CHAPTER TWELVE

Meroe Transfer Station

Anatoly Sakhalin settled his daughter on his lap, switched on her flat book, and watched his wife as she laughed and talked with colleagues she hadn't seen in months. He rested his chin on Portia's flaxen hair, tucking an arm more tightly around her, and studied the scene of actors before him. He felt more lighthearted then he had in months. The Bharentous Repertory Company had taken a sabbatical while Owen and Ginny made the final arrangements for their tour into Chapalii space, and now, finally, they had reassembled at Meroe Transfer Station for their departure.

"Kostra," said Portia, using the khush word for "father" as he had taught her to, "let's see the war."

Anatoly gauged the distance between them and Diana, who was deep in conversation with Gwyn Jones, and called up the program. The thin slate itself had solidity and heft, sitting on his knees with Portia's little legs stuck out on either side, framing it in a "v". But the image that appeared on the flat black surface was insubstantial although it looked as if they were peering through a window into a tiny world, complete with depth and movement, a range of sharp hills and a distant city, and two armies facing off on a flat stretch of ground. Anatoly had learned to model these programs himself: The walled city in the distance was the Habakar city of Qurat, where, nine years ago, Bakhtiian had won a decisive victory over the Habakar king.

"Which ones are the bad guys?" Portia asked, and answered herself by putting a finger on the Habakar army, with its bright pennons and flags. "The khaja are the bad guys. They had a king and he ran away from you."

"That's right." Anatoly could not help but smile over past glory. "Now, when two lines meet like this, what should the general ask himself?"

"Hmmm," said Portia. "Why do all those soldiers there have gray horses?" She pointed to the center rank of the Habakar army. The image was as distinct as if they were watching the real battle from a hilltop.

"Because those are the king's guard, and they all wear the same color coats over their armor and ride the same color horses to show that—"

"Anatoly!"

Reflexively, he tapped the screen to black. "Awww," complained Portia. "Kostra, I wanted to count the gray horses."

"Oh, Anatoly." Diana grabbed Portia under the girl's arms and heaved her off Anatoly's lap. "If you have to do this, could you not do it in public? It's so embarrassing."

"It's nothing to be ashamed of," he snapped. "It's just a picture."

"Oh, yes, just the thing for people to see: The barbarian gloating over his last battle where uncounted human beings were slaughtered. I told you I don't want you to-—"

"Then what would you rather have me do? Argue with my wife in public?"

She flushed. She took in a breath and forcibly took stock of their argument and any potential eavesdroppers. Hyacinth stood close by, but after living upstairs from them for eight years, he was bored by their bickering. "Anatoly," she said in a calmer voice. "I know you've found other people through the net who are interested in war history, but most people aren't like that. It's very old-fashioned."

"And it is still new-fashioned to bring home a barbarian husband?" he asked, just to see her flinch.

"Or is that old-fashioned now as well?"

"I don't like this," said Portia, and she squirmed out of her mother's arms and darted off into the crowd toward Hal.

"We agreed at the farm that we wouldn't talk about that again!" said Diana through clenched teeth.

"You're not fighting fair."

"What is fair in fighting? I'm fighting to win." He leaned to one side, looking around his wife, to make sure that Portia had reached Hal without incident. She had, and was even now hanging on Hal's leg, an impediment the other actor took with his usual good grace: He ignored her while continuing his conversation with the stage manager, Yomi Applegate-Hito.

"Exactly! You're stuck in primitive patterns of thinking. Everything has to be win or lose."

"But, Diana, if you are fighting a war, then someone must win and someone must lose."

"That's why we don't fight wars anymore!"

"Then what is Duke Charles doing? I would call that fighting a war, to drive away the khepellis who have conquered these lands."

"Shhh! Anyway, that's different—"

Anatoly snorted. "Different! In what way?"

"We want to regain our freedom—"

"I want to do what I wish, and not have you tell me that you care more about what other people think of me and what I'm doing than about me." At once, he was sorry he had said it. Her face closed, like a blanket being drawn across a tent's entrance.

