“Wait!” Kault called out in Anglic.

Uthacalthing looked back. “Yes, respected colleague?”

“I …-. .” Kault dropped back into GalSeven. “I must speak with you regarding the evacuation. You may have heard, my ship is in disrepair. I am at the moment bereft of transport.”

The Thennanin’s crest fluttered in discomfort. Protocol and diplomatic standing were one thing, but the fellow obviously would rather not be in town when the Gubru landed. “I must ask therefore. Will there be some opportunity to discuss the possibility of mutual aid?” The big creature said it in a rush.

Uthacalthing pretended to ponder the idea seriously. After all, his species and Kault’s were officially at war right now. He nodded at last. “Be at my compound about midnight tomorrow night — no later than a mictaar thereafter, mind you. And please bring only a minimum of baggage. My boat is small. With that understood, I gladly offer you a ride to sanctuary.”

He turned to his neo-chimp driver. “That would only be courteous and proper, would it not, corporal?”

The poor chimmie blinked up at Uthacalthing in confusion. She had been selected for this duty because she knew GalSeven. But that was a far cry from penetrating the arcana that were going on here.

“Y-yessir. It, it seems like the kind thing to do.”

Uthacalthing nodded, and smiled at Kault. “There you are, my dear colleague. Not merely correct, but kind. It is well when we elders learn from such wise precociousness, and add that quality to our own actions, is it not?”

For the first time, he saw the Thennanin blink. Turmoil radiated from the creature. At last though, relief won out over suspicion that he was being played for the fool. Kault bowed to Uthacalthing. And then, because Uthacalthing had included her in the conversation, he added a brief, shallow nod to the little chimmie.

“For my clientsss and myssselfff, I thank you,” he said awkwardly in Anglic. Kault snapped his elbow spikes, and his Ynnin clients followed him as he lumbered into the floater. The closing cupola cut off the sharp dome light at last. The chims from the Library looked at Uthacalthing gratefully.

The floater rose on its gravity cushion and moved off rapidly. Uthacalthing’s driver held the door of his own wheelcar for him, but he stretched his arms and inhaled deeply. “I am thinking that it might be a nice idea to go for a walk,” he told her. “The embassy is only a short distance from here. Why don’t you take a few hours off, corporal, and spend some time with your family and friends?”

“B-but ser …”

“I will be all right,” he said firmly. He bowed, and felt her rush of innocent joy at the simple courtesy. She bowed deeply in return.

Delightful creatures, Uthacalthing thought as he watched the car drive off. I have met a few neo-chimpanzees who even seem to have the glimmerings of a true sense of humor.

I do hope the species survives.

He started walking. Soon he had left the clamor of the Library behind him and passed into a residential neighborhood. The breeze had left the night air clear, and the city’s soft lights did not drive away the flickering stars. At this time the Galactic rim was a ragged spill of diamonds across the sky. There were no traces to be seen of the battle in space; it had been too small a skirmish to leave much visible residue.

All around Uthacalthing were sounds that told of the difference of this evening. There were distant sirens and the growl of aircraft passing overhead. On nearly every block he heard someone crying… voices, human or chim, shouting or murmuring in frustration and fear. On the fluttering level of empathy, waves beat up against one another in a froth of emotion. His corona could not deflect the inhabitants’ dread as they awaited morning.

Uthacalthing did not try to keep it out as he strolled up dimly lit streets lined with decorative trees. He dipped his tendrils into the churning emotional flux and drew forth above him a strange new glyph. It floated, nameless and terrible, Time’s ageless threat made momentarily palpable.

Uthacalthing smiled an ancient, special kind of smile. And at that moment nobody, not even in the darkness, could possibly have mistaken him for a human being.

There are many paths, … he thought, again savoring the open, undisciplined nuances of Anglic.

He left the thing he had made to hang in the air, dissolving slowly behind him, as he walked under the slowly wheeling pattern of the stars.

10

Robert

Robert awoke two hours before dawn.

There was a period of disorientation as the strange feelings and images of sleep slowly dissipated. He rubbed his eyes, trying to clear his head of muzzy, clouded confusion.

He had been running, he recalled. Running as one does sometimes but only in dreams — in long, floating steps that reach for leagues and seem barely to touch down. Around him had shifted and drifted vague shapes, mysteries, and half-born images that slipped out of reach even as his waking mind tried to recall them.

Robert looked over at Athaclena, lying nearby in her own sleeping bag. Her brown Tymbrimi ruff — that tapered helm of soft brown fur — was puffed out. The silvery tendrils of her corona waved delicately, as if probing and grappling with something invisible in the space overhead.

She sighed and spoke very low — a few short phrases in the rapid, highly syllabic Tymbrimi dialect of Galactic Seven.

Perhaps that explained his own strange dreams, Robert realized. He must have been picking up traces of hers!

Watching the waving tendrils, .he blinked. For just a moment it had seemed as if something was there, floating in the air just above the sleeping alien girl. It had been like… like …

Robert frowned, shaking his head. It hadn’t been like anything at all. The very act of trying to compare it to something else seemed to drive the thing away even as he thought about it.

Athaclena sighed and turned over. Her corona settled down. There were no more half glimmers in the dimness.

Robert slid out of his bag and fumbled for his boots before standing. He felt his way around the towering spine-stone beneath which they had made camp. There was barely enough starlight to find a path among the strange monoliths.

He came to a promontory looking over toward the westward mountain chain, and the northern plains to his right. Below this ridgetop vantage point there lay a gently rippling sea of dark woods. The trees filled the air with a damp, heavy aroma.

Resting his back against a spine-stone, he sat down on the ground to try to think.

If only the adventure were all there was to this trip. An idyllic interlude in the Mountains of Mulun in the company of an alien beauty. But there was no forgetting, no escaping the guilty sureness that he should not be here. He really ought to be with his classmates — with his militia unit — facing the troubles alongside them.

That was not to be, however. Once again, his mother’s career had interfered with his own life. It was not the first time Robert had wished he were not the son of a politician.

He watched the stars, sparkling in bright strokes that followed the meeting of two Galactic spiral arms.

Perhaps if I had known more adversity in my life, I might be better prepared for what’s to come. Better able to accept disappointment.

It wasn’t just that he was the son of the Planetary Coordinator, with all of the advantages that came with status. It went beyond that.

All through childhood he had noticed that where other boys had stumbled and suffered growing pains, he had always somehow had the knack of moving gracefully. Where most had groped their way in awkwardness and embarrassment toward adolescence and sexuality, he had slipped into pleasure and popularity with all the comfort and ease of putting on an old shoe.