The monorail set Kenri Shaun and his fellows off at the edge of Kith Town. There the buildings were low and peak-roofed, mostly houses. Clustered together, they seemed dark beneath the towers and lights that surrounded them; it was as if they sheltered night and quietness from the city.
For a minute the group stood silent. They all knew Kenri's intention, but they didn't know what to say.
He took an initiative of sorts. "Well, I'll be seeing you."
"Oh, sure," replied Graf Kishna. "We'll be here for months."
After another pause he said, "We'll miss you when we do go. I, uh, I wish you'd change your mind."
"No," replied Kenri. "I'm staying. But thanks."
"Let's get together again soon. For a game of comet's tail, maybe."
"Good idea. Let's."
Graf's hand briefly cupped Kenri's elbow, one of the Kith gestures that said more than speech ever could. "Well, good night."
"Good night."
The rest mumbled likewise. They stood a few seconds more, half a dozen young men in the loose blue doublets, baggy trousers, and soft shoes current among the local lower class. Folk costume was inadvisable in public. They themselves bore a certain similarity, too, short and slender build, olive complexion, features tending to high cheekbones and curving nose. Stance and gait marked them out even more, nowadays on Earth.
Abruptly their group dissolved and they went their separate ways. Kenri started down Aldebaran Street. A cold gust hit him; the northern hemisphere was spinning into autumn. He hunched his shoulders and jammed hands in pockets.
Kith Town thoroughfares were narrow strips of indurite, lighted by obsolete glowglobes. You wanted to come home to a place as familiar as possible, never mind how outmoded. Houses sat well back, lawns around them, often a tree or two close by. Not many people were out. An elderly officer walked grave in mantle and hood; a boy and girl went hand in hand; several children, not yet ready for bed, rollicked, their laughter chiming through the stillness, above the background rumble of the city. Some of those children were born a hundred or more years ago and had looked upon worlds whose suns were faint stars in this sky. Generally, though, buildings lay vacant, tended by machines. Except for a few permanent residents, the owner families were gone decades on end, only present here between voyages. A few houses would never know another return. Those families, those ships, no longer fared.
Passing the Errifrans residence, he wondered when he'd see Jong. They'd had fun together at such times as their vessels met. The Golden Flyer had last set course for Aerie, and should be well on her way Earthward by now. Since the next trip that Kenri's Fleetwing made would just be to Aurora, there was a fair chance that the two would take Solar orbit within the same period — No, wait, I'm staying on Earth. I'll be old when Jong Errifrans arrives, still young, still with a guitar on his knee and jollity on his lips. I won't be Kith anymore.
It happened that three starcraft besides Fleetwing were currently in, Flying Cloud, High Barbaree, and Princess Karen. That was uncommon. Kith Town would see one supernova of a Fair. Kenri wished he could take part. Oh, he could, when he wasn't engaged elsewhere, but he wouldn't feel right about it. Nor would it be wise. The polite among the Freeborn would raise their brows; the uninhibited would say, maybe to his face, that this showed he was and would always be a — tumy, was that the latest word for a Kithperson?
"Good evening, Kenri Shaun."
He stopped, jerked from his reverie. Street light fell wan over the black hair and slim, decorously gowned form of the woman who had hailed him. "Good evening to you, Theye Barinn," he said. "What a pleasure. I haven't see you for — two personal years, I think."
"Slightly less time for me." It had been on Feng Huang, whence Fleetwing and High Barbaree went to different destinations before making for Sol. She smiled. "Too long, though. Where have you been hiding?"
"A party of us had to boat to Mars directly after our ship got in. Her mainframe navigator needed a new data processor. The Earth dealer told us he'd stopped carrying that type." We suspect he lied. He didn't want to do business with tumies. "We found one on Mars, brought it back, and installed it. Didn't finish till today, and then, groundside, we had to go through two hours' worth of admission procedures. Never did before."
"I knew that. I asked your parents why you weren't with them. But I — they supposed you'd be finished sooner. Didn't you get" — she paused — "impatient?"
"Yes." Feverishly. For Nivala, awaiting him. "The ship came first, however."
"Of course. You were best qualified for the job."
"My father's handling my share of sales for me. I don't like that much, anyway, and I'm not very good at it."
"No, you're born an explorer, Kenri."
Chatter, monkey noises, keeping me from Nivala. He couldn't simply break off. Theye was a friend. Once he'd thought she might become more.
She continued quickly: "On the surface, things haven't changed a lot since last I was here. The same Dominancy the same buildings and technology and languages. More hectic, maybe. Not that I've ventured to see for myself. I take my impressions from the news and entertainment shows."
"You're probably well advised. I hear they're clamping down on us."
She flinched. The gladness fled her. "Yes. So far we're being denied permission to hold the Fair anywhere outdoors. And we have to wear a badge everywhere except the Town."
Is that what that "special pass" business was about? He wondered. We didn't want to make the spaceport official surlier by asking. Nor did he now care to inquire, partly because of the tears he saw glint in her eyes.
Her mouth quivered. She reached a hand toward him. "Kenri, is it true? I've heard rumors, but I didn't feel I... ought to ask your parents —"
"About what?" He wished immediately that he hadn't snapped.
"You'll resign? Quit the Kith? Become an Earthling?"
"We can discuss that later." He couldn't hold down the harshness. "I'm sorry, but I haven't time this evening."
She pulled her hand back.
"Good night, Theye," he said more amicably.
"Good night," she whispered.
He saluted again and strode off, fast, not looking back. Light and shadow slid over him. His footfalls rustled.
Nivala waited. He would see her tonight. Somehow, just then, he couldn't feel quite happy about it.
She had stood alone in a common room, looking at the stars in the viewscreen, and the illumination from overhead had been cool in her hair. Glimpsing her as he passed by, he entered quietly. What a wonder she was. A millennium ago, such tall, slender blondes had been rare on Earth. If the genetic adaptors of the Dominancy had done nothing else, they should be remembered with thanks for having re-created her kind.
Keen-sensed, she heard and turned about. The silver-blue eyes widened and her lips parted, half covered by a hand. He thought what a beautiful thing a woman's hand was, set beside the knobbly, hairy paw of a man, "Oh," she said. Her voice was like song. "You startled me, Kenri Shaun."
"Apologies, Freelady."
Since he had had no reason to come in — none that he could tell her — he felt breathtakingly relieved when she simply smiled. "No harm done. I'm too nervous."
An opening for talk! "Is something the matter, Freelady? Anything I — anybody can help with?"
"No." And, "Thank you," she added. "Everyone is already very helpful." They'd better be, with a passenger of her status. However, these first two daycycles of the voyage she'd been courteous, and he expected she'd continue that way. "It's a sense of" — she hesitated, which wasn't like a Star-Free —"isolation."
"It's unfortunate that we are an alien people to you, Freelady." Social inferiors. Or worse. Though you haven't treated me so.
