and El'kah'Hatim had been obliged to return immediately to his people's home-world or risk becoming stranded among his Terran associates. He would certainly have been interned for the coming war's duration, and he might never have been able to get back to his home and to the children he'd left there with his two mates.

So he had left the human woman called Serina Landay and the child she was going to bear to him—a child who after all was safely classified as a Terran native in spite of his mixed heritage—and had gone back to his home. Kate had understood that a little bit better than she'd understood her own father's departure, but she had loved El'kah'Hatim too and losing him had been almost as bad as losing another parent. None of which, she realized on some instinctive level of her being, was any of this man's business now. Clearly the “daddy” she remembered so lovingly and the real man named Carsten Marstallar weren't exactly the same person. She'd known her father did not like aliens in general, and his wife's best friend in particular—but she hadn't realized that he actually hated El'kah'ths. So now she said carefully, “El'kah'Hatim was deported to his home-world before Mother had their baby. She never talked about going with him, I'm not sure whether she could have if she'd wanted to. Then there was the war, and afterward the peace treaty stipulated that there wasn't to be any travel by El'kah'th citizens within the Sovereignty's borders. Mother went back to active duty as soon as she was able to work again, and she left Clifton and me with her parents on Earth." "That's good to hear.” Marstallar's angry face relaxed. “I didn't have any close family of my own for you to stay with, and I always liked Serina's parents. When we visited them while you were small, I could see how much they loved you." "I was happy there,” Kate admitted, and now she smiled. “I stayed with them until I was ready to begin at the Academy, and even now when I go ‘home’ it's to Castine. I have an apartment at Luna City, but that's not the same.... “Her voice trailed off, her smile faded, and she swallowed again before she corrected herself. “I had an apartment at Luna City. I'm legally dead now, though; the record says I killed myself to escape the Questioners. That's what Mother's been told, what Grandpa and Gram have been told, what Clifton's been told." She saw that her father flinched whenever she mentioned her half-brother's name, and she made up her mind not to let that stop her from saying it in his presence. She stopped talking, though, and waited now for him to say something to her. He said, “So, Kate. You want to know how I wound up here when my service record says I went missing half a quadrant away from the other side of the Gate, don't you? And I want to know what in hell you managed to do that got you put to the Question, and what in hell you are to Joseph Costigan and Hanna Leone that they were willing to spend their resources to get you to safety and bring you back to life.” He touched a comm unit. Clearly the technology he had at his disposal was far older than that at Gateway City, but it was also far more plentiful; and it was exquisitely maintained. “We're going to have a long night of it, and you can't have eaten since sometime yesterday. I'm going to have some food brought in, we don't have anything fancy here but no one goes hungry. I'll tell you all of it, Katydid—I've got to trust you or not trust you, and if I find out I can't trust you then I'll have to kill you. But you know that, don't you? You said you went to the Academy, and I'll bet before you made whatever misstep landed you in the Questioners’ clutches you wore your own set of these.” He touched the insignia on the shoulder of his civvies, that of a Ranger captain—a rank equivalent to what his daughter had attained before her thirtieth birthday, since Rangers followed the same system as the old North American Army while Explorers used what had once been the Navy's hierarchy. "Not exactly,” Kate said, and now she could smile again. “I was a Ranger for my first few years, then I switched over. I made full captain in the Explorers, I've commanded three different starships; and I was about to let them give me a rear admiral's scrambled eggs even though that meant being put ashore on Luna for the rest of my career."

Someone must have been expecting that request for refreshments. The office door opened at Marstallar's permission, and a very young-looking man placed a tray on the desk and left hastily. Whatever was in those dishes was aromatic enough to remind Kate that she was in fact very hungry; and even if she hadn't been, she was a seasoned military officer who'd long ago learned the lesson that no matter what her circumstances might be like at the moment she should never pass up an opportunity “to eat, sleep, or use the head.” So she pulled her chair closer to the desk, accepted her portion from the tray and began consuming it with unabashed eagerness. **** "All right, Katydid, you first.” Carsten Marstallar also had learned to eat first and talk later except in a deliberately arranged social setting—of course he must have learned that long before his daughter had. “Did you really change that much when you grew up? Even though you were curious as hell you were still my little straight-arrow, you wanted to know what the rules were and you wanted everyone to follow them." "I know,” Kate said, and her tone was rueful. “Sometimes that lost me some friends! I didn't mean to be a tattletale, but it always bothered hell out of me when I saw something happening that shouldn't have been.” How to begin this, how to tell her father how she'd managed to get herself accused of the worst offenses an officer could commit? All through her professional life she had followed the rules so diligently, except for the time when she'd done what was necessary to protect her estranged mate from torture; and then twenty years later she had violated service regulations in a different way, because her responsibility to those she commanded wouldn't let her do otherwise. And what she'd done on that occasion had landed Kate herself in the Questioners’ hands. "When you were three years old I had you with me for seven months straight.” Even though he'd told her to speak first, Marstallar somehow found it necessary to fill the silence when she hesitated to gather her thoughts. “I was visiting with some friends one afternoon that I had off duty; one of them had a little boy who was just over a year old, and the two of you were playing together outside while the grown-ups talked. You put your head in through the door, and I thought you just wanted to know where I was. So I told you to go back outside and play—and you started to. But then you changed your mind, you came in and walked right up to me and said, ‘Better come see, Daddy!’ Do you remember why you did that, Kate?" It was one of the first things she did remember, actually, and small as she'd been it was a clear recollection. She nodded, and said, “Yes. The little boy—what was his name? I remember everything else, but not his name! Anyway, that house on Faraday had a yard with a barrier around it, and he'd managed to get the gate deactivated and he was headed off down the street. And I couldn't drag him back, so I came to get you." "Uh-huh. That's just how it happened. And he wasn't the least bit happy, he was too little to understand he'd been in danger and you'd protected him. He did his damnedest to get loose from his mother because he wanted to pound you, what he did understand was that you were the reason he got caught.” Marstallar grinned. His beard hid most of it, but his eyes communicated his amusement clearly. “You always put yourself in spots like that one, Kate, you always tried to do the responsible thing; and I knew you'd have a rougher life than you needed to sometimes because you were like that." "But when I did the responsible thing at Galapagos, they killed me for it,” Landay said, and she allowed herself the rare luxury of closing her eyes while she continued. She never did that, she'd learned early to face the person with whom she was conversing and to make regular eye contact. But (at this point anyway) Carsten Marstallar wasn't her enemy, right now he was just her father; and she couldn't think

about the last few days of her old life without giving herself some emotional privacy. She hadn't thought about that time and those events in any detail since waking up in the regen tank to Amy's and Joe's voices; she hadn't been able to. She wondered now how much she really could have made herself tell Hanna Leone when the Gateway City woman had asked her, in that last moment before the alarms had sounded. Well, she'd have to talk about it sooner or later. And this was the right time, this was the right person. She drew a long breath, and she made herself begin. "I almost wish it was something more dramatic, I almost wish I could tell you I stood up for some grand principle and knew what I was doing and that I'd have to pay the price,” she said, and felt her lips curving wryly. “But it wasn't like that, it was just a complete bloody snafu. Just ‘wrong place, wrong time'; with Kate trying to do the right thing as usual and this time making all the wrong people mad in the process! I'd been ordered by my commanding officer, Commodore Novotny, to take the Sparrowhawk into the shipyards at a border system called Galapagos for an overhaul after I'd brought her in from an extended survey mission. From there I was supposed to leave the ship and take passage to Luna City. I was in line for an admiral's flag, and my life-partner back on Earth wasn't exactly pressuring me but I knew he wanted me to accept it. "Something just seemed wrong as soon as we got close to Galapagos. I wasn't sure what, but you don't stay alive for twenty-five years in the service without a pretty damned good sixth sense and mine was screaming bloody murder at me. So I brought Sparrowhawk about, stood off shore and requested reconfirmation of my orders from Novotny. After all, I hadn't talked with him for several days then and that sector's always simmering—I figured it only made sense to check with my C.O., as soon as I had doubts about going ahead. "Novotny's flag captain answered me, and she told me to go on in. It was a direct order, and she had the Commodore's full authority. I knew I was sailing into someplace I had no business to be going, I knew that in my bones, but I didn't have a choice. Not that I could see, anyway! So I started to take my ship in, and it was only blind dumb luck that kept us from sliding all the way into the clamps in spacedock before the trap got sprung. But someone on Galapagos was itchy, someone powered weapons earlier than they had to just in case we got wise, and my ops officer saw that buildup on sensors while we still had maneuvering room." Landay opened her eyes then, because she had to see how what she'd said so far had affected the man who was listening to her. She saw little that helped her in the eyes that were so like her own, but at least she didn't see condemnation; so she let her lids close again, and then she continued. "What I didn't know was that Novotny was dead. There'd been an attempted command coup at the sector level, during those last few days while Sparrowhawk was flying through some disputed territory under comm silence and we weren't able to communicate with the fleet. Things had been sorted out by the time we reached Galapagos, and Flag Captain Pine was in legitimate control; but Fleet Command back on Terra didn't want the authorities at Galapagos to know that. They'd had intelligence reports that the Galapagos brass were some of Novotny's people, and Captain Pine was afraid that if she allowed us to break off and go elsewhere they'd suspect something was wrong and they'd destroy the yards before she could send in a proper force to secure them. So she was letting Novotny's orders stand as he'd given them to me; and Sparrowhawk , my ship and my crew, were going to be sacrificed to keep the secret and guarantee that the yards would stay open." No one had to tell either captain, Marstallar late of the Rangers or Landay late of the Explorers, how essential such remote-sector shipyards as the ones at Galapagos were. To allow the capture of a single

ship and the execution or imprisonment of its crew to preserve such a facility was fully justifiable. They both knew that, any command officer in either service would have known that. But it was one thing to sit in an admiral's or commodore's or flag captain's chair and make that sort of determination; and it was quite another to be an ordinary captain on your own bridge and realize you had to sentence the people who looked to you for leadership to captivity of uncertain length, or even to a death they'd done nothing to deserve. And Kate Landay hadn't known that was what she was expected to do, anyway, at the crucial moment off Galapagos. All she'd known was that her command intuition had told her to stand clear of this place; she had consulted her superior as she was supposed to do whenever she had doubts about the wisdom of carrying out orders; and when instructed to go in anyway, she had done so. Then she'd been given proof certain that her instincts were right—and of course she had done the only thing a captain could do then, and had ordered her ship to come about and make for safety in open space. "So you ran like hell,” Carsten Marstallar said softly into the rocky chamber's absolute silence. "Yes. Of course I did.” Landay opened her eyes again, and knew that she wouldn't need to hide from him while she told him the rest of her story. “I couldn't raise anyone after we got clear, and we really did need to make port somewhere. We were low on fuel when we arrived at Galapagos, we were low on everything because we'd just come back from that survey swing that was almost two years long. So I didn't dare to keep fooling around out there trying to make contact with Pine again, I headed for the next closest base after Galapagos and figured once I reported there I'd get everything straightened out. Instead an Internal Affairs team met me on my bridge about five seconds after we entered orbit. They told me that the Galapagos yards had been destroyed before Pine's fleet could take them, and that I was under arrest." "Because somehow you were responsible; somehow you must have been in on it with Novotny?” Marstallar asked almost rhetorically. His eyes were sympathetic, but his mouth was taut with anger at the high-ranking fools who had so completely misread her actions. Or who had used her as their scapegoat. All his knowledge of politics (gained on this world, while he'd lived a life of which Kate still knew almost nothing) made him strongly suspect that, even though he didn't know enough about the causes and personalities involved in her disgrace to make that judgment. But it wouldn't help his daughter for him to put that idea into her head right now if it hadn't occurred to her already; that she'd been wrongly accused and punished was bad enough, but to realize her superiors might have deliberately used her to take the heat off them would be devastating. And she had enough baggage to deal with already, she didn't need for him to add another burden to her load. "They said that, yes.” Landay nodded. “I was angry, but I wasn't really frightened. I knew they'd use truth dope to question me, and I didn't have any reason to be afraid of telling them the truth. I hadn't done anything wrong, so it should have cleared me! I was expecting to wake up after a session with the Questioners and be told I could go home, I even recorded messages for my lover and my family telling them to expect me soon." There was nothing more to say now, really. She didn't need to relive, and he didn't need to hear about, those moments when she'd realized that she had told the truth and either she hadn't been believed—or it had made no difference. Nor did she want to recall the hours, the days afterward.... "Katydid,” Marstallar said softly, and put out a big hand across his desk. “You're alive, because you survived you've beaten them. And you'll go on surviving. I know what it's like to wake up one day and find you've been ripped away from everyone you ever loved and the only life you've ever known; that's

happened to me, too, even though I didn't have to live through the Questioners first. You'll be okay. It takes time, but you're young yet and you'll build another life. I did! It isn't what I'd have chosen, but it's a damned sight better than having died when I was your age." Kate's eyes had closed involuntarily as she'd come to the end of her tale; she had felt stinging behind them, and she had been obliged to swallow hard to keep herself from being seriously threatened with tears. She was only human, a human who had passed through hell and come out on its other side; thinking about it scared her still, and it probably always would. But the big hand around hers was warm and protective; and when she allowed her mind to explore her body as she had so many times since waking in the regen tank, she felt relieved all over again at the absence of pain and at the sense of strength and physical well-being that filled her. So she let herself return the pressure of that handclasp for a moment before she disengaged from it, and then she opened her eyes and didn't feel ashamed that she had to put up her other hand and rub at them briefly. Then she said, “Your turn now, Dad. How did you get here? And why did you arrange to kidnap my mother from Gateway City, since you thought I was her? And is that woman I saw earlier really your daughter, too?" He opened his mouth to respond. An alarm pre-empted him, not the blaring klaxons of Gateway City but a penetrating sound that reminded Kate of a starship's yellow alert signal. A steady ee-bee-bee-beep, ee-bee-bee-beep, ee-bee-bee-beep! that didn't cause the adrenaline rush of the battle stations call, but that brought both former captains to their feet by pure reflex and that caused Marstallar to grab his comm and say the same word that Hanna Leone had said into hers: “Report!" [Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter 6 It was too much to ask that Carsten Marstallar would give Kate Landay his full trust immediately, simply because she was his daughter. She knew that, but the intellectual knowledge didn't keep her from feeling hurt when she found herself being hustled back to what was euphemistically called the “medical bay” by an armed and very grim-looking escort. Nor did all her years of practice at switching on an instant's notice from what had sometimes been a very private moment into combat readiness keep her from finding it difficult now to be jerked away from mid-conversation with her father, when she'd just finished telling him her story and had been about to listen while he told her his. On some level, in fact, she was afraid that before they saw each other again he either would be killed, or would decide he'd made a mistake and would never open up to her again. But there was nothing she could do except try to escape or wait out this emergency; and right now she had no desire whatsoever to escape, even if she'd had enough knowledge of where she was and how she might get back to Gateway City to make that a sensible course of action. She needed to find out what progress the medic had made at treating Joseph Costigan's injuries, so at least returning to the medical chamber would serve that purpose. And after that she wanted nothing but to talk with her father again, to find out the answers to the questions she'd just asked him when that infernal alarm had sounded—to those questions first, and then to so many others. So she had no problem at all with staying right here, and the guard wasn't needed to make sure she went where she'd been told to go—although she understood the precaution, and would have done the same

thing herself if these had been her people and if she'd had a prisoner who might be a threat to them. But she did wish someone would tell her what that particular alarm was likely to signal ... staying safe in a rear area while others faced an enemy was something she'd never liked doing, although of course from the time she'd first made captain she'd had to force herself to do that when the situation called for it. The guard said something to the medic in a language that Landay didn't comprehend, the first words of anything but Standard English that she'd heard spoken since she'd arrived on Arcadia. The medic responded brusquely; he was busy cleaning his equipment, and he looked exhausted. Joseph Costigan lay on a cot, in the area where Kate Landay had awakened—how long ago? "How is he, Doctor?” Landay waited only until the guard withdrew (probably to keep watch outside the door, but she wouldn't bother to verify that because she didn't care) before she made the inquiry. The medic sighed in plain exasperation. “Costigan's fine now,” he said, in a tone that carried none of the satisfaction she might have expected from a physician who'd successfully treated a seriously injured patient. “And I hope I don't get casualties within the next couple of hours, because thanks to him I may not be able to take proper care of them if I do!" Oh, yes. He'd complained that his neural scanner might not recharge rapidly enough if he drained its energy caring for Costigan; no doubt that wasn't the only problem he had with supplies and equipment and expertise. If he had assistants, let alone colleagues to back him up, they would surely be here now when he was tired out and an emergency was in progress. But no other medics were appearing, and this lone man was doing his own clean-up; and that made his situation quite clear. Landay asked anyway, “Are you the only doctor they have here?" "The only fully trained physician, yes. I've tried teaching others, but the young ones born since we came here don't have the basic education that's required; and the two corpsmen from our original group have both died over the years.” Frustration could make any human say too much when it hit at the wrong moment, and probably that was why this man was telling her too much now. Either that or he knew she was a member of Marstallar's family, and mistakenly thought she could be treated as a trustworthy member of this—group. What a neutral collective term her mind had just assigned to these people! Not “tribe,” not “unit” (as in “military"), not “village” or “clan.” But if she started deliberately inquiring about this place in order to classify it she was apt to shut off the flow of information the medic was providing to her, so Landay asked instead, “What kind of recovery do you expect for Mr. Costigan? I know you said he'll be all right, but how soon?" "As soon as he wakes up, he's just sleeping now.” The medic actually managed a tired smile. Venting his feelings and meeting with acceptance instead of reproof had probably made him feel better—Landay had long ago learned that sometimes all a distressed subordinate really needed was a chance to express his or her anger in order to defuse it. “I can't tell you when that will be. Depends on how tired the man is, there's absolutely nothing wrong with him medically." As if that were a signal, Costigan stirred on the cot and muttered. Landay moved to his side and knelt, glad that someone had already placed a folded blanket on the stone floor for that purpose. She bent toward the man who'd once been her lover and she said his name softly. Costigan opened his eyes. For a moment he was puzzled, even alarmed. Then he recognized her, and he smiled. “Kate,” he murmured with gratitude in his voice. “I must have been dreaming, for just a minute I

thought it was twenty years ago...." "I'm glad it's not, though,” Landay answered him gently, and she put up a hand and smoothed his hair back from his face. “I'm damned glad neither of us has to live those years through again, Joe. How do you feel?" "A little bit tired. Otherwise I'm okay. What happened, Kate?” He tried to sit up, and after a moment's struggle he managed it. “The last thing I remember is trying to get the aircar down as gradually as I could, I knew I couldn't keep it flying but I was hoping to land it instead of crash it. What happened to Hanna? And are you all right?" "I'm fine. And Hanna must be, too, because the people who brought us here were disappointed that she got away before they closed in after the car crashed.” Landay smiled at her old love and touched his cheek again. “You've lost a day, Joe. Maybe longer, I'm not sure how much time I lost myself before I woke up here." "Where is here?” Costigan wanted to know. He looked around at the chamber's rocky walls, at the medic who was back to them at present and ignoring them completely, and then at Kate's face again. "I'm not sure,” she said, which was the complete truth. She had no real idea where she was relative to Gateway City. “We were loaded onto an antigrav cart and hauled behind a team of horses, at least that's what the woman who led the raid told me." Costigan swore. “Then we're in one of the mountain valleys!” he said in clear disgust. “Only the mountain people use horses that way. But that's odd, because those mountains are a hell of a long way from us. It would be a long trip, longer than I think I could possibly have been unconscious...." Landay nodded. “I wondered about that,” she said honestly. “But however long it took, we're here now and the good news is that I just met someone I know. My father is in command here, Joe." "What?” The word came out as a gasp. “You told me your father died at New Pitcairn! You found the record that said so!" "Yes, I did tell you that and I did find that record. But not ten minutes ago I was with my father, and there's no way I'm wrong about who the man is. I wasn't a baby when he and my mother parted company, Joe. I was ten years old, I remember my father and this is him.” Landay's voice was firm. “These people call him Captain Marstallar because that was the last rank he held in the Rangers—in fact he's still wearing his rank, although I sure as hell don't want to wear my stripes again! And he's been here a long time, long enough to have had another family. The woman who led the raid on the grain fields, the woman who captured us, is also his daughter. That's all I know about her, except that her given name is Francesca and that she thought she was getting my mother instead of me when her people brought down the aircar." "They knew you were with us? Or at least they knew someone named Landay had been brought through the Gate?” Costigan stiffened. “Oh, gods, Kate. I've suspected we had an intelligence leak, a high-level one, from Gateway City to some of the other settlements; but that's not a leak, that's a bloody torrent! I wonder what else they know?" "A fair amount, Mr. Costigan.” The young woman called Francesca had done something that ought to have been impossible; she'd managed to get within hearing distance of two ex-Rangers without either of them noticing her presence. “Captain Landay, is that what I'm supposed to call you? I can't handle

‘Kate,’ and I'll bet you can't either. Captain Marstallar sent me to tell you that he's going to be busy for the rest of the night, maybe longer than that, so I'm supposed to escort the two of you to a place where you can rest. It'll be under guard at all times, so don't even think about trying to leave!" **** Costigan was still tired from the aftermath of his injuries, and Landay hadn't realized how her conversation with her father had drained her until she lay down on a pallet in the plain stone chamber to which she and her companion were escorted by Francesca. She was asleep within minutes, and even then Costigan had already preceded her in dropping off on his own pallet a couple of meters away. Some time later—how long she really had no means of judging, since in this place there was no natural light and she wasn't wearing an illuminated wrist chrono—she woke up screaming, to feel Joe's hands on her shoulders and to hear the guard asking urgently what in the blankety-blankety-blank ailed the woman, anyway. "She's having a nightmare, idiot!” Costigan said shortly, as he pinned her to the pallet and as either the guard or their own motions caused the lumipanels to activate. “Kate. Kate, wake up! You're okay, it's just a dream. No one's coming to take you back to the Questioners." "Is that what I said?” Landay whispered. She'd stopped struggling, but her body was still tense under his hands and she felt damp all over. “I don't remember what I dreamed ... and I've been sleeping fine, if I was going to have nightmares about that you'd think I'd have had them right after I got out of regen instead of waiting a week." "Since when is there anything logical about nightmares?” Costigan countered. He let go of her shoulders, and sat back on his heels beside her pallet and stared down at her. “Kate, you're entitled. But if you're awake now I'm going back to bed, it's cold here." Losing his touch made her feel shaken, and the idea that he was going to lie down two meters away from her again and that then the chamber would go dark around them was suddenly too much. Kate Landay had commanded starships, led Ranger landing parties, fought enemies with blasters and knives and her own hands ... but right now she was just a frightened human being who didn't want to be alone in the dark in a strange place, and she reached out toward the man who was about to leave her. “Come in with me,” she said, and lifted her blankets with one hand while she clasped his arm with the other. He looked into her eyes, and understood. And he lay down beside her, pulled the blankets over them both and wrapped his arms around her body so that they lay spooned together with her back against his chest. A good position for sharing warmth, without offering or inviting more intimacy than was intended ... he wasn't the first comrade she'd bundled with like this, sometimes it had been necessary for pure survival's sake. And then it had made no difference to her whether her sleeping companion was partnered or unpartnered; of the opposite gender or another woman, or even some nonhuman being who was neither male nor female as she understood that distinction. But long ago she and this particular man had been lovers, and she wasn't the least bit surprised when she realized that her closeness was having a very tangible effect on his body. She couldn't help remembering other times when the two of them had lain down in a bed together, and if he couldn't help recalling that either—she found it quite understandable. Not, of course, that she hadn't felt this same response when huddling for warmth with other male comrades on other occasions; it was, after all, a reflex that a man couldn't help. With those others the only polite thing she could do was ignore it, pretend it wasn't happening and not mention it afterward. But her bundling-partner tonight was her one-time life-mate and lover, and that was why she didn't think it necessary to stop herself from uttering a soft and rueful

chuckle. “Sorry,” she whispered, and meant it. "For what?” He kissed her cheek from behind, and tightened his arms around her. "You know damned well for what. I'm free now—I'd still go home to Yoshi if I could, but I know that's never going to be possible; and I know he isn't going to wait for me, because he's been told that I'm dead. But you've got a wife back in Gateway City, so it's not a bit fair for me to ask you to keep me company like this and then get you all hot and bothered. You do know I didn't do that to you on purpose, don't you, Joe?" "I wouldn't mind if you had done it on purpose.” He rolled her to face him inside a nest of blankets that suddenly was almost too warm. “Kate, if I humiliated Hanna in public she'd never forgive me—but I don't think she gives a damn whether or not I sleep with other women, not as long as I'm discreet about it." "And do you sleep with other women often?” Kate was astounded. She stiffened, and involuntarily drew back from too close contact with the man who held her. “I always thought you were the kind of person who kept promises, Joe." "Actually, I haven't made love to any woman but Hanna since she and I started living together. I won't say I've never wanted to, but—somehow it never seemed right. Even though like I told you already, we don't have formal commitment ceremonies here on Arcadia and that means I've never promised to be faithful to Hanna. Public or private, she's never asked me to give her a promise like that and I've never volunteered it.” He didn't try to draw her close to him again, but neither did he let her go. “And these days I don't make love to Hanna, either. She never did like it much, and now ... now, it doesn't seem to matter a damn to her. And since I don't want to take a woman to bed when she'd really rather I didn't, that's how it is with us." My wife doesn't understand me, my wife won't sleep with me—those were the oldest lines known to humankind for a married man to use when he wanted to get into another woman's pants, Kate thought as she lay very still and listened to Joe Costigan's breathing and realized hers was just as audible. The only problem was that she had once known this man so well. Well enough so that although she realized the years since then had to have changed them both, she still felt certain that he wasn't trying to create false sympathy. He was telling her the simple truth, and he wasn't expecting her to offer herself as comfort. He was hoping, yes, and he wasn't trying to conceal that hope; but if she wanted to now she knew she could snuggle against him, put her head on his shoulder, and go off to sleep knowing that he would do nothing except lie awake in frustration until his body finally allowed him to relax and sleep, too. But that wasn't what she wanted to do, and she was no longer bound by her commitment to Yoshi. She whispered so low that she knew Costigan would barely be able to hear her, “The guard?" "He's outside the door, we just have to be quiet,” he answered, and now he did draw her body against his. He kissed her all through the moments when keeping quiet would otherwise have been torture for her, when she knew that she was first moaning and then crying aloud into his mouth; but none of the sounds she made escaped into the chamber's darkness. So the only noises someone just outside it might have heard were those of bodies moving and blankets rustling, and then when it was over and he took his mouth away from hers the sound of two humans’ exhausted breathing. "Okay?” he asked her then, very softly and very gently. He'd been so needy, and yet he had been

careful—exploring with his fingers to make sure she was ready before he entered her, then easing himself inside when he realized from the involuntary way she tensed that she'd been celibate for awhile herself and that her body needed time to accommodate itself to this no longer familiar act. Or maybe it had something to do with the regen, maybe she'd come out of that tank almost virgin again in a sense? In any case he had felt her body's resistance, even though she spread her legs wide in welcome and deliberately lifted herself to meet him, and he had responded with gentleness and consideration. And he'd remembered what she liked, had slipped a hand between them to rub and stroke her ... and that gave her what she needed, the initial moisture of her arousal became a warm flood and then he was able to enter her fully and move freely. And not long after that she'd convulsed in glorious release, from which she was still shuddering while she lay in his arms and bit her lip to keep herself from whimpering aloud. She swallowed hard, quivered a few times more; and then she whispered back, “I'm fine. And that was like—coming home." "It wasn't like that with Yoshi?” The question slipped out, and then he realized how indelicate it had been and he sighed. “Oh, damn! Forget I asked you, Kate. None of my business, of course, but...." "No, it wasn't; and whether or not I ought to tell you, I want to.” She had her arms around his shoulders, and now she lifted her lips to his and kissed him with tenderness instead of with passion. “Yoshi and I had something wonderful together, and that goes for the physical part just as much as for everything else. But—" "But what?” He sounded genuinely puzzled. "But even though I loved making love with Yoshi, he never made me feel the way you just made me feel. He isn't you, Joe. No one else is you, and if I'd realized it was going to last for twenty years I'd never have agreed we needed that so-called temporary separation.” She rested her forehead against his, and they lay completely still for a moment before either spoke again. "I didn't expect what happened anymore than you did, Kate,” Joe said at last, and sighed. “When I went home to Alba Five I thought I was going to come back after just a few weeks. I had no idea when I left you it might turn out to be for the rest of my life! There hasn't been one night since then when I haven't missed you. But you really have been happy with Yoshi, haven't you? Even if it hasn't been everything you wanted, you've loved him and you still do. I never did love Hanna, and even though we've been contented enough together I'm sure she's never loved me. We've been partners, and that's all." "And Yoshi and I were friends who made love together because we each needed someone, and neither of us had anybody else.” It made sense now, and whenever things started making sense Kate Landay always felt better about them. “After I lost you I picked up the pieces and I went on, Joe. I couldn't have come with you into exile even if I'd wanted to, I had my service oath to keep—my family to think about—and since our marriage wasn't formalized I didn't qualify as your spouse anyhow, not to mention how suspicious requesting that would have made my deposition at your trial! I'm not sorry I spent those years on the other side after you left, because up until Galapagos they were good ones. And you're right; I was happy with Yoshi, and I can't be sorry about that either. You don't give someone a whole decade out of your life and then walk away and forget that person five minutes later—or at any rate, I can't." "But Yoshi's not a problem now, because even though I know you miss him you're never going to see him again, Kate. And if we get ourselves out of this mess and get back to Gateway City I'm sure as hell going to see Hanna again!” Joe sounded as if the full impact of what they'd done, and especially of how it had made both of them feel, was only just hitting him. “Oh, gods, what am I going to do?"

"Joe, it's what are we going to do.” Kate's voice in his ear was firm and tender. “And right now I don't have a clue, but right now I don't have to do one single thing except go to sleep. Hold me, just as close as you can. We both need to get some rest. In the morning we can talk some more. I've got a feeling we're going to have plenty of time to talk before either of us sees Gateway City again." He complied, and although he'd expected his thoughts to be in turmoil for the rest of the night he drifted off within a surprisingly short time. She slept, too, and this time no images of Questioners or regen tanks troubled her dreams. In fact when morning did come, when their chamber's lumipanels gradually brightened in imitation of the dawn that was taking place somewhere outside, Joe found her smiling when he woke up first. [Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter 7 Just how private they should keep their renewed intimacy was a matter they never had to discuss, because Kate had only just awakened to the touch of Joe's mouth against hers when they started apart at the sound of voices at their chamber's entrance. Then she heard a soft masculine chuckle, and it wasn't her lover who was amused. "So that's why you moved half the universe to get her to where she'd be safe!” Carsten Marstallar said, and stood in the doorway and grinned at them from behind his copious beard. “But it doesn't explain why the Leone woman went along and let you do it, and you couldn't have pulled it off without her being willing. How is this going to affect things for you if you ever get back to Gateway, son?" Joe Costigan sat up, drawing the woman and the blanket with him in a protective gesture, and glared at the older man with as much dignity as he could muster just now. He said, “You'd be Kate's father. So I won't start this off by telling you not to call me ‘son'; I guess you can do that if you want to. How about turning around for a minute? We could use a little privacy." Landay's face was crimson, but she deliberately caught Marstallar's eye and she smiled at him. She wasn't sure whether the effect was rueful or reassuring—it was probably both!—but her father nodded, his own grin growing even wider as he complied with Costigan's request and turned although he didn't budge from where he was standing. The lovers emerged from their blankets, looked at each other and teetered precariously between wanting to laugh at their mutually rumpled and disreputable condition (neither had undressed completely, and their remaining clothing testified to that fact) and wanting to say things to each other that they weren't about to say in any third person's presence. Then they both managed to compose their faces, and went to work making themselves as presentable as was possible under the circumstances. "Any chance of a shower around here?” Costigan inquired, for all the universe as if he were a traveler who'd sought hospitality in this place last night and not a deliberately-taken prisoner. “We're decent now, but cleaning up would be a damned good idea. For me, anyway.” He gave Landay a smile, and she smiled back. "Times two!” she said emphatically. “Everything okay now, Dad? The last time I saw you there was what sounded like a yellow alert going on."

