“We better go,” she said lower. Arinnian caught the first slight musky odor. At the next table, another male raised his crest and swiveled his head in their direction. Arinnian could imagine the conflict in Vodan — dismiss her, defy her, strike her; no killing, she being unarmed — and yet that would be a surrender in itself, less to tradition than to mere conventionality — “We’ll have to leave ourselves, soon’s we finish these beers,” the man said. “Glad to’ve come on you. Fair winds forever.”

Vodan’s relief was unmistakable. He mumbled through the courtesies and flapped off with Quenna. The city swallowed them.

Arinnian wondered what to say. He was grateful for the dull light; his face felt hotter than the air. He stared outward.

Tabitha said at length, softly, “That poor lost soul.”

“Who, the nightflyer?” All at once he was furious. “I’ve met her sort befere. Degenerates, petty criminals. Pray Vodan doesn’t get his throat cut in whatever filthy crib she’s taking him to. I know what must’ve happened here. He was wandering around lonely, at loose ends, a mountaineer who’d probably never come on one like her. She zeroed in, hit him with enough pheromone to excite — ugh!”

“Why should you care? I mean, of course he’s a friend of yours, but I hardly believe that pathetic creature will dare try more than wheedling a tip out of him.” Tabitha drank smoke. “You know,” she said thoughtfully, “here’s a case of Ythrian cultural lag. They’ve been affected by human ideas to the point where they don’t give their abnormals a quick death. But they’re still not interested in sponsoring rehabilitation or research on cures, or in simple charity. Someday—”

He scarcely heard the last remark. “Vodan’s to marry Eyath,” he said through the interior grip on his gullet.

Tabitha raised her brows. “Oh? That one you mentioned to me? Well, don’t you suppose, if she heard, she’d be glad he’s gotten a bit of unimportant fun and forgetting?”

“It’s not right! She’s too clean. She—” Arinnian gulped. Abruptly he thought: So why not take the risk? Now I need forgetting myself. “Is the matter small to you?” he blurted. “In that case, let’s us do the same.”

“Hm?” She considered him for a while that grew. Lightning moved closer on heavy gusts. His rage ebbed and he must fight not to lower his eyes, not to cringe.

At last: “You are bitter for certain, aren’t you, Chris?” A chuckle. “But likewise you’re hopeful.”

“I’m sorry,” he got out. “I n-n-never meant disrespect. I wanted to give you a, an imaginary example — make you understand why I’m upset.”

“I might resent your calling it imaginary,” she smiled, though her tone had become more compassionate than teasing, “except I assume it wasn’t really. The answer is no, thanks.”

“I expected that. We birds—” He couldn’t finish, but stared down into his mug until he lifted it for a quick, deep draft.

“What d’you mean, ‘we’?” she challenged.

“Why, we… our generation, at least—”

When she nodded, her locks caught what illumination there was. “I know,” she said gravely. “That behavior pattern, promiscuous as kakkelaks provided they don’t much respect their partners, but hardly able to touch birds of the opposite sex. You’re a bright lad, Chris; Avalonians aren’t given to introspection, but you must have some idea of the cause. Don’t you want, a wife and children, ever?”

“Of course. I — of course. I will.”

“Most of them will, I’m sure. Most of the earlier ones did eventually, when they’d come to terms with themselves. Besides, the situation’s not universal. We birds do have this in common, that we tolerate less prying than the average human. So comparative statistics aren’t available. Also, the problem has gotten conspicuous these days for no deeper reason than that the movement into the choths has begun snowballing. And, finally, Chris, your experience is limited. How many out of thousands do you know well enough to describe their private lives? You’d naturally tend to be best acquainted with your own sort, especially since we birds have gotten pretty good at picking up face and body cues.”

Tabitha’s pipe had gone out. She emptied it and finished: “I tell you, your case isn’t near as typical as you think, nor near as serious. But I do wish that going bird didn’t make otherwise sensible people lose years in thwarting themselves.”

Anger pricked him again. What call had she to act superior? “Now wait—” he began.

Tabitha knocked back her beer and rose. “I’m headed for my hotel,” she said.

He stared up at her. “What?”

She ruffled his hair. “I’m sorry. But I’m afraid if we continue tonight, we’ll brew one cyclone of a squabble. I think too well of you to want that. Well take another evening soon if you like. Now I aim to get into bed and have Library Central screen me some of that Homer stuff.”

He couldn’t dissuade her. Perhaps he took most umbrage at how calm his arguments left her. When he had bidden her a chill goodnight, he slouched to the nearest phoneboard.

The first woman he called was at work. Defense production was running at seven hours on, fifteen and the odd minutes off, plus overtime. The second female acquaintance said frantically that her husband was home if that was the party he wanted; he apologized for punching a wrong number. The third was available. She was overly plump, chattered without cease, and had the brains of a barysauroid. But what the chaos?

—He awoke about the following sunset. She was sweating in her sleep, breath stale from alcohol. He wondered why the air had gone hot and sticky. Breakdown in the conditioner? Or, hm, it’d been announced that if force screens must be raised, the power drain would require Environmental Control to shut off—

Force screens!

Arinnian jumped from bed… Rain had given way to low overcast, but he glimpsed shimmers across that slatiness. He groped through the dusty clutter in the room and snapped on the holovid.

A recording played, over and over, a man’s voice high-pitched and his face stretched out of shape: “—war declared. A courier from Ythri has delivered the news in Gray, that Terra has served notice of war.”

VII

“Our basic strategy is simple,” Admiral Cajal had explained. “I would prefer a simpler one yet: pitched battle between massed fleets, winner takes all.”

“But the Ythrians will scarcely be that obliging,” Governor Saracoglu remarked.

“No. They aren’t well organized for it, in the first place. Not in character for them to centralize operations. Besides, they must know they’re foredoomed to lose any standup fight. They lack the sheer numerical strength. I expect they’ll try to maintain hedgehog positions. From those they’d make sallies, harass, annihilate what smaller units of ours they found, prey on our supply lines. We can’t drive straight into the Domain with that sort of menace at our rear. Prohibitively costly. We could suffer actual disaster if we let ourselves get caught between their inner and outer forces.”

“Ergo, we start by capturing their advanced bases.”

“The major ones. We needn’t worry, about tiny new colonies or backward allies, keeping a few ships per planet.” Cajal gestured with a flashbeam. It probed into the darkness of a display tank, wherein gleamed points of luminance that represented the stars of this region. They crowded by thousands across those few scaled-down parsecs, a fire-swarm out of which not many men could have picked an individual. Cajal realized his talent for doing this had small intrinsic value. The storage and processing of such data were for computers. But it was an outward sign of an inner gift.

“Laura the nearest,” he said. “Hru and Khrau further on, forming a triangle with it. Give me those, and I’ll undertake to proceed directly against Quetlan. That should force them to call in everything they have, to protect the home star! And, since my rear and my lines will then be reasonably secure, I’ll get the decisive battle I want.”