She smiled again. "No, the differences are interesting." The smile died. "I shouldn't admit this." Her fingers brushed across his for a bare moment that he never forgot. "I should have grown used to it, outbound. And now I'm headed home. But the thought that . . . more than half a century will have passed ... is coming home to me"
He had merely cliches for response. "Time dilation, Freelady. People you knew will have aged." Or died. "But the Peace of the Dominancy still holds, I'm sure." All too sure.
"Yes, no doubt I can take up my life as it was. If I want to." Her gaze went back to the blackness; stars and nebulae and cold galactic river. She shivered slightly under the thin blue chiton. "Time, space, strangeness. Perhaps it's that — I fell to thinking — I'll make the crossing in practically the same time as before, over the same distance, as far as the universe is concerned — except that it isn't concerned, it doesn't care, doesn't know we ever existed —" She caught her breath. "And yet the return will take nine days longer than the going did."
He took refuge in facts. "That's because we're rather heavily laden, Freelady, which Eagle wasn't. Our gamma factor is down to about three hundred and fifty." Not that it ever gets much above four hundred. We merchantmen are not legendary Envoy. It isn't necessary for us, it wouldn't pay; and maybe even we Kithfolk have lost the vision. Kenri put the thought from him. It spooked too often through his head.
For a while they stood wordless. Ventilation hummed, as if the ship talked to herself. Nivala had once wondered aloud how a vessel felt, what it was like to be forever a wanderer through foreign skies. He hadn't actually needed to explain, as he did, that the computers and robots lacked consciousness. She knew; this was a passing fancy. But it stayed with him, having been hers.
Nor did she now resent his pointing out an obvious technicality. She looked at him again. A breeze brought him a faint, wild trace of her perfume. "The time is more frightening than the space," she said low. "Yes, a single light-year's too huge for our imagining. But I can't really grasp that you were horn eight hundred years ago, Kenri Shaun, and you'll be traveling between the stars when I'm dust."
He could have seized the chance to pay a compliment. His tongue locked on him. He was a starfarer, a Kithman, belonging to nowhere and to no one except his ship, while she was Star-Free, unspecialized genius, at the top of the Dominancy's genetic peerage. The best he could do was: "The life spans we experience will be similar, Freelady. One measure of time is as valid as another. Elementary relativity."
She cast the mood from her. It could not have gone very deep. "Well, I never was good at physics," she laughed. "We leave that to Star-A and Norm-A types."
The remark slapped him in the face. Yes, brain work and muscle work are the same. Work. Let the suboptimals sweat. Star-Frees shall concentrate on being aesthetic and ornamental.
She saw. He had not had much occasion to conceal his feelings. Abruptly, amazingly, she caught his right hand in both hers. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to — I didn't mean what you think."
"It's nothing, Freelady," he answered out of his bewilderment.
"Oh, it's much." Her eyes looked straight into his, enormous. "I know how many people on Earth dislike yours, Kenri. You don't fit in, you speak among each other of things unknown to us, you bring wares and data we want and drive hard bargains for them, you question what we take for granted — you're living question marks and make us uncomfortable." The pale cheeks had colored. She glanced down. Her lashes were long and sooty black. "But I know a superior type when I meet one. You could be a Star-Free, too, Kenri. If we didn't bore you."
"Never that, Freelady!"
They didn't pursue the matter and he soon left her, with trumpets calling in him. Three months, he thought. Three ship months to Sol.
A maple stirred overhead as he turned at the Shaun gate, its leaves crackling in the wind. The street lighting didn't do justice to their scarlet. Early frost this year, he guessed. The wind blew chill and damp, bearing autumnal odors, smoke from traditional hearthfires, cuttings and soil in gardens. He realized suddenly what had seldom come to mind, that he had never been here during a winter. He had never known the vast hush of snowfall.
Light poured warm and yellow from windows. The door scanned and recognized him. It opened. When he walked into the small, cluttered living room, he caught a lingering whiff of dinner and regretted arriving too late. He'd eaten at the spaceport, and not badly, but that was tech food. His mother cooked.
He saluted his parents according to custom and propriety. His lather nodded with equal restraint. His mother cast dignity aside, hugged him, and said how thin he'd gotten. "Come, dear, I'll fix you a sandwich. Wei-tome home."
"I haven't time," he replied. Helplessly: "I'd like to, but, well, I have to go out again."
"Theye Barinn was asking about you," she said, elaborately casual. "The High Barbaree came in two months ago."
"Yes, I know. And we happened to meet on my way here."
"How nice. Are you going to call on her this evening?"
"Some other time."
"Her ship will leave before ours, do you know? You won't see her for years. Unless . . ." The voice trailed off. Unless you marry her. She's your sort, Kenri. She'd do well aboard Fleetwing. She'd give you fine children.
"Some other time," he repeated, sorry for the brusqueness; but Nivala expected him. "Dad, what's this about badges?"
Wolden Shaun grimaced. "A new tax on us," he said. "No, worse than a tax. We have to wear them everywhere outside the Town, and pay through the nose for them. May every official of the Dominancy end in a leaky spacesuit with a plugged sanitor."
"My group got passes at the spaceport, but we were told they were just for transit to here. Can I borrow yours tonight? I have to go into the city."
Wolden gazed for a while at his only son before he turned around. "It's in my study," he said. "Come along."
The room was crammed with his mementos. That sword had been given him by an armorer on Marduk, a four-armed creature who became his friend. That picture was a view from a moon of Osiris, frozen gases like amber in the glow of the mighty planet. Those horns were from a hunting trip on Rama, in the days of his youth. That graceful, enigmatic statuette had been a god on Dagon. Wolden's close-cropped gray head bent over his desk as he fumbled among papers. He preferred them to a keyboard for composing the autobiography that officers were supposed to bequeath to their ships' databases.
"Do you really mean to go through with this resignation?" he asked.
Kenri's face heated. "Yes. I hate to hurt you and Mother, but — Yes."
Wolden found what he was searching for. He let it lie. Face and tone kept the calm suitable to his rank. "I've seen others do it, mainly on colony planets but a couple of times on Earth. As far as I could learn afterward, mostly they prospered. But I suspect none of them were ever very happy."
"I wonder," said Kenri.
"In view of the conditions we've found here, the captain and mates are seriously considering a change of plans. Next voyage not to Aurora, but a long excursion. Long, including into regions new to us. We may not be back for a thousand years. There'll be no more Dominancy. Your name will be forgotten."
Kenri spoke around a thickness in his throat. "Sir, we don't know what things will be like then. Isn't it better to take what good there is while we can?"
"Do you truly hope to join the highborn? What's great about them? I've seen fifteen hundred years of history, and this is one of the bad times. It will get worse."
Kenri didn't respond.
"That girl could as well be of a different species, son," Wolden said. "She's a Star-Free. You're a dirty little tumy."
Kenri could not meet his gaze. "Spacefarers have gone terrestrial before. They've founded lasting families."