"It's been taken care of.” Innocently made or not, her inquiry wasn't going to gain her any information that Marstallar wouldn't have given to any other stranger in his camp. “And you'll have a chance to bathe later, but right now I'm going to have breakfast and I'd like you to join me. Both of you,” he added when Landay glanced at Costigan and then back at him in plain appeal. “Does he know everything you told me last night, Katydid?" This was the first time Costigan had heard his former mate's childhood nickname, and he could not help glancing at her and lifting an eyebrow. She shot him a look as she answered her father: “Yes. Most of it, anyway. I never told him the details about Galapagos, but Amy probably did when she gave him the political background while I was still in regen ... Joe?" "Yes.” So that's why she had the nightmare, Costigan thought; and he wanted to hold her again, even though with Marstallar waiting for them this wasn't the time. She'd relived the entire experience of her “crime” and detention, her torture and death, in relating the story for Marstallar's benefit; and then she had fallen asleep. No wonder she'd awakened in terror not long afterward, nothing could have been more natural. But right now Kate Landay wasn't the vulnerable woman he'd held in his arms last night, she had her captain-face on and she was moving toward her father. And she was saying, “You had a lot of things you were going to tell me when that alarm sounded, Dad. Can we pick up where we left off this morning? And is there any way we can go someplace where I can actually see that it is morning? I miss the daylight. I know that sounds crazy when I've lived for weeks and even months on starships ... but so help me, I'm getting claustrophobic. Looking at rocks by lumipanels is starting to drive me nuts." Marstallar laughed at that, and he put out a big arm and laid it across his daughter's shoulders. The guard had vanished, clearly the leader of this group of settlers didn't feel that he needed to be protected from either his child or the man who was his other prisoner. The passageway wasn't wide enough for three people to walk abreast, so Joe Costigan fell in behind his lover and his captor and thought as he did so that either Marstallar was very sure of himself ... or very stupid, because the man wasn't carrying a weapon of any kind, and Costigan wouldn't have needed one to be effective in attacking the older man from the rear. But to do so now would mean having to escape from a place whose exact location was a mystery, via a route that was equally unknown, and either convincing Landay to come with him or leaving her behind. Or having to disable her and drag her along, which he frankly didn't think he would be able to do; at least not without really hurting her, because the body he'd held in his arms last night was just as strong as that of the much younger woman he remembered—and she had been capable of giving him a real fight whenever they took hand-to-hand combat practice together. Besides all of which he wanted to hear whatever story Marstallar was going to tell them, even though part of his mind was warning him that once he'd heard the man's secrets he might never be permitted to go back to Gateway City alive. Hell, he probably wasn't going to be allowed to do that anyway—he was going to have to make his own escape, or Hanna was going to have to do something that would amount to paying ransom, or Marstallar's people were simply going to kill him after they'd found out whatever they could from him that might be of use to this rival settlement. So he might as well just relax as best he could, go along now and listen and learn. And watch Kate Landay with her father, and decide for himself just what the man's true intentions toward her might be and whether or not Kate was aware of them. Smart and experienced as she was, Kate was human; and she wasn't apt to look objectively at a parent she'd once loved and then hadn't seen for more than 30 years. There was nothing objective about the way she was walking now in the shelter of her father's arm, in fact she was leaning toward him and

looking as if that felt natural to her. For which he couldn't blame her. Long ago Costigan had had parents of his own, a father and a mother whom he had loved. Whom he had buried, when he'd rushed home after the Sovereignty had issued its order to evacuate all the human settlers from Alba Five and leave the planet to the nonhumans who had shared it with them for longer than young Joe could remember. He'd been born there, and yet he and his family and thousands of other people like them had been expected to get themselves out of the way so that the Sovereignty's military forces (including the Ranger unit led by Lieutenant Kate Landay) could have a free hand in wiping out the beings who would be left on Alba Five after all the humans were gone. Then if there was anything left of their world, the human colonists might be permitted to return.... He had entered his birth family's silent home, and he'd found their bodies there. His father, his mother; his sister, and her husband and her child. That was how he had learned that the reports he'd heard were true, that unbelievably two peoples of different species who had lived for a full generation as neighbors had turned and started killing each other for reasons that he hadn't understood then and didn't understand now . Murdering, torturing, determined to cleanse their planet of the contamination that they suddenly perceived after years of allowing their children to grow up together there. Of course the human colonists had petitioned the Sovereignty to do something to protect them; but that “something” had turned out to be worse, much worse, that the civil war it was meant to halt. So people like Joe Costigan had found themselves caught between their alien neighbors and their own central government ... and the remnant of them that survived, had wound up in exile on Arcadia. Costigan shook himself physically in order to shake off those memories, because he didn't need them haunting him now. He needed to pay full attention to Landay and her father, and he couldn't do that with the images of his own murdered family lurking behind his eyes and coloring everything he saw with sadness and suspicion. **** "It's almost like looking out of a ship's viewports into space,” Kate Landay said softly. “I know it's freezing cold out there, but on this side of the port everything's perfectly comfortable. So what's outside seems almost—not real." "It's not as cold out there as it is in space, but it's cold enough!” Carsten Marstallar laughed gently. “The season's shut down early this year, I'd have expected another twenty days or so before the passes became blocked and the valleys frozen in. But we got the last load of grain in, we have plenty of geothermal energy to keep us warm, and everything else we need is right here too inside our caverns. We're actually better off energy-wise than the people at Gateway who inherited our solar generators after we abandoned the place years ago." So that explained it, this was indeed a cave system within the living rock of one of Arcadia's mountain ranges. What Joseph Costigan still didn't understand was how he and Kate Landay had been brought so far so quickly, but he was sure now that he would be finding that out. Clearly Marstallar wasn't worried about his guests—or captives, as they might still consider themselves—leaving his settlement and surviving long outside it. Beyond the dividing pane of clear plas-steel (where had he obtained that on Arcadia?), the mountain valley below the cave's mouth was indeed frozen into solid winter. The snow was already a good half-meter deep in accumulation, judging roughly from how much of each tree it concealed, and the flat area that Marstallar had identified as a lake was so well covered that if he hadn't told Costigan what it was it would have been indistinguishable from the land around it. "The airlock behind us is a precaution in case we're ever attacked from within the valley, or from the air

above it,” Marstallar said now, as he pushed his bowl away. “Not that either's likely. We're a long way from anyone who'd want to attack us, and the only air vehicle on the whole planet was the one you two crashed in. We don't have a starship's atmospheric scrubber system, so that airlock wouldn't do much to protect us if we ever had to deal with serious environmental contamination—but at least it sure as hell would keep the heat inside and the cold outside if the plas-steel was breached somehow." "How far are we from Gateway City?” Landay wanted to know. She'd decided that she would ask whatever questions came to her mind, and not worry about embarrassing her father with those he didn't care to answer because it was plain that he wasn't going to be embarrassed. He would simply refuse to tell her, and in this they would be two former military officers interacting in a way that both understood to be necessary. "About five hundred kilometers,” Marstallar said casually, and then plainly enjoyed the consternation on both his guests’ faces. “Mr. Costigan. Joseph, I suppose calling my daughter ‘Katydid’ one second and you ‘Mister’ the next doesn't sound very friendly of me. I'm starting to tell you things now that if I believe you might go back to Gateway City still my enemy, I'll have to kill you to keep you from repeating there. Do you want to stay with us now, or would you rather I had a guard take you back into the caverns?" Costigan drew a breath. Landay reached for his hand, not discreetly under the table but as openly as she would have touched him back in the days when they'd considered themselves mated. He let her clasp his fingers, and after a moment he returned the pressure; and he looked at her and smiled. Then he said to Marstallar, “I'll stay. And it's Joe, I hate being called Joseph. Sounds like some kind of religious icon." "All right. So be it, but this is the only chance I'll give you.” Marstallar stared at the younger man for a moment, then resumed as if he hadn't changed the subject at all. “Kate asked me last night, and I was about to tell her when I had to deal with a problem that the early freeze-up was causing to our environmental controls, how I came to be here on Arcadia when the Sovereignty's records show that I died at New Pitcairn. Well, it's so damned simple that thinking about it almost makes me laugh. Almost." He repeated that qualifying word with irony, and he took a swallow from a mug of something that looked like coffee but decidedly wasn't when you tasted it. Then he continued. “I was leader of the Ranger escort for the first group of settlers that was sent through the Gate to a new world, a world that looked so promising that the authorities decided to make a secret try at planting a colony on it even though the scientists were still working on how to control—or at least predict—the Gate's opening and closing to allow planned traffic between the colony and the other side. The Gate had been running on a more or less regular cycle, one opening at least every solar month and sometimes two or three. But after the colony's people and equipment and supplies were brought through, the damned Gate decided to show us it was still a force of nature and we were still just puny human beings. So it proceeded to shut itself down for fifteen months." "That's the longest shutdown on record!” Joe Costigan interjected. He hadn't meant to speak, the last thing he wanted to do was alter or slow down the tale that the older man was relating; but he couldn't help that exclamation. “So you were part of the original settlement that was a regular, Sovereignty-sponsored colony, not a prisoner-disposal operation like the one that brought me here. That brought everyone else I know here, except for people like Hanna who came through the Gate as family members with a prisoner who was being deported. Hanna told me that the mountain people who have horses were the original settlers; but most of our younger people at Gateway City think that's just a story, that you mountain valley folk came here the same way everyone else did." "Do you mean to tell me that those jailbirds won't even admit there was a legitimate colony here before them?” Marstallar lifted an eyebrow, and the irony in his voice grew thicker. “Gods and spirits, son! I

realize cultural drift's inevitable in a survival situation, and that history just about always gets lost and distorted with the passage of time. But we're talking here about twenty-five years, just a generation the way most humans reckon sociological time—not centuries! Where in hell do they think the solar generators they use every day came from? Do they think those things were carried through the Gate in someone's backpack?" Costigan flushed. He said calmly and evenly, “I don't consider myself a ‘jailbird,’ Captain Marstallar. I was exiled along with the other survivors of a half-human, half-alien colony that tore itself apart in civil war; I never committed anything I regard as a crime. And you know damned well your daughter didn't, either. She's here because she didn't fall into a trap the way she was supposed to, and that made a mess out of some other people's plans and they needed a place to hang the blame." Marstallar was the one who flushed now, and it was clear from which parent Kate had inherited that unwanted way of reacting to anger or embarrassment. But he said, “I stand corrected. In your case and Kate's, anyway, and even in the Leone woman's case since what you just told me about her sounds true enough. But for every political refugee or family member of a convict who's come through the Gate during the years since settlement began, there's been another immigrant who deserved exactly what he or she got. So if I use that term again—I'll try not to, but it's a habit and I may fall back into it without thinking—you can be sure I don't mean you. Now, then! We moved away from the Gate and explored our new world, because there still were herds of grazing beasts and accompanying predators all over the plains in those days and we needed a place where we'd be safer from them. We left an outpost there near the Gate, and we communicated with it daily; and eventually we discovered the means we still use to move quickly between the plains near Gateway and this valley, and between other places on this planet." "Short-range ‘gates'?” Costigan asked. He had a feeling that Marstallar's pause wasn't for dramatic effect, that he was waiting to see whether Costigan had suspected such things existed; and if so, whether he would risk admitting it. "Exactly. There are other off-world Gates, too; I'm sure you know that the one leading back to where we came from isn't the only one that opens up spontaneously from time to time. But the other off-world Gates we located as we first explored this world always led to somewhere that we couldn't survive, and we couldn't go through them because we didn't have the right equipment for any of those other environments. We figured that once we got back in touch with the other side of our own Gate the Sovereignty would send us more Rangers, more Explorers, and then there'd be a proper survey done. And if this planet is what I suspect it may be ... we could use it to go almost anywhere in the universe. It seems to be like the center of an old-fashioned spoked wheel, only the spokes leading out from the center aren't linear in space or time. They fold, they contort, they even seem to flow." Again Marstallar stopped talking, and this time Costigan didn't fill the resulting silence with a question or observation of his own. Landay reached out after a time and laid a gentle hand on her father's arm. She asked, “The minor ‘gates,’ Dad? The ones that you use to get from one place to another on Arcadia itself. Do you understand how they work, and can you predict when they'll open and close?" Marstallar seemed to wake from a reverie, and he put a hand on top of his daughter's hand and he smiled at her. He said, “They're always open, Katydid. And who in hell named this world ‘Arcadia'? It's no paradise, believe me it's not!" He glared at Costigan as he spoke, but the younger man ignored that bait. So Marstallar resumed. “Apparently a couple of things happened on the other side during the fifteen months when the Gate took a vacation. We, the settlement party, got written off as dead; and that doesn't surprise me, there's no worse publicity the powers that be can get than an unsuccessful attempt at founding a colony. So that's

how I came to ‘die’ officially at New Pitcairn, although Kate telling me that last night was the first time I've really known what sort of story wound up in my own record. The equivalent must have happened with every single person in our party; as far as our families and our friends are concerned, all of us are dead." He drew another breath, this one long and obviously painful. “The other thing that happened was that not being able to contact us for so long, and not knowing when or if they'd ever be able to do so again, had convinced the authorities that founding any permanent settlement here wasn't worth doing. So when the Gate opened and our group that had remained nearby tried to go through it, they were driven back. Those who wouldn't accept that ... were killed. Then the Gate closed again, and the next time it opened about a hundred of the most bewildered and angry people I've ever seen came tumbling out through it. No equipment; no supplies except what each person could carry; and with kids along, some of them babies. We would have tried to take care of them and integrate them into our settlement, the small one at Gateway or the larger one where we'd started farming successfully and had learned how to protect ourselves from the predators, but they wouldn't have it. They wanted to take everything we'd built, and their idea of the best way to get it was to kill us. If we hadn't been armed and them not armed, I don't want to think about what would have happened! And that group was just the first. After awhile we realized that the dumping was going to go on happening, and we were going to keep on becoming more and more outnumbered unless we made slaughtering every new arrival the whole business of our lives; and that was when we retreated here and started converting this natural cave system into a home where we could be safe." "And you married again?” Kate had been wondering when she might decently ask that question, and now seemed a suitable time because she could see that her father had had enough of talking about betrayals and struggles and tragedies. “You had another family here, including Francesca?" If she'd assumed this would be a more pleasant topic, she had been mistaken. Marstallar's face didn't lighten, it darkened. After a moment he sighed and said, “You'll need to know about that, of course. It was simple enough. I didn't marry again, I just had a relationship—even putting it that way dignifies it more than it deserves!—with another service member, an Explorer who'd also been assigned to assist the civilian settlement party. When she told me there was a child on the way, I agreed to take responsibility for it; I didn't see what else I could decently do, even though I really didn't want to bring an innocent life into this place and I was furious with the woman for not telling me when her birth control ran out. But I should have taken my own precautions, I shouldn't have counted on her to do it all when I'd never even talked about it with her. Anyway, she died having the baby. You've noticed that we have fairly decent medical technology—except for not being able to synthesize certain medications, like those that control human fertility!—but we're damned short on trained people to use it. All our medics were out in the field when her time came, and she was early. And by the time they got back, Francesca had been born and her mother had died." Do I tell him I'm sorry?Kate wondered, and looked at his face and opted for saying nothing. But she did tighten her fingers where her hand still lay on his forearm. After a silence he looked up at her. "I just didn't want another child,” he said, repeating himself and plainly realizing that he did so. “I knew how much it hurt to lose one, I didn't want to go through that again. And I didn't want to take another partner, and by that time I was leading the settlement. So I found a couple that was willing to raise Francesca, and I didn't have anything to do with her from then until she was fourteen and her foster parents died in a bad-weather stranding. She was there too, but they put her between their bodies and they kept her from freezing. So when we found her alive and brought her back to the settlement, I figured I was stuck and I'd have to do what I could with her. I couldn't very well push a girl who was almost a grown woman off onto someone else to finish raising."

No wonder,Kate thought as she pressed her father's arm again. The young woman had called this man “Father” and had accepted his kiss yesterday when Kate had seen them together for the first time in the medical bay; but Francesca had clearly not felt any sense of closeness to this man, or any confidence in his affection for her. She'd appeared to be seeking his approval and following his orders in much the same way that she might have tried to live up to the expectations of a mentor who wasn't related to her at all. "So!” Marstallar gently but deliberately removed his forearm from under his elder daughter's hand. “I've spent the past 20 years in this place, leading my people and directing the building of this haven—and trying to figure out a way to get word to someone on the other side of the Gate who might be sane enough to want to hear everything I've learned about this world, and what it could mean to the Sovereignty and to humanity in general. And all I've been able to do instead is keep everyone fed by stealing grain in bad years and trading for it in good years, and now instead of me getting back to the other side—you've wound up over here, too. Katydid, that's the last thing in the universe I'd have wanted to see happen to you. No, not quite the last thing! Of course it's better than being dead, I'm glad Joe here figured out a way to bring you through the Gate and give you back your life. Even though I'm not just sure for what purpose. He may call this world Arcadia, but whenever I've tried to give it a name from out of Earth's old mythologies I've always ended up calling it Gehenna." [Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter 8 "They think we're dead, Joe." He'd found her sitting at the long-range comm monitor that morning, and she'd had a look on her face that had alarmed him. But he hadn't pressed her then to tell him what was wrong, because two others were present (being left alone in the comm room was a level of trust Kate had yet to be granted) and one of them was the young woman called Francesca. During the weeks since they'd come here—weeks that were becoming months—both Costigan and Landay had gradually expanded their privileges, as the people under Carsten Marstallar's leadership had accepted Kate as his daughter and Joe as her mate. The latter part hadn't come easily, because all of them knew what power Costigan had held in the leadership of Gateway City. But he'd gained that power, after all, as the consort of “that Leone bitch” (when Marstallar had said “Leone woman,” he'd been deliberately polite—the people here invariably called her by the former term); and now he was no longer with Leone. Here he was Kate Landay's partner, living intimately with her in the quarters she'd been assigned and sharing her entitlement to a place at their leader's table. So although he wasn't exactly a guest or an ally, and certainly wasn't one of their own, he at least wasn't a declared enemy in their midst and he was no longer watched as such. Except, of course, by Francesca. She watched both her half sibling and the former co-leader of Gateway City just as carefully now as she had when they'd first arrived. So when he found Landay sitting by the one-way comm monitors that were forever trained toward Gateway City, with a look on her face that made him certain she was fighting against tears, Costigan didn't push her to tell him what was wrong while she was in Francesca's presence. He simply kissed her cheek as he always did when he greeted her or said good-bye to her in front of others, talked to her about other things, and then went off to a meeting of the settlement's surprisingly active scientific staff to learn more about the Gates they'd

discovered that led off-world but not to anywhere within the Sovereignty. It did seem odd to him that he was the one who was so interested in the facts and implications of those discoveries, while Kate who'd spent most of her adult life in an Explorer's uniform instead glued herself to the comm room and raptly listened to everything that went on back in Gateway City where she had lived for such a brief period of time. Most of which she didn't even remember, because she'd been recovering in Amy Salter's regen tank. But that was how it was today, and how it had been on most days since Marstallar had decided that his daughter and her partner should be allowed access (although sometimes only under supervision) to most of the cave settlement's facilities. Now Costigan and Landay were alone, following an evening meal with Marstallar and Francesca (something that thankfully didn't happen all that often, because Francesca usually lived her separate life and came to her father's table only when he summoned her there). The chamber that now served as their quarters had a roughly constructed bed in it, not two separate pallets on the stone floor as on their first night here, and they were lying together without touching. Landay lay curled on her side with her face turned away from Costigan's, and her shoulders were quivering although she was making no sound that was loud enough for him to hear. He'd asked her what was wrong, and she had told him. And now she was crying, silently and terribly, with her knees drawn up so that her body formed a tense and self-protective ball. This was how people cried when they didn't dare to give themselves such a luxury. Costigan knew that, but he also knew that this restraint was only habit with her now; it was no longer a necessity, because she no longer commanded a starship or an Explorer landing party or a Ranger team. So he gently put a big hand on her back, and started rubbing in slow circles. He wouldn't do more than that until, unless she responded to his touch. Much as he ached to hold her right now, the last thing she needed was for him to violate her personal space when her whole body's posture was telling him so forcefully that she wanted to be left alone. In fact, if she pulled back even from that gentle rubbing he would have to honor her wishes and take his hand away and leave her in peace. But at least she'd spoken to him, at least she had told him what was wrong. And he didn't have to ask what she meant, he knew who her half of “they” was—and who his half was, too. "You said, or at least Francesca said, that Hanna was able to get out of the aircar under her own power after it crashed,” Joe reminded his mate now. “So she should have known we were both still alive, shouldn't she? Kate, forgive me—but are you sure she really said that we died in that crash?" "I'm sure.” She didn't move away from his hand, but neither did she turn toward him as he so much wanted her to do. “It was a speech given over a public address system, that's why the comm monitors picked it up so clearly and so completely. Usually they get just a bit here and there, stuff that people in Gateway City say to each other over personal comm units ... but this wasn't like that. It was Hanna, all right, and she was telling everyone that you were dead and that enough time had passed so she was choosing a new personal partner and co-leader." That was fine with Costigan, to him it actually sounded like a serendipitous solution to the problem of what he was supposed to do about having two mates: Hanna Leone back in Gateway City, with whom he'd spent the past 20 years of his life; and Kate Landay right here beside him, whose risk-taking of two decades ago had made his life with Hanna possible in the first place—and who was without doubt the one woman he'd ever genuinely loved. Or believed he ever would, even though deliberately hurting Hanna's pride was a thing from which he'd shrunk whenever he had realized he would have to do that if

he ever did get back to Gateway. But Hanna Leone meant nothing to Kate Landay, it was the personal partner to whom Leone had announced joining herself that had Kate's shoulders trembling now. And Costigan was at a loss; he understood that she was distressed, but for the life of him he couldn't comprehend why. "Kate, you and Amy were friends,” he said now, and stopped the gentle massaging circles his hand had been making although he still let it rest against her back. “Just friends, though, isn't that right? I never thought you were interested in her physically. So why do you care if she's with Hanna?" "I don't!” Kate said, and sniffed like a child and stiffened her shoulders. “I don't give a damn who Amy has sex with, but I do care that she thinks I'm dead. I do care that she gave up everything on the other side of the Gate to come through it with me, to do the regen so I could live—and now she must think it was for nothing. That I died after all, and now she's stranded and she can't get back the life she sacrificed to help me. You're damned right I care about that!" With that she turned, this time not away from him but toward him. She buried her face in his shoulder, and now she let herself cry in earnest. It took her a long time to get it out, a time during which Joe held her and stroked her hair and said nothing. He understood now: she'd let her friend down, at least in her own eyes, and that was completely unacceptable. And although she hadn't said so because quite possibly she still didn't realize it, twenty years earlier when he and Kate had had their life together and Amy Salter had been on the fringes of that life as Kate's best friend, he had realized that what Amy felt for Kate was quite different than what Kate felt for Amy. To Amy he'd been a rival, and the only reason there was never open conflict between them was that Kate's love for Amy wasn't sexual—and Amy knew it. The young physician already had Kate's friendship, and that was all she ever would have; Kate was het, not lesbian, and no matter how much she might love her friend the idea of expressing that love physically was foreign to her. Not disgusting, just completely uninteresting. So Amy had kept whatever frustrations she might (hell, must ) have felt to herself, and had tolerated Joe Costigan as gracefully as she could. No doubt she'd done the same thing with Yoshi Sakagawa, later on when Kate had formed a second long-term love relationship. So Joe held his lover while she wept, and he waited until she'd quieted at last and then had turned away from him to blow her nose and dry her face and put herself in order as humans always thought they must do before letting themselves be seen after having cried. Then she lay back down with him, this time face to face, and she said softly, “Okay. I do feel a little jealous. Surprised, Joe?” Her eyes almost dared him to answer with an affirmative. Well, he'd never minded accepting that sort of a challenge. He said quietly, “Some." "I always knew if I could have been interested in her that way, Amy was ready any time I wanted her. I never exactly admitted that to her, it was just a little too hot to handle! But even though I went ahead and had relationships with men, Amy never did the same thing with other women. I figured that was her business, I didn't ask why not ... but now I'm wondering if all the time she thought I might change my mind someday." "Because as soon as she thought you were dead, she did find another woman to be her partner? Her life partner, and not just her friend?” Joe put out a hand and smoothed her hair. “Could be, Kate. And then again, maybe she just fell in love for the first time. At least now I know why Hanna never cared much

about going to bed with me! I guess she's not one of those women who enjoy going either way just as much, I guess she really just isn't interested in making love with a man." "I guess not.” Kate's tense body had relaxed a bit. Clearly she'd been prepared for a quarrel, and wasn't sure now whether to be relieved or disappointed that nothing like that was happening. “And the crazy thing is, I do think I'm jealous. Not because I wish I'd done anything with Amy, I still can't imagine being interested in another woman that way ... but when you've had first place in someone else's life for as long as I've had top priority in hers, it's hard not to feel dethroned when another person moves in to where you used to be." Should he tell her that his role in Kate's life had clearly made Amy Salter feel the same way, long ago when Amy had been a medical student and he and Kate had been Rangers together? No. If she hadn't seen it then it was just as well, and being made aware of it now wouldn't help her one bit. Making her feel more guilty than she already did wasn't going to benefit anyone, and he hadn't felt bad about her friend's jealousy at the time and he didn't feel bad about it now. Yet he could never be grateful enough to Amy that Kate was alive and healthy in his bed tonight, instead of being ashes scattered in space somewhere (or maybe over a North Atlantic cove on faraway Earth?) following a hasty cremation of what the Questioners had left of her body. So he wouldn't say anything more about Amy to her, and Hanna Leone was someone else's partner now. Which was wonderful, because that fact freed him; and it took away the twinge of guilt that until now he'd felt on every occasion when he had reached out to Kate, and had gently drawn her body against his and bent his head to kiss her. She was through grieving, at least for the moment, and she was also through tormenting herself. Her mouth opened under his, and after they'd kissed thoroughly and intimately he reached down and tugged at her bed-gown and then pulled it over her head. They had been young together, they'd learned much of what they both knew about sexuality and its pleasures from experimenting with each other's responses during long-ago days and nights. But a very good thing about being a bit older now was that he could last longer, could enjoy touching and being touched without becoming overwhelmed by urgency—could put off the moment of taking her, until his partner was thoroughly aroused and as ready as he was for full intimacy. What they'd done as kids together had been mutually satisfying, but he hadn't been able to please her like this.... Come to think of it, he'd never pleased any woman like this. In his youth he simply hadn't been able to, he'd had neither the patience nor the stamina. And Kate had too often been anxious during the intimacies of their earlier life together, wondering no matter which of them had made the first advances whether she really had the right to be taking time away from duty for private pleasures—and always anticipating one of the emergencies that sometimes interrupted them, even at the most appallingly inopportune of moments. She didn't have to be anxious on either point now. And she wasn't. When they came together now she accepted his love, and gave him hers in return, without a hint of that long-ago guilt and tension. They lay together afterward, and Kate held her lover close and murmured words that she'd used sparingly, if at all, in the old days. Words she couldn't say to him often enough now, when no service oath demanded first claim on her time and her loyalty. “I love you. Oh, Joe, I do love you." "No more than I love you,” he answered, and then he kissed her again.

They still hadn't talked about what they would do when spring's arrival made it safe for humans to leave the shelter of the cave complex, whether to remain here together or try to get Marstallar to agree to send them back to Gateway City; or, failing that, to escape and make their own way back (assuming that Marstallar and his people couldn't or wouldn't kill them for attempting it). But that choice would no longer be waiting for them up ahead, because today's events had taken away the need to make it. Hanna Leone's choosing a new partner meant that the life Joe Costigan had built for himself in Gateway City was gone. Two decades of invested time and attention, and—yes, even a certain kind of love although not anything like this!—had just ended, so suddenly that although his release was a godsend he still had trouble believing it. The people he'd led through the Gate twenty years earlier had become thoroughly integrated with Gateway City's other population, they were Hanna's people now; and while he would never willingly fight them, he felt no obligation to go back to them either. And the life Kate Landay had known before Arcadia had just closed its own final chapter, because now she no longer had Amy out there waiting and hoping that she would come back someday. Amy had been the last tie. Everything Kate had now in the accessible part of the universe was right here: the man who shared her bed tonight, her father and her sister, and the community in which she and her lover had already started building a second life together. Before today's news they had been doing that by default, because as long as winter confined them to these caves they couldn't return to Gateway City ... but now, neither of them had any reason to go back. [Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter 9 Spring. It had arrived just days earlier, with an abruptness that mirrored the way winter had shut down the day after Kate Landay and Joe Costigan were brought to the underground complex that was called simply “the Settlement” by those who lived within its shelter. From the Settlement people emerged now; some to plant the few crops that their mountain valley would bring to maturity during its brief growing season (to plant them even while the ground was still thawing, so crucial was every day's development and so sturdy were the plants that could live here), some to gather and herd the horses and mountain cattle and goats that had been able to winter on their own (because only animals capable of doing that could be used by these people); others to travel via the small, intraplanetary gates from place to place, to trade and reacquaint themselves with their world after months of virtual incarceration. A team of scientists used a series of the small gates to reach one particular Gate that had been newly discovered the preceding autumn, whose “other side” was as yet an unknown quantity; and when they returned to the Settlement, they came with a mixture of soberness and jubilation that Kate Landay remembered well from her Explorer years. She and Costigan were trusted to come along on the next expedition, because everyone knew that for better or for worse this was their home now. The change in leadership at Gateway City, and its personal impact on both of them, had cut their last ties of loyalty to the world outside the Settlement; and they had been open about that with their new comrades. And the best thing about living here, as far as Joe Costigan was concerned, was that finally he was among people who were as interested as he'd always been in finding out all that could be learned about this planet from a scientific standpoint instead of treating it strictly as a place to make homes and raise crops and children. Kate Landay no longer listened to traffic in the comm monitoring room. She worked with her mate on

the team investigating gateway phenomena, and even though they were trusted community members now they were accepted far more easily for this task than if their interests had led them toward such strategically important jobs as food gathering or farming, or herding, or training for the Settlement's defense. They were together at the new Gate this early spring morning; they'd been there with the team all the previous night waiting for the Gate to open, hoping that when it did so it would remain that way long enough to permit them to scan the other side again and confirm what a scan made several days earlier had indicated. "It's definitely opening to a Class M environment somewhere,” the senior scientist—a woman of Carsten Marstallar's generation, a member of the original team stranded here so long ago—said as she watched the preliminary scans through the slowly-forming orifice. “But it's got to be an uninhabited location, because otherwise the people there would have investigated it by now. And we wouldn't be having to do all this work on our side, instead we'd be doing a first contact. Or more likely we'd have made that contact the day we first walked through the other Gate, because we'd have been met by people who would have arrived here first and already would have claimed this piece of real estate for their own." "Sometimes we forget what a valuable place this world is, or would be if there was just a reliable way to reach it from our own Other Side.” Landay nodded, and then frowned as she examined the instruments in front of her. They were impossibly old by her standards, jury-rigged over and over in order to keep them functioning—even altered to perform additional tasks, to get the maximum possible effectiveness out of every component—but they did the job. And what they seemed to be telling her now, she didn't dare to believe. “Joe, check this for me. It's a scan of the sky just beyond this Gate." She wanted Joe, not the team's senior scientist, because if she were mistaken she wanted him to tell her so before she got anyone else's hopes up. Landay moved aside just enough so that her mate could join her, but didn't relinquish her position entirely because she wanted to go on looking at the readouts while he examined them too. They looked at each other after they looked at the instruments, and both nodded slowly as their eyes locked. Then Landay said, “Ishkar. I know this sky, Joe knows this sky. So now we know where this Gate opens to." "Where?” The senior scientist moved swiftly and lightly to look over both younger team members’ shoulders. And of course everyone else who wasn't otherwise urgently occupied moved in too, because there couldn't have been a more intriguing idea presented to this particular group of humans than that they might have found a second useable Gate. "It's the sky viewed from a point somewhere in the southern hemisphere of the planet El'kah. Which means it's sectors away from the place where the other Gate opens ... and what I can't understand if this is what it appears to be, is why the El'kah'ths either have never realized their end of this Gate is there—or if they have realized it, why they've never used it to come here and have never mentioned its existence. Or at any rate, why they never mentioned it to their human associates before the Sovereignty broke with them." Ishkar nodded. “I'd find that awfully hard to understand,” she admitted. “But then, the El'kah'ths have a lot of characteristics that we humans have found it hard to understand; and I believe they've often thought the same thing about us. Which is why we parted company, true?" "True,” Landay said, and suppressed a sigh. Recalling the war that had separated her mother from

El'kah'Hatim before small Clifton had been born always made her feel this sadness, this sense of loss that never quite lost it poignancy. “So it is possible, do we agree about that?" "Of course it's possible, this Gate could go anywhere. If the sky you're seeing beyond it belongs to El'kah, then that's where this Gate opens.” Ishkar checked the scanner array's settings anyhow, because she was far too thorough a scientist to forego that precaution. “This Gate is a slow opener, but it's nearly large enough to be used now. I think it's time to notify Captain Marstallar and invite him to witness our experiment. We can scan the other side until hell freezes over, but until we send through a living creature that has the same requirements humans have we aren't going to know for certain that we dare to send a person through. So.... “She stroked a goat that was tethered to a nearby stake, and she smiled. Then she left to personally issue that invitation to Marstallar, and her place near the Gate was taken by a person who didn't usually appear at research camps but who somehow found this one intriguing. Francesca, who used no surname—native-born Arcadians seldom did no matter which “settlement” they called home—placed her slim body behind Kate Landay and Joe Costigan, where Ishkar had recently stood. Unlike Ishkar, she had to push her way in between them because they did not separate voluntarily to make room for her. She asked curiously, “Where did you say this Gate opens?" "On El'kah,” Costigan answered her, when he realized that Landay wasn't going to. His mate was busy at her work once more, ignoring her half-sister as she often did when she found Francesca annoying. "El'kah. That's where the man was from who took your mother away from our father.” Francesca continued speaking to Kate, while her already dark-featured face got even darker. She absolutely despised being ignored. “Isn't it?" Kate's face flushed, too, and she concentrated still more pointedly on what she was doing. Joe Costigan said, “Yes, of course El'kah is El'kah'Hatim's home-world. And I don't know about him taking Kate's mother away from Captain Marstallar, that's not quite the way I heard it; but he's the father of Kate's younger brother." "Oh,” Francesca said. She rose, and walked directly toward the slowly-dilating Gate. Costigan was about to go after her, even though he was sure she must have sense enough to stop before she got too close, when he heard his name being called by Ishkar. He turned toward the senior scientist, answered her ... and then he heard Landay's voice, shouting to Francesca. He couldn't move fast enough, he simply couldn't get there. His mate was at the Gate's mouth, which was now wide enough for one human to pass through it. She was drawing her half-sister away, and Francesca was allowing her to do so; the younger woman looked dazed, as if staring through to the Gate's other side had mesmerized her somehow. And then Francesca was moving swiftly, doing something so utterly unexpected that for once in her life ex-Ranger and ex-Explorer Kate Landay couldn't react fast enough to counter the move. Francesca pushed her half-sister through the Gate. Then she took the blaster rifle from her own back-sling, where she always wore it when she ventured outside the cave system and the valley beyond, and she fired into the ground at the spot where the Gateway was still forming. That was an experiment the team had discussed many times, but that no one had ever seriously considered performing. Discharging a disrupter-type weapon within a Gate's inceptive field ... what

would result from that interaction of energy patterns? Well, now someone had performed the experiment and now they were seeing its outcome. The Gate was collapsing, closing behind the vanished woman far more quickly than it had been opening just seconds earlier. Several of his teammates tackled Joseph Costigan, or he would have been inside the opening (or at least his outstretched arms and possibly his head would have been) when it disappeared so swiftly that it actually made a distinctive sound. No Gate had ever made a sound before; but then again no Gate had ever been collapsed within seconds, instead of being allowed to close naturally over whatever time period that might take. Francesca stood aside, and watched and listened. She was still there a few minutes later when Carsten Marstallar came striding up, having arrived via the nearest intraplanetary gate. He listened to what Ishkar and her teammates told him; he knelt beside Joseph Costigan, and checked the younger man's pulse to make sure he'd simply had the wind literally knocked out of him and wasn't otherwise injured. And then he walked up to Francesca and backhanded her, and let someone else pick up her from where she landed from the force of his blow. **** "She's lucky he didn't kill her outright,” Ishkar said in her gentlest voice, which contrasted with the anger in her eyes. She was sitting beside Joseph Costigan, and both of them—the scientist who was getting old now, and the former Ranger who had taught himself to be a scientist and who was entering the middle years of his own life—were staring almost hopelessly at the instruments that monitored the site of the Gate through which Kate Landay had vanished. "She's lucky I'm not going to kill her myself!” Costigan said fiercely. “But Kate wouldn't do that, so I'm not going to either. Doctor, do you really believe it's possible for one blast from a rifle to permanently destroy a natural phenomenon as powerful as a Gate?" "I don't know, Joseph.” Ishkar got away with calling him that, because somehow he'd never been able to tell this dignified senior scientist that he hated his full given name. “I hope not, I hope what we're seeing now is just a normal phase during which this Gate is inactive." "But it's not just inactive, from where I sit the damned thing looks dead!” Costigan couldn't strike the instruments in his frustration, they were needed; so instead he slammed his right fist into his own left palm. “The only bright spot in all this is that if Kate and I were right, and dammit all I know we were, she's gone to a world where the first order of business won't be to turn her over to Sovereignty authorities. I don't know what they'd do if a person they executed almost a Terran year ago turned up alive in their territory again, but somehow I don't think they'd issue her a pardon and a new set of travel documents." "I don't think so, either; and you did say that the El'kah'th are a people Kate has known before, that she even has ties to a family or at least to an individual there.” Ishkar laid a strong old hand on Costigan's shoulder. “Easy, son. I know this must be terrible for you, because you love Kate and you're thinking you'll never see her again; but the person who's in the worst trouble right now isn't you and it isn't Francesca. It's our captain. I have no idea how he's ever going to get through this." She was right. Marstallar had lost his wife and his daughter once, long ago when Kate had been a little girl. Years afterward he'd lost his career and everything else he'd ever known when he had become stranded here; and then with Kate's arrival a small bit of his old life had been given back to him. And he had blossomed, in a way, as she became part of his daily existence. He had even started treating