"I'm sorry," she said curtly. "You're right."

Then, damn her, she left him and went over to greet the actors Dejhuti and Seshat, who had just arrived in the concourse. Anatoly cursed himself silently. Diana was right: They had the same argument over and over again. Irked, he keyed on the screen and watched the battle play itself out in collapsed time.

"Do you mind if I give you some advice?"

Anatoly glanced up. "Yes."

Hyacinth did not take the hint. Instead, he crouched down beside Anatoly's chair. The actor no longer wore his hair blond. It had reverted to a coarse black, shorn tight against his head, and with his dark almond eyes and his yellow-brown complexion, he looked much more foreign than he had when Anatoly had first met him. Then again, most Earth humans Anatoly saw looked more like Hyacinth than like Diana, with her golden hair and light skin. "Yevgeni isn't coming with me, you know," said Hyacinth, seemingly at random. "He's off to another crafts exhibition. I'm getting a little tired of him winning all those awards for his leather-work. He's had an offer from Passier to do his own exclusive line of saddles for them."

Anatoly endured this confidence in silence. He didn't want to like Hyacinth. He could just imagine what his grandmother would say to the thought of a prince of the Sakhalin befriending an avowed lover of men, especially a man who lived as if in marriage to a jaran man whom his grandmother had exiled from the jaran.

"At first I thought it would be impossible for Yevgeni to adjust," Hyacinth continued. "Yevgeni was so dependent on me for everything. But it's odd that he was able to take the very things that made him so out of place here and create his own life with them. He's built a reputation for himself that he never could have gained in the jaran. Of course, he had no standing to lose. It's not as if he was a prince of the Sakhalin."

"I can't imagine that anything that an arenabekh, an outcast, like Yevgeni might do would have anything to do with me," said Anatoly, affronted.

"Yes. That's exactly the problem, isn't it?"

Anatoly closed his lips hard on a sharp retort. At the same moment, movement eddied around the concourse entrance, and with the instincts that had made him a successful actor, Vasil Veselov entered. Behind him, mobile cameras nudged up against the concourse archway, passing through nesh images of interviewers and hangers-on in their efforts to get a better angle and that one final shot of the departing star; the ephemeral escort of nesh figures halved in number, vanishing into the ether, as soon as they reached the archway, which blocked their entrance. One of the hangers-on was real, then, Anatoly noted, because she walked into the waiting area alongside Karolla, carrying a pack, with the baby in a sling at her hip. The children followed at their mother's heels. Veselov went to greet Owen and Ginny. Karolla found the nearest seat and sank down, looking tired.

"Oh, I won't say you're worse than poor Karolla," added Hyacinth, who had also been watching this display, "with her odd notions about what is due her and that awful place she's made to live in, but you're certainly no better. In your own way."

"I beg your pardon." Anatoly stood up. "If you will excuse me."

Hyacinth rose as well. "No. Now let me say this, because I'm the only other person here who's gone through what Diana is going through, and I care about her very much. Hell, I even like you.

Portia deserves better than you two fighting all the time."

The mention of Portia stopped Anatoly. He looked for her. She had found little Evdokia, and the two girls were giggling at something Ilyana Arkhanov was telling them. The two boys had lost themselves in the crowd, but Ilyana herself inevitably stood out: She had her father's beauty as well as a precociously self-possessed manner. Born into the Arkhanov line, she would have been a fine candidate for etsana of the Arkhanov tribe, had her mother stayed with her family, as she should have.

"Diana is stuck with you, Anatoly."

The comment jerked Anatoly out of his wandering thoughts. "Diana is my wife!"

"By jaran law. I don't recall that she has taken any steps under Earth laws to marry you, except for the child-license certificate, and that's simply a legal agreement. I notice she no longer wears the scar of marriage."

Stung, Anatoly defended himself. "We agreed that because of her work it had to be covered up. It isn't really gone. That had nothing to do with our marriage."

"Except that she can't leave you because she's all you have here, and she knows it. I felt the same way about Yevgeni for a long time. But he wasn't too proud to change. You are."