"That was then."
"I'm not afraid. Sir, may I have the badge?"
Wolden sighed. "We won't leave for at least six months — longer, if we do decide on a far-space run and need to make extra preparations. I can hope meanwhile you'll change your mind."
"I might," said Kenri. And now I'm lying to you, Dad, Dad, who sang me old songs when I was little and guided my first extravehicular excursion and stood by me so proudly on my thirteenth birthday when I took the Oath.
"Here." Wolden gave him the intertwined loops of black cords. He pulled a wallet from a drawer. "And here are five hundred decards of your money. Your account's at fifty thousand and will go higher, but don't let this get stolen." Bitterness spat: "Why give an Earthling anything for nothing?" He clamped composure back down on himself.
"Thank you, sir." Kenri touched the badge to his left breast. Molecules clung. It wasn't heavy but it felt like a stone. He sheered off from that. Fifty thousand decards! What to buy? Stuff we can trade —
No. He was staying here. He'd need advice about Earthside investments. Money was an antidote to prejudice, wasn't it?
"I'll be back — well, maybe not till tomorrow," he said. "Thanks again. Good night."
"Good night, son."
Kenri returned to the living room, paused to give his mother a hug, and went out into the darkness of Earth.
At first neither had been impressed. Captain Seralpin had told Kenri:
"We'll have a passenger, going back to Sol. She's on Morgana. Take a boat and fetch her."
"Sir?" asked astonishment. "A passenger? Have we ever carried any?" "Rarely. Last was before you were born. Nearly always a round trip, of course. Who'd want to spend ten, twenty, fifty years waiting for a return connection? This is a special case." "Does the captain wish to explain?"
"I'd better. At ease. Sit down." Seralpin gestured. Kenri took a chair facing the desk. They were groundside on Main. The Kith maintained offices in Landfall, the planet's principal town. Sunlight streamed in through an open window, together with subarctic warmth and a cinnamonlike odor from a stand of native silvercane.
"After I got the word, naturally I searched out everything I could about her," Seralpin said. "She's the Freelady Nivala Tersis from Canda. An ancestor of hers acquired large holdings on Morgana in pioneering days. The family still draws a fair amount of income from the property, though she's the first of them to visit it since then. Evidently she — or rather, no doubt, an agent of hers — made inquiries at Kith Town and learned what the current arrangements, schedules, were for 61 Virginis."
"Current" is not exactly the word, passed through Kenri. We're talking about a span of several centuries. But no, that's by cosmic time. To Kithfolk, not very many years. And "schedule" is pretty vague, too, the more so when fewer ships ply the lanes now than once did.
"You can see how it worked out," Seralpin went on. "Given the existing agreement on trade circuits, she could take Eagle here, knowing Polaris and Fleetwing would call within about a year of her arrival before proceeding to Sol. Fleetwing happened to make port first, and she's ready to go, so we'll take her." Seralpin paused. "I can't say I'm overjoyed. However, she'll pay well, and you don't refuse a person of that status. Not if you want to stay in business at Earth."
"Why would anybody like that ever come, sir?"
Seralpin shrugged. "Officially, to inspect the holdings and collect data, with a view to possible improvement of operations. Actually, I imagine, for the thrill and glory. How many in her circle have gone beyond the Solar System? She'll be a glamour figure for a while, till the next fad comes along."
"Um, uh, maybe she's serious, sir. At least partly. She's taking some risk and making some sacrifice. She can't be sure what things will be like when she returns, except that everybody she knew will be aging or dead."
"So much the better," replied Seralpin cynically. "New fashions, new amusements, and new young people. Liberation from boredom. She spent her time on this planet till lately, and only then popped over to Morgana. Now she wants back, though she knows we won't leave for weeks."
"Well, sir, Morgana's not humanly habitable. Those valuable biochemicals can be repulsive-looking, or dangerous, in their native state."
Seralpin grinned. "That's why I picked you to fetch her. You're an idealist who wants to believe the best about his fellow human beings. You should get along with her and not have to swallow as much rage as most of us would." He turned solemn. "Make sure you do get along. Be super-respectful and obliging. She's not ordinary upper class, she's a Star-Free."
Thus it came about that Kenri Shaun piloted a boat to the neighbor planet. At the present configuration, a one-gravity boost took four days. He spent some of the time rigging a private section for the guest, though it left scant room for him, and arranging the minor luxuries that his mother had suggested he lay in. Afterward he was largely at the reader screen, continuing his study of Murinn's General Cosmology. He couldn't win promotions if he didn't have that material firmly in his head.
But must he accept it as the absolute last word? True, there hadn't been any fundamental change since Olivares and his colleagues worked out their unified physics. Everything since had been details, empirical discoveries, perhaps surprising but never basic. After all, went the argument, the universe is finite, therefore the scientific horizon must be, too. Where a quantitative explanation of some phenomenon is lacking — biological, sociological, psychological, or whatever — that is merely because the complexity makes it unfeasible to solve the Grand Equation for this particular case.
Kenri had his doubts. Already he had seen too much of the cosmos to keep unqualified faith in man's ability to understand it. His attitude was not unique among his folk. When they mentioned it to an Earthling, they generally got a blank look or a superior smile. . . . Well, science was a social enterprise. Maybe someday a new civilization would want to ask new questions. Maybe there would still be some Kith ships.
He set down on Rodan Spacefield and took the slideway into North-port. The hot, greenish rain sluicing over the transparent tube would have poisoned him. Though its machines kept it clean, a subtle shabbiness had crept into the Far Frontier Hotel. Partly that was because of the plantationers drinking in the lounge. They weren't rowdy, but lives as lonely as theirs didn't make for social graces.
Hence Kenri's surprise approached shock when he entered the suite and found a beautiful young woman. He recovered, bowed with arms crossed on breast, and introduced himself humbly. That was the prescribed way for one of his station to address one of hers, according to the latest information from the laser newsbeams.
"Greeting, Ensign," she replied. Her language hadn't changed a great deal since he had learned it. She got his rank wrong; he didn't venture to correct her. "Let's be on our way."
"Immediately, Freelady?" He'd hoped for a day or two in which he could relax, stretch his muscles, go someplace other than the boat.
"I'm weary of this dreary. My baggage is in the next room, packed. You should be able to carry it."
He managed a smile. At the craft, he managed an apology for her cramped, austere quarters. "That's all right," she said. "The ferry out was no better. I called for a ship's boat for the sake of trying something different."
After they had lifted, settled into steady boost, and unharnessed, she glanced at her timepiece. "Hu, how late," she said. "Don't worry about dinner. I've eaten and now want to go to bed. I'll have breakfast at, um, 0900 hours."
But then she surprised him anew. Having stood pensive a moment, she looked in his direction and the blue gaze was by no means unfriendly. "I forgot. You must be on quite another cycle. What time is it by your clocks? I should start adapting."