Francesca with less resentment and more warmth, and he'd been almost paternal also in his treatment of Joe Costigan. So what would losing Kate all over again do to him now, especially when Francesca was the reason it had happened? Costigan sighed. He asked, “Do you think I can do anything to help him, Doctor? Or am I just going to aggravate him if I insist on trying?" "The first thing he did after he realized Kate was gone wasn't knock Francesca down,” the senior scientist said quietly and meditatively. “The first thing he did was check you to make sure you were going to be okay. So what do you think, Joseph?" "I'll go to him. The worst thing he can do is knock me flat, too.” Costigan's smile was wry and twisted, more a sign of pain than of amusement. But he rose now from the instruments, stretched his cramped and stiffened body and carefully rubbed his aching head, and then walked slowly toward the tent where Carsten Marstallar had taken up vigil near the place where he hoped his elder daughter might reappear. The old man was sitting in darkness, which was such an appropriate metaphor that it made Costigan feel a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. But when he realized who his visitor was, he roused himself from his silence and lighted a torch and indicated that Costigan should sit. He inquired, “Anything yet, son?" "No. I'm sorry, sir." "No one wants her back more than you do, I'm sure.” It was like Marstallar to remember and to acknowledge that a life partner's claim was greater than a father's; in his own way he was the fairest of men. “At least we don't have to be afraid that the people on El'kah will harm her. They have some very weird and disgusting customs, I never liked them and I was glad when the Sovereignty outlawed them—but killing a lone alien female isn't something they'd be likely to do, not from what I remember of the ones I met while they were allowed in our territory." "I don't remember knowing any El'kah'th personally, I didn't get off Alba Five until years after they were outlawed.” Costigan settled himself as best he could. The chair was no more or less comfortable than what he was used to, but Marstallar's aura of bereavement was so powerful that it made being near him a difficult business. “I only recognized their sky because I'd seen it in Kate's night-views, the ones she used to project on the ceiling of our bedroom while we were mated before. She had a few favorites. One of them was the sky from Terra, of course, a view she'd made herself from a field on her grandparents’ property; one was from a place that was special to us, from when we first got together; and the others were views from El'kah. She said she liked them because she'd shown them to Clifton so many times, trying to help him understand about who his father was and why he had to live on Earth even though he wasn't fully human." "I'd rather not hear about my wife's bastard,” Marstallar said, but he didn't display the anger with which he usually greeted any mention of his former wife's liaison and the child who had resulted. Costigan had been babbling, normally he would not have forgotten that Clifton Bradley was a forbidden subject; but somehow that old hurt didn't seem to be as poignant as usual tonight. Probably that was due to how keenly Marstallar was feeling his newest loss, but in any case he continued speaking instead of throwing his daughter's mate out of his tent as he probably would have done if Costigan had committed such an indiscretion before Kate's disappearance. “What I would like to hear, is what you meant when you told me once that Kate was the reason you wound up banished instead of being Questioned to death the way she was. You said that much, she looked at you, and you changed the subject—and I always meant to ask you about it again, sometime when she wasn't around to be embarrassed. I didn't push it that day

because I could see it made her uncomfortable; but I knew it was important, it was something about my girl that I needed to hear." "It certainly was important to me!” Costigan said, and in spite of the way he felt right now he smiled reminiscently. “I just mentioned that my home was Alba Five, Captain. Do you know anything about the civil war there?" The old man's broad shoulders stiffened. After a moment he answered, “I know what you've told me, and a few other things that I've heard since your group came through the Gate. Alba Five was a world where humans and aliens mingled to live and not just to trade, a colony that was founded that way on purpose by some kind of damn fool sociological research group. Eventually that stupid ‘experiment’ blew up the way everyone should have known it would, and the authorities dumped the human survivors here. You were in charge of those refugees, Joe—were you one of their leaders during the war, too?" "No. I left the service unit I was assigned to—and left Kate and some problems she and I had been having—and headed home as soon as I heard about what was happening on Alba Five. But I didn't get there in time. I found my family dead, murdered by people who'd been our neighbors for as long as I could remember. I didn't understand what had started it, I still don't, really; but for some reason they turned on us, and when we asked our government for help we were told to evacuate and abandon our homes.” Costigan's mouth thinned at the memory. “So I stayed there when I was supposed to go back to my Ranger unit. I deserted is the legal term for it, even though I still don't see how anyone could have expected me to do anything different. I was still there on Alba Five when the Rangers came to mop up what was left, after the Sovereignty had given us plenty of time to get through killing each other. And then all of us humans who'd survived, not quite eight hundred of us, were sent through the Gate the next time it opened so that the Sovereignty wouldn't have to figure out what to do with a group of ‘criminals’ that included babies and old people as well as so-called young terrorists like me." "You were their leader then,” Marstallar said. “I know from monitoring Gateway City's comms all these years that you were at the head of a large group that came through the Gate all at one time. You caused quite an upheaval, as I remember it." "We did. But I'd never have been allowed to stay alive and come through the Gate with my people if Kate hadn't lied to protect me. She didn't just lie, she falsified her log entries as a Ranger team leader. She was my immediate superior, you see; and that meant that although we considered ourselves mated, our relationship couldn't be formalized until I no longer reported directly to her. I guess what she did then does prove that the policy's right, there ought not be personal relationships between people within a hierarchical command structure.” Again Costigan smiled ruefully, and this time there was less pain in his voice. “I couldn't believe it, Kate never lied! And until then she'd never done anything that even hinted at giving me an extra break because I was hers; in fact she usually was twice as tough on me, just to prove to herself and everyone else that it didn't make a difference. That's probably the only reason why she got away with it when she did use her position to protect me, when she told the Internal Affairs investigators that I'd resigned my commission before I left her unit and therefore I couldn't be prosecuted as a deserter. And she not only stuck to that story, she supported it with a log entry that I still don't know how she managed to backdate without the I.A.'s catching her. It must have been a hell of a job, because if they'd been suspicious after they examined it she'd have been questioned under truth dope and then we'd have been sharing the interrogation unit at New Brixton." "Kate lied for you. My Kate falsified her log, to protect her lover?” Carsten Marstallar stared, and then he threw back his silver head and he laughed. He roared, until tears began streaming down his face and his breath began coming in great gasps that sounded perilously close to becoming sobs.

But he didn't make the transition from laughing until he wept, to simply weeping from pain and loss. After a time he gained control of himself, wiped his eyes and regulated his breathing and stared again at Joe Costigan. Then he said with utter frankness, “Son, I knew my daughter loved you—but I had no idea how much. That girl of mine wouldn't have lied to save her own skin, but she risked lying in a Sovereignty record to save yours! And she wasn't even going to be able to have you with her afterward, she must have known that when she did it?” His voice lifted interrogatively. "Yes. She knew that, of course she did.” Costigan looked back steadily. “It wasn't just me, Captain. She did it for me, yes; but she's told me since that she also did it because she hated what had happened on Alba Five. Her theory is that we were set up to be attacked by our fellow colonists, when the Diet passed the Travel Exclusion Act and barred them from passing through Sovereignty territory to get to their home-world unless it was a one-way trip. And Kate still hates knowing that she lied. Even though no one here would ever do anything but praise her for it, she's still—like you said—embarrassed." "If the Diet passed an act that helped to break up an unholy mess like that Alba Five experiment, good riddance and good law-making is all I can say!” Marstallar chuckled. “But I'm glad Kate saved your neck, anyway, son; and she's got no reason to feel ashamed of how she managed to do it. I don't agree with either of you about a lot of things, but she's my child and I want her back safely. And for the record, if it had been her mother that you'd brought through the Gate—which is what I thought when I set up the operation that brought you both to the Settlement, it never entered my mind that the female Explorer named Landay could be Kate—I wouldn't be feeling any less concerned for her. I hated what Serina did when she let that Elkie bastard have her and then insisted on keeping the child he made, but I never hated her. I hope Serina's got some way of communicating with her Elkie and that they've been talking to each other all these years, because a connection like that could at least put Kate in touch with her family on the other side if she can't get back to us here. She can't go home, of course, but maybe Serina could at least go there to her...." Marstallar's voice trailed off, and they looked at each other in silence for a moment. Then Costigan said in what he hoped was a reassuringly confident tone, “Captain, the new Gate has to open again sooner or later. Gates always do, don't they?" "They always did before. But they've been known to take as long as fifteen months ... and besides, until Francesca did it this morning no one's ever fired a disrupter charge into an active Gate. For all we know she may have destroyed the whole damned thing, or she could just as easily have shut it down for who knows how many of its natural cycles before it powers itself up again. But,” and here Marstallar managed to smile grimly, “one thing about Kate is that she knows how to survive. She's been a Ranger, she's been an Explorer, and she knows the Elkies. So she has as good a chance as a human could given her circumstances, and she'll use that chance for all it's worth." [Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter 10 The night sky over Kate Landay's head was exactly the one she expected to see. She had automatically redirected her body into a classic shock-absorbing roll, once she'd realized there was going to be no regaining her balance; so she came up onto her feet, unhurt and furious. She shouted before she realized she was going to say anything, “Francesca! Damn you! What in hell do you think you're doing?" There was a flash of energy from what she realized in horror was the other side of the Gate, and the

portal closed. It made a sound when it did so, a loud crack that reminded her of lightning in a Terran electrical storm. She was left standing in combat-ready mode, her legs braced apart and her arms outstretched for balance, on a pebbled surface that seemed to be remarkably level for as far as she could see all around her. Not that she could see for any great distance, when all she had was starlight ... but El'kah had no moons, she remembered that along with just about everything else she'd ever learned about that world. First because when she'd been small and curious El'kah'Hatim had talked to her often about his home, and then because she had been the only person in little brother Clifton's day-to-day life who had once known his father and could therefore give him at least some grounding in the non-human half of his heritage. Their mother was usually away, and when she was with them talking about her lost friend so clearly saddened her that even Clifton seldom insisted on making her do so. So Kate had learned everything she could about El'kah, but that didn't help her much now because all she knew was that she was somewhere on its surface—most probably in its southern hemisphere, based on the stars over her head. Either she was relatively near the planet's equatorial region or it was summer here, because the night was warm compared to the crisp spring morning she'd just left behind on Arcadia. She remembered that El'kah was hotter at its equator and colder at its poles than was Earth, and that it had dramatic seasonal changes because it too revolved around its sun on a tilted axis. But that still didn't tell her what she needed to know, which was where she could find people. People who would recognize her as a human, and who would view her as nonthreatening once they did so. Waiting for the Gate to open again didn't enter her mind. She didn't know what had caused the energy burst that precipitated its abrupt closing; but she knew it shouldn't have happened, and that told her that it was likely to stay shut now—at least until its next “normal” time for opening. Which could of course be anytime, but the winter-long automatic monitoring records she'd reviewed for this Gate told her that it wasn't apt to open again for at least the equivalent of a Terran month. So staying near it wasn't an option, she had to look at least for food and shelter; and looking for people made much better sense, since El'kah was not a hostile world. Its citizens no longer traveled to Terra or other Sovereignty planets, no longer traded formally with them or exchanged diplomats; but they weren't at war with each other, either, and the El'kah'th weren't savages. Landay had no fear of encountering the people who lived here, although she did realize that communicating with them was going to be a problem. She remembered a few words of the local language, but at best it was a difficult tongue for humans to master; and she hadn't used what she did know of it in years, so she could only hope it would come back once she started trying to communicate. There was nothing to do except either sit down and wait for dawn, or start walking now. She could see well enough so that she wasn't afraid of falling if the terrain became uneven, so she chose to walk. She had no light-source with her, no food, no water; all she had was a sidearm, of all things, because the Gate's location on Arcadia had been in a wild area where it was necessary to be prepared to protect one's self. Hopefully that sidearm would be superfluous here on this civilized world. She had moved only a few careful paces away from the spot where she'd arrived when a floodlight caught her in its beam, and she froze there with her eyes squeezed tightly and involuntarily shut. Even then she had to put up her hands for additional protection, because even through her lids the light would have been painful to her otherwise. She gasped, wondered for a moment whether she should call out and if so what she should say; but when she held completely still the light's intensity was promptly reduced and its tight focus diffused. So after a time she was able to open her eyes again, blinking them to combat frantic tearing. She wiped her cheeks, blinked again, and finally dared to look around her.

The light now comfortably illuminated a flat, pebbled plain, around the edges of which she saw bowl-like sides rising toward the dark sky. What did this remind her of back on Earth? Oh, yes. An amphitheater, or a sports stadium! Such structures on Terra, of course, usually had turf (natural or artificial) covering their centers and this one had pebbles; but the likeness was decided, all the same. Now, at last, she called out. She could remember the word that meant “friend” in the El'kah'th standard language, and she used it. For a long while nothing happened. Landay repeated the single word that she hoped would be accepted as a greeting, and she waited. She was about to start walking again, even though she sincerely hoped that wouldn't cause the lighting to resume its former agonizing intensity, when she heard a familiar humming sound. An aircar surmounted the rim of the stadium, far above her head, and it swooped down gracefully toward the pebbles and settled onto them. An El'kah'th emerged from the pilot's seat. She always had trouble telling which gender was which, and that wasn't to be wondered at because El'kah'th didn't know which they would be until puberty arrived. Then they developed in one direction or the other, with the determination made in a way that the El'kah'th themselves solemnly declared to be a sacred mystery—not only had they never found out what caused the transition to go one way sometimes and the other way at other times, they hadn't even tried to find out. And didn't seem to care, since somehow the outcome was that approximately one-third of El'kah'th adults were “males” as Terrans thought of gender and two-thirds were “females.” ("Males” being creatures who ejaculated and in so doing expelled reproductive cells, “females” being those whose reproductive cells were released and fertilized within their bodies—and in the case of the El'kah'th, who then became pregnant and subsequently bore live young. But of course there were sentient species whose females produced eggs externally, so giving live birth wasn't essential to gender definition anymore than was lactating and suckling one's young.) At any rate, upon Kate's hasty examination this being seemed to be female. It was light-skinned for an El'kah'th; its blue was more like a Terran robin's egg than like El'kah'Hatim's rich summer-ocean coloring. The thatch on its head (hair, but coarser than a human's) was so dark a blue it was almost black. Its eyes were very like a human's eyes, though, and it had two limbs on which it walked upright and two with which it reached and grasped and manipulated. The evolutionary parallels were considerable, really remarkable. And its DNA was more like a human's than any Terran scientist had ever expected, and Kate had always been of the opinion that this was one reason why so many Terrans tended to be afraid of “Elkies.” They were actually more at ease associating with sentient beings who were dramatically unlike their own species, than with these who were similar in such eerie ways. The female El'kah'th spoke, and while Landay could make no sense whatsoever of her words she knew enough about this language's tonal components so that she was sure she was being scolded. But the Terran woman wasn't being threatened, the El'kah'th was exasperated more than she was angry. She reminded Landay very much of herself whenever her small brother had gotten into mischief that was actually dangerous for him, sputtering and trying to sound furious while her relief insisted on coming through loud and clear.

"Friend,” Landay repeated, when the El'kah'th pilot allowed her to get a word in. The exclamation that answered her sounded like a totally disgusted, “Oh!” At which point the pilot jerked open the aircar's passenger door and gestured that Kate should enter the little craft. She did so. A typical El'kah'th was just about the size of a typical human, perhaps a bit larger; so she had plenty of room, since she was small for a Terran adult. The pilot got into the other seat, and the aircar lifted off. Yes, that was a stadium or amphitheater below them. Its lighting disappeared, leaving only dark plain, almost as soon as they cleared its rim; it must have known by some type of sensor system when Kate Landay had arrived and had begun moving around within its confines, and it must have summoned the El'kah'th woman who was now conveying her to—where? **** This world had technology, and Landay had almost forgotten during her months on Arcadia what it was like not to have to coax incredible results out of antiquated devices ten percent of the time and simply do without what she'd once regarded as life's basics the rest of the time. Having been an Explorer hadn't helped her all that much. She knew all the survival tricks; but what she hadn't known before being stranded, was how not to think of her former life's everyday conveniences as things she was going back to “as soon as this assignment is over." So she was mildly astonished when the aircar set down near a public transportation terminal, and she was profoundly glad when her night-time arrival kept that terminal from being crowded. She wondered whether having a crowd around her might not have pushed her toward panic, so unused was she now to being in a place like this one where she had no doubt that during the day people moved in tide-like masses from one destination to another. Her companion clearly didn't think of her as threatening; she was not hauled before any local authorities, she was not searched or examined in any way, in fact she wasn't even relieved of the weapon she carried. The El'kah'th female spoke to her from time to time, now in a soothing tone such as a Terran adult might use with an excitable child. Her guide touched her also, and that jibed perfectly with El'kah'Hatim as Kate remembered him; and with Clifton as nature had inclined him, although Kate and their mother's parents had all worked hard to channel Clifton's need for almost constant physical contact in ways that would satisfy him without alarming or repelling other humans. Landay's arm was clasped gently but firmly under the other woman's arm, against the warmth of her side. She was held like that, in a gesture that she knew was one of friendly reassurance and not of restraint, all through the journey after they boarded a high-speed underground transport that took them—how far within minutes? Far enough, because it was dawn where they emerged. And the air felt different, too; it had been a warm night in that stadium, but here the weather was even crisper than it had been back in that spring morning on Arcadia. From that end of the public transport system they boarded another aircar, one of dozens that waited obligingly in rows without any kind of security that Kate could detect. It looked as if anyone who left the public system was welcome, indeed was expected, to climb into one of those aircars and proceed on the rest of his or her journey. Well, El'kah'Hatim had had difficulty with private ownership of certain kinds of property during his earliest days in the Explorers. Or so Serina Landay had said, and she had laughed about his errors and the resulting misunderstandings; she had understood completely that “stealing” was a kind of taking that

was a foreign concept to her friend and comrade. For the first time it occurred to Kate Landay that she should say the name of the one individual she knew on this world, that she probably ought to have done that as soon as she'd gained her escort's attention for the first time. But perhaps it was just as well she hadn't done so, she had no way of knowing whether El'kah'Hatim was still living—and if living, whether he was at home or off on a starship or another planet somewhere—and most of all, she didn't know whether his own people held him in high esteem or in contempt after his aborted career in the ranks of the Sovereignty Defense Forces. The aircar was set down inside the enclosed courtyard of a structure. A home, Kate thought as she noticed that it was small relative to the public buildings she'd seen and that it was one of many similar structures scattered over this area. There were no streets, because a society that used air and underground transportation exclusively didn't need them; but there were pathways between the dwellings, as if people walked when they wanted to go a short distance to visit a neighbor. Otherwise they would fly, of course; this two-seater aircar had come to rest beside its twin, and there was a larger model parked nearby. A family's conveyance, no doubt, and a large family at that because the typical El'kah'th household consisted at minimum of a male and his two females and their shared offspring—assuming there were no elders, and no “neithers” as Serina Landay had aptly nicknamed those occasional cases when an El'kah'th reached puberty and found that nothing happened. That was what the untutored El'kah'th often concluded humans must be, El'kah'Hatim had told his human mate before he had been obliged to abandon her. Serina Landay had later repeated the observation to her daughter, at one of the times when they'd been together after Kate was grown and they could talk both as two women and as two military officers. Those times had been rare, but her memories of them were precious. Kate had even paid Serina the supreme compliment of entrusting her with the truth about how she'd protected Joe Costigan from prosecution as a deserter. In some ways the lives both women led had made it impossible for them to be close, but in other ways no two people could have understood each other better. Kate swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. It wasn't surprising that being on El'kah'Hatim's world should remind her so powerfully of her mother, but it was damnably annoying that it was stirring up an emotional reaction at a time when she didn't need to be dealing with one. She climbed out of the aircar, and stood in the courtyard in bereft astonishment when the little craft promptly lifted off again and left her there alone. Alone only for a moment. A voice that she recognized immediately said in liquid tones and with surprisingly little accent considering how unlike a human being's larynx was its physical source, “Kate. Child-first of my wife-third, welcome to my home." **** For a time all she could do was cling in his arms. She hadn't seen this man (for so she had always thought of him no matter what he might or might not be technically) since she was a little girl of ten, yet he still seemed large to her; unlike so many other things revisited in adulthood, El'kah'Hatim hadn't shrunk by comparison of reality with memory. And to her vast relief, he had delicacy enough to realize that being welcomed by his entire extended family would be overwhelming for a lone human. So when at last she stepped back from his embrace and looked around the courtyard, she could detect faces at windows and doorways but no one rushed out to join them. "Hatim,” she said, exercising her old privilege of dispensing with his honorifics. “How did—she, the pilot, the woman who found me—know to bring me to you?"

"Will you be embarrassed if I tell you that my image must have been in your mind when she touched you?” El'kah'Hatim had a mouth that wasn't constructed for smiling, but his eyes more than made up for that with their expressiveness and just now with their humor. “Besides which, she knows what a human is and I am still of all my species the individual who has lived the longest among individuals of yours. The children I made with your mother are the first hybrids between human and El'kah'th, so they are the source of much wonder; and they have caused me to be more well-known than would otherwise be the case for a person of very ordinary lineage." "Children?” Kate had expected that the first topic they would discuss would be how she'd come to be here, that the second might be the welfare of Serina and Clifton, and that the third must certainly be for her to tell him about her arrest and death and regeneration and exile. Perhaps the order of those subjects might have turned out differently, but that something else—particularly something this astonishing—would chase those urgent topics completely out of her head, was unbelievable. “You and my mother have one child, my half-brother Clifton. She gave birth to him after you were deported, he's a grown man now and he has a fairly normal life back on Terra. So what do you mean, ‘children'?" "Come, and I will explain.” El'kah'Hatim drew the human woman gently along, cradling her small body in the curve of one arm. That gesture was both tender and protective, and although Kate knew the comparison was probably inappropriate it felt thoroughly paternal to her. “Are you hungry, Kate? Or thirsty? Or in need of warmth?" Ritual questions in a sense, but she knew she was expected to provide honest answers. To do otherwise in this society would have been just as impolite as to be too baldly frank in most Terran cultures. So she said, “Thirsty, yes. I'm too excited to be hungry, and I was dressed for weather like this in—the place where I came from." "Here is refreshment.” A beverage dispenser in the room to which El'kah'Hatim had led her provided a cold glass of something pale yellow, like lemonade, in color. She drank, and was glad that the flavor (while not at all lemon-like) was palatable because she really did need the fluid. “You ask me about my offspring from your mother. I will tell you that story first, even though I am very eager to hear how and why you came to appear at the Gateway to Beyond, because it is a simple tale and I suspect that yours is not." He drew her down beside him onto what resembled a love seat, a place where two beings were supposed to rest together. Single chairs were for conveyances only on this world, people didn't sit alone if they could help it here. They needed touch too frequently, because tactile stimulation was as vital to their well-being as conversation was to most humans. Kate nodded, a gesture that had the same meaning to her host as it did to her, and she waited for him to continue. "You will not be surprised to learn that conception of young among my people is not a process identical to that which kindles new life among humans. A Terran female ‘conceives,’ as you call it, a very short time after the male's seed enters into her body; if this does not happen that seed dies, the female's reproductive cell also loses its viability, and the act must be repeated during the female's next monthly cycle if conception is still desired. It is not so with us,” El'kah'Hatim said in a quiet voice. His arm still rested around Kate's shoulders, but he did not insist in staring into her face even though he would have been doing so if she'd been a person of his own species. He remembered humans, he knew that would make her unbearably uncomfortable. "Your mother and I coupled at one time; this you know,” El'kah'Hatim continued. “I am male in the sense that you think of such concepts, and to my great amazement and hers spontaneous fertilization took place and the being you call your brother was conceived. Neither of us expected that could happen, we

had believed that even though coupling was possible for us conception would not be. Then, as you also know, I had no choice but to return here to my home; and while I would have been glad to bring Serina with me and give my family's full acceptance to the child she carried, she did not wish to come with me and she was not willing to give up the child. She would not have him removed from her womb and nurtured to viability in a laboratory environment, nor would she send him to me later after he had developed within her body and had been born naturally. So I have never seen this son of mine, and until now I could only hope that he had somehow managed to grow to maturity among humans without the damage of their inevitable rejections affecting him too greatly for productive adulthood to be reached." There was a question in El'kah'Hatim's voice as he said that sentence. He paused, and Kate obliged him by saying, “Hatim, Clifton's fine. Yes, he was teased when he was a little boy; yes, he felt different and sometimes it was awfully hard for him. But he had enough people who loved him and valued him so that he grew up valuing himself, and now he has as good a life as most young Terran men do. He's a physician, Hatim. He specializes in treating hybrids, other people who are part human and part something else. And he says that he couldn't do it right if he was all human himself, so I guess you could say he's made his differences work for him even though there were a lot of times when he was younger when they certainly did work against him. The only things he's barred from doing as an adult are owning real property—which means he can never gain the franchise, of course—and entering Defense Service. But I don't think either of those restrictions feels like much of a loss to him." "That is good to hear,” El'kah'Hatim said. His tone smiled, even though his mouth couldn't. He resumed, “What I am sure Serina did not realize about the reproductive process of my species is that, although ‘male’ in most of the ways that humans use to define that gender's sexual and reproductive role, I am capable of extracting a partner's DNA patterns and of storing them within my own reproductive system for a number of seasons. So after I returned home and began regularly mating my other ‘wives,’ as you might refer to them—in due time a hybrid child was born to each of them." "My god,” Kate Landay said reverently. Then she asked, “Boys or girls? How old?" "The elder of the two was born twenty-six years ago, as Terran years are reckoned, and at puberty became female. The younger was born just seven years ago, and since that one has yet to reach puberty I cannot say what it will become. Between these hybrid children my wives and I have engendered other offspring, each of those purely of our own species. You are not repelled, Kate? That is good. Neither were most of my people, although I must say that when my older wife realized what she had borne she initially found the adjustment difficult. Simply feeding the child was a problem at first, we scarcely knew how it might be nourished!” Again that gentle amusement filled the musical voice. “But she is grown now, and she is a physician also. That is interesting, since neither Serina nor I ever demonstrated an inclination toward medicine. I wonder what the younger child will become?" He shook himself then, in a very human-like gesture (no wonder some of her fellow Terrans had found him eerie, Kate thought!). He said with what was as close to briskness as he was ever likely to manage, “Now you must tell me your story, Kate. We on El'kah know little of what has happened on Terra or within the Sovereignty during the time since the association between us was ended. You will remember that we agreed to have nothing to do with each other; and peace has endured between us because both sides have adhered to that agreement with remarkable faithfulness. Yet I am aware that your society has become more secretive and more controlled since the time when I lived within it. I do know that your authorities have much broader powers now, and that your individual citizens have fewer of what once were considered basic liberties." Strange, that after all she'd been through at the hands of those “authorities” Kate Landay had to restrain herself from automatically defending them simply because they were her fellow humans and the man who

was criticizing them with such devastating accuracy was an alien. Yet she realized what she was about to do before she got her mouth open, so when she did speak she said evenly, “What you've heard is true, Hatim. We've been at war in one place or another for a long time now, and we've had too many changes of government and too many coups within our military services. We've had to give up some of our freedoms just to keep some kind of order, is the best way I can explain it to you. Or that's the official line, anyway, and it's what I would have told you if I'd met you like this a year ago—because then I'd still have believed it was true." "You do not believe so now?” El'kah'Hatim finally let her go, finally moved away from her although of course he didn't leave the small couch. Her tensing body had told him that she needed to be out of physical contact with him for whatever she had to say next, and he remembered humans well enough to realize that if he insisted on staying too close to her she might not be able to speak freely and frankly. And he wanted her to do that, because whatever had happened to change Kate Landay's perception of her service and its leadership—both military and civilian—had to have been drastic and it had to have been distressing. So he let her have the space she needed in which to collect her thoughts, in which to gather up her strength and her self-control before she started to tell him about the last year of her life and exactly how it had changed everything. [Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter 11 "So you came to be at the Gateway to Beyond due to that rash act of your half-sibling's, and then you were unable to return to your mate and your father and your people.” El'kah'Hatim had listened with the patience that was what Kate remembered best about him, and had loved most when she was a little girl whose chattering tongue and thousands of questions had sometimes overwhelmed adult humans. He had listened while she'd told him all of it, the entire past going on a year of her life, and hadn't interrupted her even once—which would have been impossible for a human, which would have been impossible even for half-human Clifton. “Are you certain, Kate, that the closing of that Gate was an unnatural occurrence?" "No.” She had to be honest, with herself as well as with him. “I only know there was a flash of energy from the Gate's other side, and it made a loud noise and then it closed. I don't know for certain what the flash was, or what caused it." "But it is only natural if you suspect that a weapon was fired within its matrix as that matrix formed. A weapon fired, perhaps, in your direction by the person who had pushed you through.” El'kah'Hatim made a sound that was his equivalent of a sigh. “The Gateway to Beyond is one of our sacred things, Kate. We have studied it by direct observation only, we know a great deal about how it behaves but we know little about why." "And you keep it secret, too?” Landay asked. The fact that the El'kah'th had built a structure, indeed a vast structure, around the spot where the Gate periodically appeared indicated beyond doubt that they had known its habits for a very long time; yet during the years when their scientists and those of the Sovereignty had been in contact with each other, the El'kah'th apparently had said nothing that was remembered later when the Gateway world was discovered elsewhere in the galaxy. Or if they had, the Sovereignty's authorities had not let that knowledge become available even to their military officers. "No. Not at all, the Gateway to Beyond is no more ‘secret’ among our people than the Cathedral of

Notre Dame is secret among yours. Or than the Place of Judgment is secret among the inhabitants of Lor'cht. But it is not a matter to be discussed with outworlders, that surely you can understand." Kate didn't understand, but then religious mystery had never been a concept she accepted easily. She always wanted to know, the why and the how in particular, and the more puzzling the phenomenon the more determined she was to probe its secrets. But she was also an Explorer who had been trained to respect the mores of alien cultures (although never to involve herself with them beyond what was necessary in order to establish trade), so she nodded and said frankly, “Whether or not I understand it, I certainly accept it. Hatim, what are my chances of being able to use your Gateway to Beyond to get back to the place where I was?" Her mother's friend considered, and as he did so he unconsciously edged closer to her. It was abnormal for him to sit at a distance from a companion, and that he'd managed to do so all the while she told him her story had been an accomplishment. He said at last, “If your half-sibling did not permanently alter the sacred portal's behavior, then it will surely open again five rotations from now." "Rotations? Do you mean days, or years?” Kate frowned, and shivered, and fought down anticipation. If he meant days, then she could be back in Joe's arms in less than a Terran-reckoned week. It was too much to hope for, of course. El'kah'Hatim said, “Years, as you define that word. Five rotations of my world around its sun would be equivalent to six Terran years plus an additional two months, and some days as well. Doing precise calculations in my mind has never been among my talents, but I believe that is very close to the actual result of such a conversion." Kate slumped against the arm that was once more resting behind her shoulders. “But our data from the other side showed that it opens a lot oftener than that,” she said, her voice not rising above a whisper. "Yes. The opening when you came through was one of the many unanticipated times; only for the openings that we can expect are gatherings and ceremonies planned. That is why facilities have been constructed at the site, on those days when we know the portal will open we assemble there in great numbers. But there are other openings, and if you wish I will help you petition the proper authorities to allow you to wait at the sacred place until one occurs." He sounded very doubtful as he spoke that last sentence. Landay looked up at him, with their faces once again almost too close together for her eyes to focus on him properly, and she asked, “Would they allow that, Hatim? I had the impression from the woman who found me and who brought me here to you, that I wasn't supposed to be there. That she was scolding me, as if I were a little girl who'd stumbled into a place where children didn't belong." "You should not have been there, of course.” El'kah'Hatim nodded. “No one except Watchers or Guardians should be, except when a ceremony is planned. But if you wish it I will nevertheless make your request, the only peril involved is that it is very likely to be refused." This was different than any culture Kate Landay had encountered during her years of service on alien worlds. A “sacred place” that obviously was truly revered, not just as a relic of past faith but the object of current veneration—whose violation didn't call for the immediate destruction of the being who had violated it? And whose spiritual guardians could be asked to relax or alter their protocols? No matter how likely they were to refuse, the fact that such a request could be made freely was astonishing. She said, “I don't know, Hatim. Is there a way for us to find out first whether Francesca really did alter the Gateway's matrix? I don't want to ask permission to sit there and wait for it to open again if it's not

going to." "A sensible approach.” Again the El'kah'th nodded. “It is monitored at all times, discreetly but most accurately. I will inquire. In the meantime, although our peoples have had no official contact with each other for many years it is possible for me to transmit a message to Terran associates; there are, perhaps I should say, willing go-betweens available to me for that purpose. Do you wish me to send word of your return to Serina, or to your grandparents, or to some other persons or person? Or would my doing so place your life at risk once more, when now you are as far as the Sovereignty authorities know either dead or exiled?" This offer was something she had been hoping for, and dreading, and in a sense hoping wouldn't be made so that she would be spared from having to respond to it. Kate Landay lifted her head off El'kah'Hatim's shoulder and said, “It's Mother I'd trust with that, Hatim. If you can notify her without leaking the message to anyone else ... then yes, I'd like someone I care about to know I'm alive and where I am now. But don't do it if there's any chance it will get her in trouble! Please, I can't be responsible for the Questioners getting hold of her because of me." **** Her half-sister could not speak a word of Standard, and Kate Landay could speak little El'kah'th. Yet somehow they communicated, partly because El'kah'Kaleet was able to see images in Kate's mind while they were in physical contact and partly because Kate put her years of Explorer training and experience to use in trying to get through. And it was easier in a sense with the smaller half-sibling, the little one who as yet had no name and no defined gender. The child's mind was not sufficiently developed to allow for image transfers, but it had the flexibility and outgoing nature of the young of most sentient species; in fact it reminded Kate poignantly of Clifton when he'd been small. It clung to her, spent hours nestled in her lap and would have ridden around the family's home on her back if its father had not forbidden that particular behavior because he could see that the child was too large for the human woman to carry comfortably. Both were curious about their own Terran heritage, and that curiosity had never been very well addressed because El'kah'Hatim could give them only a full El'kah'th's perspective on Terrans. So during the days that it took for El'kah'Hatim to learn what Kate needed to know about the Gateway's status following Francesca's disruption of its matrix, she had little chance to be lonely in this alien place; she was too busy with El'kah'Kaleet and the small one, and with them she felt the immediate connection of shared blood that had never been present in her relationship with Francesca. How odd that seemed, when Francesca was fully human and these two beings were not. But perhaps it wasn't all that strange; after all, she'd loved and nurtured Clifton through his childhood and had remained emotionally close to him even after her career had taken her away from him as he neared adolescence. So although Clifton had more Terran characteristics than did either of these half-siblings (Clifton, after all, had been plainly a male child at birth—he hadn't had to wait for puberty, thank goodness, to develop primary as well as secondary sexual characteristics!), still she found them far less alien than another human might have and she also found them both easy to love. Yes, that was the right word. It wasn't too strong. And then came the day when two things happened at once, and both meant that her idyll was over and it was time to choose her future. It began shortly after first-meal, when El'kah'Hatim instead of leaving the house (he and the younger of his wives went to some sort of employment each morning, while the elder wife remained to care for all of the family's children who were not old enough to venture outside by themselves) took Kate with him into