Drilled in a harsh school of manners, Anatoly only barely stopped himself from slugging Hyacinth right there in front of everyone. But Hyacinth was a Singer, and Singers were allowed to say whatever they wanted to, even to a prince of the jaran. Even to a prince who was not a prince in these lands.

Gods, he knew in his heart that Hyacinth was right. But he felt helpless to do anything about it. He had no family, no tribe, to give him stature, and wars, as Diana constantly pointed out, were old-fashioned here.

"Nor did I ask Yevgeni, obviously, to take the kind of risk you demanded of Diana, that she have a child, which we all knew would endanger her life because of the incompatibilities."

"It was her choice as well!"

"She had that child for you."

"She loves Portia! She's a fine mother to our daughter! You know it's true."

"It's nice to hear you defending her, for once." Hyacinth smiled slightly, if sadly.

Anatoly suddenly realized why he didn't want to like Hyacinth. It wasn't truly that Hyacinth was a lover of men, although that was bad enough. It was that he felt sorry for Anatoly. That was worse than any insult. "I offered my services to the Duke years ago," he said finally, roughly, "for the—"

"Yes, for that." They never used the word "rebellion."

"His councillors sent a message to tell me that I must wait. So I have waited. I have tried to learn about this place, even though half of it seems to be shadows and air. What else is there for me to do?"

"We are going into Chapalii space now. Finally. We'll have unprecedented access to their—well, to their lands."

"To zayinu lands."

"Maybe this is what Charles Soerensen has been telling you to wait for."

During his seven years on Earth, Anatoly had found a dark corner of himself that he had not known existed. He hated it and feared it in equal measure, but it had grown steadily. What if Duke Charles had told him to wait not because he had a jahar for Anatoly to lead at some distant point, but because he had no use at all for an exiled jaran prince? At first, certainly, Anatoly had thought that Bakhtiian's army could sweep as easily across Earth as across Rhui, since no one here seemed versed in the ways of war and no one carried weapons and there were no fortresses except as museums. He knew better now. "I—" he began, and stopped. He could not bring himself to say it aloud. I've mounted a horse that's too wild and too strong for me to ride. Bad enough that they all pitied him covertly. He could not stand it if they did it openly.

"We live longer. You know that. So we take longer to make decisions and to take action, because we have the luxury of taking time. We don't even know how long the Chapalii live. They seem to be even more leisurely than we are. It doesn't mean you aren't wanted—"

"I didn't say I thought I wasn't wanted! Of course I—" Anatoly broke off and lapsed into silence.

"—it means," Hyacinth went on, "a lot of things. Your people fell in love with the vision of destiny, and it's like a great engine turning at high speed. It's huge, and it's visible, and it has immense weight and force. We don't work that way anymore. The Machine Age is over. And right now, especially, we can't. We have to work in insubstantial ways. We have to work under the surface."

"You understand about the way your world is like the breath of Father Wind, all air and ghosts."

Hyacinth chuckled. "What other way should it be? No, I'm not laughing at you. I think I see what you mean. Listen. Talk to Gwyn Jones."

"Why Gwyn Jones?"

"Because he is ... oh, I guess I could say he is the dyan of the new jahar that's forming. A scouting jahar."

At once, Anatoly bridled. "I was a dyan—"

"In Bakhtiian's army. Were you born a dyan?"

"No! I earned the right just as any soldier must."

"Mother of Gods, Sakhalin, you're not stupid. I've seen you use the net. You speak our language very well, and I've heard you working at the Chapalii language, which most of us are too damned intimidated to even try to grasp. So earn the right here, as well. That's what I've been trying to say all along. You want them to come to you and give it to you because of who you are. But you wouldn't have expected that from Bakhtiian, or at least you say you wouldn't have."

Anatoly flared. "One thing Bakhtiian learned from my cousin Yaroslav: that a boy must earn his saber and a soldier earn his command."

"Then I've made my point."