"We have four days for that," he replied. "The first breakfast shall be when the Freelady wishes." It was not convenient for him, but somehow he did not now resent it.
Emerging from his berth after a few hours' sleep, he was again surprised by finding her already up. Her tunic would have been provocative were they of equal status. As it was, he merely admired the view. She had started his readscreen, evidently curious to know what interested him, and sat pondering Murinn's text. She nodded at his salutation and said, "I don't understand a word of this. Does he ever use one syllable where six will do?"
"He cared for precision, Freelady," answered Kenri. On impulse: "I would have liked to know him."
"You people do a lot of reading, don't you?"
"Plenty of time for that in space, Freelady. Of course, we have other recreations as well. And communal activities, such as educating the children." He wouldn't discuss the rituals with an Earthling.
"Children — Do you truly need hundreds in a crew?"
"No, no. Uh, Freelady. When we're on a planet, though, we often need many hands." And all want to travel, to walk on those worlds. It's in our blood.
She nodded. "M'hm. Also, the only way to keep a family, no? To keep your whole culture alive."
He stiffened. "Yes, Freelady." What business was it of hers?
"I like your Town," she said. "I used to go there. It's — quaint? Like a bit of the past, not virtual but real."
Sure. Your sort come to stare. You walk around drunk, and peek into our homes, and when an old man goes by you remark what a funny little geezer he is, without bothering to lower your voices, and when you haggle with a shopkeeper and he tries to get a fair price you tell each other how this proves we think of nothing but money. Sure, we're happy to have you visit us. "Yes, Freelady."
She looked hurt. A while after breakfast she withdrew behind her screen. He heard her playing a portable polymusicon. He didn't recognize the melody. It must be very old, and yet it was young and tender and trustful, everything that was dear in humankind, When she stopped he felt an irrational desire to impress her. The Kith had their own tunes, and many were also ancient. Equally archaic was the instrument he took forth, a guitar. He tuned it, strummed a few chords, and left his mind drift. Presently he began to sing.
"When Jerry Clawson was a baby
On his mother's knee in old Kentuck,
He said, 'I'm gonna ride those deep-space rockets
Till the bones in my body turn to dust.' —"
He sensed her come out and stand behind him, but pretended not to. Instead he regarded the stars.
" — Jerry's voice came o'er the speaker:
Cut your cable and go free.
On full thrust, she's blown more shielding.
Radiation's got to me .
" 'Take the boats in safety Earthward.
Tell the Blue Star Line for me
I was born with deep space catting.
Now in space forevermore I'll be.' "
He ended with a crash of strings, turned his head, and rose.
"No, sit down," she said before he could bow. "We're not on Earth. What was that song?"
" 'Jerry Clawson,' Freelady," he replied. "A translation from the original English. It goes back to the days of purely interplanetary flight."
Star-Frees were supposed to be intellectuals as well as aesthetes. He waited for her to say that somebody ought to collect Kith folk ballads in a database.
"I like it," she said. "Very much."
He glanced away. "Thank you, Freelady. May I make bold to ask what you were playing?"
"Oh, . . . that's even older. 'Sheep May Safely Graze.' By a man named Bach." A slow smile crossed her lips. "I would have liked to know him."
He raised his eyes to hers. They did not speak for what seemed a long while.
Kith Town lay in a bad district. It didn't always. Kenri remembered a peaceful lower-class neighborhood; his parents had told him of bourgeoisie; his grandparents — whom he had never met, because they retired from starfaring before he was born and were therefore centuries dead — had spoken of bustling commerce; before the city was, Kith Town stood alone. Forever it remained Kith Town, well-nigh changeless.
No, probably not forever, the way the traffic was dwindling. Nor really changeless. Sometimes war had swept through, pockmarking walls and strewing streets with corpses; sometimes a mob had come looting and beating; often in the last several Earthside lifetimes, officers had swaggered in to enforce some new proclamation. Kenri shivered in the autumn wind and walked fast. He'd learned that nowadays, except for where the monorail from the spaceport stopped, there was no public transport within three kilometers.
Light became harsh as he entered the Earthling neighborhood, glare from side panels and overhead fixtures. He had heard this was decreed less to discourage crime than to keep it in its place, under surveillance. Vehicles were few. Inhabitants slouched, shambled, shuffled along littered walkways between grimy facades. Their garments were sleazy and they stank. Most of them were loose-genes, but he saw the dull, heavy faces of Normal-Ds among them, or the more alert countenance of a Normal-C or B. Twice a Standard thrust them aside as he hastened on his errand, ashine in the livery of the state or a private master. Then Kenri imagined he saw an electric flickering in the eyes around. Though still ignorant of current politics, he had caught mention of ambitious Dominants who were courting the poor and disinherited. Yes, and the Martians were restless, and the Radiant of Jupiter openly insolent. . . .
But the state should be more or less stable through his and Nivala's lifetime, and they could make provision for their children.
An elbow jabbed his ribs. "Out o' the way, tumy!"
He tensed but stepped off the walk. The man strutted on by. As Kenri went back, a woman, leaning fat and frowzy from a second-floor window, jeered at him and spat. He dodged, but could not dodge the laughter that yelped around him.
Has it gotten this bad? he thought. Well, maybe they're taking out on us what they don't yet dare say to the overlords.
The long view gave thin consolation. He felt shivery and nauseated. And the sadness in his father and mother — Though Nivala awaited him, he needed a drink. A lightsign bottle winked above a doorway ahead.
He entered. Gloom and sour smells closed in on him. A few sullen men slumped at tables. A mural above them jerked through its obscenities. A raddled Standard-D girl smiled at him, saw his features and badge, and turned away with a sniff.
A live bartender presided. He gave the newcomer a glazed stare. "Vodzan," Kenri said. "Make it a double."
"We don't serve no tumies here," said the bartender.
Kenri sucked in a breath. He started to go. A hand touched his arm. "Just a minute, spaceman," said a soft voice; and to the attendant: "One double vodzan."
"I told you —"
"This is for me, Ilm. I can give it to anyone I want. I can pour it on the floor if I so desire. Or over you."
The bartender went quickly off to his bottles.
Kenri looked into a hairless, dead-white face. The skull behind had a rakish cast. The lean gray-clad form sat hunched at the bar, one hand idly rolling dice from a cup, scooping them up, and rolling again. The fingers had no hones, they were small tentacles, and the eyes were cat yellow, all iris and slit pupil.
"Uh, thank you, sir," Kenri stammered in bewilderment. "May I pay —"
"No. On me." The other accepted the goblet and handed it over. He put no money down. "Here."
"Your health, sir," Kenri said, emboldened. He lifted the vessel and drank. The liquor burned his throat.
"Such as it is," said the man indifferently. "No trouble to me." He was doubtless a petty criminal of some sort, maybe an assassin, if that guild still flourished. His somatype was not quite human. He must be Special-X, created for a particular job or for study or for fun. Presumably he'd been released when his master was done with him, and had ended in the slums.