a private chamber and closed its door. First he talked to her about the Gateway, which was what she expected when he arranged for this rare privacy. "Kate, there is a measurable difference in the Gateway to Beyond's energy readings since the act of vandalism to which the woman Francesca subjected it. Normally it would build up its power over time, and it would open briefly or incompletely on many occasions during that build-up; finally it would accumulate enough energy to form a stable matrix, and at that point one of the predictable openings that we venerate would occur. At that time the Gate would dilate fully, would become wide enough to encompass nearly the entire area within the structure that surrounds it. It would remain so for close to a full planetary revolution, during which worshippers would gaze through it into the Beyond and would in ancient times have pushed sacrifices through it.” El'kah'Hatim spoke almost ironically when he came to that revelation; although he respected his world's traditional beliefs, this one he clearly thought ridiculous. “But now we do not know, now our most knowledgeable studiers of the Gateway and its characteristics and its behavior cannot predict, whether when the proper time comes again that event will take place or not. What we do know is that the Gate has not opened, has not shown any sign of preparing itself to do so, since it closed after you passed through it twelve days ago." "What will happen if it doesn't do what it's supposed to do six years from now?” Landay asked that question with real curiosity. No matter what impact this news might have on her personally, she was still an Explorer and she was still impossibly curious about such things. “That's going to be a huge change in something that's been very significant for your people." "That is true,” El'kah'Hatim admitted. The comradely hand he was resting on the human woman's arm tightened as he spoke. “Many catastrophic happenings are predicted for the day when the Gateway to Beyond no longer opens. I doubt very much that any of those happenings will actually take place, I would classify those tales as you might classify human tales of apocalypse; but the effect upon our society will be another matter. It may well prove to be disastrous, Kate. For us it will mean the loss of a cultural foundation, that is the best way I can express its impact to you in words." "That says it very well, I'm afraid.” Landay drew a sympathetic breath. “So. Now I know why the ‘predators’ that run wild on Arcadia look so much like some of the animals I've seen pictured in your wilderness preserves here on El'kah! Did they wander through the Gate when it was open in your prehistoric times, do you think, or were they the kind of ‘sacrifice’ that used to be sent through on purpose?" "The sacrifices were always grazing animals. One of the few parallels between our ancient religions and your Terran ones is the unsuitability of predatory animals as sacrifices,” El'kah'Hatim said, and his mood lightened. “But no doubt the predators found a way to follow! Predators always do, do they not?" He didn't mean nonsentient creatures, the equivalents of Terran wolves which had once preyed on Terran sheep. Kate Landay understood that, and she returned the smile in his eyes with one that she formed with her mouth. She said, “They do indeed, Hatim. So! I can't go back to Arcadia, that's obvious. At least not via that Gateway, not unless its matrix recovers after some time passes. Damn Francesca!" "Damn her, indeed.” This was the first Standard curse she'd ever heard El'kah'Hatim utter. “But that changes nothing, for you or for us. However, I have other news for you that may change many things. Kate, I have heard from Serina." She had expected the bad news about the Gate; she knew just enough about its science so that the result of Francesca's “vandalism” was no surprise to her. But she hadn't expected that El'kah'Hatim would be

able to follow through on his offer to discreetly contact her mother. That project had involved far too many variables, so she had not allowed herself to hope he might succeed. And now that he was telling her he had managed it, Kate Landay found herself wondering just how she really felt about that success. But of course she said, “Thank you, Hatim. That's wonderful, when can I talk to her?" "Whenever you wish. She is currently assigned as the military member of the Sovereignty's trade mission on a space station operated by neutral powers, and she has no hesitation about speaking with you from there without elaborate precautionary measures. All that she has to tell you, I would rather she told you herself; I am ill-equipped to judge its accuracy. Not that I would accuse Serina of being untruthful, but even when I lived within it your society was alien to me and now that I have been gone from it for many years it is far more so.” With that oblique observation, El'kah'Hatim moved away from Kate and activated a comm unit that was located in an alcove in the small chamber. Serina Landay must have been expecting this contact, because her holo-image formed in the comm a surprisingly short time after her old friend requested it. She looked tense, uncharacteristically nervous; and being Serina, she wasn't trying to cover her true feelings with a false smile. She said, “Kate,” by way of greeting; and then she waited without apology for El'kah'Hatim to withdraw from the room and give them privacy. "Mother,” Kate answered. She didn't try to smile, either. Serina Landay was nearing seventy now, which explained why although she remained on active duty with the Sovereignty's military services she had been shifted from Explorer field duty to a shore assignment. After her long experience with alien contacts, she was a natural choice for assignment to diplomatic or trade missions to other worlds—particularly, to worlds that weren't part of the Sovereignty and that therefore required such uniquely skilled staff members for their consulates, embassies, and trade missions. She'd never attained high rank, so she would have been tremendously proud if Kate had been able to wear an admiral's insignia instead of having been arrested and tortured and exiled. But at least Serina hadn't been punished for her daughter's transgressions; she still wore a full commander's stripes, and every one of them had been earned with long and honorable service. That she would be promoted to captain or above had become impossible the day she'd given birth to a half-alien child, and she had realized that when she'd made the choice to bear that child in the first place. She looked at her first-born now with shrewdness as well as with love, and as soon as she was sure they were alone on the comm she said, “They told us you killed yourself almost a year ago." "I didn't,” Kate said unnecessarily. "I knew that at the time.” Serina Landay sighed audibly. “They've always put out that story when a high-ranking prisoner has died under Questioning, and although I suppose once in awhile it could be true I just didn't believe they'd have given you that opportunity. Did you do what they said you did at Galapagos?" "If they said I disobeyed orders, yes. If they said I committed treason, no.” Kate lifted her chin proudly. Sometimes she still had the nightmares, especially if for some reason she'd thought about the Questioning just before falling asleep; but she'd awakened on enough nights safe in Joe's arms so that she no longer had the terrible feeling that maybe she really hadn't escaped—that perhaps being safe was the dream, and that she would soon wake to the reality of Questioners and captivity and torment that had no end. She would never be exactly the person she'd been before, no one ever came back unchanged from a

trauma like that one, but she was more recovered than she had any business to be after so short a time. Enough so that she could look into her mother's face now and be absolutely steady in eye and in voice while she told her side of what had taken place, that day at Galapagos and then in the days afterward, in far more detail than she'd told her father or even Joe—taking her cue from the older woman's frankness, trusting that this transmission was truly private and that she wasn't placing her mother in danger. "Your name wasn't in any of the lists of people who were sent into exile via the Gateway,” Serina Landay said when her daughter had finished speaking. “I searched those lists myself, and Amy Salter's name was there—sentenced to exile as your less-culpable accomplice, which now I can see they had to do since she couldn't be put down as accompanying a person who wasn't alive to be officially banished. It's hard to believe, isn't it, that they kept such careful records of what they did when it was so heinous? But you weren't there, so I accepted that you really were gone and I told your grandparents and your brother and Yoshi." "Oh, lord,” Kate said simply. She'd realized intellectually that everyone except Amy who cared for her must believe she was dead, but to know that and to feel it were two different matters; and she was feeling it now, both what their loss had been like and what a shock it would give them if by some miracle she could go back to them now in safety. Not that there was any such possibility, of course. She was going to have to stay right here on El'kah, because she wouldn't get a parsec inside Sovereignty space before the Questioners would have her again. But something was different, something had changed. Serina had reviewed Gateway's exile records herself? How had that been possible? And how was it that she and her mother could speak this freely on any commlink, even a secured one originating in a neutral power's territory? "Kate, you can come to me here without putting yourself or me in any danger,” Serina was telling her daughter, speaking gently now because she could see from Kate's face what had to be going on inside her mind. “I'm not sure how it would be for you to travel within Sovereignty space just now, since you wouldn't have a legal identity there; but I'm on a space station operated by the Okala Cartel, and the fact that you're walking around and breathing is ID enough for them. And you'll be safe, because you can take passage on an El'kah'th ship and once you're here you'll be in a free zone where all visitors are protected just for good business's sake." "You're not sure how it would be for me to travel in Sovereignty space?” Kate repeated in disbelief. “Mother, I may be legally dead; but that wouldn't stop the Questioners from having me arrested again, the second I showed myself in territory where they could get me. Either they'd manage to do it secretly, or they'd put out a suitable story to cover the situation. And I'm not sure they wouldn't go after me even outside their own authority's area, I'm not anywhere near as certain as you are that I'd be safe once I left El'kah'th protection.” She drew a breath, and realized that she hated what she'd just said. It had sounded so cautious that it seemed almost cowardly—those were words she never would have spoken if she were still the Kate Landay she'd been before the Questioning. Yet she went on to say something that seemed worse. “Mother, you could come here. Couldn't you?" "No. I couldn't.” Serina's tone was final, and she held up a hand when she saw that her daughter was about to argue. “Kate, it's not being safe there I'm concerned about! I haven't seen Hatim since he was deported, and I don't want to see him. I spoke with him earlier only because it concerned you. And if you want me to explain why I won't see him, I'll tell you; but not over this damned comm circuit. Now,” and she spoke briskly, “you obviously haven't been brought up to date about Sovereignty politics. You don't have to be afraid of the Questioners, Kate. Never again, no matter where you travel, because there

aren't any Questioners now." "What? How is that possible?” There had been Questioners for as long as Kate Landay could remember. In recent years more and more people had fallen into their clutches, for fewer and fewer justifiable reasons; but that of course was because they'd been growing ever more powerful, and a universe in which they were no longer a factor hardly seemed possible. Yet Serina had never lied to her daughter, and Kate had no fear that her mother was doing that now. She was puzzled beyond measure, but she believed Serina's words because of the person who had said them to her. "It's possible because the government has changed again, but this time it's a real change—not just the exchange of one clique for another. And the first thing the new Diet did was investigate the Questioners’ activities, because that was what the franchised citizens had put that new Diet in place to do; and when the records were opened.... “Serina pursed her lips. She was not and never would be a voter, a “franchised” citizen of the Sovereignty; her parents owned real property, but neither she nor Kate had ever been interested in doing so. “The official media said that ‘there were many excesses.’ The unofficial media, of course, put it much more colorfully. And many of the Questioners were tried for those excesses, and many others escaped. So I don't know what status you would be given if you turned up alive now, within the Sovereignty when you're supposed to be dead; but you wouldn't face more punishment. Of that much I'm certain, and the rest we can talk about after you're here with me." Something off-screen demanded her attention then, and she looked away and spoke with the comm pickup's mute engaged. Then she turned back and smiled at her daughter. “Kate, stop wasting time and get on board the next ship! All right? Will you do that?" "Yes,” Kate said, in what was little more than a whisper. [Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter 12 It took just two days for a very comfortable passenger liner to convey Kate Landay from El'kah to the Okala Cartel's space station. For the first time in nearly a year, she was on her own; there was no Amy, no Joe, and no Hatim beside her, and instead of feeling lonely she was amazed to find that she felt—on vacation. Funding her passage wasn't a problem, she traveled as a member of a household attached to the Sovereignty's trade mission. The documents issued to her were in her real name, which surprised and at first almost panicked her; but she soon realized that this was only to make her connection to her mother clear, that otherwise she might have called herself “Cleopatra Queen of the Terran Nile” for all anyone aboard that El'kah'th ship cared about the identity of the lone human passenger. She couldn't talk to anyone, not with real fluency at least. For the first time in her adult life, except when she'd been taken to New Brixton after her arrest, she had no professional tasks to perform while she was aboard a starship. Not only was she not this vessel's captain, she wasn't even (as she'd started out a quarter of a century earlier) a lowly cadet on a training mission. She was just “cargo that eats,” as even VIP passengers were contemptuously called on warships, and so she rested in her quarters and took her meals privately and ventured out only to enjoy the stars from the ship's observation deck. The stars, how she'd missed the stars! Her cabin had no viewport, El'kah'th ships weren't constructed to

provide outside views from within private quarters. But she remembered her cabin aboard the last ship she'd commanded, recalled the wide viewport directly above her berth ... and that made her positively homesick. Amy had been there as ship's surgeon, Amy had been on every ship where her friend had been an officer from the time she'd qualified as a military physician; but as captain Kate Landay been alone in a sense even while she was with others, and now at last she was alone again. And although she didn't mind her solitude, by the time it ended she was ready for it to do so. She didn't expect Serina to meet her when she disembarked, and she was right about that. She located the schematics and instructions that were usually made available to people just arriving at commercial spaceports, and they yielded clear directions to the Sovereignty trade mission's offices on one of the space station's middle decks. So she took herself there, and was announced promptly and received into her mother's private office. Serina Landay as a diplomat was a somewhat ridiculous notion, but Serina as a trade negotiator rang true. Kate looked around the compartment where her mother conducted Sovereignty business, and found that it had the same ambiance as had many other places where she'd visited Serina. She had just settled herself into a chair (sighing because at last she was being treated to furniture designed for her species, and not for two or more always-cuddling El'kah'th!) when a silver-haired woman in a service uniform came through the office's door and held out her arms in welcome. "Kate!” Serina wasn't given to physical expressions of affection, which was odd because Grandpa and Gram were her parents and they both were touchers. But today there was no doubt that she expected an embrace, and when Kate dutifully got out of that wonderful chair she found herself squeezed with a strength that was surprising in a woman of almost seventy years’ age. She was even more surprised by her own reaction; she clung to her mother, and although she didn't cry she trembled. Serina said nothing to soothe her, but she held her daughter until the trembling had stopped. Then she ended the embrace, moved toward her desk and sat down behind it as gracefully and as casually as if she were about to have a conference with an alien counterpart instead of her first face-to-face talk with her child who was back from the dead. Kate returned to the guest chair, and they stared at each other. "No problems on the passage?” Serina inquired at last, when she'd satisfied herself that the regen tank had completely restored her daughter's physical body. That there had been some damage to the younger woman's spirit she already knew, because Kate hadn't clung quivering in her mother's arms since she'd been a small child. "No, Mother. I just took it easy, I hadn't been alone in months and in a way I actually enjoyed myself.” Kate smiled. She knew Serina would understand that statement instead of being offended by it; her sense of privacy had come to her not from Carsten Marstallar, but from this woman. "That's good. Now tell me what happened to you on the Gateway planet! That's where you left off when we talked over the comm. Amy went there with you, but somehow you got separated and left her behind; and somehow you discovered a second Gate, one that landed you on El'kah instead of back on Gateway. Hatim wouldn't explain to me how that was possible. He said to ask you.” Serina didn't offer refreshments, and she didn't suggest that her daughter go settle into quarters or do anything else that a just-arrived traveler might normally be expected to do. She leaned her elbows on her desk, cradled her chin in her hands, and waited expectantly. This was fine with Kate; this was just how she wanted it. Eating, drinking, and getting settled could all

wait until later, and rest was what she'd had plenty of during the passage. So she drew a breath, and she began. It took time, she was far more complete with her mother than she'd been with El'kah'Hatim. And although Hatim had known Carsten Marstallar during the years when Serina Landay had been Marstallar's wife, Kate hadn't given the El'kah'th man the parts of her story in which her father appeared in anything approaching the detail with which she related them now. She had considered glossing over those events, and would have done so if she had thought she was distressing her mother; but Serina leaned forward almost avidly, and interrupted Kate with questions from time to time (which Hatim had not done). Whether having news of her former husband's life after all the years of separation pleased her or not was difficult to say, but at least it intrigued her. And whether or not it was pleasant she still wanted to hear it, that was plain. "So what do you suppose Carsten did with his other daughter, after he found out what she'd done to you?” Serina inquired when Kate was finished at last. “He could be a harsh man when he was sure he was right and someone else was wrong, I've got reason enough to know that and remember it. But he was never one to deliberately harm someone he cared about, either, so he must have had a real dilemma on his hands after you were gone and he had Francesca to thank for it." "I hope he didn't kill her,” Kate said frankly, and looked searchingly at her mother to see how Serina would react to that idea. “You're too right he can be harsh! He wasn't like that with me, but I never had to cross him; and he was pretty clear that Francesca was a complication he never wanted in his life in the first place." "He didn't kill her, Kate.” Serina's smile was oddly gentle. “He didn't ask me to kill Clifton, he only asked me to give him up." "But you weren't with Dad any longer when you had Clifton.” Kate had slumped in her chair as her story had wound down. Now she pulled herself upright again, and looked at her mother in what was almost alarm. She had the oddest feeling that the tables had just been turned, that now she was about to hear things that she wasn't certain she wanted to know—but that she would listen to anyway, because she was far too curious a soul to refuse. “You left him for Hatim, that was how Cliff happened. Didn't you?" "Not exactly,” Serina said, and her lips twisted ruefully. “No—not at all is more the truth! Cliff happened, and when I wouldn't dispose of him your father left me. That's how it really was, Kate, and after you've spent the past couple of weeks being charmed by Hatim and those children of his that somehow have my DNA in them even though I've never seen them—after that I think I want you to know how it really was. And you're not a girl now, you're a mature woman who knows what it's like to have things happen in your personal life that somehow aren't completely within your control. So I think you may finally be ready to understand this, and that's why I'm finally ready to tell it to you. Unless you'd rather that I didn't? I'll stop now if you want me to; we'll go find your quarters and get you settled, and we won't say a word about this ever again." "Mother, if you stop talking now I'll never forgive you!” Kate said, and then had to laugh at her own tone's fierceness. “I hate people who make me curious and then leave me hanging. Tell me, for gods’ sake." "Gods had absolutely nothing to do with it.” Serina Landay got out of her desk chair and walked to the compartment's viewport. That she had one testified to her importance here, even though it was a small port. She stared out at the stars and she said, “What happened between me and El'kah'Hatim—it wasn't exactly consensual, Kate. No, I don't mean that he raped me! Although that's the word your father used

for it when I first told him. Later, when I knew there was going to be a child and I wouldn't either abort it outright or have it extracted and placed in stasis for transport to El'kah ... then he stopped calling it rape and started calling it adultery. And neither word fits, because it was complicated and those words describe very simple acts." "I don't understand.” Kate couldn't tolerate the silence when her mother paused for what seemed like far too long a time. “Either sex is consensual, or it's rape. What other possibility is there? Or has it got something to do with Hatim's being an El'kah'th?" "It's got everything to do with that.” The older woman sighed. “We were on a mission, we were part of a landing party that was scouting on a world where the weather systems were fierce and unpredictable. Our ship couldn't retrieve us when an out-of-season winter storm hit the region that we were scouting; all the others in our party died, frozen to death before a rescue finally was attempted. But Hatim and I were the lucky ones. We found shelter of a sort, and even though we got awfully cold we managed to survive." She turned away from the viewport then and looked directly at her daughter. She said, “I didn't know that lowering an El'kah'th male's body temperature can have drastic consequences. Hatim knew it, of course, but he had no idea that any female but one of his own species could arouse him sexually—under normal conditions he would have found me, or any human woman, about as appealing as you or I might find a gorilla. There's a certain physical compatibility, so mating is possible; but ordinarily it wouldn't have occurred to either of us, we just wouldn't have been interested in each other. But when he got just so cold ... certain things happened. And I was there, huddled with him trying to survive, and by the time I realized what he was going to do there no way I could stop him short of killing him." "And you chose not to do that.” Kate's eyes stung with unexpected and unwanted tears. “You must have realized he couldn't help it, and he was your friend." "Yes. That's how it was. And afterward I didn't have any serious physical damage, I was just awfully sore and shaken up; and he couldn't tell me enough times that he was sorry, that he hadn't been able to help it and he hadn't intended to hurt me. Under the laws of every world in the Sovereignty I had the right to do anything that was necessary to protect myself, I had the means right there in my service belt, and Hatim knew that. He knew I'd chosen to let him live, and that was probably why he was so eager to take care of me when I realized a few weeks later that there was going to be a child.” Serina lifted her chin proudly. “That should have been your father's child, our second. I'd gone off contraceptives because Carsten and I were planning a leave together, and we'd decided it was time for another baby if we were ever going to have one. When I first knew I was pregnant I thought it really was his, and I even told him that!" Kate swallowed, hard. The images were disturbing ones, and unfortunately she could conjure them up easily now that she was—as Serina had said—a mature woman herself, someone to whom a thing like this could just as easily have happened if she'd been caught by the same set of circumstances. "I couldn't stand to be near Hatim after what had happened between us, even before I found out about Clifton I was planning to transfer away from him,” Serina said when she resumed speaking. Her voice was nearly emotionless now. “I didn't blame him, but it was an awful memory and I just couldn't pick up and go on as if nothing had happened. And then both he and your father, damn them and damn all males sometimes, expected me to either go with Hatim and have the baby or stay with Carsten and get rid of it by one means or another. And that's when I got mad, Kate. I wasn't going to be defined by whose child I was carrying, and I wasn't going to let them play god with Clifton's life. I didn't give a damn at that point who the baby's father was, the point as far as I was concerned was that he was mine! And I wanted him, I'm still not sure just why but I never had a second when I doubted that I did. So I told them both to go

to hell, and I went home to your grandmother and your grandfather; and I took you with me, since Carsten informed me that if he took you at all he was never going to bring you back. He said he wanted either to be in your life or out of it, that he was sure you'd be better off without him if he and I weren't going to be together anymore; and while I didn't think that was true, I couldn't do a thing to change his mind." "He told me that he expected I must have grown up calling Hatim my father,” Kate murmured, and nodded her understanding. “As if you'd have wanted me to do that, even if for some reason you had decided to marry him! Dad can be ridiculous sometimes, can't he, Mother?" "He certainly can. And the worst thing about him is that once he gets an idea into his head, especially an idea about what another person is like or what that other person wants, it's impossible to convince him that he's mistaken.” Serina returned at last to her desk chair. “So now you know why I wouldn't come to El'kah to see you, Kate. And maybe you understand, too, why when Hatim sent me notification of first one and then the other of those hybrid births, I didn't respond because I didn't feel that I really had a thing to do with either of the children. I don't question that they have my human DNA in them, but if I understand the biology that's involved anywhere near accurately each of them also has DNA absorbed from the woman who was the birth mother; and that gives each of them three parents, not two, and they didn't need me if they already had mothers of their own. Which reminds me: I did offer that to your father, and he turned me down. We could have had the medics blend his DNA into the genetic code of the embryo I was carrying. I had the pregnancy confirmed early enough, and because we were service members the procedure's cost wouldn't have been an issue." "Dad didn't go for that? I'll just bet he didn't!” Kate couldn't help smiling now. The desperation of the expectant mother that Serina had been wasn't the least bit amusing, of course; but the image of Carsten Marstallar being offered the chance to become a third genetic parent to his wife's unborn baby was in a sense quite entertaining. He would have been tempted, Kate knew he would have been terribly tempted ... he had loved Serina; and no matter what he'd told himself to justify rejecting her for refusing to part with her baby, he must have realized on some level that he had no right to make such a demand. No one did, because the child in her womb was a woman's own business. Human history had proved time after time that any other legal doctrine of pregnancy inevitably caused the judicial system to begin treating expectant mothers (and then by extension, all women of child-bearing age) as containers rather than as people. So he would have wanted to accept her offer, and probably if she'd slept with and conceived by another human he could have swallowed his pride and consented. But he hated “Elkies” so much ... he couldn't have stood to have called one his son, not even if his own essence really was incorporated into the youngster; not even after El'kah'Hatim had been deported, which had guaranteed that the child would know no other father. "It was his loss,” Serina announced bluntly. “Being pregnant with Clifton wasn't easy, giving birth to him wasn't easy, and bringing him up—you know how that was even better than I do, because your grandparents did most of it and you helped them. But I've never had a minute when I've wished I hadn't had him. I can tell you that now and mean it with everything that's in me." "I've never wished you hadn't had him, either,” Kate said, and she meant that just as completely. “Not that I didn't have the times I guess all older siblings do, when I'd ask Gram or Grandpa why we couldn't just give that little pain in the ass to someone else who might not mind getting no sleep while he screamed night after night! But I didn't mean it for more than a minute or two at a time, and even then I just wanted him out of my hair for awhile. I didn't really want to get rid of him, I always loved him and I always will." "I know you do. And even though I was proud when I saw your name on the promotion list for rear admiral, I've never been as proud of you for any other reason than for how you've always been a real

sister to Cliff.” That was an incredibly sentimental speech for Serina Landay, and after she uttered it she looked surprised. “Well! By now you must be tired, Kate, and you must be hungry too. Come along, I'm sure your quarters are ready by now and I'll make us a restaurant reservation. We still have an awful lot to talk about, you know. We've just spent such an long time disposing of the past, now maybe we can forget about that and start figuring out your future." "Now that I have one again,” Kate said, and this time she smiled without irony. [Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter 13 "Captain Landay.” The captain of the Sovereignty starship Agra greeted Kate with a handshake, with all the respect to which she had formerly been entitled. “Commander Landay.” The man then rather absently extended the same courtesy to Serina, who was clearly enjoying the rare treat of watching her daughter interact with a peer at that level to which Serina herself had never quite risen. “Welcome aboard. We don't have the fanciest VIP quarters in the fleet, I'm afraid; but we took on fresh food supplies recently, and I think you'll be fairly comfortable on the way home." "It's been so long since I was called by my rank, I hope I don't forget to answer to it,” Kate said, and she smiled with as much nervousness as pleasure. “I never expected to hear that again—and I certainly never expected to be wearing a service uniform again, either.” She didn't mention that once she had believed she would never want to do so. "The minute that the Defense Services Minister learned you were alive after all, she pulled out all the stops,” Captain Terje Ellison said with an answering grin. “You were the last person the Questioners killed, you see. So in a way you're a symbol of what the new government is there to represent, and I guess in this case a living symbol is an awful lot more inspiring than a dead one." "More useful, anyway.” Serina Landay was watching her daughter carefully. Learning that she could have her commission back simply by getting DNA verification to prove her identity had in a sense been wonderful for Kate; but in another way it had been alarming, because admitting to the authorities that she was alive and had somehow become the first person in the Gateway's history to escape from exile beyond it carried some terrible risks. The Questioners and the government that had sponsored their activities were both gone, but the Sovereignty's territory within the galaxy was now an even more turbulent place simply because that government's control had been relaxed (and in some respects, removed altogether). And not only were there those comrades who wouldn't welcome a supposedly dead captain back into the Sovereignty's military because that would mean one less command-level post available to other up-and-coming officers; there were also plenty of people, inside and outside the service, who were apt to react to a “living symbol” of the deposed government's excesses by trying to make that symbol silent and invisible again. Add to all that the series of traumas Kate had been through during the months just past, one of which was having built a new life for herself on the Gateway world and then being torn away from it; and Serina thought that she had every reason to watch her daughter carefully. Kate was resilient, a career survivor to be sure, but she was also no more than human. And the choices she had to make now were daunting ones, would have been so even if she hadn't had to meet them while still reeling from all of the past year's other upheavals.

And Serina had just inwardly articulated her own greatest fear, which was that Kate was being restored to her commission and her former rank not because it was the fair and just and decent thing for the Sovereignty to do—but because those now in power wanted to use her, for purposes that might have very little to do with Kate's welfare or anyone else's except their own. Ellison was leading the two women along one of his ship's passageways, personally conducting them to guest quarters. He and Kate were chatting as they went, exchanging the comments and bits of information that any two captains meeting each other for the first time might have traded during an interval when their conversation didn't have a preset agenda. Kate was asking about current fleet organization, personnel changes at the highest levels of command, standing orders that weren't the same now as they had been a year ago, the political situation in which the Defense Ministry now operated ... and Ellison seemed to be giving her straightforward answers. If he realized that Serina's most recent assignment had left her in a remarkably good position (for a commander!) to judge his accuracy and his sincerity, he still paid little attention to her; his eyes were on Kate, exclusively. But maybe that had nothing to do with her status as a VIP passenger, or with her being his equal in rank and therefore far more worth his attention than was a mere three-striper. Serina reminded herself that Kate was an attractive woman who was somewhere near to Ellison in chronological age, and that alone might account for the way he kept looking at her. If that was it, fine. But Serina wasn't counting on it, and she didn't know enough about Ellison's background to judge his potential as enemy or ally in the great game of fleet politics. That game had never been played more actively or more seriously than it was being played since the governmental changes of recent months, as various factions within the service and its branches jockeyed for position and as individual command officers’ hopes for advancement rose and fell. Ellison might want something from Kate Landay that was quite different from a discreet liaison during the coming passage home ... and while Kate normally would be more than capable of taking care of herself in this or any other interpersonal situation, right now she had vulnerabilities that she herself might not fully comprehend. So it was going to be Serina's job to guard her daughter's back while Kate relearned her roles in both military and civilian life, roles that the political sea-changes during her absence had certainly altered. That was the real reason why she had requested approval to travel with Kate to Earth, using her own accumulated furlough time. For the first time since Kate's childhood, Serina was going to look after her daughter and let all the other priorities hang. Not that she'd had any other choice when she had left her pre-teen and her baby in her parents’ care all those years ago. She'd had a job to do, a living to earn, an oath to keep. But she was getting to be an old woman now, and for once she was going to do exactly as she damned pleased. And if the service didn't like it ... well, the worst thing they'd be likely to do to her now was insist that she retire at last. Which she might just do anyway, if the mood struck her while she was at home on this leave. They were assigned to adjoining cabins, each small but comfortable; they were of course invited to the captain's table for meals; and soon the ship was underway, it was night by ship's time, and Serina was awakened by sounds from the other side of the bulkhead. She went through the shared head and found what she expected, which was Kate twisting under the covers of her berth and crying out hoarsely. “Joe! Amy! Joe, where are you? Joe!" Serina spoke softly to her daughter without touching her; she knew better than get too close to a former Ranger who was having a bad dream unless she intended to physically restrain the dreamer. She said, “Kate, wake up,” and she stood near the berth in her nightgown and she waited.

It didn't take more than that one call; she hadn't expected that it would. Kate sat up, her eyes snapped open, and she looked around her. When her eyes found her mother in the cabin's increasing light she said, “Oh!” in a tone that was part relief and part something else. Disappointment? Yes, that was it exactly. Because the next thing she said was, “I dreamed I was back on Arcadia, Mother. I was with Joe, and I was trying to tell him something ... and then things would shift, and I'd be in that regen tank and I'd be alone there and I'd be calling for Amy. I'm sorry I woke you up, what time is it?" "It's only 2105, you haven't been asleep very long.” Serina sat on the edge of the berth. She'd become far more used to touching her daughter during the several days that they'd been together, so now it didn't seem strange for her to put an arm across the younger woman's still-quivering shoulders. “Kate, if you could have gone back to Arcadia through that Gate on El'kah you'd have done it, wouldn't you? You'd have returned to your new life there, to Joe and your father and everyone else you'd been getting to know. Being back in that uniform today was stranger for you than I realized, and I'm wondering now whether you did the right thing to put it on again. Whether I did the right thing to make the contacts for you, the arrangements to prove your identity and get you listed as a living citizen of the Sovereignty again." "You did the right thing, Mother.” Kate uncharacteristically leaned against her mother's thin shoulder. “The life I had on Arcadia is over now, anyway—and when I wanted to go back there so badly, I still thought it was the only place where I could have a life. I had no idea I could see you again, or Clifton, or Gram and Grandpa. No idea I could live inside the Sovereignty and use my own name, let alone have my commission back under a government that's worth serving! I miss Joe and Amy both, and once things get really straightened out I'm damned well going to find or make a way to bring them back through the Gate to this side again. But I don't wish I could go back there myself. I made the best of it while it was all I had, but now I'm planning to thank Francesca instead of shooting her the next time I see her." "Kate, what about Yoshi?” Serina stroked her daughter's hair. “You didn't call him when you called the others. You don't even mention him when you list the people back home that you want to see. Did the time you spent with Joe really change everything that much?" "Yes, it did.” Kate straightened. She didn't pull away from her mother's embrace, but she no longer accepted her support. “I'm fond of Yoshi, in a way I really loved him and in a way I still do. But Mother, I didn't break off what I had with Joe twenty years ago because our relationship failed. The civil war on Alba Five and then his sentence to exile took him away from me, and I got over him and went on with my life because there just wasn't anything else I could do. And then when I saw him again, when our being trapped together in that mountain settlement gave him back to me ... it was a gift I never expected to have. So I grabbed him and I hung on for all I was worth! And he did the same thing to me. I want him back again now, and if I have to move the entire Diet and the Ministry of Corrections and the Ministry of Defense to get his and Amy's sentences to exile reversed then I'm going to find a way to do just that!” She was completely awake now, and both her tone and her body were rock-steady. "Kate. No one's told you that one thing yet, have they?” Serina wanted to weep, for the first time in a very long time. “The original Gate, the one you and Amy were sent through—and before you Joe, and all the other exiles—it's been closed, and the New Brixton garrison abandoned. Oh, I'm sorry I didn't tell you before! But it never came up, somehow, and I guess I just didn't want to mention New Brixton to you unless I had to." "Closed. What do you mean, closed?” Kate stiffened. Now she did move away, and she stared.

"I mean that the new Diet decided that as long as it was there, the Gate would be used to exile people; and although they agreed that was wrong, they couldn't allow all the people who were already on the other side, plus their descendants, to come back through it. And that was what would have happened, of course, if it wasn't guarded whenever it opened and watched the rest of the time; because no one's ever been able to predict its operation as is at least partly possible with the El'kah Gateway, from what you've told me. So the Gate was sealed. An energy charge was used to destroy its matrix. I think the science of it would be very similar to what your half-sister Francesca did to the El'kah Gateway.” Serina was speaking gently, far more gently than was her habit. “So you can't petition anyone to let Joe or Amy return from beyond the Gate, because it's no longer possible. The Gate will never open again, not unless all the people who've studied it over the past twenty-five years are wrong about the long-term effect of that explosion. And now that we know the world it led to really did have Gateways to other habitable worlds in our own galaxy ... what a waste, Kate. Gods and spirits, what a waste!" Kate closed her eyes. For a moment her face contorted, and her throat moved convulsively as she swallowed. Swallowed a disappointment that was the bitterest of her life so far, and that was a large statement because she'd known other disappointments and some of them had been monumental. Soon, though, she opened her eyes again; looked into her mother's face and said softly, “You'll have to forgive me if right now I don't care a damn about that part of it, Mother. So! I guess it's time I let you in on something. Twenty years ago, just before everything happened that separated us, Joe and I were going to have a baby together. I never told you about that, it didn't work out and we were both disappointed; and I never told you, either, that we were having a rocky time—actually had decided we ought to stop living together for awhile and think things over—when he went back home to look after his family, and then couldn't or wouldn't leave. I told you everything else about that time, about what I had to do so that he wouldn't be court-martialed for desertion; but I didn't mention the baby we lost or the trouble between us. I never talked about that except to Amy, and to her only because it was on my medical record and she was my physician from the time we first shipped out together." She paused, swallowed again, and then continued speaking. “There's not much use for birth control on a new, empty world that needs a lot more people as much as it needs anything else. So while Joe and I lived together at the Settlement we didn't do a blessed thing to stop another baby from coming, and now I know that's going to happen. The service doctor who did my DNA verification also did a full physical, and the pregnancy scan results didn't surprise me a bit; I'd finally decided that had to be what was going on with my body instead of menopause kicking in. I'm ten weeks along with a baby boy." "No wonder you weren't even thinking about going back to Yoshi.” Serina sighed, long and gustily. “Just when were you going to tell me this, anyway?" "I—I don't know.” And she didn't, truly, Kate realized. She got out of her berth now, shrugged a robe on over her nightgown, and winced when she inadvertently bumped a nipple with her hand. Unaccustomed tearfulness she'd chalked up to the tremendous emotional stresses of the past weeks, weariness to sleep disturbances, lack of menstruation to her mid-forties age (although it admittedly hadn't happened before). But morning nausea and breast tenderness hadn't fit those parameters, so when those symptoms appeared she had finally realized what her body was trying to communicate to her. “Somehow I think I was waiting to tell Yoshi before I told anyone else. I haven't called him because I didn't want to tell him something like this over a comm, but that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about him. And he's unfinished business for me, there's no question about that!" "What if he still wants you anyway? Baby and all, since now you know that getting Joe back isn't possible?” Serina had been asking people tough questions all her adult life, and usually she enjoyed bringing up what others hesitated to face. But not this time, these were matters she hated to raise even

though she owed it to her daughter to do so. Kate was walking up and down the cabin's deck, while her mother remained seated on the berth and watched her. She walked faster now, turning almost angrily whenever she reached a bulkhead. “How can I answer that?” she hissed at last, stopping in front of the older woman and staring down at her. “Right now it seems impossible, I can't imagine having anything to do with Yoshi except as an old friend. But after all the other ‘impossible’ choices I've made during the past year, there's no way I'm going to add this one to the list of things I said I'd never do and then turned around and did." "Kate, do you still want the baby? Even though Joe's not going to be part of your life after all?” Another tough, terrible question, but it was one Serina Landay had once had to answer for herself and for an unborn child of her own. "Of course I do.” The answer came easily, this at least wasn't a source of doubt or conflict. “Twenty years ago I got pregnant at the ‘wrong’ time. While I was off birth control I got the promotion I'd been hoping for, and the next day I found out it was already too late to change my mind about trying to conceive right then. I couldn't accept the new assignment that went with the rank, not if I was going to have to turn around and take maternity leave just a few months in; so Joe and I agreed that the thing to do was put the embryo in stasis for a couple of years. It wasn't a risky procedure, and I just couldn't derail my whole career—my whole life!—to go ahead with a pregnancy right then. But even though the risk was low, of course there always is one; and I was the patient it caught up with.” Kate braced her shoulders, facing the memory. “The procedure killed the embryo. And what I said to you about Joe and I being ready to separate anyway, when he had to go home and got caught in the civil war ... losing that baby tore us apart, Mother. We thought we were going to be back together within a few weeks’ time, but even if that had happened I'm not a bit sure we could have picked up the pieces. So I'll be damned if I'm going to even think about not having this baby. I grieved enough the first time around, I won't make that mistake again." "It wasn't a mistake,” Serina said, and her voice was very gentle. “You made a perfectly valid reproductive choice, Kate, and it wasn't your fault that some rare thing went wrong. And you told me that Joe agreed with you about it, didn't he?" "Joe wasn't the one who was pregnant.” Kate's lips twisted with bitter humor. “It was my body, my decision, and I made the wrong call. But don't worry, Mother, that's not the only reason I want this child now! I'd want him whether or not the other pregnancy had ever happened; that memory's helping me know what decisions I need to make now, but it's not why I'm making them. And I'm not doing this just because it's Joe's child, either. I want it because—oh, hell, why does any woman want to have a baby?" "Good.” Serina rose, reached out and stroked her daughter's cheek with a gentle hand. “Then you'll make the right choices as they come up; you've just told me exactly what I hoped I'd hear. Now. I know telling you to relax and go back to sleep after I've just given you lousy news is probably like telling you to levitate and fly, but I still think it might do us both good to get something warm to drink and then at least try to rest for awhile before morning." "We don't have to be on time for duty shifts,” Kate reminded her mother, and managed a wry smile. “We're passengers, remember? So if neither of us wakes up in the morning, the worst thing that happens is we eat breakfast after the Alpha Shift's already underway instead of before it with Captain Ellison. I don't know if that makes me feel relaxed, or if it makes me feel unnecessary." "I know how it makes me feel,” Serina said. “Old. And for once I don't mind, that's the strange part. It's as if I've finally got a license to rest, or if not a license to rest—at least a damned solid excuse to be lazy."

[Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter 14 Debriefing. That word was never a welcome one to any officer, because it conjured up memories of being questioned endlessly about actions one had taken and decisions one had made far away in the heat of battle; recollections of medical indignities; and even, sometimes, the unsettling blankness of waking up to know you'd been questioned under truth dope and then might or might not have been relieved of some of your memories before you were returned to consciousness. But at least Kate Landay hadn't been obliged to deal with the press contingent that was waiting for her when she and Serina arrived at Luna City. In a way this public arrival was reassuring, because it couldn't have happened under the former government; but it was also unsettling, because never in her professional life had Kate been faced with this type of attention. Under the old system anything about her that reached the media—her ship's discoveries, the occasional battle in which she'd distinguished herself, her anticipated promotion to flag rank—had been filtered out through official channels, and she'd never once spoken personally to a reporter. So she was grateful when security placed a solid barrier of bodies between the two of them and that welcoming committee, and when she was only required to make the briefest of “yes, I'm glad to be home” statements before being hustled into a waiting lift car. She was at once alarmed, and curiously relieved, when Serina was separated from her without the least ceremony; in a way she was reluctant to go into whatever was coming next alone, and yet she'd grown very tired of having someone watching over her night and day during the weeks of passage. Still she was apprehensive now, because soon she would find out just exactly how much the new government really did differ from the old. She would learn how the “new” military services treated those of their own whom the old system had victimized, and then she would know—too late to change her decision, unfortunately!—whether she'd made the right choice in accepting the chance to reclaim her commission. The lift deposited her into an ordinary waiting area, not into a secured compartment. That was good; she had the dignity of being able to walk up to a reception counter and say to the auto-unit, “I'm Captain Landay. Reporting for debriefing,” instead of being met by people who knew very well who she was and being placed under armed escort. "Hello, Kate,” a male voice said before the auto-unit could reply. She turned to find that another lift car had just deposited someone else into the room. "Cliff!” The man was taller than she was; the top of her head barely reached to his shoulder. His skin was a pale, almost delicate blue in color, his hair was El'kah'th thatch, and his limbs were longer and had more joints in them than did a full human's. But his eyes were Serina Landay's eyes, and just now they were warm and tender and unashamedly wet. Her little brother lifted her off her feet, and held her until she could hardly breathe. And she held him back just as fiercely, and laughed and cried and suddenly didn't give a damn who she might be making wait for her. "Kate.” He said her name again as he finally took her shoulders in his hands and held her away from him. “Well, we'll know for sure how you came through everything in just a little while; but you look fine to me,

and that's my professional opinion as well as my personal one. Come on, I'm going to be the civilian member on your debriefing team." "Civilian member? What are you talking about, Cliff?” That was unheard of. Never was the “silent service” more silent than when its Internal Affairs arm was cooperating with its medical staff to get all possible information out of one of its own members. "Just what I said. It's one of the reforms, it's supposed to make sure that nothing like the Questioners ever takes root again.” Like a true El'kah'th even though he'd never in his life seen a member of his father's species, Clifton Bradley wrapped his arm around his sister for the walk past the reception counter and into the medical suites beyond. He always had to be in physical contact, and denying that need was difficult even at the times when consideration for his human associates’ privacy made it necessary that he do so. “Kate, you don't mind, do you?” He couldn't detect images in her mind the way a full El'kah'th would have done, but he could and did realize that she was as agitated right now as she was pleased. So he stopped before the door in front of them opened, and that obliged his sister to stop with him. “If having me around is going to embarrass you, I'll step aside and let another civilian doctor take my place. This is going to get up close and personal, mentally and physically." "That's just why I want you to stay!” Kate said, and nestled against his side. “Cliff, I'm not going to pretend I'm not scared silly right now. The last time I walked through a door like that one.... “She indicated the portal just ahead of them. "You didn't walk out again. I know that, Sis.” The strong arm around her squeezed gently. “And you're way ahead of the game because you can admit how you feel about this. I do this all the time now, I've quit treating hybrids to work with people the Questioners left alive; and the ones who try to play stoic are always the ones who don't recover well. So, how far along are you?" "Am I showing already, or did you find that out from Mother?” Kate frowned. She didn't remove herself from Clifton's embrace, but she turned and leaned back against his arm. "Mother knows? Good. But she didn't tell me, and yes—you're showing. Maybe not enough for anyone else to notice, but I'm a doctor, remember? I could feel that curve in your belly when I hugged you just now, and unless you changed your whole body type while you were in regen then that's not fat. That's a baby. A good four months along, am I right?" "Sixteen weeks,” Kate said, and she relaxed and smiled. “But that won't be a problem if you don't use truth dope any longer for debriefings." "Of course we don't,” Clifton answered, and he kissed her cheek. “Congratulations, Sis. I know you want it, or you wouldn't have carried it this far into term." "I never wanted anything more.” With that said, Kate was the one who stepped ahead and drew her brother with her through the doorway. She was ready to face them now, the other medical doctors and the psychologists and the military intelligence specialists who were waiting for her; and now that she was ready, she wanted it over. **** Should she see her grandparents next, or Yoshi? Kate Landay stood in the concourse of the Luna City spaceport and tried to make that decision, and for once she couldn't order her thoughts or exercise her will.

Clifton had stayed with her through the entire debriefing and medical workup process, which had taken a grueling full day of time. It had carried them into the night by Luna City's Greenwich Standard clock, actually; and when it was finally over he'd taken her back to his apartment and had made sure she went to bed there before he left again. Her apartment was long since tenanted by someone else. She'd been dead, legally speaking; her once-confiscated assets plus a years’ worth of back pay had had to be deposited into a brand new credit account, because her old one had been closed out. That wasn't important, and she'd never thought of her apartment as home so she didn't care about that either. She had wished Clifton didn't have to leave, had wanted to go to sleep knowing he would be there when she woke up the next morning; but that hadn't been possible. He had other commitments; even the day that her debriefing had taken had been time he'd stolen from elsewhere, in what was apparently a very busy life of working with the human wreckage the former government had left behind after its fall. He would see her again soon, at their childhood home on Earth. He'd promised her that, and the date he'd named for that reunion was days away. So unless she wanted to lie around his empty apartment and hope he might dash home for a few hours in between patients—something that was unlikely, he'd cheerfully admitted that he practically lived at what he called “the clinic"—it only made sense for her to join Serina in Castine, or to contact Yoshi in either Halifax or Roseway and find out when and whether he wanted to see her. She was free to do that, free to go wherever she wished now. And that was incredible, overwhelming, almost frightening. She saw a man wearing a press corps badge standing at a nearby counter, talking with a spaceport official, and that decided her. She wasn't sure how quickly he might recognize her as the person he and his colleagues had tried so hard to get at yesterday, but she was certain she didn't want to risk having that happen; so she moved swiftly into a public comm alcove, and called up the interface at Yoshi's office at Dalhousie University. It would be a class day in Nova Scotia, and the time there would be—what? The comm system at Dalhousie forwarded her to Yoshi's home in Roseway, that lovely village down the Lighthouse coast from Halifax, and soon a sleepy-looking man was staring out at her from the holoscreen. “Kate! I didn't think they'd let you loose this soon. Didn't you just get back yesterday morning, Luna City time?" She nodded, and she tried to smile. She knew Yoshi so well, but right now he was so startled and so drowsy that she couldn't tell for the life of her whether he was pleased to see her or not. She said, “Debriefing's a lot quicker process than it used to be, Yoshi. I'm at the spaceport, and I'm not sure whether I want to head to Castine now to see Gram and Grandpa or whether I should come to you first. What do you want me to do?" This was unheard of, neither of them could remember the last time (if there ever had been such a time) when Kate Landay had asked Yoshi Sakagawa to make a decision for her. Her long-time lover gaped at her for another moment, then squared his bare shoulders and said, “Get down here as fast as you can, Kate. And if you've got any bags, bring them. You and I have one hell of a lot to talk about. I'm going to call my graduate assistant as soon as it's late enough so I won't be hauling her out of bed, and tell her she's teaching my classes today." "I'm sorry I woke you up,” Kate said, and tried to be contrite even though what she was feeling now was relief so great that it was almost exultation. “I forgot how big the time difference is between

Greenwich and Atlantic!" "That's okay. See you soon,” Yoshi answered, and then he was the one who cut the connection. And that was good, because she was so paralyzed that if he'd waited for her to do so she might have stood there in the comm alcove forever. **** Apparently one didn't need to be a physician to notice that her belly was starting to swell with her unborn son's development, because Yoshi pulled back from their first embrace and looked down at her stomach and then unhesitatingly put up a hand and explored her there. Then he asked, “Accident or on purpose, Kate?" No one else but Yoshi would have put it quite that way, she thought as she clasped his hand and pressed it against her. She answered honestly, “Very much on purpose. How much do you know about what happened to me beyond the Gateway, Yoshi?" "Only that Amy was able to regen you back to full health, that you spent months over there and somehow got separated from Amy, and that you found a way back through another Gate that no one except the El'kah'th knew about before.” Yoshi pulled her into his arms again and held her close. “Who was he, Kate? And is this why you didn't call me and didn't accept my calls? When I heard second-hand that you'd come back, I thought the regen did something to your mind and you didn't remember about us. And when I called and called and you never talked to me once, I was sure that had to be it." "I didn't know you called me,” Kate said, and she snuggled into his arms and felt the old sense of being in a place that fit her perfectly. Joe was so much taller and larger than she was that although in lovemaking everything was right and comfortable, when they simply stood together like this she always felt tiny and she was always sure that having to bend down to her must be awkward for him. But Yoshi wasn't a great deal taller than she was, and he was a slim and wiry man. “I wasn't able to take any civilian comms while I was aboard the Agra, and you should have been told that when you tried to reach me ... but it doesn't matter now. I'm here and I guess you're glad to see me, and that's all that matters." "Of course I'm glad to see you!” He tilted her head back then, and he kissed her. And to pull away and deny him that seemed impossible, particularly when he knew perfectly well she had someone else's baby in her womb and that clearly didn't matter much to him. They had breakfast together on the deck overlooking the ocean. It was early summer, even here on the normally chilly North Atlantic coast the morning was warm, and sunrise came ridiculously early in this time zone. She told him all of it—even the parts that she'd held back when talking to her mother, all the things that even the debriefers hadn't found out because she had not seen fit to volunteer what was truly intimate; and unlike the old “Questioners,” these ones had asked her for personal information only when it was necessary to make sense of her story or to verify the state of her health. He listened, he ate little while she gorged with an appetite that seemed incredible until she remembered that this was the stage of pregnancy at which increased hunger normally replaced morning sickness, and he watched her as if (as was surely the case) he'd never hoped to see her again. And it was mid-morning, with the sun high in the sky and the air heavy and still as if a storm might soon blow up to cool the unaccustomed heat, before she finally stopped talking and reached out and took his hand in hers. She asked softly, “Where do we go from here, Yoshi?" His name, and not an endearment. That much was a change, an involuntary one. She sat still, clung to his

hand, and waited. He said quietly, “Kate, you can't go back to him and he can't come here to you. He's gone ... you do know that's true, don't you?" "Yes.” She nodded, and she swallowed. “I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with knowing it, though. Right now it doesn't seem real, it doesn't seem possible that a few days from now I won't be seeing him again and telling him about the baby and making plans for how we'll raise it together." That was a natural enough response, not only because humans tended to deny what they couldn't yet accept—but also because Kate's entire life had inured her to being separated from her loved ones for long stretches of time. But this time there wasn't going to be a reunion, everyone kept telling her so.... And until she satisfied herself that the Gateway had truly been destroyed, she wasn't going to believe them. She looked into her former lover's eyes and she said, “I know it, but I still need to prove it to myself, Yoshi. I can't give up on Joe and Amy and my father, not unless I visit the Gateway world first. I've got more leave time on the books now than I've ever had in my life before, and I know exactly how I'm going to use it." "I knew you were going to say that!” Yoshi sighed. His smile was so wry, she was sure it must be hurting him. But he squeezed the hand he was holding, and it was a touch of love and reassurance. “So. I'm going with you, then." Yoshi taking time off from Dalhousie, leaving this comfortable ocean-side house and his life here to make a long journey through space—when test flights of prototype ships were the longest trips she'd ever known him to take voluntarily? Just to be beside her, at a time when she wasn't even sure he ought to be there? But looking into his eyes didn't uncover any hint of doubt or resentment; he really wanted to do what he was proposing to do, and he wasn't asking if she wanted him along. He was telling her, which meant that he needed this for his own sake and not just for hers. It was all right, then, even though she still didn't understand it. Kate sighed and said, “I have to see Gram and Grandpa first, Yoshi. They're both close to the century mark now, if I turn around and leave Earth without seeing them I may be missing the last chance I'll have. But after I do that...." "By the time you've done that, Dalhousie will have had time to find other professors to cover my summer classes,” Yoshi said, and he grinned encouragingly. “I've never taken a whole term off from teaching since I was first hired, Kate, and I've been on tenure for a lot longer than it takes to qualify for a full-length sabbatical. And I'm going to remind the powers that be of that when I'm telling them all the reasons I just have to grab this chance to study the Gateway, now that an ordinary academic can get near it." "And if they won't let you go, either on your own or on University business?” Kate asked. She thought she knew the answer already, but it was so unlike the Yoshi she'd always known that she had to make him say it. Yoshi the property owner and voter, Yoshi the stable resident of Terra who'd never taken a chance in his life except the terrible risk of loving her. And clearly he did love her, in a way that she hadn't understood before and that part of her now desperately wished she could return.

"I'll quit,” he said simply. “So! Much as I want to spend time with you, Kate, it looks as if I'm going to be doing that while we're on board ship—and every hour you spend here now is an hour when you could be in Castine with your grandparents. So you go ahead and get on board the next transport, and I'll get dressed and head for the Dean's office and see what hoops I've got to jump through. Hell, they might even fund this if I pitch it to them in just the right terms." [Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter 15 "So he's gambling that what you're going to do together—making a passage to Gateway, personally verifying that the Gate can never be opened again—is going to fail? Because for him, that would be success?” Serina Landay wasn't sure whether she ought to allow herself to smile, but somehow she couldn't help it. She and her daughter were walking together on a rocky beach (although it really should not have been dignified with that term, since it was made up of small jagged stones and there wasn't a grain of sand visible in its composition), with a brisk on-shore wind kicking up salt spray that reached them from time to time and by so doing had dampened both women's hair. Kate's was curling ever so slightly as a result, and Serina was saddened to notice that there were strands of silver in it now. Not that Kate wasn't old enough for that to be happening naturally, of course she was; but somehow Serina couldn't help being sure that everything her daughter had been through during the year just past had accelerated that process. But Kate moved with all her old power and ease when they reached a spot where there wasn't any more so-called beach, where they were obliged to climb over huge tumbled blocks of granite and quartz and other stones; and Serina gleefully realized that she was having no trouble keeping up with her daughter. She'd kept not only her general health, but most of her strength as well, thanks to remaining in active service with its rigid physical training requirements. "I suppose you could say that,” Kate admitted, and she plainly wasn't amused. “But Yoshi realizes it's not just Joe I want back, Mother; Amy's on the other side of that Gate, too, and Dad. I'd do this for any one of them—and I really do believe that if it turns out that things aren't as final at Gateway as you were told, if somehow we can get them back, Yoshi won't try to stop me from going back to Joe. At any rate he realizes that as long as there's a chance that can happen, even the smallest chance, there's no way I can go back to the way things used to be between us. And he took finding out about the baby a lot better than I expected; you guessed right about that. It's not going to be a major problem, no matter what else does or doesn't happen." "Speaking of which, should we really be climbing around like this with you pregnant?” That hadn't occurred to Serina, and clearly it hadn't occurred to Kate either. The younger woman was feeling well again now that she'd entered her second trimester, and she wasn't yet bulky enough for a shifting center of gravity to render her awkward. But the rocks they'd been scaling earlier had turned into cliffs, and now the sea was below them instead of beside them ... and at its edge, just under its turbulent surface, both women could see floating rockweed that told them it would be an awfully hard landing for anyone who fell from this height. "Don't be silly, Mother,” Kate said, and then laughed at herself. “Did I really just sound like a fourteen-year-old again? I'm sorry, and I guess you're probably right at that! But I'm not used to thinking about being limited physically, and much as I want to spend time with Gram and Grandpa I can't stand

the idea of being cooped up inside all day on a day like this one." "Neither can I, but we could have taken a walk in the woods, you know!” Serina changed her course, carefully eased herself up over the cliff's edge and then moved aside to give Kate room enough to do likewise. “It does seem strange, doesn't it, to have them both want to be inside all the time? They were always so active; even when I was last here just after you disappeared, they were still running the nursery themselves. They had help, of course, but they were in control of things and both of them were still doing some of the physical work in the greenhouses and in the fields." They weren't doing that now. Morgan Landay and John Bradley had been sitting together by the old-fashioned hearth in their three-hundred-year-old house when Serina and Kate had left for this “walk” (that was what they'd called it when speaking of it to the grandparents), and that seemed to be where they spent most of their days now. At ninety-nine and ninety-eight years of age respectively, they were finally old and willing to acknowledge that fact. Neither had an identifiable terminal ailment—but somehow Kate had the impression whenever she looked at them or spoke with them, now, that both were winding down. Quietly and purposefully getting ready to let go of the lives they'd always before lived with such enthusiasm, as if somehow having her back with them alive and safe and—yes, carrying another generation's beginning inside her!—had given them a permission for which they'd been waiting. "I know,” she said, agreeing with her mother even though it was not at all what she wanted to do. “What does Clifton think?" "Cliff says they've always done what they wanted to do, and that's what they're up to now.” Serina was able to smile again at that thought. “And Kate, I should tell you—one thing they've always wanted, or at least have always told me they wanted, was to die while they had family at home with them." "Oh,” Kate said softly. She pulled herself upright with help from one of the weather-stunted trees at the rock-face's edge, and she stood there braced against the wind and stared out to sea. How many generations of Landays and Bradleys had guided their boats and their ships over those waters? Navy men, fishermen, haulers of lobster traps; and in recent years, starship officers of both genders who came home and sailed by the old methods for the change and the chance to relax. Yes, this was home. Only a few times had she been able to bring Joe here, but when she'd done so he had fit in and had charmed her grandparents and her brother. Yoshi they liked, but they'd had to go to Halifax to meet Yoshi; and to like was not to love. They'd loved Joe. First for Kate's sake, but then for his own. It was so long ago; and yet everything that had happened in between seemed unreal to her now, unless Kate looked into a mirror and saw that her face was that of a woman past forty and that her hair was just starting to silver. And she was glad now to be free to take off that captain's uniform and put on hiking shorts and a shirt, because even though she'd been proud to wear her rank again it had no longer felt natural. Was it possible to outgrow something as hard-earned as those stripes on her sleeve? Or was it simply that the geopolitical entity she'd protected and for so long worked to expand, had so completely lost her respect? She hoped the new government would change that, but now that the initial pleasure of having her commission restored was past she had a gut-uneasy feeling that she couldn't explain but also couldn't seem to shake. Serina announced, “Kate, I put in for retirement right after I left you at Luna City."

Kate opened her mouth to ask whether her mother was sure that was what she wanted. What came out instead was, “It's about time. You've given the service enough years of your life." "My thoughts exactly.” Serina had been resting on the rocks into which the stunted trees had somehow thrust their roots, finding crevices and scanty accumulations of soil that were just enough to allow them to fasten themselves down and grow in spite of everything that tried to prevent them from doing so. Now she rose, also having to use a tree for support against the wind, and searched along the edge until she found an opening through the vegetation. “Kate, I don't feel easy all of a sudden. Let's get back." **** The young woman and man whom Gram and Grandpa had hired to do first the bulk of the physical work at the nursery, and then to operate it for them during the past year or so when even managing things had become too much of a burden, were in the living room with the old couple. So was Clifton, and he was scanning his grandfather when Kate and Serina entered the room. He looked up at his sister and his mother and said, “It's over. They did it just the way they wanted to do it, right down to the timing. I had a message from Gram to come home today—urgent, drop everything, get yourself here PDQ. And this must have been why." Kate had always accepted intellectually the idea that an individual had a right to choose when life should end, particularly when age and infirmity or a painful and debilitating illness had robbed that life of its satisfactions. But she still found it impossible to imagine herself doing anything like this ... after all, she had fought to survive in the face of first torture and then disfigurement and finally death itself. But she was young, less than half the age of these two people, so perhaps she just didn't know how it felt to have completed one's task and to be ready to let go. In any case she couldn't feel any anger at either of them; there was too much relief in seeing them sitting in their familiar places and looking so peaceful, and in knowing that now there couldn't possibly come a time when one or both would become physically helpless or mentally confused—and would perhaps long for release, but be unable to seek it. Serina kissed first one old face, then the other. She was turning to her son to say something to him when the door opened without anyone's having asked permission to enter, and Yoshi Sakagawa walked in. Kate paled. That something was terribly wrong was obvious, just from Yoshi's coming here. She heard Serina telling the young nursery managers that the family wanted to be alone now, that this man was Kate's lover; and although Serina wasn't given to telling untruths and that certainly was one now, she said it with perfect conviction. Clifton came to his sister's side and draped an arm across her shoulders, and she felt comfort flowing into her body from his in a way that simply couldn't happen when another full human was touching her. "Kate, I've got a ship ready to leave Luna City and all supplied for a research cruise to Gateway,” Yoshi said as soon as the others were gone. He had to understand the significance of the scene he'd intruded upon, the two ancients sitting dead in their chairs and their aging daughter and their middle-aged (or in Clifton's case, not quite middle-aged) grandchildren standing by with dazed looks on their faces; but he launched into what he had to say without preamble, and that was further evidence of just how serious this visit's purpose must be. “We'd better get up there. And when I say ‘we,’ I mean everyone who belongs to you." "What is it?” Kate asked. She felt her brother's arm tightening around her, and knew that he understood Yoshi much better than she did at this moment. But then, neither Clifton nor Yoshi had spent the past several days in an isolated village on a part of

Terra that was a legal preserve. “Conforming” businesses and homes were permitted along the middle coast of the region that was still more often than not referred to as the State of Maine, and there was normal access to public transportation and mass media for those who lived there; but while those things were available they didn't intrude from moment to moment as they did elsewhere. So Kate and Serina had been able to ignore the universe outside, and had concentrated on what they'd both sensed would probably be their last time to be with the old people and to enjoy the girlhood home they had both known before the grandparents’ passing changed it forever. So it wasn't surprising if Clifton and Yoshi knew of some happening that had completely bypassed the people in this household, two because they had stopped caring as they prepared to end their lives and two because they were vacationing as completely as they possibly could. But Kate wasn't budging until someone told her what that something was; she did want to get on board a ship headed for Gateway, but she knew of no reason why Serina or Clifton needed to accompany her—or of any reason why Yoshi should, either, except that he was choosing to do so. Yoshi said, “Kate, if we don't get out now we may never get another chance to leave. Things are so much better than they were under the old government that sometimes we forget all of the people who were part of it aren't gone, and all of them never will be. There's a debate going on right now in the Diet about whether or not you should be arrested again and tried for vandalizing the El'kah'th Gateway, or for escaping from beyond the Gate after you'd been banished, or for a few other crimes that took considerably more dreaming up than those two obvious ones did. So if you're smart you'll be on a ship outward bound before those damned fool politicians reach any resolution. The Questioners are gone, but the service still has an Internal Affairs section and they sure as hell still arrest people and imprison them. And they probably still do worse, I wouldn't want to bet your hide or mine that when New Brixton closed everything that used to happen there got stopped completely." "But why?” Kate wanted to know. She'd been trying so hard to relax, during these days at home she had done her best to make herself believe that all the threats and terrors were behind her; and since she'd seen the changes in the way the political and judicial systems operated with her own eyes, she could hardly stand to think now that after giving her a public welcome back from exile the new government could or would turn on her. She didn't want that feeling in her gut to be proved right, this one time she had been trying to ignore it—and simultaneously praying that it might be wrong. “They can't give a damn about the Gateway on El'kah, they'll never have access to it unless we go to war. And as for me escaping after being banished, when I arrived at Luna City that made me a hero!" "And you didn't cooperate with that role, Sis,” Clifton Bradley said gently. “Remember? I know you had no idea you were snubbing the press and the politicos, you were just tired and in a kind of daze and all you wanted to do right then was get home. But after you left I started to realize you'd unintentionally stepped on a lot of toes—kicked a lot of shins, actually, is how those with the biggest egos perceived it! And I hoped it would blow over; but when I came down here today I was going to tell you what was going on. I hoped you'd make up your mind to go back with me and talk to the right people, and maybe smooth things over and patch them up." "Too late for that now,” Yoshi said succinctly. “Come on, Kate. You too, Serina. If there's anyone left on Terra that can be used to force Kate back, I can name a couple of people in that debate now who wouldn't hesitate to do it—and believe me, I don't want to be the one who gets left behind to find out just how far they'd go." "But I'm on active duty again!” Kate said, and shook her head to clear it. “Mother just told me she's put in for retirement, so I suppose she'll be able to walk through the gate at the spaceport and not have to worry about anyone stopping her. And you're a civilian employee of the medical service, Cliff; and you're

just plain a civilian, Yoshi, so now that nonmilitary travel's been decontrolled you can go anywhere you want without tripping alarms and calling up security goons. But if I try to board a ship that's headed for open space without getting the right permissions and clearances...." "It's taken care of,” Clifton said, and gently squeezed her again. “Yoshi and I may be civilians, Sis, but we're not stupid civilians. We've been talking to each other and doing some planning, while you and Mother were busy here. Are you ready to die all over again? Because as far as the Diet's going to know, that's what you're about to do." "Cliff?” Kate looked up at him, this “little brother” who towered above her and had been doing so ever since he reached early adolescence in human years. She was puzzled and apprehensive, but not frightened. She couldn't be, not with that arm around her. "It's okay, Kate. We'll take the research ship for an in-system test cruise, something will go wrong, and the rest of us will ‘die’ right along with you There's just no other way to do this now, because sooner or later someone might get the idea your death was faked—and then they'd try to flush you out no matter where you were hiding, they'd get hold of one of us and apply persuasion until they got you back.” Clifton let his sister go, after a final one-armed hug. “Come on, we've got to move now. They could go from debate into action at any minute." Kate stood where she was for a moment longer anyway. She stared at the two old people who sat so peacefully dead in their chairs, and she shut out the rest of the room and let the idea that had been forming in her subconscious rise to a level of her mind where she could access it. Then she looked at Clifton again and she said, “Wait! If we go dashing off to take a test cruise and leave Gram and Grandpa, any damn fool's going to know something's wrong. But if we take an extra few minutes now and set this up right, we can convince any harbormaster in the Sovereignty that we really are just taking the ship out to the edge of the system and back." **** Just a little more than two hours after the deaths of two old people in Castine, Maine, a small, fast starship left Luna City with four living people and two burial pods on board it. It was a civilian charter, not a military vessel; a ship that Dalhousie University sometimes hired to provide groups of its professors and their students with research experiences during term breaks, and sometimes to conduct full-fledged credit-earning courses. Today it was on lease to Professor Yoshi Sakagawa—a lease that he'd invoked a few days before the start of a special research cruise so that his life-partner, Captain Kate Landay of the Explorers, and her family could lay their two oldest members to rest in the way that they had requested. Not that the wills of Morgan Landay or John Bradley had said anything about burial in space, of course; so their heirs had been required to swear that they'd made verbal requests. But not even Kate was the least bit troubled by that particular untruth, because she knew that if they'd realized such requests would save the lives of their daughter and her children, and the life of their unborn great-grandchild, the old people would have been glad to cooperate. Actually they hadn't cared enough about what would be done with their mortal remains to give any instructions of that type at all, because to them a body without life in it was simply fertilizer for their plants. Their land and its buildings—the nursery and the ancient house—that would have belonged to their fully human descendants who were now leaving Earth, would go instead to the young people who'd been operating the business anyway. And with the land would go their franchise, their right to cast votes for representation in the Diet of the Sovereignty that included many worlds but had Terra at its heart. The little research ship cleared the sun's gravity well, and then the accident happened. Far enough out so that while it would be noted, it couldn't be observed so closely that its actual nature would be easy to

prove—although it was probably asking too much to hope that no one would suspect the real cause of that sudden blossoming on the viewscreens and sensors of other ships in the general vicinity, or on the long range sensors of monitoring stations back on Luna and on other outposts further out toward the solar system's edge. The ship's power supply exploded, and it disappeared from everyone's monitors. It was gone, and so were the people who'd been aboard it. **** "How does it feel to be dead for the second time in your life, Kate?” Yoshi Sakagawa asked as he sat down beside Kate Landay in the research vessel's small control room. She was at the helm, of course; and Yoshi was just up from the engine room, where he had orchestrated that “disaster” with a boyish pleasure that had astonished her. After all the years she'd been to all intents and purposes this man's life-mate, she had never suspected him of having the wry and wicked sense of humor that he was demonstrating now. She turned toward him, and she smiled. Those words that just a few days ago would have caused her to shudder with involuntary recollections of what had happened to her with the Questioners, today seemed like the bittersweet jest that Yoshi intended them to be. She answered, “I feel free, Yoshi.” And that wasn't a joke, she meant it completely. No more hoping she could find her place again within the service after so many things had changed, about that organization and about Kate Landay herself. No more wondering if she would have to resign her newly reclaimed commission in order to be allowed to investigate the Gateway's current status, to confirm that contacting Joe and Amy and her father was impossible—or to find a way to do so in spite of having been told that it couldn't be done. And especially no more trying to ignore the turmoil that her command intuition, that cross between curse and blessing, had persisted in stirring up inside her ever since she'd renewed her oath by the simple act of donning that four-striped tunic again. There was a curious kind of release in being considered dead, and since everyone in the universe she cared about now either was here with her—or was on Arcadia—or far away on El'kah, there was no sorrow in knowing that she wouldn't see Earth again. She'd always called that spot on the coast of Maine “home,” but the Europeans among her ancestors had made it that by leaving another shore behind them forever; and even those of her forebears who'd been Native North Americans had originally come there from somewhere else on Terra. So she could and would do the same thing they had done, only her journey would be much longer because her next home wouldn't just be washed by a different ocean. It would orbit another sun. [Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter 16 "Kate, wake up and listen to this." Kate Landay rolled over in the berth, with difficulty because she was now eight months pregnant and getting larger every day. She opened her eyes, looked at Yoshi Sakagawa and said, “Whatever it is, record it. I want to go back to sleep." "No, you don't. You want to hear this,” her former lover answered firmly, and turned up the comm

volume. Sharing this cabin with him hadn't been Kate's idea, but when she'd found that Yoshi expected her to do so she hadn't objected. Staterooms were at a premium here on the little Dreamcatcher , as this vessel had been whimsically rechristened by Clifton Bradley (its former name of Glooscap having been eradicated after it was “destroyed"). Before Yoshi chartered it, its sleeping accommodations had consisted of a bunk room for students—which in the course of sailing preparations he'd caused to be converted to much-needed extra cargo storage; a minuscule dispensary in which no one who wasn't sick would have chosen to bunk; and just three private cabins for faculty members. Two of the cabins were small, clearly meant for singles. One was spacious enough for a couple, complete with a double berth. If someone had asked Kate how to arrange their accommodations she would have placed herself and her mother in the double cabin, but Yoshi had arranged the quarters to his own liking; and before Kate had realized it, Serina had been settled into a single from which only a torpedo could have dislodged her. And much as Kate adored Clifton, she certainly didn't want to bunk with him. Even if they'd figured out a way to substitute two single berths for this double, she still wouldn't have wanted to share her sleeping quarters with any male creature except.... Either Joe or Yoshi. She soon discovered that she didn't mind sleeping beside her ex-lover, and their first moments of awkwardness were left behind swiftly as the two of them fell back into their old habits and rediscovered their own particular ways of living together. And as for making love, she wouldn't have cared about doing that now even if she'd had Joe there beside her every night instead of Yoshi. She had felt frustrated at first, back when she was less than five months along and their journey was just beginning; then her libido had often reminded her that Yoshi was a damnably attractive man. But he hadn't made even the most discreet attempt to approach her sexually, and she hadn't approached him. Given their circumstances it would have seemed indecent to her to do that, not because she was carrying someone else's baby but because at the end of this passage she still had every intention doing her damnedest to re-establish her life partnership with that other man. Well, she wasn't bothered in the least now by the sight of Yoshi in the briefest bit of underwear. Nor did she fear making him uncomfortable if her nightgown rode up when she reluctantly swung her legs over the edge of the berth; modesty had deserted them months earlier, and that at least made life together a workable proposition. And in spite of her protests she realized he had been correct—she did want to hear this message, or broadcast, or whatever it was, because by now she'd made out the sound of her name. "Captain Kate Landay, or Katherine Landry as some records call her,” the voice was saying in Standard but with a thick off-world accent. “Wanted by the Sovereignty's Defense Ministry, Division of Internal Affairs, for falsifying log entries during her service as a Ranger two decades ago; a crime only recently uncovered, that allowed the leader of the Alba Five rebellion to avoid being charged with desertion. This woman and a party consisting of a male human of Oriental ancestry—a male half human, half El'kah'th—and one elderly human female of mostly European ancestry, stole a ship from a leasing firm on Terra four standard months ago. They may soon be entering this sector, attempting to reach the planet Terrans once called Gateway. The Diet of the Sovereignty has posted a reward for the capture of this woman and her associates. Alert, all ships within range...." "It's automated, of course,” Yoshi said as he finally shut the voice off. “I'm not surprised someone finally woke up and realized we faked the Glooscap 's explosion, and I'm not surprised they made up charges against you to justify issuing arrest warrants for all of us. But even though the sector's in dispute now that New Brixton's been abandoned, I am surprised that they're trying to enlist non-Sovereignty ships to

capture us. That's a first, isn't it? I hope it doesn't mean we'll have a welcoming committee waiting for us at Gateway!" Kate was dressing now, awkwardly and without the least attempt at modesty. When she came to the places where she had difficulty managing a garment or fastener with her big belly, she presented herself for Yoshi's assistance and felt no embarrassment whatsoever. Not because he was seeing her with little or no clothing while she looked like this, and certainly not because she needed his help; in both respects he might just as well have been the father of the child she was carrying. She'd long ago convinced herself that if he was willing to assist her in the ways a husband would at such a time, then she could accept him in that role and would simply be glad he cared about her that much. Should she tell him that the charges against her weren't manufactured ones, not this time? She hesitated over that decision, but only because she wasn't certain she wanted to saddle him with the burden of the truth. And she decided after a moment that she wouldn't tell him, because what the man didn't know he could never be forced to reveal under torture. She couldn't guess how that old forgery had finally come to the Defense Ministry's attention, and not knowing troubled her. Had they really conducted that careful an analysis of every log entry she'd ever made, during more than two decades as a service officer? Or had someone from her old Ranger unit guessed her secret, and volunteered it for reward? And did this mean that Yoshi's concern would prove true; would they find a service detachment, or even local bounty hunters, waiting for them when they arrived at Gateway? When she finally did speak she said, “There's one way to find out, isn't there?" "Kate.... “Yoshi had just finished pulling on her second boot for her, and he was still kneeling on the deck at her feet. He looked up into her face, and the worry in his dark eyes was plain. “Do you really want to risk sailing into a trap right now?" As if responding to a cue, Kate's unborn son kicked her lustily from within. She gasped, put both hands to her belly and pressed gently against its distended wall. This was the issue she'd been avoiding ever since they'd left Earth, and up until now Yoshi had cooperated with her by not bringing it up either. The exact length of time required for a passage between systems depended on many variables, that was why there never had been such things as starships that operated according to firm timetables; and she had hoped they'd get to Gateway long before she was this close to giving birth. Yoshi, of course, must have hoped the same. And since turning back toward Earth had never been an option, although they had both realized weeks earlier that Kate's pregnancy was going to come to term somewhere far out in space they had simply kept on going; and they hadn't tried to talk about it. But now they must talk about it, because hearing that message and knowing that spacefaring locals in this sector were likely to be gunning for them in addition to any Sovereignty forces that might be waiting for them at Gateway made one hell of a lot of difference. Kate said softly, “What do you suggest we do instead, Yoshi?" "Well ... at least we should wait to tackle Gateway until you've had the baby. We have a doctor on board and we're still well supplied, so we can afford that wait. And even though Cliff has learned a lot about this ship in the past four months, and I know its design inside out—the fact is that you and Serina are still the ones who'd really have to take care of things if we did run into trouble, because designing a ship's one thing and fighting an enemy with it's something else again.” Yoshi reached up and caressed her belly, and his eyes grew wide with wonder when the baby kicked again and he felt the pressure through both her body and her clothing. “Kate, I can actually feel that little boy's foot!"