Fuming, Anatoly found Diana in the crowd—now she was talking with the good-looking man who built the lights for the plays—and he was filled with an immense irritation that she seemed so interested in the other man. It was bad manners for a woman to flirt openly with another man when her husband was around to see. Portia, still giggling, sidled up to her mother, and Diana hoisted her up without even looking at her and continued talking, her face so animated, so bright.

Anatoly looked away. The sight of them together pained him too much. At that moment, more than anything, he wanted to ask Hyacinth: How do I make my wife love me again? But he could not.

Ilyana wondered if she could throw herself out an air lock, up here in space, on a transfer station whose knobbly docks were like blunt fingers from which the webs that connected the vast reaches of space together were woven and sent into the heavens. It just wasn't fair. She had said g'bye to Kori at Victoria Station and then hid her tears on the long ride to Nairobi Port by pressing her face up against the glass and staring out the window at the sea until her father had grown tired of entertaining Evdokia and Anton and left them in her care while he went forward to the salon car. But Kori's Uncle Gus had taken her aside right before they'd left and told her that he was also negotiating for a tour into Chapalii space; that if he managed it, he'd bring Kori with him. Ilyana clung to that faint hope.

Darling Portia ran over to giggle with Evdokia and then wiggled away to go to her mother. Ilyana glanced quickly around the room but did not see Portia's father anywhere.

"Yana! My dear girl. You've grown again. How nice to see you." Dejhuti and Seshat, Yomi and Joseph, Oriana, Phillippe, and Ginny all came up to greet her, and Phillippe, as usual, tugged on her braid. She would have kicked him, but that would have been childish. Owen was so engrossed in his conversation with a man Ilyana vaguely recognized but could not place that he only acknowledged Vasil with a sketchy wave of the hand without giving him any attention at all. But Vasil insinuated himself into the conversation anyway. He was like those kids who always have to be where the center of attention is.

By now overexcited, Evdokia was beginning to run in circles, so Ilyana led her back to their mother and sat down with her. Nipper stood guard over Karolla, who had yet to regain her strength even though the baby was now three months old. Nor had she begun her courses again, and because of the child's blemish, Karolla could not name the infant until she had offered the blood of her body to Grandmother Night, so that She might forgive the blemish on the body and allow the child to live.

Karolla gave her daughter a tired smile and let Evdokia crawl up onto her lap. "It's a pity about them," she said.

"About who?" asked Ilyana suspiciously. She hated it when her mother gossiped.

"That they haven't had another child yet. Porzhia is a sweet girl, and they ought to have had another one by now." She clicked her tongue disapprovingly. "It's no wonder they argue so much."

Ilyana caught sight of Anatoly Sakhalin on the other side of the room. Like a good soldier, he stood alert and on guard, surveying the crowd for danger. He was really old, almost as old as her mother, but still ... the boys her own age were just so uninteresting. Most of them didn't even know how to ride a horse. They hadn't commanded a jahar. They hadn't captured a king. She bit at her lower lip and looked around to see that her mother was eyeing her speculatively.

At once, Ilyana clasped her hands in her lap and fixed her gaze on her knuckles.

"If you had completed your woman's passage," said Karolla suddenly, "you could name the baby in my stead."

Ilyana felt her ears burn. She said nothing.

"A prince of the Sakhalin would be an appropriate choice for a girl's first lover," continued her mother relentlessly. Ilyana would have clapped her hands over her ears, but it wouldn't have done any good. "You are sixteen years old, Yana, and you began your courses two years ago. It's past time for your tsadokhis night. When I was your age—"

"You had four ankle bracelets to show you'd had four lovers. You were married just before you turned seventeen. I know. I know. You've told me all this before."

"You will show me the respect I am due, child!"

Ilyana could not stand it anymore. She leapt up and hurried off into the crowd, knowing Karolla would not follow.

She promptly careened into a man.

"I beg your pardon," she gasped, preparing to bolt.

Her victim chuckled. "If only I had that much energy. You're Ilyana Arkhanov, aren't you?"