"Been away long?" he asked, his gaze on the dice.
Kenri couldn't immediately remember. "About a hundred years." Or more?
"Watch out. They really hate Kithfolk these days. Hereabouts, anyhow. If you get slugged or robbed, it'll do you no good complaining to the militia. You'd probably get your butt kicked."
"It's kind of you —"
"Nothing." The supple fingers gathered the dice, rattled them in the cup, and tossed. "I like having somebody to feel superior to."
"Oh." Kenri set the goblet down. "I see. Well —"
"No, don't go." The yellow eyes lifted toward his and, astonished, he saw tears glimmer. "I'm sorry. Sometimes the bitterness breaks loose. No offense to you. I tried to sign on as a spaceman once. Naturally, they wouldn't have me."
Kenri found no response.
"A single voyage would have been enough," said the X dully. "Can't an Earthling dream, too, now and then? But I realize I'd have been useless. And my looks. Underdogs don't like each other."
Kenri winced.
"Maybe I shouldn't envy you at that," the X muttered. "You see too much history. Me, I've made my place. I don't do badly. As for whether it's worth the trouble, staying alive —" He shrugged. "I'm not, anyway. A man's only alive when he has something bigger than himself to live and die for. Oh, well." He rolled the dice. "Nine. I'm losing my touch." After a moment: "I know a place where they don't care who you are if you've got money."
"Thank you, sir, but I've an appointment," Kenri said. How awkward it sounded. And false, in spite of being true.
"I thought so. Go ahead." The X glanced elsewhere.
"Thank you for the drink, sir."
"Nothing. Come in whenever you want. I'll tell Ilm to remember you and serve you. I'm here pretty often. But don't yarn to me about the worlds out there. I don't want to hear that."
"No, sir. Thank you. Good night." Kenri left most of his drink untasted. As he went out, the dice clattered across the bar again.
While she waited on Maia for Fleetwing's departure, Nivala had taken the opportunity to see the Tirian Desert. She could have had her pick of the colony for escorts, but when she heard that Kenri had been there before and knew his way around it, she named him. Less annoyed than he would have expected, he dropped promising negotiations for vivagems and made the arrangements. An aircamper brought them to the best site. He had proposed that from this base they tour the area for two days, overnighting here in between. She readily agreed, though they'd be alone. Both knew he wouldn't touch her without leave, and to a person of her status scandal was as irrelevant as the weather on another planet.
For a while they rode quietly in the groundcar he had rented. Stone and sand stretched around them, flamboyantly colored. Crags lifted from the hills in fantastic shapes. Scattered thornbush breathed a slight peppery odor into thin, cool air. Overhead the sky arched cloudless, royal blue.
"This is a marvelous world," she said at last. "It's just as well we're leaving soon. I might come to like it too much."
"Aside from the scenery, Freelady, I should think you'd find it rather unexciting," Kenri ventured. "Hardly even provincial."
The fair head shook. "Things here are real. People have hopes."
He didn't know what to say to that.
After a few more minutes she murmured thoughtfully, "I envy you, Kenri Shaun. All that you've seen and done. That you will see and do. Thank you for the data your ships bring. Infinitely better than any fiction or ... entertainment. On Earth I spent much of my virtuality time playing Kith documentaries — riding along with you like a ghost. You live it."
The wistfulness made him feel he could ask: "Was that why you came here, Freelady?"
She nodded. "Yes. Inspecting the property was an excuse. Worth doing, but an agent, or perhaps even a robot, could have done it better. I wanted the experience. A taste of the reality."
He thought of weeks and months on end in a flying metal cave, of huddling in a groundside shelter while deadliness raged outside, of toil and danger, hurt and death — fleeting days of friendship, and then your friends were gone on their next voyage and you wondered if you'd ever meet them again; sometimes you didn't, and then maybe you wondered how they had come to die. "Reality doesn't always taste good, Freelady."
"I know. Because it is reality. But I didn't quite know how hungry I was till I made this trip."
The words stayed with him. When they returned to camp he suggested that he build a fire and cook their evening meal over it, primitive style. Her delight chimed in him.
The sun set while he worked. A small, hasty moon rose, nearly full, to join the lesser half-disk already aloft, and argency rippled over the dunes. Afar a creature wailed — a hunting song? Warmly clad, they squatted close to the fire. Flamelight and shadow played across her, and her hair seemed as frosty as her breath. "Can I help?" she offered.
"It isn't fitting, Freelady." You'd make a mess of it. The filets in the skillet sizzled, savory-smelling. They were natural food, purchased at a waterfarm.
She regarded them. "I didn't think you people ate fish," she said.
By now he knew she didn't intend any condescension. "Some do, some don't, Freelady. You've seen we grow fruits and vegetables aboard, along with flowers, more for the sake of the gardening than to supplement the nanosystems; and we often have aquariums, also mainly for pleasure but sometimes for a special meal. In early days, when ships were smaller, an aquarium would have crowded out a substantial piece of garden for the benefit of a very few. Crews couldn't afford the resentment that would cause. Abstention acquired almost the force of a taboo. Even offship; it was a symbolic act of loyalty. Nowadays, mostly, only older folk observe it."
She smiled. "I see. Fascinating. One doesn't think of the Kith as having a history. You've always simply been."
"Oh, we do, Freelady. Maybe we have more history and tradition than anybody else." He considered. "Or maybe it's just that we pay more attention to what we have, study and talk about it more. Another thing that helps hold us together, keep us what we are."
Her gaze dwelt on him through the smoke, above the sputtering flames. "And it's an intellectual activity, isn't it?" she said. "You Kithfolk are a brainy lot."
His cheeks grew warm. He concentrated on his cooking. "You flatter us, Freelady. We're not exactly Star-Frees."
"No, you're more whole." She jumped back toward impersonality; it was safer. "I did do research on you before leaving Earth. Spacefolk always had to be intelligent, with quick reactions but stable personalities. It was best they not be too big, physically, but they must be tough. Dark skin gives some protection against soft radiation, though I suppose genetic drift, happenstance, has been at work, too. Over generations, those who couldn't fit into your difficult life dropped out. The time factor, and the widening cultural gap, made recruitment more and more unlikely, till now it's essentially impossible. And we have the race of starfarers."
"Not really, Freelady," he protested. "Anybody who wants to can build a ship and flit away. But it's a big investment, of lifetime still more than capital, for small profit or none; so nobody does. We, though — we never attempt the kind of voyage they embarked on aboard Envoy, before there ever was a Kith." Does that name mean anything to you?
And the profits shrink century by century, as demand shrinks; and so we do not replace our losses any longer, and our numbers grow less and less.
"Small profit or none? No, you gain your lives, the freedom to be what you are," she said. "Except on Earth — You're aliens there; because the profit is small, you have to set high prices; you obey our laws, but you don't submit in your hearts; and so you come to be hated. I've wondered why you don't abandon Earth altogether."