"So can I,” Kate answered dryly, and then she had to laugh. The tension had been broken, and at just the right moment; now she no longer felt, somehow, that she had to cling so tightly to her purpose in being here that she couldn't give other matters the priority they deserved. Other matters such as the life that was moving so vigorously inside her right now, as if the baby knew his welfare was at stake and was reminding his mother of that fact. "All right,” she said. “We'll change course, steer clear of trouble and maybe find a place to lay low for awhile. I hate to admit it, but the idea of getting into a fight right now doesn't do a damned thing for me. I can hardly get out of my own way, much less anyone else's." And then she added, “But first let's find that damned message buoy and take it out!" **** She'd had the best of intentions, but fate wasn't going to allow her to “steer clear of trouble.” Kate was just finishing breakfast in the little starship's saloon, an ancient seafaring term that was now applied to the combination of mess hall and common living area on small civilian vessels, when a red alert klaxon sounded and she discovered that she could get out of her seat a lot faster than she'd imagined in her current condition. Red alert was a signal that crossed all the lines of ship classes and military vs. civilian distinctions. And when the officer of the watch declared it, even the ship's captain must respond as fast as was humanly possible. Kate sank into the co-pilot's seat in the control room, not wanting to take the time to supplant her mother in the pilot's chair. She didn't have to ask what was wrong, she could see the viewscreen as well as Serina could. "Bogey off the starboard bow,” Serina reported anyway. “I've been hailing them, and they're not responding. Their ID is Sovereignty, Kate, but they're not even as big as we are. And it looks to me as if they've got some real problems." "Explorer, Ranger, or Regular?” Kate asked as her hands danced over the console in front of her. She could still get into this seat only because it was adjustable for large human males, and even so her belly kept her further from the keypads than she wanted to be. "None of the above. It's an Internal Affairs long-distance shuttle." "I.A..” Kate couldn't help repeating that information, and she also couldn't help the way it caused the blood to drain from her face. But she concentrated on the readouts in front of her, and she soon saw what Serina had meant by real problems aboard the other craft. “They can't go to warp, and they're far enough from Gateway now so that getting back there at sublight speeds would take them a hell of a long time. And there's no ‘they’ about it, actually; there's one life sign only, although there are several corpses. The life sign is human, and female." "She's still got weapons,” Serina said tautly. “That's why I called for red alert, Kate." "And you were right, Mother.” Addressing Serina as “Commander Landay” would no longer have been appropriate even if Kate had wanted to do so, and frankly she didn't want to revert to formal command structure. Not only while the four of them, two former military officers and two civilians, were on this little ship together; and she didn't think she would ever want to be called by her own former title again

anyway, not after the way its restoration had turned out. “If that one person is conscious and knows how to use the weapons system, she can be just as dangerous as a whole shipload of people.” She pursed her lips, thought a moment, and then said, “Did you identify us when you sent that hail, Mother?" "Of course not,” Serina said, and snorted. “Why take that risk?" "Because that woman out there could be playing possum, and if so she's a lot more scared of us than we are of her.” Kate closed her eyes for a moment, claiming privacy in which to test her intuition and decide whether to heed what it seemed to be telling her now. “No, that's not it at all; this isn't a game of possum. Those life signs are so low ... either she's unconscious, or she's too weak to respond to us, or—she's in stasis." "What?” Serina was the one whose hands flew over the touchpads now. After a moment she looked at her daughter, and she nodded. “Damned if you're not right,” she said almost grudgingly. “But I guess that's why they almost made you an admiral, isn't it?" "Almost,” Kate responded, and she grinned with relief. “I'm 99 percent sure I'm reading this right, Mother, especially since what you're seeing backs me up. But 99 percent's not good enough, so someone's going to have to verify this personally. Are you game?" "I think I have to be, unless we're going to sail on past and ignore that craft completely. The other alternative's to dock with it without verifying its status first, and that could turn into a fast recipe for suicide if there's a problem over there we aren't detecting.” Serina nodded calmly. She didn't mention that if anything happened to her, Kate would be the only qualified pilot left on board the Dreamcatcher . And as for her age—that wasn't significant, it would have hindered her working outside the ship in a suit only if she'd been afflicted with joint stiffness or shortness of breath or some other activity-limiting health condition. She was getting old and she knew it, but Serina's physical condition was excellent. She moved to the suit locker, down in the ship's belly near its personnel airlock, and she donned one of the vacuum-proof garments without having to ask anyone to assist her with its seals or even with its helmet. "Yoshi, Cliff,” Kate said from the control room, where she had rerouted the panels instead of going to the awkwardness of moving herself to the now-vacant pilot's chair. To say “Captain to all hands” would have sounded foolish, but sheer habit had nearly caused her to do so. “Looks like that's a derelict out there, it'll be about a hundred years getting to any habitable world under its own power. It's carrying one faint life-sign, and there's no way I can talk myself into leaving any sentient creature to die alone in space. So Mother's going out. I've dropped us out of warp, and I'm going in as close as I dare without actually docking until she gives me the go-ahead." "Understood,” Clifton said from his red alert post in the ship's tiny dispensary. "Got it,” Yoshi answered from the engine room, where he of course had known it when they dropped out of warp but hadn't known why. “Kate, I could—" "Negative. Your extra-vehicular activity certification is only for ships in spacedock,” Kate answered firmly. “That's not a bit like maneuvering with a powered backpack in open space. Let Mother do her job, Yoshi." A few minutes later Serina was accessing the outside control panel on the other vessel's airlock, and was relieved when it yielded to her commands instead of locking her out. If the craft somehow contained

undetected inhabitants they hadn't felt threatened, then; hadn't thought it necessary to protect themselves from a suited intruder ... and of course, docking required that someone on board cooperate in the necessary maneuvers. The only other way to gain access to the interior of a vessel in open space was to tractor it inside a cargo bay, if you had a ship that was big enough to accomplish that, or to blast a hole in its skin and then see if anything useful to you remained after the resultant explosive decompression. Kate waited. She wanted to pace, and if she'd been back on the bridge of one of her former starship commands she would certainly have been doing that. But now she had neither the deck space nor the energy, so she just sat and drummed her fingers on her chair-arm and was glad that her favorite among the first officers who had served under her wasn't around to protest at how much that drumming annoyed him. She wondered just where Raj was now, and whether his having served under her had caused him to suffer in any way. "I'm in,” Serina's voice finally announced. “Air's stale but breathable. And you were right, Kate, there are several bodies here—just about mummified—and one stasis tube. I can't find any reason to delay docking, so give me the word and I'll take the conn over here." "The word's given,” Kate said. A delicate dance followed, a mating ritual of sorts between two star-going vessels. At length two hatches joined with what would have been a thud if there had been sound in the vacuum around them, and at each vessel's controls a human female sighed with relief and then relaxed. Relaxed a trifle, anyway. Now Serina would bring the stasis tube aboard on antigravs, since having anyone else go across represented a needless risk; and then Kate would have to decide whether after casting the other vessel off she should take it in tow, or leave it a derelict, or destroy it before the Dreamcatcher proceeded on her way. **** "The Gate didn't open for months,” Amy Salter said as she sat up in the narrow medical berth, in the dispensary that would now have to become either her cabin or Clifton's, and sipped at a container of hot coffee (the one fluid she'd demanded upon awakening from stasis). “And then when it finally did open, no one and nothing came through it. And during all that time there was nothing but silence from the other side, we couldn't raise anyone no matter what we did. The old-timers said it was like it used to be before it was possible to communicate with the other side at all ... before Joe." "What happened when the Gate did open?” Kate Landay sat beside her friend and watched her with love and relief. Just exactly how Amy had come to be aboard a Sovereignty spacecraft, particularly an Internal Affairs-designated craft, was a tale that she couldn't wait to hear; but she was compelling herself to be patient. She knew what it was like to wake up from stasis without knowing how much time had passed, or where you were waking, or what might have taken place while you'd slept. So she was prompting only with the gentlest of questions, and mostly she was just listening—and touching. Her hand rested on Amy's arm, and when she had to get out of the way so that Clifton could check his patient's progress she did so with reluctance. "We went out through it, a team that Hanna put together,” Amy said, and swallowed more coffee. “She figured that something had happened on the other side, something terrible or wonderful depending on whose viewpoint you were taking. And she was right; the place was deserted."

Kate looked at Clifton, and the two of them nodded. Of course; if the Gate had been sealed, why bother to guard it? This agreed with what they'd been told—except that apparently the “sealing” hadn't lasted. "We got stranded on the other side, the opening didn't last anywhere near as long as it normally would have,” Amy resumed. “But the New Brixton people hadn't taken time to clear out their buildings as thoroughly as they might have, so we found food and power supplies and we started settling in and surveying things while we waited for the Gate to open up again. And we realized it could be a long haul, because we'd brought one scientist with us—a fairly recent exile—and he determined that something had really fouled up the Gate's normal energy pattern." "Something certainly did!” Kate muttered. Then when her friend looked at her inquiringly she smiled and said, “Go on. I'm sorry, Amy, I don't want to interrupt you. What you're telling me may keep us alive, and that's why I'm making you wait before I tell you anything—even about this.” And she patted her pregnant belly. Amy grinned at that. She said, “A long-range shuttle landed on Gateway while we were still stranded outside the Gate. We played cat and mouse with the I.A.'s aboard it, and we picked them off; by then we knew the complex so well that they were on our turf, not the other way around. And since we couldn't get back through the Gate and we had a warp-capable craft at our disposal, we put together a crew of people who had some starship training—I had the most, believe it or not!—and we took it for a test run." "And it lost warp power,” Kate said, her mind automatically performing the calculations that would tell her how far the shuttle had managed to travel from Gateway before that had happened. "Yes. And since by then we'd used up most of the food we found when we first started scavenging New Brixton's leftovers, us geniuses had off-loaded most of the shuttle's rations for use on the planet. We had no idea we were going to be away for longer than a couple of days, we figured that before we undertook anything but a test flight we'd resupply from Gateway City during the Gate's next opening. So we traveled at sublight—first on short rations, then without anything to eat at all—until the others died, and finally I had to put myself into stasis or I'd have died too. There was only one stasis tube aboard, so there never was a question that the last person alive would be the one to use it ... how long ago was that?” Amy clearly had to force out that question. She needed to know, but she didn't really want to know. "You were in stasis for thirty-seven days, according to that shuttle's autolog,” Kate said softly. "Do you know anything about what's happened on Gateway since I left there?” Amy surrendered her empty cup, and then gripped Kate's hand that had been resting on her arm. “And do you know why the Gate stopped functioning the way it used to?" "No, I don't know what's happened there since you left,” Kate answered, still gently. “But I do know what happened to the Gate, Amy. The new government, the Sovereignty's new Diet, had it destroyed. Or at least that was what they meant to do, and since they abandoned the planet afterward they must have believed they'd succeeded. The long-range shuttle must have come back only to verify that what they did was what they intended ... and after your group killed them off, I don't know whether the Diet would have sent another party or if things out here became just too turbulent for that. This isn't Sovereignty territory any longer, it's in dispute now." "Then I may never see Hanna again,” Amy whispered. She clung to Kate's hand, their roles of so many other occasions now reversed. “If they did send in a follow-up team, they must have realized they'd failed

to destroy the Gate—and they must have made another attempt at it. But there's another way in and out, you must have found another way or you couldn't possibly be here now! How did you do it, Kate? We thought you and Joe were both killed by the Rusties, and now here you are not only still alive but on this side of the Gate. And if Cliff and Yoshi and your mother are here with you, then you've been off Arcadia long enough to go back to Earth and get all the way back out here. What happened, and where's Joe?" Kate's eyes had been stinging for some minutes now. At that they overflowed, and she closed them and bit her lip and waited until she could control herself before she tried to speak again. And then she settled herself into the berth-side chair, held her friend's thin hand cradled between both of hers, and began talking softly. Telling her everything, from the moment the klaxon had sounded as she and Hanna Leone had walked through the streets of Gateway City; until today, when Clifton had opened the stasis tube recovered from the I.A. long-range shuttle and had told his sister who it was that lay unconscious within. [Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter 17 "I have to know,” Kate had declared firmly, and this time she'd been unshakable. “You think I can settle down to another month of being pregnant without finding out what's happened on Gateway? Well, I can't! We'll take every precaution, we'll play it just as safe as we can, but we're going in now while I can still function. And just what gives any of you the idea that I'm going to be better able to do it later than I am right now, at least for the first few months after the baby's born?" Surprisingly from Kate's point of view, it was her mother who supported her then. “You're right,” Serina had said bluntly. “Even with the best medical help, no one's ever figured out a way to give birth that doesn't leave a woman exhausted and no one's ever figured out a way to keep a newborn baby from being the most time-consuming project known to humankind. So if you need to find out what's happened on Gateway, you either do it now or you make up your mind that it's going to have to wait until at least three or four months from now." So Kate had set Dreamcatcher's course toward Gateway, and she'd brought the little ship into a high orbit. No other ships were there, and there never had been any satellite network established in Gateway's skies; so as long as they detected no incoming bogeys they were safe, or would be while they remained in orbit. What would happen to anyone who ventured down to the planet's surface was, of course, quite another question to be answered. The best thing about having a research ship for this job was that Dreamcatcher 's scanners were both powerful and sensitive, impressively so even to an ex-Explorer like Kate Landay. They could learn as much from orbit as had been the case with any vessel she'd ever been aboard. Enough so that as she monitored sweep after sweep, she wondered whether she would in the end be able to risk sending someone dirtside to verify what those scans had already told her. Either the Sovereignty had sent its forces back to Gateway since Amy Salter's party had left, or someone else had visited this world. In any case the ground installations where once the Questioners had operated, and the Gate's guardians had officiated, and where so many frightened humans had been driven through the portal from the universe they knew into a place that wasn't even of certain location—were gone. All gone, and the ground where New Brixton's installations had stood was blasted barren, and the

soil and the atmosphere were poisoned. As the data flowed from beneath her fingertips Kate Landay finally realized that not only could she not go down there in her present condition; she could not consider sending anyone else, either. Whether or not the Gate opened again here hardly mattered now, except that she did find herself wondering whether its doing so might not leak contamination through to Arcadia. So now she actually hoped it was forever disabled, because there was no way she wanted to think that the people she cared about on the other side might be harmed by that poison down there. She gave the order to leave orbit after she'd been at the sensors for twelve hours, with breaks taken only as her body demanded them. She directed Serina to set their course for the relative safety of open space, and then she went to the cabin she shared with Yoshi and she lay down on the berth without removing even her boots (an impossible task for her to perform unaided these days, anyway); and for the first time in her adult life she literally sobbed herself to sleep. **** She'd been awake, she knew that because she remembered using the head (more than once, in fact); she remembered Yoshi getting her out of her clothes somehow, and after that she recalled snuggling into the covers and dropping back to sleep. At intervals her son had half-roused her with his activities, but this was the first time she'd really come all the way to the surface since she had walked away from the sensors and at the same time had walked away from hope. She opened her eyes now to find Yoshi lying beside her, watching her with concern on his quiet face. When he saw that she was awake at last he smiled, clearly relieved; and it was almost instinctive for her to reach out to him then, and to let his arms draw her close when he responded with almost fierce delight. "Oh, you're back,” was all he said. But the words were punctuated by the touch of his lips against her cheek and her neck, and by the pressure of his arms around her. This was an awkward business, trying to embrace with eight months’ worth of baby between them, but they both turned their bodies and adjusted their positions until maximum skin contact was made. Comfort, pure comfort, was all this should have been about; Kate could hardly have been more amazed when she realized that her former lover was hard with excitement, and that the raggedness of his breathing now wasn't entirely due to relief at seeing her awake and aware once more. How could he be interested in her, huge and awkward as she was right now? But he'd slept beside her for months without making even the slightest advance, so perhaps her appearance didn't matter half as much as just the fact that she was female and she was there in his arms and her body was naked against his. And Kate was astonished at the flood of tenderness that welled up in her, at the gratitude she felt when she thought about everything this man's love for her had cost him. She couldn't open herself to him, not only because it would have seemed somehow indecent when she was this close to having someone else's baby—not only because she felt no desire at all to have him inside her—but right now it might not even be medically safe. She hadn't sought Cliff's or Amy's advice about that, because she hadn't anticipated wanting to have sex during this final month of her pregnancy. But she could, and she did, reach out to Yoshi now and touch him in the gentle ways she remembered so well. Intercourse was only one way of making love, and right now she very much wanted to make love to him. And it was a delicious feeling, a sensual experience for her too, when she felt him moving rhythmically and saw the way his eyes squeezed shut. She heard him cry out a few seconds later, felt the warm gush

over her hands and knew they were both going to need cleaning up and so was their berth; but she didn't care. He had followed it through to the end, it was over, and now there was nothing left for her to do except keep what she viewed as her side of the bargain. **** In the shower she rested against the enclosure and let Yoshi's hands do the bathing, because she felt too drained to do anything more strenuous than standing up. But her eyes flew open when she realized that the water was turned off now, and that he was still touching her but that his intent no longer had anything to do with cleanliness. "Yoshi.... “Should she protest? Not that what he was starting to do was going to hurt her, not that there was any reason now why she shouldn't allow such an intimacy; but she doubted her capacity to enjoy it, and after the sweet moment they'd just shared she did not want to disappoint him by failing to respond. Right now she didn't want to think about anything, though, and to her considerable surprise she felt a familiar but long-dormant tingling sensation starting to build as he knelt in front of her and his hands slipped under the bulk of her belly and found the soft folds between her legs. He parted her flesh gently, firmly caressed her where she was most sensitive; and she found herself gasping and shuddering, and although moving against his hand was out of the question in her present position she didn't need to. He did it all, and then stood up and moved in close to her side and held her while the last quivers of ecstasy spent themselves and supported her when she sagged against his shoulder. And for the first time since she'd come home, she heard his voice murmuring the old familiar endearments and felt his lips nuzzling her temple and her ear and her throat. But to say the corresponding words back to him was more than she could manage right now; she was agreeably surprised that she'd found such pleasure in his touch, but that was as much response as she was capable of giving him. If that disappointed him he didn't say so. And soon enough another kind of physical response took control of the situation, because as he was helping her out of the shower she felt flooding from between her legs and this time it was far more than the lubrication of sexual excitement. Even though she understood its significance immediately she froze when it happened; stood there with Yoshi still tugging gently at her arm, and futilely tried to see past her bulging abdomen and said in amazement: “My god, Yoshi! Look!" He looked, and his burnished-golden face went ivory. He said reverently, “Well, I'll be damned. I guess you're going to be a mother a little sooner than you thought, Kate." **** It hurt, but it was bearable. Not that she tried to explain that evaluation of her labor to anyone else, because only Amy might possibly have understood; but compared to what she'd endured during her time in the hands of the Questioners, having her baby was a distinctly painful but by no means overwhelming experience. Then she'd had no hope it would end, by any means except in death; then she'd been surrounded by people whose only thought was how to hurt her more effectively. Here she knew that although it might seem endless, this was a natural process that certainly would reach its resolution (or that if it didn't, would be resolved by the two very competent physicians who were taking care of her). And she was surrounded by people who loved her—her mother and her brother, her best friend and her life partner. Yoshi was playing that role just as if he'd fathered the child she was bearing, and somehow she had the

distinct feeling that it was a right he'd earned rather than a favor that she was granting to him. He was the one who held her against the worst of it, and when the time finally came for her to push the little boy out of her body both doctors stood back and let the child slide into Yoshi's welcoming hands. Then the baby was crying, and she was too, and so was Yoshi. And so was everyone else, because after all in one way or another this child belonged to every person on board the ship. **** Kate lay in bed, in her own familiar quarters, and drowsed with her baby cuddled in the curve of her arm. He had nursed vigorously, startling her by just how savagely he clamped down on her nipple and at how fiercely he was capable of tugging; she hadn't really expected that part to hurt, and it had. But both of her physicians had promised her that her body would adjust, and that her little boy would calm, as they repeated that curiously intimate act together; and anyway he was worth it, just as he'd been worth everything else. For just a moment she looked down at his narrow head, dusted with coal-black fuzz that he'd clearly gotten from Joe and not from her, and she found herself wondering what the daughter they had lost so long ago would have looked like. But that didn't last long, not with Yoshi bending down to kiss her forehead and to say tenderly, “I'm sorry, sweetheart. It's probably my fault this happened to you four weeks early, but...." "Yoshi, what we did in the shower didn't have a thing to do with my labor starting!” She managed not to laugh. He was so utterly serious, she was sure she was going to hurt his feelings if she did that; and that would have been like kicking a kitten, she'd never seen the man look as vulnerable as he did right now. For all the years of their relationship while she'd been a field officer with the Explorers and he had held his Terran professorship, there had been ways in which he kept himself emotionally remote from her even in their most passionate moments together; but today all his barriers were down, all the commitment he'd so carefully protected himself by withholding was hers at last. Given not just to her, but also to this child who was someone else's son biologically but who had known Yoshi's as the first hands to touch him. "Are you sure about that?” Yoshi asked now, his forehead wrinkling worriedly. “I mean, an orgasm's a uterine spasm, isn't it? And so is—" "Labor. But believe me, my love, they're not the same thing. Not at all!” Kate started to laugh, and then realized what she'd just called him. And suddenly both of them were very still, and she looked into his face and their eyes locked. "What are we going to call him?” Yoshi asked after a long moment. There was relief in his eyes now, and the start of a contentment that Kate had never seen there before. “And I want you to know up front that it's fine with me if you call him ‘Joseph.’ I'm perfectly okay with that, Kate. I want you to tell him about his father, I want him to be proud of who he is." She nodded, because right now she didn't trust herself to speak. But after a time she managed to say, “Yoshi, some children have more than two parents. I will tell him about Joe, I do want him to understand that he's Joe's child; but he's your son, too, and you're the father he'll grow up knowing and loving. And that makes him one very fortunate little boy, and his mother a lucky woman, too, I think." "Go to sleep,” Yoshi said, and this time he kissed her mouth instead of her forehead. **** "So where do we go now? And what do we do when we get there?” Kate opened the meeting, if this

gathering of her extended family could really be called by that formal a designation, with those two blunt questions. They sat together in the saloon, she with her week-old son cuddled against her shoulder following a feeding at her breast. Yoshi was beside her, looking as if he had a right to be there now. Amy Salter had settled at her other side, an Amy who'd recovered her physical health quite well in the days since she'd emerged from post-starvation stasis; but who was clearly saddened at knowing she would never be able to get back to Arcadia and Hanna Leone. What was it Joe had said when he and Kate had speculated together about that relationship's foundation? “Maybe she just fell in love for the first time.” That was exactly what had happened, and Amy had made no bones about it and had simply assumed that Kate's acceptance would be a given. And it was, Kate thought as she looked at her friend now and wished with all her heart she could somehow find a way to send Amy back to the place where she wanted to be. Oh, she knew how that felt! But she had what Amy didn't have; in small Joseph she had a bit of her absent lover to care for and nurture, to watch for signs of likeness to his biological father. And she also had Yoshi, whom she loved too although in a different way. Once she would have thought she was giving up, by admitting to herself that if she never saw Joe again she could live contentedly with her baby to raise and with Yoshi as her partner; but now she thought nothing of the kind. It wasn't some ridiculous, old-fashioned “this boy needs a father to bring him up” kind of reasoning that had brought her to this place, but only that she'd loved Yoshi for years while Joe hadn't been part of her life—and that if Yoshi could still love her now, then she wanted and needed to accept his love. And there was nothing to stop her, and while she certainly could have reared small Joseph by herself she was glad to have a willing helper for that monumental task. And of course also there in the saloon with Kate were her mother, a grandmother at last and beaming with pride; and her brother, who was starting to look as lost as Amy did after months of being away from Earth and isolated aboard a tiny ship with just three (now five!) other people. Clifton Bradley needed interpersonal contact even more than he needed touch, and he wasn't getting enough of either these days. But he was coping, so far at least, and now he was the first to speak up and respond to his sister's questions. "I think we ought to make a run for El'kah'th space,” he said quietly but decisively. That had occurred to Kate; she nodded, and glanced around at the others. Plainly it hadn't occurred to any of them, because Amy looked puzzled and Serina frowned and Yoshi positively scowled. And little Joseph yawned as Kate lowered him from her shoulder, arranged his tiny body in her lap, and watched tenderly as he sank down into sleep. Then she said, “Tell us why you think that's a good option, Cliff." She wanted to hug him for bringing that idea forward so that she didn't have to. If it had come from her it might have sounded callous, both to Serina and to Yoshi; but Clifton couldn't be accused of having her particular agenda, and he didn't know (or at least Kate didn't believe he knew) about his mother's aversion to seeing his natural father again. Clifton said, “Well, first of all it's a place where Sovereignty ships can't follow us and where no one is going to give a damn about a Sovereignty-offered reward for your hide, Kate."

"And second?” she prompted. She didn't look at the others, but with her peripheral vision she saw that Serina was nodding in unwilling agreement. "Second, if the Gateway we just found blasted to hell could recharge or renew itself a few months after it was supposed to have been destroyed, the same thing may be true of the Gate on El'kah. So Amy might be able to go through it back to her lover, and you might be able to find out about Joe and your father and your sister, Kate.” If Clifton realized that saying this in front of Yoshi was now a complete faux pas, he gave no sign of that knowledge. The newborn in Kate's lap couldn't have been more innocent than were his uncle's eyes, or his uncle's tone. “And I've always been damned curious about my ‘other’ people. I never thought I'd have a chance to meet my father, or anyone like him, but now that I've let myself think about it I know I want to do it. So whatever everyone else decides to do, Kate, sooner or later I'm going to El'kah. If I have to leave the Dreamcatcher to do it, that'll be fine; everyone else doesn't have to do this just because I need to. But I just told you why it might make sense for the whole group of us, at least for a next step until we can all make better plans." Kate turned her head and looked at Yoshi then. He was pale; once again his golden skin had become the hue of old ivory. But he said, “I don't know where else you might really be safe right now, Kate. And that's the most important thing, for you and little Joey to be somewhere out of harm's way while he's this tiny." In other words, he was willing to take one more risk for her sake and the baby's. Kate nodded. She turned again and asked, “Mother?" Serina Landay put her hand on Clifton's arm. She said, “Hatim is your father, Cliff. If you want to see him, then you should. And I don't have anywhere more important to go or anything better to do these days, so maybe I'll just tag along and—settle a few old ghosts." "Mother?” Clifton asked. "Not now,” she said, and she squeezed his arm gently. "Amy?” Kate had left her friend until last, mostly because the others’ reactions were unknown quantities and she was sure of what Amy was going to say. "How long is it going to take us to get there?” Amy wanted to know. For the first time since she'd come out of stasis, she was smiling with her eyes as well as with her mouth. [Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter 18 It took six months. Which made it more than a year since Kate Landay had found herself standing in that ceremonial stadium on El'kah. Joey was crawling around Dreamcatcher 's decks now, and while she would nurse him for several more months he was no longer completely dependent on his mother for his nourishment. If she'd had the full care of him, Kate thought as she sat writing in the saloon and watched her baby as he scooted toward Amy who was just entering the compartment, she couldn't imagine how she might have been able to get anything else done—particularly during his earliest weeks of life, when she had still been physically less

than at peak and when he had been completely helpless and unbelievably demanding of adult attention. But there were four other adults aboard with her, each of them was willing to take care of the baby to one extent or another, and so she'd been able to get a decent amount of sleep and recover her strength and return to acting as Dreamcatcher' s captain by the time her son was just a week old. By that day when they'd sat together in this compartment and had decided to chart this particular course, to strike out across the space separating Gateway from El'kah and head there directly without pausing at any of the inhabited worlds that they knew were scattered along their way. That part of the choice had been difficult, because although they were well-supplied with food and fuel (after all, Dreamcatcher had been designed to carry many more people than were now aboard her) there was little they could learn about happenings back in the Sovereignty without deliberately contacting other ships or inhabited systems. The dangers of doing that, though, had clearly outweighed the possible benefits; because either they were still on the Sovereignty's “most wanted list” (a term Yoshi had pulled out of his copious memory, from some old novel or play or other, to his shipmates’ amusement) or they weren't. If they were still subject to pursuit and arrest, then stopping at or near population centers would be suicidal and completely avoiding contact with other ships was nothing more than playing it safe. And if somehow that order had been lifted, if they could return to the Sovereignty without endangering themselves, then they would find that out soon enough because although El'kah didn't have diplomatic relations with the Sovereignty there was regular communication between its citizens and those of neutral worlds who also communicated with Terra. So if anyone wanted to “go home” then (a phrase that for Kate now had very little meaning, at least as far as Terra or anywhere else in the Sovereignty was concerned), it would be possible. And in the meantime the two people aboard Dreamcatcher who wanted to get to a functioning Gate would have reached the one spot in the known galaxy where they might find one. Amy picked up Joey, who had reached her feet and had clasped his little arms around her ankles. Kate smiled as she watched her friend holding the baby to her breast, and then had to stifle a laugh when Joey did what it was absolutely natural for him to do at this time of the day—but what was as embarrassing as hell for Amy. The infant nuzzled, searching through the fabric of the woman's clothing for access to a nipple, and tugged at her shirt's front closure with his tiny hands. Amy's fair skin reddened as she came hastily across the saloon and handed the child to Kate. “Here!” she said emphatically. “What he wants I don't have. Hasn't he figured out yet that you're the only one who nurses him?" "I guess not,” Kate said mildly, and rearranged her clothing and put her son to her breast. “There, is that better, little boy?" Joey settled in, suckling busily and kneading his mother with small hands that already looked remarkably like the far larger ones of another human male named Joseph. Kate put the log she'd been updating aside, and cuddled her baby and stroked his dark head and savored the fact that she had no pressing reason to do anything else right now. Which might change completely in just a few hours’ time. Amy said, “Serina sent me down to tell you that she's picking up some very faint El'kah'th transmissions on long-range sensors. She thought you'd want to be in the control room when we get close enough in so that someone in El'kah'th space is apt to hail us." "Thanks, I will want to be there.” Kate looked up from her child, and she nodded. “It's crazy, Amy, but I've got butterflies over this. What are we going to find out in the next day or so? We've come so far,

we've waited so long ... and now we'll soon know for what." "If we do find that the El'kah Gate is functioning again, and if that means you can go back to Joe or that he can come to this side to be with you—what are you going to do then, Kate?” Amy sat down, not across the table from her friend but close by her in the next chair, and leaned back and stared at her while she waited for a response to that question. "Damned if I know,” Kate answered frankly. “I've been living with Yoshi, not just sleeping in the same bed, ever since I got over having Joey. Somehow the idea of not making love with him seemed ridiculous after everything we'd been through. And there was a little while when I really did believe there wasn't any hope left that I ever would see Joe again ... and that was when I let Yoshi back into my life, and pushing him away again afterward just seemed too cruel. To him, and to me. But if Joe is still alive when we find a way to reach him and the others ... and if he hasn't found someone else, if he does still want me ... Amy, I don't know what in hell I'm going to do.” She cuddled her baby closer then, and went on feeding him in silence. Amy sat quietly for a time, watching them both and clearly trying to decide whether to say what she was thinking or to keep it to herself. And that was extraordinary, because she and Kate Landay had known each other all their adult lives and if anyone had the right to be completely blunt with Kate then that person definitely was Amy. At last she made up her mind, drew a breath to brace herself, and spoke. She said, “Kate, what makes you so sure you have to choose between them? You love them both, that's pretty clear. And they both love you, and Yoshi loves your baby and Joe's certainly going to love his son. So unless they insist that you choose one of them to live with and completely abandon the other—why are you assuming that you'll have to?" With that said, Amy got out of her chair and left the saloon. Quickly, because she neither wanted nor expected a reply. **** "My god, it's a battle line,” Serina said reverently. “I never thought I'd have to look at one of those again! And—" "I know, Mother. You're too damned old.” Kate spoke with wry humor, but she didn't smile. She'd barely finished feeding Joey, had still been sitting in that chair in the saloon and thinking about the idea Amy had put into her head, when Serina had summoned her to the control room via a private comm instead of calling an alert as the older woman very well could have done. But as usual the former Commander Landay had read the situation correctly: panicking their civilians wouldn't be wise or necessary at this stage of things, right now what mattered was getting the ship's captain to the control room so she could take stock and decide how they were going to proceed. One clear option was to turn around and run. If they did that there was probably no danger at all as yet, because the little research vessel's acute long-range sensors were giving her pilots a great deal of information about what was up ahead; while the warships of that battle line probably saw nothing except a faint and tiny blip at the very edge of their sensors’ scanning area. As yet they wouldn't know whether it was a lifeboat or a rogue comet, a ship under power or a natural wanderer; and even if they guessed it to be a ship, they wouldn't be able to discern that it was Sovereignty-built. And they certainly wouldn't realize that its ID code had been altered. So. Run to absolute safety? Try to find a way around, which would take time and would involve the