Stuck, Ilyana slanted a glance up at him. He was the man Owen had been talking to. He had a pleasant face and an open expression, and like all adults, he looked old. Not old like dying-old, because she knew that here on Earth most people lived for a long long time without ever looking like Elders, but so old that Ilyana couldn't quite imagine that she herself would ever be that old. But he looked approachable. "Yes," she agreed. "I'm sorry, I don't remember you."

"No reason you should. I won't embarrass you by telling you how young you were and how much you've grown since I saw you last." He grinned, and, tentatively, Ilyana grinned back. "I'm David ben Unbutu, by the way. Pleased to meet you."

"Pleased to meet you," Ilyana echoed. "Do you know M. Zerentous? Are you one of the new actors?"

"I know Ginny better than Owen, and no, I'm not an actor. I'm—well, it looks as if I'll be traveling with you. I've done that before, when the company went to Rhui."

"Oh," said Ilyana, enlightened. "I think I sort of maybe remember you. Didn't you—aren't you the one who painted the portraits of Tess Soerensen and Bakhitiian, in Jeds? I used to come watch you paint."

Now he really smiled, so that it creased his face with warmth. "You knocked over the easel once while Tess was doing a sitting."

Ilyana giggled. "Only because I tripped. I didn't mean to, and it ruined the painting, but then you said you had barely started and it didn't matter."

"In fact, when I started over, I realized that I'd had the wrong image in my mind, so really I should thank you for it. It's as if you knocked my preconceived notions to the ground and made me rethink them."

Ilyana smiled and tried to think of something to say.

"If you don't mind my asking," he went on, "why did your father come back to the repertory company? I'm surprised he walked away from the string of successes he's been having."

"Uh," said Ilyana, tensing, "I dunno."

"Well, never mind," said M. Unbutu quickly. "No doubt the artistic rewards are greater. Have you heard that we're going straight to Duke Naroshi's palace? It's said that it was designed by his sister. In Chapalii culture, she's evidently a renowned architect." He hesitated.

"No one knows much about Chapalii architecture," Ilyana said into the silence, enthusiastic now. "I did my last year's depth survey on it, but there wasn't much—" Another scrap of memory swam into sight. "You compiled one of the files I used as a reference, didn't you?"

His eyes widened, and she saw she had surprised him. "It's a hobby of mine, yes. I know which program you mean. It doesn't get a lot of use-tags. Most people only pick and choose and browse through the upper layers. As I recall, I only got fifty complete downloads of that file all last year."

"Well! One of them was me!"

"I'm not going to fall into the trap of asking you how old you are," he said with a laugh. "What interested you in Chapalii architecture? The architecture, or the Chapalii?"

"Oh. I like buildings and stuff. I dunno why. It's just sort of, the way they're built, and then to look at them and I just like them, and I really like to do the unbuilding programs in nesh. That's my depth survey for this year, an unbuilding project on ancient temple complexes." She stopped, hearing how stupid she sounded.

"Have you picked any particular complexes?"

"Well, uh, I thought maybe Karnak."

This time when he smiled, he looked more like a child planning mischief than a responsible adult.

"How about the Imperial Palace?"

"The one in ... uh ..." Ilyana felt an urgent and discomforting need to impress him. "... Beijing?"

"That would be interesting. I was thinking of the Chapalii Emperor's imperial palace."

"But—how could we—I thought—wouldn't that be impossible?"

"Probably. Just wishful thinking. I don't have access to Duke Naroshi's sister anyway, because I'm male."

"I'm female," said Ilyana brightly.

There was a short silence. M. Unbutu blew all his breath out between his lips and pulled a hand back through his mane of dreadlocks. The hand came to rest on the back of his neck, playing with four thin beaded braids. "Yes, you are," he said finally. "No doubting that." Ilyana felt like she'd missed something. "But I'd be happy to help you with your survey, if that's allowed in your tutorial."

"Certainly it's allowed! You're allowed to use a mentor! Are you an architect?" Ilyana began bouncing from one foot to the other, realized she was doing it, and stopped, fixing her feet to the ground. Her teachers approved of her ability to focus and explore, but she had never before met an adult who really truly was fascinated by architecture the way she was.