The idea had passed through his mind occasionally. Veer off Don't speak it. Dangerous, also to his soul. "Earth is our planet too, Freelady. We get by. Please don't feel sorry for us."
"A stiff-necked people," she said. "You don't even want pity."
"Who does, Freelady?" He laid her meal on a plate and handed it to her.
Where the slum ended, Kenri found a monorail nexus and took an ascensor up to the line he wanted. Nobody else boarded the car that stopped for him and nobody else was on it. He sat down and looked out the canopy. The view speeding past was undeniably superb. Towers soared in columns and tiers and pinnacles; streets and skyways glowed, phosphorescent spiderwebs; lights blazed and flashed in strings, arcs, fountains, every color eyes could know; scraps of dark sky heightened the brilliance. Was any world anywhere more exotic? Surely he could spend a lifetime exploring this, with Nivala for guide.
As he neared city center, the car paused to admit four young persons. They were Frees, he saw, though styles of appearance and behavior had changed. Filmy cloaks streamed from luminous draperies or skintights; jewels glittered in headbands; men sported elaborately curled short beards, women wore twinkling lights in flowing hair. Kenri hunched in his seat, acutely aware of his drabness.
The couples came down the aisle toward him. "Oh, look, a tumy," cried a girl.
"He's got a nerve," said a boy. "I'll order him off."
"No, Scanish." The second female voice sounded gentler than the first. "He has the right."
"He shouldn't have. I know these tumies. Give 'em a finger and they'll take your whole arm." The four passed by and settled behind Kenri. They left three rows vacant between themselves and him. Their conversation still reached his ears.
"My father's in Transsolar Trading. He'll tell you."
"Don't, Scanish. He's listening."
"Well, I hope he gets a potful."
"Never mind," said the other boy. "What'll we do tonight? Haven't settled that yet, have we? Go to Halgor's?"
"Ah, we've been there a hundred times. How 'bout we hop over to Zanthu? I know a place there, not virtual, realies, it's got apparatuses and tricks you never —"
"No, I'm not in that kind of mood. I don't know what I want to do."
"My nerves have been terrible lately. I think they're trying to tell me something. I refuse medication. I might try this new Yanist religion. It should at least be amusing."
"Say, have you heard about Marli's latest? Who was seen coming out of her bedroom?"
Ignore them, Kenri thought. They may be of Nivala's class, but they're not of her kind. She's a from Canda. An old family, proud, the blood of soldiers in them.
A Kithman's not too unlike a soldier.
Their building loomed into view, stone and crystal and light mounting heavenward. Their crest flamed on its front. The depression that had dogged him let go. He signaled his stop and rose. She loves me, sang within him. We have a life before us.
Pain stabbed into his right buttock, through his back and down the leg. He stumbled, fell to a knee, and looked around. A boy grinned and waved a shockstick. Everybody began to laugh. He picked himself up and limped to the exit. The laughter followed him.
Aboard ship he served in the navigation department. Ordinarily one person was plenty to stand watch in the immensity between suns. The room was big, however. With interior illumination dimmed, it became a twilit grotto where instrument panels shone like muted lamps. The viewscreens dominated it, fireballs fore and aft, sparks streaming from them across the dark to melt into a girdle of intermingled keen hues. Air moved inaudibly; it was as if the ship kept silence before that sight.
When Nivala came in, Kenri forgot to bow. His heart sprang, his breath stopped. She wore a long, close-fitting blue gown, which rustled to her stride. The unbound tresses fell over bare shoulders in waves of pale gold.
She halted. Her eyes widened. A hand went to her mouth. "O-o-o-oh," she whispered.
"Weird, isn't it?" was the lame best he found to say. "But you've surely seen pictures and virtuals."
"Yes. Not like this. Not at all like this. It's nearly terrifying."
He went to stand before her. "An optical effect, you know, Freelady. The system here doesn't process photons captured in the instants between zero-zero jumps. It displays the scene during the jumps, when we're moving close to the speed of light. Aberration displaces the stars in the field, Doppler shift changes their colors. Among other things, these readings help us monitor our vectors."
He was suddenly afraid he had sounded patronizing, afraid not that she would be angry but that she would think him a pedantic fool. Instead, she smiled and looked from the sky to him. "Yes, I do know. Thank you for trying to reassure me with a lecture, but it wasn't necessary." Seriousness returned. "I misspoke myself. I should have said 'overawing.' The other face of the universe, and I'm not being shown it, I'm meeting it."
"I'm, uh, glad you like it."
"A passenger, like a child, wasn't allowed in vital sections on Eagle," she said. And you didn't use your status to force your way in, he thought. "Thank you for inviting me."
"My pleasure, Freelady. I knew you wouldn't do anything stupid."
"It was good of you, Kenri Shaun." Her fingers brushed his knuckles. "You're always kind to me."
"Could anybody be anything else, to you?" he blurted.
Did she blush? He couldn't tell, in this dusk he had made for her to get the most from the spectacle. She eased him when she said merely, slowly, "I'd be interested to hear what you do at your post."
"Usually not much," he admitted. "The computer handles the data; the navigator's in case of emergency. But need for a human can arise. No two routes are ever identical, you see, because the stars move — not negligibly in the course of centuries. Likewise dark dwarf nebulae, black holes, or rogue planets. They're extremely few and far between, but for that very reason they haven't all been identified, and encountering any would be fatal. Comparing the high-velocity and low-velocity starscapes gives clues to possible hazards ahead — spectral absortion lines or gravitational lensings, for instance. But interpreting them can take more, well, creative imagination than a computer program has. Twice in my time, a navigator's called for a course change. And, oftener, he or she's decided it wasn't necessary, the alarm was false."
"So that's your work here, Kenri Shaun?" She smiled anew. "Yes, I can well picture you, with that funny tight expression, as if the problem were your personal enemy. Then you sigh, rumple your hair, and put your feet on the desk to think for a while. Am I right?"
"How did you guess, Freelady?" he asked, astounded.
"I've thought about you quite a lot lately." She stared away from him, at the lurid blue-white clustering ahead.
Her fists doubled. "I wish you didn't make me feel so futile," she gasped.
"You — "
She spoke fast. The words blurred on her lips. "I've said it before. This is life, this is reality. It's not about what to wear for dinner and who was seen where with whom and what to do tonight when you're too restless and unhappy to stay home. It's not about traffic in goods and information, either. The laser beams only bring news from the settled worlds, and only what the senders choose to transmit. You bring us the news from beyond. You keep alive — in some of us — our kinship with the stars. Oh, I envy you, Kenri Shaun. I wish I were born into the Kith."
"Freelady —"
She shook her head. "No use. Even if a ship would have me, I couldn't go. I'm too late. I don't have the skills or the character or the tradition that you took in with your mother's milk. No, forget it, Nivala Tersis from Canda." She blinked at tears. "When I get home, knowing now what you are in the Kith, will I try to help you? Will I work for common decency toward your people? No. I'll realize it's useless. I won't have the stubbornness. The courage."