constant risk of being detected and identified as what they actually were? Or try to slip through or bluff through, and reach El'kah on something resembling the timetable that she'd planned? Kate closed her eyes for a moment, let thought merge with intuition. She'd done this so many times before, repeatedly on each and every ship where she'd been a command officer; but never before had she faced a battle line with a baby on board, and never before had her primary duty been to people she loved and not to a geopolitical entity and the military organization protecting that entity's interests. When she opened her eyes she said, “We'll go in closer, Mother. Close enough so we can listen in on their transmissions, but we'll stand ready to run the instant we realize we're in any kind of danger. I don't want to steer completely clear of them and go around, that could take so long that we'd start running low on supplies or fuel or both; and I'm not about to try to bluff my way through that line, not at this stage. We're nowhere near that desperate, right now we could still make a run for a neutral like the Okalas if we had to." That latter option carried its own set of perils, and Serina knew that as well as her daughter did. But the older woman nodded, nevertheless, because the fact was that sooner or later they had to make planetfall somewhere; they couldn't go on traveling forever, as it was they'd been remarkably lucky that there was no serious friction among their small group's members. And of course the issues of food and fuel would at some point become critical, although right now they still had weeks of safe travel capability. "Let's do it, then,” Serina said, and kept the helm so that Kate could operate the sensors with complete concentration. After a time that was so tense for her that she didn't realize she was perspiring until her hair and her clothing were both damp, Kate turned her gaze back to her mother and announced, “I don't believe this. That's an El'kah'th blockade of El'kah!" "I didn't think they had that many ships,” Serina observed. She hadn't been completely immersed in sensor analysis the way Kate had been, but piloting had not prevented her from watching the scanners from her own console. "They don't. Some—a lot, actually—are registered on other, neutral worlds. Or maybe they're not so neutral anymore, because that sure looks to me like some kind of ‘allied’ fleet. But the good news is that whatever or whoever they're out here to fight, they can read us clearly now and they're not shooting. So I don't see why we shouldn't hail them and see what kind of response we get." Kate had barely finished speaking when the control room's intership comm came to life. It sputtered with words in a language that she couldn't understand, except for a word or two here and there; but Serina responded, fluently uttering sounds that Kate hadn't heard come from a human mouth since the last time her mother and El'kah'Hatim had conversed in her presence. When the incomprehensible exchange was over Serina said in Standard English, “Apparently getting rid of Gates is a top Sovereignty priority these days. That blockade is there to keep Sovereignty forces away from El'kah, and we just scared hell out of their commanders by outflanking them. They aren't the most militarily skilled species in the galaxy, after all; whenever they've stood us off before it's been by pulling in all their trading associates and standing there and absorbing everything we threw at them until we finally couldn't keep it up any longer." That was true; Kate had been a child at the time of the last Sovereignty vs. El'kah'th conflict, but she had studied that “war” (if it deserved such a name) as part of her command school training. And she'd found

that history hard to believe, to her it was inconceivable that a defense strategy of just absorbing punishment and holding the line could actually be successful. What vast resources that must have taken a generation ago, and what resources it was taking now! She'd realized the El'kah'th were a wealthy species, but that any race could do this struck her as incredible. And that any race would do this—did that mean they really were the cowards her professors had made them out to be? Or was this simply their way of fighting, as legitimate a strategy for them as those of vigorous self-defense and creative counteroffensive were for human warriors? "Water is the strongest of the elements, because it takes the shape of that which tries to contain it and it smothers that which tries to consume it.” Yoshi had recited that ancient Oriental proverb to her once, long ago when she'd first been getting to know him; and she had found it puzzling. Now she thought she understood its meaning at last. "What did you tell them, Mother?” she asked Serina now. "I told them that we're refugees, human civilians running away from the Sovereignty,” the older woman answered. “They're willing to give us safe passage through their space. I haven't identified you to them, Kate, and I haven't identified Clifton. Nor did I ask for asylum, or make any mention of wanting to make port at El'kah itself. Do you want me to do that now?" Again Kate hesitated, again she closed her eyes and thought furiously; then cleared her mind and didn't think at all. And when she opened her eyes again she said, “We've got to take that risk, Mother. The El'kah'ths could very well hate me for having started all this, without me no one in the Sovereignty would know they've got a Gate on their world. I wish I could have kept that part secret ... but there wasn't any way I could do that, not once I'd made up my mind to go back to Earth. But even if the El'kah'ths are upset with me, I don't believe they'll harm us. Their culture isn't like ours, they don't seem to be anywhere near as eager assign blame as we are—and I've never known them to punish an individual for actions or events that individual couldn't control. Have you?" "No,” Serina said, and her mouth became a hard line as she thought about the kinds of actions that the El'kah'ths themselves sometimes committed that were beyond conscious control. If they understood better than did humans that an individual could sometimes do a harmful thing without intending it and without being able to prevent it, then perhaps their biology had a lot to do with that understanding. “But it's still a risk, Kate, and it's just as hard for me to put you and Clifton in harm's way as it is for you to do that with little Joey. So I'll go ahead and transmit our ID, our crew list, everything; and I'll ask them for safe passage to El'kah and for asylum once we get there. But I want you to give me the flexibility to pull back the second I realize something's wrong. If I reverse course I want you to back me up, and not countermand me as captain or even argue with me as my daughter. Agreed?" "Agreed.” This could have been ridiculous, but somehow it wasn't. Kate nodded, and she spoke into the Dreamcatcher 's shipwide comm. “Yoshi, Cliff, Amy. We've made contact with the El'kah'ths, and we're heading into their space. We believe everything's going to go smoothly, but they are having problems with the Sovereignty over control of their Gate and this ride could get rough without any warning. So take your red alert stations and secure yourselves, and especially secure the baby. Got it?" She didn't even know who was taking care of her son just now. She'd left him with Yoshi, but now he must be transferred to the dispensary where he would be safest if the Dreamcatcher did have to run or fight. And Yoshi, of course, needed to be in the engine room in case the ship's propulsion system required any on-site attention during a moment of crisis.

Kate did what she had seldom done in all her years aboard starships, and took a safety harness out of storage and secured herself to her seat. Serina did the same thing. Then Kate nodded again and said to her mother, “Do it. We're as ready as we're ever going to be." [Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter 19 They flitted through the blockade where its ships were clustered together most thickly, in the spherical region of space surrounding the El'kah'th home star system. Whatever Serina Landay had said to their commanders had worked, because they were not challenged in any way. They docked with one of the space stations in orbit around El'kah, and then came the most difficult moment for every person aboard except of course for the sleeping infant: now they had to leave their refuge of the past ten months behind them. "I almost expected a Questioner to meet me at the hatch!” Kate Landay said to Amy Salter, who was at her side as they stood on one of the space station's decks and looked around them at a rather intimidating expanse of open area. “Don't ask me why, but I had the most awful feeling that somehow they'd manage to find me even here." She said that to Amy, and not to Yoshi or Serina or Clifton, because Amy was the one who'd been with her when the Questioners had taken her and Amy was the one who had claimed her body afterward and had brought her back to life and health. And Amy was beside her now because she knew how much Kate needed for her to be there, at this moment no one else's presence would do. "I had that feeling, too,” Amy admitted, and put a hand on her friend's arm and pressed it gently. Kate heard someone drawing in a startled breath, and looked around quickly and realized that person was her mother. Serina was staring through the crowd that was moving in orderly El'kah'th fashion through the spaceport's concourse, individual El'kah'ths noticing that the recently disembarked group consisted of humans and one part-human but being far too polite to stop and actually stare and certainly not to speak to them uninvited. How odd, Kate thought suddenly, that a species which so relished and required physical contact had such a highly developed sense of personal privacy as it applied to strangers. Or perhaps that wasn't the least bit odd, perhaps the one made the other necessary. Someone familiar was emerging now from among the other El'kah'ths, and although he acknowledged Serina's presence with a graceful motion of his limbs he stopped in front of Kate and greeted her verbally. “Kate. It has been long, are you well?" Formal words, to which she could respond since he'd spoken them in Standard. “El'kah'Hatim. Yes, I am well. Are you, and are the others of your household?" He didn't reply, she had completed the public greeting ritual and now he clasped her in his many-jointed arms. And she hugged him back, with all her combat-trained strength that could hurt Yoshi if she squeezed him like this but that didn't bother El'kah'Hatim in the least. Hatim released her after a long moment and then turned—again not to Serina, but to the young man of

some thirty-plus Terran years who was so plainly not completely human in his heritage. He spoke in his own tongue, and he waited. Clifton lifted his chin in a proud, self-defensive gesture that he'd inherited from Serina, and he said, “I'm sorry, Father. I can't speak your language." "That can be remedied,” El'kah'Hatim answered in Standard. “Your sister told me much about you while she lived in my home, Clifton. You will be able to learn, you have the capacity to adapt yourself.” He reached out and brushed his hands near his hybrid son's face, but didn't gather him into an embrace of welcome the way he'd done with Kate. It might not be time for that yet; he'd long ago learned that humans could easily be frightened by typically El'kah'th displays of affection. Then at last he turned to Serina. Yoshi Sakagawa and Amy Salter he would greet later, and then only after someone had introduced them to him properly. He said in his native tongue, “My friend. My son's mother. You still cannot bear the sight of me, after all the time that has passed?" "It's still hard for me, Hatim.” Serina had agreed to speak with her old comrade just once in all the years since he had been deported, when he had contacted her to tell her that Kate had been found alive on El'kah. On that occasion she'd been short and formal with him, and he had not pressed her for longer or more intense verbal contact. But now they were face to face, and they were in effect speaking privately because Kate's few words of Hatim's language were nowhere near enough for her to follow them and no one else among the Dreamcatcher party had even that much knowledge of the El'kah'th tongue. "You do not think I understand,” Hatim said now, and his arms twitched as he forced himself not to lift them toward this woman who had been so dear to him long ago. “And you are correct, because a female of my own species would have regarded what happened between us as a biological necessity and would not have been offended by it even though she might—like you—have found the experience uncomfortable and the pregnancy that resulted disconcerting. Yet I do realize that among humans sexual contact without both partners’ consent is a shameful thing, because for your males there is no necessity that justifies it. In fact it is more than merely shameful, although I do not know what word I might use to describe what I see in your eyes now when you look at me. And I do not know how I can make it right, Serina." "You can't,” she said. “But the closest you can come is to do what you're doing now. Give my family a safe place to stay for as long as they need it, and if it's possible give my daughter a chance to get back to the place where she left her child's father and her own father." "All that I would do for you anyway, because you were and are my friend,” Hatim said, and he inclined his head toward the human woman. “And since I cannot by any action erase or make up for the offense I gave when I took you against your will and left my child within your body, then I can ask you to consider whether it is possible for you to forgive me. That human concept does not carry the impossibility of restitution within its meaning, does it?" He didn't wait for an answer, probably because he knew this wasn't a question to which any mortal creature could be expected to give an immediate response. He turned back to Kate, in a gesture that acknowledged her rather than Serina as the group's leader, and asked in Standard, “Will you make me known to those of your party whom I have not yet met, Kate?" She did so, and when she introduced Yoshi she felt Hatim's curiosity as if it had been a palpable substance. How he could know that she and this man were lovers, she couldn't imagine; but she was certain he did know it, the instant he touched Yoshi's hand in greeting. And then he looked at Kate

inquiringly, and she realized that while he was puzzled—for he knew that Joseph Costigan had been her mate, and Serina had just indirectly told him that the child Yoshi held was Costigan's son and not Yoshi's—he wasn't offended. Humans didn't usually do this, that was all. And Hatim had thought he understood humans and their customs, so he was astonished to find that Kate Landay—of all the humans he'd believed he knew well—could suddenly start behaving in what was typically El'kah'th fashion, by taking two life-mates instead of one. **** "I thought because of the way your population balances itself gender-wise, a female with two males would seem even stranger to you than it does to monogamous humans,” Kate said to El'kah'Hatim as she sat with him in his private room on the two-person couch where she'd talked with him so many times before. "At this phase of our race's development it is so. We lost much population when a disease came through the Gateway to Beyond two generations ago,” El'kah'Hatim said, and stroked Kate's shoulder. She, at least, didn't shrink from his touch. He was careful to be discreet before her human companions, though, because he realized that for them touching between opposite sex individuals often had intimate connotations that no El'kah'th would ever have intended. “So at the present time two-thirds of us, more or less, develop into females so that the lost population may be replaced. But in the time of my ancestors we had filled our world, and then for every child who developed into a female three developed into adult males. In those days a normal household consisted of one female and her several husbands." "And they didn't fight over those females?” Kate asked wonderingly. “We allow it in today's society, of course, but I know of only one or two indigenous cultures on Earth that ever encouraged that kind of multiple partnering! Polygamy, one man having two or more wives, was pretty common in ancient times; but when women were scarce, usually the men fought over them and killed each other off." "How wasteful,” El'kah'Hatim observed, in a mild tone that made her realize that he'd said the least judgmental thing he could think of to say under the circumstances. No doubt he was thinking far more ugly thoughts about humans right now, because on El'kah killing another of one's own species was de facto proof of insanity. "Yes, I suppose it was!” Kate chose not to discuss the matter further, not when she could see that it made Hatim uncomfortable for a completely different set of reasons than it might have bothered her. She was embarrassed, but he was horrified. “So. What can you tell me about the Gateway to Beyond now? And if your people caught a plague by being near it while it was open, why did you go on gathering together for that festival every six years?" "I cannot give you a reason that you would understand,” Hatim said in answer, not condescendingly at all but telling her the simple truth. “As for the Gateway's behavior during the time that you have been away from my world, its power is gradually regenerating. Those who monitor its activity believe that it will open again one day, but when and for what duration they have not thought it wise to make predictions." "Oh,” Kate said, and her voice was a small girl's in its disappointment. The comm whistled then, and Hatim left the couch and responded to it. The conversation in his own tongue was swift and passionate, even by El'kah'th standards. When he turned back toward his guest, she felt excitement emanating from his tall body.

He said, “Kate, I have spoken too soon. The Gateway's Guardians wish to speak with you, because the fact that you have passed through it and have lived—have even borne a healthy child that was conceived on the other side—intrigues them. They wish to understand you and others like you in order to decide how they should respond to the Gateway's renewed activity, and to your request that you be allowed to use it again. Are you willing to commune with the Council of Guardians for this purpose?" "Commune?” Kate frowned in puzzlement. “What do you mean, ‘commune'?" "I had thought I chose the correct word, but perhaps I did not.” Hatim sat down beside her once more. “May I give you the image that will explain my meaning, Kate?" She nodded. He touched her, both arms around her body, her face tucked against his throat and his head resting above hers. The image that passed from his thoughts into hers was a compelling one. “Commune"? Far too innocuous a term for what he was suggesting she might do, and she was thankful she'd known him well enough to catch that distinction and to question her understanding of what he intended before agreeing to participate. But although the connection he described was an intense and intimate one, it caused her to feel no revulsion and only the slightest pangs of fear. And even those were simple human apprehension at encountering the unknown; she wasn't frightened that someone involved in what was coming would hurt her deliberately, or would fail to protect her from accidental harm. "What was coming.” She'd already made her decision, all she needed to do now was acknowledge it. Kate Landay opened her eyes, drew back from El'kah'Hatim's close embrace although she didn't commit the rudeness of breaking physical contact with him completely and abruptly. She nodded her head in one of the gestures that humans and El'kah'ths had in common, and she said, “All right. I'll do it, Hatim. But when? And where? And most of all, how?" [Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter 20 To Kate, “communing” felt like being in an immersion tank of warm water. At first that frightened her, because regenerative gel didn't feel a great deal different; but she hadn't been able to move in the regen tank, and in this place she could and did stretch her limbs and twist her torso and move her head up and down and then from side to side. She was conscious that the beings who had joined her were observing these maneuvers—first with puzzlement, then with amusement, and at last with an understanding so great that it included apologies for that amusement. They couldn't conceive of creatures of the same species deliberately tormenting one of their own kind. What had happened to Kate Landay at the hands of the Questioners might be horrible by her race's standards, but to these El'kah'ths it was evil beyond comprehension. She relaxed with them then, even though she realized that in her own psyche there were the seeds of the same behaviors; and she knew that the El'kah'ths would perceive that fact, and that although they would not judge her they would find that aspect of her being repulsive. "You sometimes do things that my people find reprehensible,” she told them, able to communicate now

without language posing a barrier. “Your mating instincts, for example. Isn't it true that if your bodies grow cold enough, you'll compel a partner as a way of restoring your own warmth?" Yes, that was so. They couldn't help it, and the fact was that the Questioners could have refused to behave so evilly. Had not Kate herself denied dark impulses within her own soul, had she not done that many times? "Yes, I have. But I've also given in to them sometimes, to some extent at least. I've used my strength against people who were weaker than I was, to make them do what I wanted them to do; I've deliberately hurt others at times, even people I was supposed to love. Does that make me a monster to you?" No, it didn't. This was curious, this was very strange, but it was clear to all of them that Kate Landay was more like them than she was different; and it was also plain that she intended their species no evil. She dearly loved someone who was far more like them than she was ... a sibling, that was it. A sibling half like her, and half like them. A link, a living bridge. "But he was made from an involuntary mating, and among my people that's one of the worst crimes that can be committed. In past eras it called for the death of the person—nearly always the male—who committed it, and even now conviction for that offense means personality reconstruction so extensive that the man may recover from it no longer himself.” Kate thought of Clifton, and then she thought of what had happened when he had come into existence. The others were repelled, but they were not shamed. The male of their kind had acted as his instinct for self-preservation had caused him to act; he had willed the female of her kind no harm. Quite the opposite, that particular female had been and still was very dear to him. So how could he be blamed? "But you would blame me if I acted on the worst of the impulses that were born into me, that I didn't ask for anymore than Hatim asked for his mating drive to be triggered by cold,” Kate insisted, and was surprised and rather exhilarated to realize that her mind and spirit were strong enough so she could stand her ground with these beings. Yes. And because of those impulses we must believe that you are dangerous, to yourself and to others. “Blame” as you use the term is not the right word for how we view behaviors prompted by such innately evil racial traits, but we are hampered now in finding the correct expression because even mind-to-mind we must use word-thoughts or image-thoughts; you cannot communicate at any level more basic than that. Or can you? "Let's try.” Now Kate was frightened again, because so far she'd retained control—not of this situation, of course, but certainly of herself. Now she would have to give that up, because it was the only way she could let these beings go deeply enough into her so that they could understand the nature of one individual human as they clearly needed to do. If we cannot continue, then we must end this. And if we end it now—then although we would never send you and your companions back to a place where others of your kind might kill you, we certainly will never consider allowing you to pass through the Gateway to Beyond and reverse the journey by which you arrived among us eighteen of your world's month-units ago. It wasn't a threat, it wasn't compulsion, it was just the truth. Kate Landay knew that somewhere her physical body was sighing, and then she surrendered; she let her will go, and with it her

individuality. How to explain what happened then, later when she woke to find Amy holding one of her hands and Yoshi holding the other? With her mother and Clifton standing nearby, with all four adults looking impossibly worried and her baby screaming in terror in his grandmother's arms? "I wasn't separate anymore,” was all she could tell them. “And now I know what I've always suspected, ever since I stayed in Hatim's house and spent that time with his family—especially with my half-sister and the little one who hasn't differentiated yet. They're never really separate, the El'kah'ths are never singular. Somehow they're always—plural." And she might never quite be singular again, either. But Clifton who was watching her with such fear in his eyes was separate; he'd been born with El'kah'th DNA partially directing his physical development, but he did not have the least idea what Kate was talking about now. She sat up, carefully because the experience she'd had had drained her body while it had nourished her in every other way that was possible. She held out her arms—not to her child, who was continuing to yell with a healthy baby's full enthusiasm, but to her brother. He would come to her, and he might never go to El'kah'Hatim or to either of the El'kah'ths who were also his siblings. When he did so she gathered him in, and before he could draw back in alarm she enveloped him mentally. He stiffened with surprise, body and mind. But that didn't last; he had trusted her from the first hour of his life, and he trusted her now. After that first moment he relaxed into the contact, and then she felt wonder and welcome and a thirst for more. "I can't give you more,” she told him, in a language that she'd often wanted to speak with this little brother of hers but had never quite known how to find. “But Hatim can. Kaleeth can, and so can the others. They're your people, Cliff, and you were never meant to be separate anymore than they were." "But they scare me, Kate.” It didn't occur to him to be anything but honest, even if concealing his thoughts or feelings just now had been possible. “You I understand, you're like me. But even though I realize I must be like—Hatim—and his people, too, I don't know them and I don't know whether I can ever let them touch me like this." "You can and you have to,” Kate told him firmly, once again the merciless big sister. And she sent out a thought to another mind, one that was not in this chamber but nearby: “Hatim!" He came to them, moving past Serina who drew back with the wailing baby and wanted to thrust herself into his path but couldn't make herself do it. Later she would tell Kate that she'd never felt more cowardly, that she had wanted to protect her son from what looked to her like a threat but hadn't been able to do so. And Kate would tell her comfortingly, and truthfully, that there had been no threat; and that they were all fortunate she hadn't been able to interfere. Kate slipped away the instant she felt the third presence in the link that she had forged with Clifton. She didn't need to wait, she knew in that moment that her brother was no longer frightened and that he wasn't going to struggle. And if she stayed there she was afraid that what was coming might just be too seductive for her, that a purely human mind might not be able to withdraw itself to individuality again after

having been joined to the El'kah'th consciousness in all its fullness for a second time within a single hour. **** The Council of Guardians had decided: the humans would be permitted to make their attempt to cross over through the Gateway into the Beyond. But if they did that and succeeded, they would not be permitted to come back. So each human must choose now, whether to seek access to the Gate; or to remain on El'kah, at least until the current hostilities were over. For Clifton Bradley there was no choice to be made. He was an El'kah'th now, and to leave his newfound people was an unthinkable prospect. How or why El'kah'Hatim had struck out on his own a generation ago, to become a member of the Sovereignty Defense Services and to spend several cycles of his life at Serina Landay's side, was as much a riddle to Clifton now as it had always been to Hatim's peers; but the El'kah'ths were in some mysterious way fully individual beings as well as elements of one collaborative (not collective) consciousness, so they could and did sometimes behave in ways that baffled their fellows. El'kah'Hatim had been the most adventurous of his generation in his dealings with Sovereignty institutions and citizens, but he was by no means the only one of his kind to leave their home-world for a time and then return. But if Clifton found his father's long-ago departure from El'kah puzzling, his mother found Clifton's desire to remain here not just baffling but appalling. Serina had never told her son exactly how he'd come to be conceived, or exactly why of the two males in her life at that time neither had stayed around to help her raise him. She told him now, bluntly, with the full force of her long-suppressed hurt and anger and betrayal; and when it made no difference to him, she was more than baffled. Now she was furious with him, too, and that was how she made up her mind to leave El'kah with Kate and small Joey if the Gateway permitted them to do that. It was easy for Amy Salter, of course. She wanted nothing more in the universe than to see an open Gateway in front of her again, to rush through it and then do whatever she had to on the other side to find her way back to Hanna Leone. It wasn't a bit easy for Yoshi Sakagawa. Ten months earlier he had done the first rash thing in his entire careful life, when he had simulated the destruction of his chartered research ship and had abandoned his professorship and his home—and everything else he'd built and valued, even his status as a franchised citizen—to leave Earth with Kate Landay and what remained of her family. And after that he'd stayed with her, not so much because by then his involvement had entrapped him permanently—he could, he realized, have demanded that she put into a neutral port somewhere for just long enough to drop him off if he'd really wanted his freedom—but because he had hoped he might regain her love. And after the other Gateway's destruction and the birth of Kate's baby, he had truly believed he'd achieved that goal. Yes, she'd insisted on coming here to El'kah. He had consented to that, because after all El'kah was a safe haven for her; and he understood that she wanted her father to know she'd survived, that she wanted to reunite Amy with Hanna, even that she might want to get word to Costigan that she'd had a child. But Yoshi had allowed himself first to hope, and then for a time to believe, that after having lived with him in intimacy during the months their journey here had taken—after having allowed little Joey to bond with him as son with father—Kate would surely come to the realization that it would be best for everyone's happiness if she left Joseph Costigan in his world, while she went on building a new life with Yoshi in hers. So he could scarcely convince himself, now, that she really was going to try to pass back through that infernal “Gate” and take her son (his son!) with her. But she was going to do that, whether or not he was willing to go with them. The only worse thing he

could imagine, Yoshi decided after he'd uncharacteristically raged at Kate and pleaded with her and had found her absolutely unyielding, was that she might have taken the baby and left for the El'kah Gateway without inviting him to accompany her. That was when he changed his mind at last, and decided that although this wasn't the way he'd wanted things to turn out it was how they were. He wasn't letting her go on without him now, and he certainly wasn't letting her take his son unless he went too. He wouldn't allow himself to consider what would happen once they reached the other side. Perhaps Costigan had died over there; from all Kate and Amy had said about it that world was a dangerous one, and eighteen months could be a very long time. Perhaps Costigan had found himself another woman, maybe even that half-sister who had pushed Kate through to El'kah; maybe she'd done that because she had wanted Costigan for herself. Who could guess what might have changed, or what might still be changed after Yoshi and Kate and baby Joey arrived together on the world whose inhabitants called it Arcadia? So Yoshi, too, would go with them. Kate, Yoshi, and Joey; Serina Landay; and Amy Salter. Five humans, waiting in the Watchers’ rooms under the walls of the Sacred Place that so resembled an ancient Terran amphitheater; observing as the energy within the amphitheater's confines built from day to day, and waiting for the moment when the portal between two worlds would open again after being closed for so many months. [Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter 21 When it happened it gave none of the warning that they'd expected. The energy that had been building gradually over the past months spurted suddenly, the matrix formed; and then the Gate stood open. There was no time for the little group of humans on its El'kah side to prepare themselves, but a far larger group on the Arcadia side was completely ready. When Kate Landay came through the passageway underneath the stadium to stand at the edge of its pebbled floor, with her baby strapped into a sling at her breast to leave her arms free and to make certain nothing would separate him from her, people were already pouring from an opening that was wide enough to admit ten adults abreast of each other—which made it much larger than the opening through which she'd once tumbled, but far smaller than the gaping maw that El'kah'Hatim had described as taking up almost the entire floor surface of this stadium. Kate's first impulse, naturally enough, was to dash forward and force her way between those who were exiting the Gate. She'd waited many days for this, after having first traveled a six-months’ passage through space to get here; so standing by and watching while a mob of people she didn't recognize came through from the opposite direction was almost more than she could stand. But she did stand it; they were desperate, she knew the look on their faces for pure panic, and she had no wish to end her long journey by putting herself and her baby into a position where they were very likely to be knocked down and trampled. She felt Yoshi beside her, and knew it was his arm that slid around her shoulders. Serina and Amy were here by now, too; and the older woman was holding onto the younger one, and reminding her over the sounds of the immigrants’ pebble-crunching feet that she must stay where she was and wait for the rush to subside. To go into that mob now would be suicide, surely that wasn't what Amy wanted to

accomplish? Kate silently blessed her mother's strong will and sharp tongue, and wrapped her arms protectively around her child and waited. And at length she began to see faces that she did recognize, and she noticed that the El'kah'th “Watchers” had appeared and that some of them were directing the Terrans to the passage that led out of the stadium. Kate was aware of disagreement among the Watchers; some of them thought it would be a very good idea to halt this influx of alien beings from Beyond, while others were certain that anything which came from there must be accepted. She sent a thought in their direction, since she seemed to have retained that ability as the legacy of her communion with their superiors: “These people are frightened, and they need help. Let them keep coming. After they're all here we'll find out what's happened to them, and then we'll figure out how to take care of them." That seemed to decide the issue, because after that she detected no thoughts about how the Gate could be closed prematurely or how the people issuing from it could be stopped from doing so. Five hundred ninety-three adults and adolescents and near-adolescent children later, the flood of humanity halted on its own. The final group consisted of Joseph Costigan, Hanna Leone, Carsten Marstallar, and Francesca. The four of them turned back toward the Gate after running what was clearly a pre-agreed distance from it, and they pulled canisters from their belts and tapped those canisters strategically and then flung them. And then they hit the deck. Kate and Yoshi went down together, into the safety of the stadium's lowest tier, and she knew that Serina was flattening Amy somewhere near them. The explosion seemed to rock all of El'kah around them. Pebbles flew like shrapnel, and she heard cries of pain from somewhere ... probably from immigrants who hadn't hit the deck when their command team had done so; in spite of the Watchers’ guiding earlier arrivals into the passage, there were still many newcomers within the stadium's confines. The shock wave was palpable, and the noise great enough so that her ears rang as she pulled herself free from Yoshi and came up to determine, first—that her baby was only screaming because he was scared and his ears hurt—and second, that Yoshi and Amy and Serina were all similarly unharmed. They were. Amy, in fact, was headed for the immigrants who were picking themselves up and rubbing their ears and trying to determine from what sort of wounds they were bleeding. The four nearest the blast site had been better prepared. When they got up Kate could see that each wore the Arcadian-made equivalent of a flak jacket, and each promptly removed a set of earplugs. And then she realized that from meters away Joseph Costigan had recognized her. His eyes lit up, and he held out his arms. She tore the baby's sling from her body and thrust the child at Yoshi. Later she would realize that she'd made an enormous presumption and simultaneously had taken a terrible risk—suppose Yoshi had wanted to punish her for what she was doing, or simply wanted to make sure she would come back to him? All he had to do was take Joey and leave while she was dashing into the waiting arms of Joey's biological father. But at the moment nothing like that entered her mind. All she knew was that she wanted to embrace Joe without the encumbrance of an infant between them. After a time during which she clung to him, a time during which he held her so tightly that he lifted her completely off her feet, she recalled that they really weren't the only two sentient beings in the universe.

She remembered that her father was there, and that somewhere behind her Yoshi was waiting with Joey in his arms. So she pulled back when Joe set her on her feet at last, and she said to him rapidly, “Follow my lead for the next few minutes, Joe. No matter what happens, you take your cues from me and you do what I tell you. Understood?" He looked into her eyes, and he nodded. Clearly this was turf that she knew and that he didn't, so doing as she directed him only made sense. She turned then to Carsten Marstallar, and discovered that her mother had come out from the edge of the stadium and was standing in front of the man who'd long ago been her mate. They were talking to each other, in tones that sounded strained although Kate couldn't make out the words. When Marstallar realized that his daughter was looking in his direction at last, he turned away from Serina and moved to take Kate into his arms. "Katydid.” The old nickname she'd never expected to hear again, uttered gently and lovingly in that voice from her childhood; the familiar solid shoulder, the collar that still carried a Ranger captain's insignia from a quarter-century ago. “We made it, those of us who lived. But I shouldn't be touching you, and Joe shouldn't have touched you; we're all contaminated to one degree or another, after awhile even our equipment got so bombarded that we couldn't take accurate readings with it anymore." Kate was still a nursing mother, so she involuntarily backed away and freed herself without waiting to ask what the contaminant had been. And she called out to Yoshi, who was hesitantly walking toward her now, “Stay back! Keep the baby back, Yoshi!" He stopped, his already puzzled face becoming downright alarmed. Kate looked around her again and saw that Amy Salter was embracing Hanna Leone now just as enthusiastically as she'd held Joe Costigan, and that Francesca alone of the Arcadians who were the emigrants’ leaders had taken charge of the ones who were left within the stadium. She was seeing that the patching-up Amy had begun got finished (apparently discovering Hanna alive and well had been the first thing Kate had ever encountered that could make Dr. Salter abandon a patient!), she was organizing her comrades, and when an El'kah'th aircar touched down and disgorged two Guardians she met them and spoke to them as if she had every expectation in the universe that they would be able to understand her. At that point, of course, Serina marched over to join them—the pair of blue, many-jointed El'kah'th and the human woman who was her former husband's child—and act as interpreter. And at that point also Hanna Leone must finally have said the same thing to Amy Salter that Carsten Marstallar had said to his elder daughter, because Amy started issuing some orders of her own. Medical orders, that brought comprehension to Yoshi Sakagawa's face and that when translated by Serina Landay caused a flurry of activity from the El'kah'th Watchers and Guardians. **** "It's okay, the radiation from the weapons that the Sovereignty used against the Gateway planet is easy enough to treat if you just have the right antidote and the right technology to administer it. But of course you had neither on Arcadia,” Amy Salter said as she finished scanning Joe Costigan's tall body. “So it did come through the Gate to your side. We wondered about that when we realized what the bastards had done." "Yes. And the winds carried it everywhere, at least everywhere that had been fit for humans to live until then; and some of us lived, but most of us died,” Hanna Leone said in reply to her partner's words. “The very young and the very old died first, but we ended up losing more than 99 percent of our population. In

a few months more it would have been 100 percent. As far as we know we've brought every single survivor through with us today, and now we've sealed Arcadia off and it's never going to be a deathtrap for anyone else ever again." "You were sure you were coming through to El'kah, and not to some other world that might not have been habitable?” Kate Landay asked. Kate had been the next person Dr. Salter scanned for refugee-borne contamination after Salter checked herself out, and she had been lucky. Any radiation passed to her by Joe Costigan and Carsten Marstallar had been neutralized so quickly that there was no danger of ill effects, for her or for the baby who still needed her milk. The refugees themselves were being treated now, with the four who'd arrived last being decontaminated first so they could talk with their hosts and not endanger them. "Yes, we researched that pretty damn carefully even though the language barrier meant there was no point in trying to establish communication through this Gate the way we were able to through the other!” Costigan said, and he smiled grimly. “And we realized that we might not be welcomed on El'Kah, especially close to six hundred of us all at once; but we really didn't have much choice. If we stayed put we were going to die, it was just a question of when for each individual, and we certainly didn't have time to locate a portal to a different M-class world. Even the southern hemisphere of Arcadia was going to be poisoned eventually, so finding an intraplanetary gate that would bypass the plague zone around the equator wouldn't have worked either. Do you know who gave the order to fry-blast Gateway with the portal wide open, Kate? Because whoever it was, I want to kill that bastard!" "That is understandable,” said the precise voice of El'kah'Hatim. How he'd come into the chamber, which was part of the stadium complex—a part normally vacant at this season, and hastily opened to accommodate the influx of human refugees—without this group made up mostly of former service officers having noticed his arrival, Kate couldn't have guessed. Nor did she understand why she hadn't detected him telepathically, unless that ability had been given to her temporarily and was now fading. Yet here he was, and both Carsten Marstallar and Serina Landay were looking at him. Kate felt her throat tighten. She measured the distance between herself and her father, and wondered if she would be able to get the baby into Yoshi's arms again—and then get her own body between Marstallar and El'kah'Hatim quickly enough, if that became necessary. But what she feared didn't happen; Marstallar glared, but he stayed where he was. Serina looked first stunned, and then resigned. Something she'd thought she would never have to face again was happening to her anyhow, and little as she wanted to deal with it she was gathering up her resources and preparing to do so. El'kah'Hatim continued as if he were completely unaware of any hostility directed toward him (which simply couldn't be the case, sensitive as he was to any sentient being's mental emanations), “But revenge, Mr. Costigan, is a luxury you and your people cannot now afford and may never find yourselves in a position to indulge. We, the people of this world, are now at war with those who committed the act of outrage at the Gateway planet; they have wished to do the same thing here in order to seal our Gate forever. But it appears that you and your comrades have accomplished the same goal, and you have done so without poisoning this world as the others poisoned both Gateway and the realm beyond it." "Have your scientists checked that out?” Costigan asked. Although he'd heard a great deal about El'kah'Hatim, there was no reason why he should recognize him; El'kah'Hatim had been deported long before Kate's path and Joe's had first intersected. But it didn't matter. Costigan could see that this individual was no mere translator, but someone Kate and her parents knew well.