"I'm an engineer, but I have a special interest in architectural and historical engineering. A bit of a hobby. But I'll have to talk to your parents first."

"They won't care." Her mother thought her interest in buildings to be slightly obscene, and her father treated it with the same approbative disinterest with which he treated all her activities. "Are you going to stay with us the whole time?"

"I don't know about that, but I'd like to find out as much as I can about architectural and engineering techniques and traditions in Chapalii culture. That's why I'm coming along. It's a great opportunity. We don't truly know anything about the Chapalii except what they've given us permission to know. No human has ever been invited into a Chapalii nobleman's palace and private city before. Never been farther than certain restricted areas of port authorities."

Suddenly it didn't seem quite so bad to be leaving London behind. The communique-implant on Ilyana's right ear rang, and she heard Yomi's calm voice calling them to board.

"Remember," Yomi intoned, sounding bored as she said it, "this is a Chapalii passenger liner, and if I find out that any of you haven't scrolled through the protocols for shipboard, I'll personally vent you out an air lock myself."

"I'd better go, Ilyana."

She flushed. "Everyone calls me 'Yana.' My father doesn't like—well, anyway, they just do."

"Oh," said M. Unbutu in an odd tone. "All right, Yana. We'll set up a meeting once I've spoken with your father and mother. We could do a regular tutorial if you'd like."

"I would!"

He left. Ilyana reluctantly returned to her mother, who was frantically searching for Valentin. Half the company had already filed into the port tube by the time Ilyana tracked him down.

He had shinnied past the rope barrier at the bubble that looked out onto space, and he lay on the transparent curved surface, braced on his palms and knees, staring out.

"Valentin!" Ilyana whispered, afraid someone would find him here. "Come on. We're leaving."

He mumbled something inaudible. She finally squeezed past the barrier and eased out onto the curved bubble, careful of her footing, to grab him by the back of the shirt and tug. Out here on the surface of the bubble, the stars swam in depthless night and the transfer station itself ran like a blot of darkness against the backdrop, covering stars and half of the brilliant globe of Earth. Dizziness made her sway. She yanked Valentin back and gulped down nausea, and they ran up against the barrier. It stung where the forcefield touched her bare arms and made her scalp prickle through the veil of her hair. Then they were through and out into the concourse. Valentin walked dazedly along beside her, saying nothing. She had no problem getting him in line. By the gate entrance, David ben Unbutu greeted a surprising new arrival: Margaret O'Neill.

"Mags!" He was laughing again. "You're up early, and late as usual. Congratulations on arriving before departure."

"It's too damned early in the day to be taking ship," she growled. "How can you be so bloody cheerful?"

"Oh, to be seventeen again. I've lost my heart."

"You're making perfect sense. Here I thought it was me. Where is Yomi?"

They walked out of earshot. Nipper arrived, breathless. "Oh, thank goodness, Yana, you found your brother. We'd better go. The cabin arrangements are already made."

Ilyana let go of Valentin and allowed Nipper to herd him forward. She trailed behind. Everyone was on board, except for Yomi, who ticked off the roster with the touch of a finger as each individual crossed into the port tube, the last stragglers, and Anatoly Sakhalin. Like a good soldier, he was bringing up the rear. He caught her gaze on him, smiled at her, and then looked away quickly. Ilyana ducked her head to hide her blush and hurried after Valentin.

They stopped beside Yomi. The stage manager glanced up and tapped a finger three times on the slate. "You're clear."

Nipper went on ahead. Ilyana winced as the khaja woman almost stepped on the threshold, the inch-high seal-ring that circled the port tube entrance. But her heel passed over it without touching it, and she walked away down the tube. An alien scent wafted out from the tube, like the current of a freshwater river mingling with the saltwater sea. Ilyana took in a deep breath. It was different, weird, but not unpleasant. Coming out of his stupor, Valentin grabbed her hand, and together they passed over the threshold and entered the domain of the Chapalii.