"Don't say that, Freelady," he begged. "You would be wasting your effort."
"No doubt," she said. "You're right, as usual. But in my place, you would try!"
They looked at one another.
That was the first time she kissed him.
The guards at the main entrance were giants bred, 230 centimeters of thick bone and boulderlike muscle. Their uniforms were sunburst splendor. Yet they were not ornaments. Stunners and fulgurators rested at their hips. A monogrammed plate in the paving between them could withdraw to let a cycler gun rise.
Kenri's pain had subsided to a background ache. He approached fast, stopped, and craned his neck upward. "The Freelady Nivala from Canda is expecting me," he said.
"Huh?" exploded a basso. "You sold your brain, tumy?"
Kenri extended the card she had given him. "Scan this." He decided it was wise to add, "Please."
"They've got a party going."
"I know." When I called her confidential number, she told me. I'd have waited till tomorrow, but she insisted this is actually a chance we should seize. Don't hang back, Shaun. She's counting on you.
The titans exchanged a glance. He guessed their thoughts. Could it be a stunt, a farce for the guests? Or could he be a secret agent or something? If he's lying, do we arrest him or pulp him here and now? The one who held the card put it in a scanner. The screen came alight. He read, shook his head, and gave the card back. "All right," he grumbled. "Go on in. First ascensor to your left, sixtieth floor. But watch yourself, tumy."
It'd be pleasant, later, to summon him and make him crawl. No. Why? Kenri passed under the enormous curve of the doorway, into a vaulted reach of foyer where murals displayed bygone battles and honors. Most of that history had happened within his lifetime. Uniformed Standard servants goggled at him but drew aside, as if from his touch. He stepped onto the ascensor and punched for 60. It lifted into the shaft through a stillness beneath which his heartbeat racketed.
He emerged in an anteroom of crimson biofabric. More servants struggled not to gape. An arch gave him a view of motion, dance, a blaze of color. Music, talk, sporadic laughter bubbled out. As he neared, a footman mustered decision and blocked his way. "You can't go in there!"
"I certainly can." Kenri flashed the card and walked around him. Radiance poured from faceted crystals. The ballroom was huge and thronged. Dancers, waiters, performers — He stopped in confusion.
"Kenri! Oh, Kenri, dearest!"
Nivala must have been keeping herself nearby, alert for his arrival. She ran straight to his arms. He wondered for a second whether that was shamelessness or ordinary upper-class behavior these days. Then they were embraced and kissing. Her misty cloak swirled about them. Her perfume smelled like roses.
She drew back. Her smile trembled away. He saw that she'd lost weight, and shadows lay below the silver-blue eyes. It struck him in the gut: This past couple of weeks, since Fleetwing took orbit, were worse for her than for me. "Maybe I'd better go," he said.
"Not now," she answered, stammeringly urgent. "I — I hoped you'd land earlier, but w-we have to meet them sooner or later, and a bold stroke — Come." She caught his hand and tugged. With forlorn gaiety: "I want them to see the man I've got me."
Side by side, they advanced. The dancers were stopping, pair after pair, awareness spreading like a wave from a cast stone, turning faces and faces and faces around. Voices choked off. The music persisted. It sounded tinny.
Nivala led Kenri to a dais. They mounted it. A troupe of erotic performers scampered aside. She lifted her head and beckoned to the amplifier pickup. Her voice rang as loud as the voice of some ancient storm goddess. "Stars and Standards, kindred and friends, I ... I wish to announce — to present my . . . my affianced, . . . Lieutenant Kenri Shaun of the starship Fleetwing."
For a time that dragged, nobody moved. At last someone made the ritual bow. Then someone else did, then all the rest, like jointed dolls. No, not all. A few turned their backs.
Nivala's thunder went shrill. "Carry on! Enjoy yourselves! Later —" The music master took his cue and activated a bouncy tune. Couple by couple, the guests slipped into a figure dance. They didn't know what else to do.
Nivala looked back at Kenri. "Welcome home." She had forgotten the amplifier. Her words boomed. She guided him off the dais and around the wall.
"It's been too long," he said for lack of anything else.
A doorway gave on a corridor. It ended in a room screened off by trellises where honeysuckle climbed, a twilit room with a screen playing a view of moonlight on a lake. The music reached it, but faintly, not quite real.
Again she came to him, and now they had no haste. He felt how she shivered.
"This is a hard situation for you, isn't it?" he said when they stood holding hands.
"I love you," she told him. "Nothing else matters."
He had no response.
"Does it?" she cried.
"We, uh, we aren't alone on our private planet," he had to say. "How's your immediate family taken this?" The call in advance had amounted to endearments and the invitation.
"Some howled. But the colonel curbed them. My uncle, the head of us now Father's gone. He ordered them to behave themselves till they see what happens." Nivala gulped. "What happens will be you'll show them, you'll show everybody what you're worth, till they boast about your being one of us."
"One of you — Well, I'll try. With your help."
They sat down on a biopadded bench. She nestled close. His right arm was about her, his left hand closed over hers, and he breathed the sunniness of her hair. From time to time they kissed. Why did his damned thoughts keep straying?
I'll try — what? Not to plan parties or purvey gossip or listen politely to idiots and perverts. No, that's not for her, either. What can we do?
A man can't spend all his waking hours making love.
They'd talked about it aboard ship, though he realized now how desultory the talk had been. He could join a trading firm. (Ten thousand pelts from Kali recd. pr. acct., arrange with Magic Sociodynamics to generate a vogue for them, and lightning flared above those wild hills. Microbes, discovered on Hathor, their metabolism suggesting certain useful variations in nanotechnics, and the jungle was a geometries of mystery. Intriguing customs and concepts recorded on a recently discovered world, and the ship had raced among foreign stars to a fresh frontier.) Or perhaps the military. (Up on your feet, soldier! Hup, hup, hup, hup! . . . Sir, this intelligence report from Mars. . . . Sir, I know the guns aren't to spec, but we can't touch the contractor, his patron is a Star-Free. . . . The General commands your presence at a banquet for the Lord Inspector. . . . Now tell me, Captain Shaun, how really do you think they'll handle those rebels, you officers are so frightfully closemouthed. . . . Ready! Aim! Fire! So perish all traitors. Long live the Dominant!) Or the science centers. (Well, sir, according to the text, the formula is — )
"Otherwise, how do you like being back?" he asked.
"Oh, it's, aside from the family trouble, it's, oh, cordial." She smiled uncertainly "I am a romantic figure, after all. And finding my way around in the new generations, that's a challenge. You'll enjoy it, too. And you'll be still more glamorous."
"No," he grunted. It was as if his tongue spoke on its own. "I'm a tumy, remember?"