"They have. And they believe that you accomplished what you intended, although of course only the passing of time can determine the outcome for certain.” Hatim turned to Kate Landay. “The Guardians have decided, Kate, that since these people are known to you and not to us they are to be placed under your authority and that I will serve as liaison. You will be held responsible for their behavior while they are our guests, and it is up to you to recommend to us what is to be done with them. They cannot settle here on El'kah. We might have offered such an option to a small group of humans, but nearly six hundred of you is and must be another matter entirely." Costigan turned red, opened his mouth, and then shut it again when Marstallar cleared his throat. The older man said, “El'kah'Hatim. You remember me, I know you do." "Of course I remember Serina's husband and Kate's father.” Hatim inclined his head. “I did not speak to you before out of delicacy only. I had not thought you would wish to have a conversation with me." "I don't. But what I want and what I've got to do are two different things right now.” Marstallar had been the sickest from the radiation; he was the oldest among the survivors, and as Amy had said this was a poison that attacked most viciously at either end of the human life cycle. But he hadn't been too ill to participate fully in the Gate's destruction, and he was sufficiently recovered now to stare intently at the being who long ago had taken his wife by force. “We know what we want, and we didn't think for a minute that we could or should stay on your world." "And what is it that you want, Captain Marstallar?” Hatim used the formal Terran manner of address deliberately, and that formality was not meant as a sign of respect. "Some of our people are willing to risk going back to Sovereignty territory, it's that important to them to try to find loved ones they left behind. No one's going to try to keep them from doing that—but most of us want safe passage to a neutral world that's willing to accept us as immigrants. We'll make whatever payment arrangements are possible and acceptable to you, all we ask is that wherever you send us doesn't have an extradition treaty with the Sovereignty." That had been a hard speech for Carsten Marstallar to make to anyone, but to have made it to his old nemesis—the man who had impregnated his wife—had been almost impossibly difficult. Yet he had done it, because there was nothing else the leader of his people could do. The leader of most of these people, Kate realized as she recalled the faces she'd recognized and the ones she hadn't while the immigrants had poured through the Gate. Yet there was a substantial minority that had come not from the Settlement in Marstallar's mountain valley and cave complex, but from Hanna Leone's Gateway City; and she suspected other, smaller groups of Arcadians were also represented. How had they managed to make a truce, even in the face of an emergency like the one that the Sovereignty had forced upon them by blasting their world with radiation? Leone's and Marstallar's peoples had hated each other, but clearly they'd found a way to put that hatred aside and form not just a truce but a solid alliance. The new arrivals weren't separating themselves into self-protective knots and watching each other suspiciously. Wherever they'd been quartered throughout the El'kah'th building, they were going about their business—and if they huddled for protection, it was with any other humans who happened to share a chamber with them because many of them found the harmless El'kah'ths a terrifying sight. Hanna Leone looked up now from where she'd been helping her partner take care of a patient, and she said to El'kah'Hatim, “Some of the people who came through the Gate today are my people, technically speaking. Those who survived are mostly a mix of two populations, with a few from smaller groups that joined us thrown in as well. I'm adding my voice to Carsten's voice, please help us. I'm not sure what

we're going to do if you refuse. It's taken all our resources to get us here, and I don't see how we can go anywhere else unless you do give us aid." "When two proud leaders put their differences aside and speak together for all their people, how can another proud species refuse them assistance in finding the means by which those in their charge may survive?” El'kah'Hatim spoke very softly, and he inclined his thatched head toward first Hanna Leone and then Carsten Marstallar. “This impresses me greatly, Carsten Marstallar, because from you in particular I would never have hoped to see willingness to ask my race for assistance—or willingness, either, to seek new homes for your people among species not of their own kind. It will take time, you must understand that. However—since you have convinced me of your sincerity, there is every likelihood that you will also be able to convince those who have real power to help you. And I give you my oath that I will see you have opportunity to do so." Kate relaxed then, and cuddled her baby and smiled up at Yoshi Sakagawa. And then she remembered that she had a truce of her own to try to arrange, because she realized that Joseph Costigan was staring at the three of them and that he looked both baffled and displeased. [Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter 22 This was a conversation that two human beings definitely ought to be having alone, for a long list of reasons that mutual comfort merely began. But that wasn't possible, and neither was it possible to put this off. So as the various groupings of refugees settled in for their first night on El'kah, Kate Landay sat down beside Joseph Costigan with her son on her lap; and she prepared to tell him the story of all the months since she'd been pushed through the El'kah Gateway by her half-sister's hands. Francesca had separated herself from Carsten Marstallar's immediate associates, whether by design or by happenstance no one seemed to care enough to ask. She returned just as the groups were settling, went to her father and kissed his cheek—an act that he clearly didn't expect and didn't know how to respond to, since he hadn't given her such a caress since Kate's disappearance. He'd behaved toward his younger daughter in every other respect as if nothing had happened, when they had been obliged to see each other and work together again after the first encounter in which he'd struck her; but he no longer touched her, not for any reason. That was a prohibition Francesca deliberately ended now, because they were with Kate again—thanks in part to Francesca's own efforts in getting the Arcadia survivors safely through the Gateway to El'kah. She then walked over to stand in front of her half-sister. She said with the directness that had always been hers, but without the sullenness that Kate so well remembered, “I'm sorry. I didn't plan it, it was an impulse. I was trying to get close enough to the Gate to see what was on the other side, and when you came to pull me back I was furious. I pushed you through, and then I was frightened; so I did what Dr. Ishkar had said might shut the Gate, and it worked. I wasn't firing my rifle at you! And if I could have undone everything thirty seconds later, I would have. I don't expect you to believe me ... but...." "But I do believe you,” Kate said. Dealing with Francesca was the last thing she wanted to do right now, when she'd just placed herself at Joe's side and when she had more than eighteen months’ worth of happenings to relate to him; but she wasn't lying to get rid of the younger woman more quickly. She looked into her sister's face and she did believe her, because she saw in those eyes a child who'd just recently begun to grow up.

Children did stupid, cruel things and were sorry a moment later, and then sometimes had to live with consequences that they couldn't change. And it was part of nature's order, however unkind, that sometimes others had to endure those consequences as well. So she said, “Francesca, it's over. Let's leave it now,” and she meant what she'd said. It wasn't precisely full pardon, but it was understanding and it was acceptance without bitterness. Francesca nodded, and she went away. And Kate turned once again to her baby's natural father, and this time no one interrupted her except Joe himself when he asked her the occasional question. Joey woke up mid-way through his mother's tale, and whimpered drowsily until she opened her shirt and gave him her breast. His father watched in fascination. Later when the child had drifted back into sleep Costigan reached out, and Kate surrendered the warm bundle and refastened her clothing. "You look good together,” she said then, and she smiled. “I never really let myself count on ever seeing this. It's wonderful, it's so right." "But even though you were so glad to see me that you flew at me out there in that amphitheater—and even though you've had my child—you've been living with someone else,” Joe said, and looked up from his son's face with troubled eyes. “Kate, what are you going to do now? I still love you, there hasn't been anyone else and I want you back. But...." "But I'm not letting you go without saying a damned word!” Yoshi Sakagawa announced from Kate's elbow, a spot he'd moved to quietly but purposefully during the last several minutes. “Costigan, when that little boy was born I held his mother while she was in labor and then I caught him in my hands. I'm the first person he ever felt touching him, and I've bathed him and changed him and walked the deck with him when he's cried and kept everyone awake at night. Dammit, he's as much my son as he is yours at least—and maybe more." "Easy, Sakagawa.” That habit of human males, of addressing each other by their surnames whenever they were posturing for a fight, had never ceased to amaze Kate. She was proud of her mother's name, but to brandish it at another woman like a weapon had never occurred to her—and she'd certainly fought other women, as well as men. As well as beings of so many different descriptions she couldn't have listed them all if she'd tried, although on some sleepless night she was going to attempt that in lieu of counting the proverbial sheep. “Okay, so you're entitled to your place in Joseph's life and I wouldn't dream of trying to take that away from you now—" "Joey,” Yoshi said, with an emphasis that didn't seem appropriate for the nickname of a child too small to walk or talk. “We call him Joey, not Joseph." "Joey, then. Anyway, he won't be the first kid that's had both a father and a stepfather. We can act like grown men about that, can't we?” Costigan's tone was meant to be conciliatory now, no doubt; but somehow it came out as condescending instead. And that might only be reflecting the way he actually felt, because he was a former Ranger and it really wouldn't be odd at all if he thought of a university professor as somehow less male a creature than himself. Well, he was wrong about that; and no one knew it better than did Kate Landay. Manhood wasn't measured in physical strength or fighting ability, any more than the ability to lead could be defined (as humankind had been almost universally convinced during earlier eras) by gender; any more than womanhood was measured by number of offspring birthed. She'd had enough of this exchange, it was time for her to speak up. So she said, “Be quiet, both of you. This isn't about who Joey's going to call

‘father.’ This is about me. Isn't it?" They both looked at her then; of course they did. And slowly they both nodded, the large dark man of European ancestry and the wiry and golden-skinned Oriental. And then they waited, with almost pitiful anxiety on both their faces even though both tried valiantly to conceal it. "I have news for you,” Kate said. She left the baby in Joe's arms, mostly because she knew there was no way the two men would come to blows while one of them held that precious little body. She got to her feet and stood back, giving herself the slight advantage of her full height as she faced them. “This isn't a contest, and I'm not the goddamned prize. You want me to choose one of you, and reject the other? Well, even though I love you both—to hell with you both! I won't do it, do you hear me?" Of course everyone in the room was listening openly now. They'd begun by pretending to sleep or conversing with the others, but the point had been reached when such subterfuge was useless. And into the silence that followed Kate's words, Carsten Marstallar spoke in his deep and penetrating voice. “If either of you cares even half as much about my daughter as you say you do, listen to her!” he ordered the two younger men, as he came forward to stand by Kate's side and put a big arm firmly and protectively around her. “When Kate was ten years old I had to make the kind of decision you two are making right now. I had to either accept the woman I cared for on her terms, or force her into making a choice an awful lot like the one I see you two trying to force on Kate. I told her to choose, I insisted she had to—and she wouldn't. And I've lived more than thirty years without her, years that we could have had together, if I hadn't held out for what I was so damned sure was right. ‘Right'? It was my own rights I was thinking about, and now I wish to hell I'd been man enough to give a few of them up. If they were ever mine in the first place, but that's the last thing that matters to me now." He gave his daughter a gentle squeeze then, and took his arm from around her and started to return to his own corner of the room. He found his path obstructed by a second petite human female. Serina Landay asked softly, “Carsten, are you telling me that if you had it to do over ... you'd accept the offer I made you, and add your DNA to Clifton's makeup and accept him as our child?" What answer Marstallar might have given his former wife they had no chance to discover, at least not just then (because of course everyone else was listening to this exchange, just as they'd listened to what had preceded it). El'kah'Hatim spoke from the doorway, where he had arrived silently at what apparently was just the wrong moment. "Serina, what was it that you offered to do to our son when your partnership with Captain Marstallar was ending?" She turned, staying near her former husband but facing toward Hatim now. She answered, “It's a procedure Terran obstetricians perform, Hatim. Sometimes a human couple has a genetic problem in one or both partners that makes it necessary to seek donor DNA if they're to have a healthy child together. Sometimes humans form marital groups, not one-to-one pairings, and they want offspring that combine their genetic material. Sometimes, in fact in about ten percent of all human adults, there's preference for a partner of the same sex; and when that happens, reproduction as a couple wouldn't be possible without genetic intervention." "So you proposed that Captain Marstallar's genetic material be added to that you and I had combined when our child was conceived?” Hatim's face and tone were both unreadable to the humans who observed him, and his thoughts were shielded so that Kate could not touch them. "Yes. I hoped I could make myself and the baby acceptable to him that way, because I hated what was

happening and I wanted to solve it somehow. And you've told me yourself that you later had two more children from my DNA, and each of them has three genetic parents because the woman who carried each child also made her contribution. So it's not that different, is it, from what you've seen happen elsewhere?” Clearly Serina knew that her old friend was disturbed by what he'd just learned. She didn't need access to his thoughts to realize that, she only had to remember his tones and mannerisms from the time when they'd been close. "It is entirely different,” El'kah'Hatim said flatly. “El'kah'Kaleeth and my small one came by all the genetic material in their make-ups naturally. What you proposed to do to Clifton, though, was entirely unnatural. Entirely immoral, so much so that if it became known here—there would be a penalty, Serina. A severe one for you, because you attempted to carry out an act that was against nature. None for the boy, though, because you did not succeed; and it is my belief that he knows nothing of this?" "No. He knows you forced yourself on me when he was made, I told him that when I realized he was serious about staying here and abandoning his human life entirely. It didn't make a difference; he said he was sorry I got hurt, but you'd only done what your nature demanded—what your survival instincts made you do. After that I wasn't about to go on and tell him how I tried to salvage my marriage without getting rid of him.” Serina almost spat the word “nature” when she said it. "Yes. Although I still regret that my behavior offended you and caused difficulty for you, our son is correct. What happened between us was a natural thing. And that is the largest flaw that I know of in humans, based upon all the ways in which I have associated with your species and confirmed yet again by what you have just told me you were so eager to do to your own unborn child. You do not regard nature as a thing to be accepted and accommodated. Whenever its demands do not please you, you do not hesitate to defy it or pervert it.” El'kah'Hatim walked to stand in front of Serina Landay now. Very deliberately, in a gesture that had precisely the same meaning to El'kah'ths as it did to Terrans, he spat on the floor at her feet. Then he looked into her ex-husband's astonished face and he said, “I thank you, Carsten Marstallar, for rejecting the woman's offer to participate in her desired perversion. I thank you that I still have a son I can cherish, and not an abomination I must kill." And then he walked out of the room, and left silence behind him. **** Eventually they came back to life, or at least started moving and talking to each other again. Kate took her baby back from Joe Costigan, and she moved away from both of her men and settled down to sleep near where Amy Salter and Hanna Leone were nestling under blankets together. No one was going to make love to a partner in this far too public encampment that had been hastily set up in rooms designed for the needs of another species. Couples did creep into nests of bedding, but it was only to snuggle and whisper and be reassured. Kate cuddled her baby, and in spite of the day's chaotic intensity and the evening's conflicts she found herself sliding down into drowsiness without the least difficulty. She was tired, she was so terribly tired.... But somewhere she could hear a woman weeping, and she had the feeling it was someone she cared about and that she ought to rouse herself and try to offer comfort. Finally she got her eyes open again, and she lay in darkness since just about everyone was trying to rest now; and she listened, and half-hoped that she'd been dreaming and therefore wouldn't have to get up. Yes, someone was crying. But she wasn't going to have to do anything about it, the situation was well in

hand. Her father's voice was murmuring gently from somewhere in the room's far corner: “There, Serina. Don't cry, you're not to blame that one of us was an alien and the other just a plain damned fool! He had two more children from your DNA after the boy was born, without you having a thing to say about it—and now he's calling you ‘perverted'? Kate smiled at that, not because El'kah'Hatim's condemnation of her mother had been amusing (actually it had been chilling)—but because knowing that her long-parted parents were together tonight was a decided pleasure to her. Whether anything more happened between them than a simple declaration of peace after years of blame and anger, she scarcely cared; but it sounded to her as if that peace was being forged right now, and it was a peace that she knew would flow over into her own life just as the conflict that had preceded it had so inevitably done. Why was it that a battle between humans, even the most private kind of battle, always had to spill over and harm others? Others just as innocent, sometimes, as the little boy she was now cradling protectively in the warmth of her own arms? Serina had said, “I told them both to go to hell.” And tonight Kate had done exactly the same thing with her own two warring males. Was Serina sorry now, more than thirty years afterward? Kate doubted it. If she knew her mother Serina was only sorry that El'kah'Hatim had been made angry with one of the humans in his charge right now, when all of them were so utterly dependent upon his good will. Serina was sobbing from nothing more significant than an overdose of tension and emotional turmoil, some of which had been festering within her for all those years, and when she was through Kate felt sure her mother would still be as certain about the choice she'd made as she had been when she'd related the story to Kate—a small eternity ago, on an Okala Cartel space station just a couple of days’ travel distant from here. "Sometimes there's no good option,” one of Kate's tactics professors had told her class at command school. “Sometimes you just hold your nose and go with the least offensive choice, morally or militarily. Life doesn't always let you take the high road; sometimes the only roads available to you will be low, lower, and lowest." It shouldn't have been a comforting thought, but somehow tonight it was. Kate bent her head and kissed her sleeping baby, and then settled herself once more. And this time she sank down into sleep without anything holding her back. [Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter 23 It would take time, El'kah'Hatim said when he came to them again the next day. He would go on serving as their liaison because he spoke their language, knew something of their culture, and therefore could handle the task more effectively than could any of the Watchers who operated this facility—and besides, the Watchers were now experiencing the trauma of realizing they must soon lose their role in El'kah'th society. Perhaps for a few years more they would live here in their complex under and around the great amphitheater and perform what remained of their traditional functions, but the time was coming when everyone on El'kah would have to accept that the Gateway to Beyond would open no longer. The Guardians were religious leaders in a larger sense, so their tasks would continue; but the Watchers would not be needed.

"It is time for us to outgrow that anyway,” El'kah'Hatim said, and his tone was one of dismissal. “It was after all only a symbol of our connection to a far greater Beyond.” He greeted Serina that morning as if he were seeing her for the first time, as if their long-ago friendship had been erased from his memory; and although he'd often told her news of their son after Clifton had left the Terran encampment to live in his father's home, from that day on El'kah'Hatim no longer mentioned him. As far as Hatim was concerned the son who for so many years had connected them was no longer in any way Serina's, but had become entirely his. Demanding that he talk to her about Clifton and thereby reasserting their old relationship might have been within the Terran woman's rights, but it would have carried risks for every human now on El'kah—not just for Serina herself, and in the end it could have served no purpose. Clifton had, after all, left her life and Kate's by his own choice. So she let it go, treated El'kah'Hatim just as impersonally as he now treated her, and concentrated instead on adding her efforts to those of the other Terran leaders as Hatim worked to organize them into groups that neutral worlds would find small enough to absorb. Yes, that was going to take time. And oddly enough, the fact that the radiation poisoning on Arcadia had devastated families—that while there were couples among the refugees, there were no infants and no young children and no true elders—worked against finding them havens, because healthy adults in ones and twos could cause upheavals when they entered established societies. When a group included individuals who required nurturing behavior, that fact actually reassured most of the other species among whom they hoped to make new lives; because those individuals were proof that the human immigrants came to establish homes within their new societies, and not to conquer or to change. Even Carsten Marstallar and Serina Landay didn't really qualify for “elder” status in that context. Those two healthy humans weren't elderly, as most physiologically similar species reckoned aging, because both were not only personally independent but were active as leaders among their people. And of course the only infant was Joseph, Kate Landay's son who at the moment had been assigned no surname. "He can always be a Bradley like Clifton was!” Kate said to her mother one evening in what had become a refugee camp, as she fed her child at her breast and watched to see where each of the two males who at different times had shared her life might be at the moment and what they might be doing. Yoshi Sakagawa was sitting and talking with Francesca, who would leave them tomorrow as part of what was nearly the last group to be moved to the spaceport—and from there, to a new home somewhere far from both Earth and El'kah. Joseph Costigan was working over a log entry with Hanna Leone. As Kate watched, Costigan unselfconsciously bent his head over his former mate's and kissed Leone's temple through her hair. Which meant nothing except that their affection for each other had survived when their marriage had died, and Kate understood that and didn't bridle. Not that she had any right to do so, of course; since the first night they'd spent in this place, when she had angrily told both Joe and Yoshi that she wouldn't be fought over and won like prize or prey, she had been intimate with neither man. Each had slept chastely beside her from time to time, each had played with the baby and had cared for his needs (Yoshi expertly; Joe awkwardly at first, but with determination to learn tasks that at first seemed foreign to his large hands), and each had talked with her honestly and almost endlessly. And they'd gotten nowhere, as far as Kate could see things. And now time was running out; there was an available space for one more adult in tomorrow's transfer, which would include Hanna Leone and Amy Salter and Francesca among others. A male was preferred, El'kah'Hatim had said, because the world to which this group was going was relatively gender-balanced and that meant that the immigrant

group should be also if that could be arranged. Francesca would like nothing better, Kate knew, than to take either Yoshi or Joe with her into her new life. She didn't care which, that too was plain, and right now Yoshi was the one toward whom she was directing her attention. "He can, of course,” Serina said, and smiled at her daughter and her grandson. “My father wouldn't mind, I'm sure, having his name put to use by another generation! But, Kate ... I've got something to say to you, and after I say it you may not be very pleased with me." "And that never stopped you before,” Kate said, and smiled back. "All right. It's just this: what you seem to want, a plural marriage that would let you keep both Joe and Yoshi as your partners and that would give Joey two fathers to live with him and bring him up—for you it probably would work. I think you'd be perfectly happy with the arrangement, and I'm sure it would be good for Joey. But what about the way Yoshi feels, what about the way Joe feels? Have they told you?" "Only a thousand times apiece,” Kate admitted softly. “They still want me to choose. Each of them says it would be easier to break off with me completely, than to have to live through nights when he'd know I was sleeping with the other. And what we all agree on is that none of us is interested in three-partner sex. That only came up once, it's just not what any of us wants." "So what are you going to do? And don't tell me again that it isn't fair! I know it isn't, but—Kate, darling, it's the way it is.” Serina reached out a hand and smoothed her daughter's hair. “I had to choose between a man and a baby, and I chose my baby over both the man and advancement in my career. I'd do it again, even after everything that's happened since. But it's not like that for you, your military career's no longer a factor in your life; and whatever choice you make about Joe and Yoshi, they'll both go on loving Joey and they'll both go on caring about you. You do have to pick one of them to live with, though, because you're going to have to respect their feelings and their beliefs. I don't think you can demand that they respect yours and not give them the same consideration." "And if I can't or won't do that?” Kate asked. Her chin was lifting, she was getting that determined-and-be-damned-to-you look that belonged to Captain Landay. "Then you can be very lonely until you find someone else to love. If you ever do. I know what I'm talking about, Kate; this is something I've lived.” Serina deliberately cupped the stubborn chin in her palm. “I could have married again, I could have had any number of relationships with men—or with women, for that matter. Sometimes I did, for a little while, but it never was the same. I didn't have the kind of choice you've got; you can still decide to spend your life with someone you love, who also loves you. Kate, don't throw it away because you don't want to disappoint one man or the other! Or even because you don't want to give one of them up. You were right to be angry when they were fighting over you, but that's over now. Make the choice, child, and then get on with the rest of your life." "If I were still on my last ship's bridge and this was a command decision I'd have made it days ago, wouldn't I, Mother?” Kate's eyes were stinging. “Those decisions were so easy, compared to this one!" "The professional is almost always easier than the personal. You've always known that, Kate. And when the professional and the personal get tangled up together ... that's when it really gets complicated.” Serina gently pinched her daughter's chin, and then took her hand away. “I thought Hatim was going to turn me over to the authorities here when he found out what I wanted to do to your brother, and I'm sure that when he left us that night he intended to follow through with his duty as he perceived it. But he didn't,

which has to mean that he couldn't. And a long time ago it seems to me that you had a duty to the service where Joe was concerned—and that you couldn't follow through with that duty, either." "I'd do the same thing again now,” Kate said, and eased her now-sleeping baby down into her lap and closed her shirt. “I do love them both, Mother, and I'd do whatever it took to protect either of them." "And yet now you're tearing them both apart, and if it's Joe you really want as your partner then you're holding Yoshi back from what could be his best chance to make a good life for himself without you.” Serina nodded her silvery head toward the place where Sakagawa was still sitting with Francesca. “I know all about what you owe to him, Kate! But if he did any of it expecting you to repay him by being his wife when it's someone else you really love in that particular way, then he's a less moral human being than I've ever thought he was. Would he really be happy if he knew that you were paying him back, every time the two of you made love together?" Kate blushed, because no matter how old she grew she had a feeling she was never going to be able to have this personal a conversation with her mother without being embarrassed. But she said softly and honestly, “I felt that way every time, while Yoshi and I lived together aboard Dreamcatcher. I enjoyed it, it wasn't a question of doing something I didn't like in order to please him ... but...." "But if he knew that, Kate, how would it make him feel?” Serina got to her feet. “Let the man go, for all that's holy's sake! You'll hurt him now, but you'll stop yourself from hurting him a lot worse later on. And then you can be fair to Joe, and to your baby, and to yourself." Kate's voice stopped her mother when the older woman had already started to walk away. She said, “Mother!" "Yes?” Serina paused, turned back and waited. "What about you and Dad?" "What about us? We aren't who we were all those years ago, Kate. If we can be friends again now, that means a lot to both of us. And we're not going to spoil that by trying to be more than friends, not until and unless we're both certain it's possible and that it can work.” But Serina smiled, and there was something in her eyes that was far more confident than the words she'd just spoken. “At any rate he's learned a few lessons since he left me. I can't imagine the man I knew then agreeing to live the rest of his life among nonhumans, not even in order to keep his family safe!" She turned again, and this time Kate didn't call her back. After a time during which the people in what was left of the refugee camp, only a few of them now compared to the hundreds of some six weeks earlier, began settling for the night's rest, Yoshi Sakagawa came and sat down at Kate's side. He said quietly, “What about it, Kate? Francesca wants me to go with her tomorrow, you must have figured that out." "Yes. I thought that was what you two were spending so much time discussing,” Kate admitted. Her throat threatened to close off, and she swallowed. "So. Should I go with her?" "You're making this easier than I deserve,” Kate said, and she closed her eyes and swallowed again. "No. I've made it a lot harder than you deserved.” Yoshi's voice was suddenly very gentle. “Would you

really have stayed with me because you thought you owed me something? Because I did figure that out finally, you know. I may be slow, but I'm really not that stupid." "Probably not. But I would have been happiest if you and Joe could both have found a way to stay with me, and make a different kind of family.” The stinging in her eyes stopped, so she opened them again. “I do love you both, it's harder than hell for me to have to choose between you!" "I know that. And believe me, he knows that too. We've talked to each other, not when you were around because that would have been just too difficult—and as much as I care about you, Kate, I can't share you with him and he feels the same way about sharing you with me.” Yoshi reached to her lap and stroked the sleeping baby's cheek, so lightly that the little boy didn't rouse. Joey didn't even stir; if he was aware of the touch at all, it was so familiar that it disturbed his sleep not one bit. “I hate leaving this little guy, though." "You don't have to. Tell Francesca you want her to wait out tomorrow's transfer. I'm sure Hatim won't be pleased, but he'll manage to place the two of you with the last group that otherwise will include just Mother and Dad, and Joe and me and Joey.” Even when she said it Kate realized it was a bad idea, but somehow she had to make the offer. She couldn't deliberately separate Yoshi from the baby he so loved, who so loved him. "Hatim wouldn't be pleased for good reason. And anyway, Kate, that wouldn't work.” Yoshi smiled gently. “Joey's little enough so that he won't remember me, and that's just as well. And Francesca and I will have our own family, we both want kids. Not that any other child's ever going to replace Joey, but—this is how it has to be.” He bent forward, and kissed the baby's forehead. Then he kissed Kate, full on her mouth and with lingering tenderness. It was just as well she had to avoid waking the baby, otherwise she might have responded to that kiss far too enthusiastically. Otherwise she might have found herself wavering, trying one more time to think of a way to keep Yoshi here without having to send Joe away in his place. But she sat still, and returned that last kiss with the pressure of her lips but didn't—and couldn't—deepen it or prolong it. Yoshi left her then. He took Francesca by the hand and led her out of the room, because now there were so few people left here that night-time privacy was possible. Kate stayed where she was, and didn't realize there were tears slipping down her cheeks until she felt another woman's body settling onto the El'kah'th double seat beside hers. Amy Salter's arm slid around her old friend's shoulders, and then Kate turned and buried her face and let herself sob. [Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter 24 For one horrible moment Kate Landay thought that El'kah'Hatim had betrayed her, that she was being met at the spaceport by an Internal Affairs team that would take her back to Earth. But then the two beings wearing the uniforms turned so that she could see their faces, and she realized that they were humanoids but not humans; and that the uniforms were salvage jobs, taken off some service members’ dead bodies somewhere after a battle. And they weren't even I.A. uniforms, they were Explorers. The basic tunic and trousers were the same

for I.A.'s, Regulars, Rangers and Explorers; but the collars this pair wore were those distinctive to Kate's own once-beloved branch of the stargoing “silent service." And this was a pair of grave robbers, or shipwreck looters, and she suddenly understood how El'kah'Hatim must have felt when he'd spat at her mother's feet two months earlier. "Kate?” Joe Costigan asked softly. His arm rested around his life-partner's shoulders, not because he felt the need to protect her but to satisfy himself that nothing could separate them from each other during these minutes before they would leave El'kah at last. They were in a waiting area that was divided from the rest of the concourse by a force field, so there was no danger whatsoever that the crowds flowing past would come between them. But during recent weeks they had been cut off from the rest of the universe at the refugee camp, and before that Kate had spent months in the isolation of Dreamcatcher and Joe had been on thinly populated Arcadia; so the rush of passing bodies and the din of a hundred conversations at once almost overwhelmed them. Joe needed to maintain physical contact with his mate, and she needed that reassurance just as much as he did. All their fellow refugees were gone now, except Serina Landay and Carsten Marstallar. The two elders sat together on the other side of the segregated waiting area, and talked quietly and companionably but didn't touch. And of course little Joey was once again strapped close to Kate's breast, because she wouldn't have considered letting anyone else—not even his father—carry her baby just now. She said softly, “I'm glad we're not staying on El'kah. Until Hatim found out that Mother had tried to get Dad to agree to the DNA combination procedure before Clifton was born, I was convinced that the El'kah'ths were a much better people morally than we humans are. They seemed so tolerant, so able to accept other beings’ ways and other beings’ faults; but they're not much different than we are, after all. They just have their own list of acts that are reason enough for one of them to be punished or rejected by the others, and what's on their list makes as little sense to us as what's on ours makes to them." "We're fallible, and they are, too,” Joe agreed. “You're going to miss your brother, though, aren't you, Kate?" "Yes. But I lost him the minute Hatim heard Mother say what she'd tried to do. If I lived on El'kah for the rest of my life I wouldn't be allowed to see him, not after that; and now that he's become part of the other El'kah'ths, I don't believe it makes all that much difference to him that he's no longer allowed to see me.” Kate sighed. “At first I thought they were individuals like us, and then I thought they were all elements of a collective mind! But neither's quite the truth. They need the connection to each other; Clifton wasn't really an El'kah'th at all until I guided him into joining with the others that first time. Yet a single El'kah'th can live away from the rest for years at a time, the way El'kah'Hatim once did; and an individual can hold back knowledge from the others. If that wasn't true...." "Your mother wouldn't be with us right now,” Joe finished for her. “But in a few minutes more we'll be on the transport, and I like the sound of the world where it's taking us." The El'kah'th blockade protecting their own world's space had been lifted, because someone in their government had had the good sense to see to it that word of the Gateway to Beyond's destruction had reached the Sovereignty Diet; so they were no longer threatened with a Terran-led attack. But the refugees from what had so hopefully been dubbed “Arcadia” still had been obliged to accept resettlement

on whatever neutral worlds were willing to take them, a few individuals here, a family grouping there; because all of them, except for those like Francesca who had been born on Arcadia, were still criminals who'd been sentenced to lifelong exile. And then there were the two Terran-born criminals named Yoshi Sakagawa and Serina Landay, who were subject to arrest for offenses they'd committed but hadn't yet been tried for. Stealing a starship, aiding a known criminal and military deserter named Kate Landay, using false identification, eluding pursuit by law enforcement officials ... no, neither her former lover nor her mother had had a prayer of being able to return to the Sovereignty in safety. Kate still felt a few pangs of guilt about Yoshi, but she could live with them by reminding herself that she'd forced nothing on him. He had made his own choices, and his resettlement a week earlier with the group including Francesca and Hanna Leone and Amy Salter had also been his own decision. And as for Serina, Kate understood that her mother wouldn't have chosen to be anywhere else because except for her lost son the only people in the universe who mattered to her were right here inside this force field. Kate said, “I like the sound of it, too, Joe. I didn't want to go to somewhere that was densely populated; and I hoped we'd be with a mix of other species instead of trying to fit into an established, homogenous culture. And I especially didn't want to be anywhere near a regular trade route, anywhere that a Sovereignty Explorer ship might find us by accident or that a Ranger or I.A. ship might find us on purpose.” Then she realized exactly what she'd said, and she laughed. “Listen to me! I just managed to put every requirement I had for our new home into a negative statement. Now, there's a mind-set I need to change." "You did say you liked the sound of it, though,” Joe countered, and his arm around her tightened comfortingly. “That sounded pretty positive to me. Kate, you've been to hell and back literally during the last couple of years and you've survived! What more can you ask from yourself, for gods’ sake?" What more, indeed? The colony for which they would soon be headed was a cooperative venture among several species, each of which had faster-than-light space travel technology but none of which was capable on its own of making a successful colonization effort. The four Terrans had been accepted there, although Terrans were an unknown race entirely in that part of the galaxy, because the El'kah'ths had assured the colony's organizers that the two males had vast experience in successful colonization and that the two females were equally skilled and experienced in the exploration of unknown worlds. All that was true, of course; Carsten Marstallar and Joseph Costigan had been highly effective in developing their separate settlements on Arcadia. It wasn't their fault that the Sovereignty had poisoned that planet too when it had blasted the world on the Gateway's other side. Living on a mixed-species world would be a new and humbling experience for Marstallar, but being forced to interact with and depend on the El'kah'ths had already done wonders for his lifelong xenophobia; while Costigan, of course, had grown up on a mixed world. And Serina and Kate Landay had both served successful careers as Explorer officers, with Serina leaving through honorable retirement and Kate exiting the service as a consequence of others’ political maneuverings—not because of any lack of competence on her part. Yes, she felt good about the new home for which they were bound. She already missed Amy, of course; but Amy belonged with Hanna, and Clifton belonged to his fellow El'kah'ths now, and Yoshi would make a life with Francesca. And as for Kate Landay—Joe Costigan had described his mate's situation accurately. She had just passed through the last stage of her own personal inferno, and was coming out with her confidence renewed and without the slightest twinge of regret for the old life that had twice been taken from her.

Coming out transformed, to claim her new life on that inferno's other side. THE END

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