"Kenri!" She stiffened beneath his arm. "What a way to talk. You aren't, and you know it, and you won't be if you'll just stop thinking like one —" She drew up short. "I'm sorry, darling. That was a terrible thing to say."
He stared at the lake view.
"I've been . . . reinfected," she said. "You'll cure me."
Tenderness welled in him. He kissed her again.
"Ahem! I beg your pardon."
They pulled apart, dismayed. Two men had entered. The first was gray, gaunt, erect, his night-blue tunic agleam with decorations. After him trailed a young person, pudgy, gaudily clad, not overly steady of gait. Kenri and Nivala rose. The Kithman bowed, arms crossed on breast.
"Oh, how nice." Nivala's voice had gone thready. "This is Kenri Shaun. Kenri, my uncle, Colonel Torwen Jonach from Canda, of the Supreme Staff. And his grandson, the Honorable Oms." Her laugh jittered. "Fancy coming home to find you have a cousin twice removed, your own age."
"Your honor, Lieutenant." The colonel's tone was as stiff as his back. Oms giggled.
"You will pardon the interruption," from Canda proceeded. "I wished to speak to Lieutenant Shaun as soon as possible, and must leave tomorrow for an ... operation that may take many days. You will understand that this is for the good of my niece and the entire family."
Kenri's armpits were wet. He prayed they wouldn't stink. "Of course, sir. Please be seated."
From Canda nodded and lowered his angular frame to the bench, beside the Kithman. Oms and Nivala took opposite ends. "How 'bout we send for wine?" Oms proposed.
"No," from Canda told him. The old man's eyes, winter-bleak, sought Kenri's. "First," he said, "I want to make clear that I do not share the prejudice against your people. It is absurd. The Kith is demonstrably the genetic equal of the Star families, and doubtless superior to a number of their members." The glance went briefly to Oms. Contemptuously? Kenri guessed that the grandson had tagged along, half drunk, out of curiosity or whatever it was, and the grandfather had allowed it lest he make a scene.
"The cultural barrier is formidable," from Canda went on, "but if you will exert yourself to surmount it, I am prepared in due course to sponsor your adoption."
"Thank you, sir." Kenri felt the room wobble. No Kithman had ever — That he — He heard Nivala's happy little sigh. She clutched his arm.
"But will you? That is what I must find out." From Canda gestured at something unseen. "The near future will not be tranquil. The few men of action we have left shall have to stand together and strike hard. We can ill afford weaklings among us. We can absolutely not afford strong men who are not wholeheartedly loyal."
"I ... will be, sir. What more can I say?"
"Better that you ask what you can do. Be warned, much of it will be hard. We can use your special knowledge and your connections. For example, the badge tax on the Kith is not mainly to humiliate them. The Dominancy's treasury is low. This money helps a little. More importantly, it sets a precedent for new levies elsewhere. There will be further demands, on Kithfolk as well as subjects. You can advise our policy makers. We don't want to goad the Kith into forsaking Earth."
"I —" Kenri swallowed a lump. It was acid. "You can't expect —"
"If you won't, I cannot compel you," said from Canda. "But if you cooperate, you can make things easier for your former people."
It surged in Kenri: "Can I get them treated like human beings?"
"History can't be annulled by decree. You should know that."
Kenri nodded. The motion hurt his neck.
"I admire your spirit," the colonel said. "Can you make it last?"
Kenri looked down.
"Of course he can," said Nivala.
The Honorable Oms tittered. "New tax," he said. "Slap a new tax on, quick. I've got a tumy merchant reeling. New tax'll bring him to his knees."
"Hold your jaw," from Canda snapped.
Nivala sat straight. "Yes, be still!" she shouted. "Why are you here?" To her uncle, desperately: "You will be our friend, won't you?"
"I hope so," said from Canda.
Through rising winds, Kenri heard Oms:
"I got to tell you 'bout this. Real funny. This resident merchant in Kith Town, not a spacer but a tumy just the same, he lost big on a voyage. My agent bought the debt for me. If he doesn't pay, I can take his daughter under contract. Cute little piece. Only the other tumies are taking up a collection for him. Got to stop that somehow. Never mind the money. They say those tumy girls are really hot. How 'bout that, Kenri? Tell me, is it true —"
Kenri stood up. The room around him lay as sharp as if he saw it in open space. He no longer heard the music. A metallic singing filled his skull.
He did hear Nivala: "Oms! You whelp!" and from Canda: "Silence!" The sounds came from light-years away. His left hand caught hold of the tunic and hauled the Honorable Oms to his feet. His right hand made a fist and smote.
Oms lurched back, fell, and moaned where he lay. Nivala quelled a scream. From Canda leaped to his own feet.
"Arrest me," Kenri said. A detached fraction of him wished he could speak less thickly. "Go on. Why not?"
"Kenri, Kenri." Nivala rose, too. She reached for him. He saw at the edge of vision but didn't respond. Her arms dropped.
Oms pulled himself to an elbow. Blood coursed from his nose. "Yes, arrest him," he squealed. "Ten years' penance confinement. I'll take everything he's got."
From Canda's shoe nudged his grandson in the ribs, not gently. "I ordered you to stay quiet," he said. Oms whimpered, struggled to a sitting position, and rocked to and fro.
"That was reckless of you, Lieutenant Shaun," stated from Canda. "However, it was not unprovoked. There will be no charges or lawsuit."
"The Kith girl —" Kenri realized he should first have said thanks.
"I daresay she'll be all right. They'll raise the money for her father. Kithfolk stick together." The tone hardened. "Bear in mind, you have renounced that allegiance."
Kenri straightened. A hollow sort of peace had come upon him.
He remembered a half-human face and eyes without hope and A man's only alive when he has something bigger than himself to live and die for. "Thank you, sir," he said belatedly. "But I am a Kithman."
"Kenri," he heard.
He turned and stroked a hand down Nivala's hair. "I'm sorry," he said. He never had been good at finding words.
"Kenri, you can't go, you mustn't, you can't."
"I must," he said. "I was ready to give up everything for you. But not to betray my ship, my people. If I did that, in the end it would make me hate you, and I want to love you. Always."
She wrenched away, slumped onto the bench, and stared at the hands clenched in her lap. The blonde tresses hid her face from him. He hoped she wouldn't try to call him tomorrow or the next day. He didn't know whether he hoped she would take treatment to adjust her mind-set or wait and recover naturally from him.
"We're enemies now, I suppose," the colonel said. "I respect you for that more than if you'd worked to be friends. And, since I presume you'll be shipping out and we'll never meet again — luck to you, Lieutenant Shaun."
"And to you, sir. Good-bye, Nivala."
The Kithman passed through the ballroom, ignoring eyes, and through the anteroom to the ascensor. Well, he thought vaguely on his way down, yes, I will be shipping out.
I do like Theye Barinn. I should go around soon and see her.
The time felt long before he was back in Kith Town. There he walked in empty streets, breathing the cold night wind of Earth.