Hell's Gate

"That's very interesting," she said after several seconds. "It's a lot to take in, of course … even without your well-deserved little lecture." she smiled crookedly, then she yawned. It wasn't completely feigned, and her smile turned lopsided. "In fact, if you don't mind, I think I'm going to take advantage of the sun until lunchtime and sleep on it."

"By all means, get as much rest as you can," Gadrial advised her with an equally crooked smile. "We won't be getting much of it over the next half-dozen universes or so."

"In that case … "

Shaylar settled back in her deck chair and tucked the light blanket around her legs. Then she gave Gadrial a smile, closed her eyes, and dreamed nightmares of Sharonian nights filled with the ghastly pyres of dragon breath.

Chapter Forty-Eight

"So, Davir. What kind of effect do you expect these negotiations to have?" Darl Elivath asked.

It was late as he and Davir Perth sat sipping tea. They were in the Sharonian Universal News Network's green room, in the wing of the Great Palace set-aside for the press, waiting for official word that the Conclave's Committee on Unification had finally managed to report out draft language for the proposed amendment to the initial Act of Unification.

"On the Conclave and the Unification? Or on whether or not we go to war with these people?" Perthis asked.

"Both, I suppose," Elivath said. "It took the threat of a war to get the Conclave assembled in the first place, after all."

"Well," SUNN's Chief Voice scratched his chin thoughtfully. "I suppose the fact that they want to talk at all has to be a good sign. At least it's not what you expect out of the kind of murderous barbarians we've all assumed we were facing. And the possibility that it was all a mistake?that they thought our people were soldiers who'd attacked one of their people?genuinely hadn't occurred to me."

Perthis was a bit surprised by how unwillingly he made that admission, and he wondered why he was so unwilling. Was it that he'd invested so much in hating the "Arcanans" for what they'd done that he simply didn't want to give up his hate? Or was it what he'd Seen from Shaylar's final Voice transmission? He remembered once again Seeing Ghartoun chan Hagrahyl stand up with his hands empty … and go down again, choking on his life's blood.

Perthis was a man who'd spent his entire adult career in the news business. He knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that what he'd Seen from Shaylar was the truth. It was, quite literally, impossible for a Voice to lie about something like that in such a deep linkage to another Voice. But the professional newsman in him also recognized how even the truth could be misread, misinterpreted. Was that what had happened here?

It was entirely possible that it was, he admitted. And if it was, the fact that relatively few people on Sharona?Davir Perthis, included?had ever seen a violent death with their own eyes had undoubtedly contributed to it. The sheer, horrifying emotional impact of seeing that sort of carnage with your physical eyes would have been bad enough for someone who'd never seen it before. Going the extra step and Seeing it with the total clarity (and emotional overtones) which could only come from a powerful Voice trapped in the middle of it only made it infinitely worse.

"What about what they say happened to Shaylar?"

Elivath's question broke in on the Chief Voice's thoughts, and Perthis looked back up at him with a sour expression.

"They haven't really said all that much, when you come right down to it," he pointed out. "Aside from the fact that she wasn't killed outright?which we already knew?all we have is their claims that they tried to get her to one of their Healers before she died. Or that they could have done anything for her if they'd managed to reach one in time. We didn't get that from a Voice, either, you know. And either way, she's still dead, and they still killed her."

"So you think they're lying?"

"I didn't say that." Perthis realized he sounded a little defensive, and waved one hand. "All right, I admit I thought it. I'm having a hard time getting past my original image of them, I guess. But the fact is, Darl, that we don't have any sort of confirmation of a single thing they've said, and I'm just … uncomfortable with the fact."

"But if they did try to save her, and if it turns out they can prove it, don't you think it would make a difference with public opinion?"

"If they genuinely tried to save her life after making an honest mistake, then probably yes," Perthis said. "But that's a lot of ifs, Darl. They've still got a lot of talking to do, as far as I'm concerned, to explain how what were supposed to be a bunch of trained soldiers mistook someone standing up and holding out empty hands as an act of aggression. Mind you, I'm not saying mistakes like that can't happen. Gods know they've happened in our own past. I'm just saying that after actually Seeing the events from our crew's side, it's going to be hard to convince a lot of our people, including me, that that's what happened here."

He started to say something else, then stopped himself. He didn't know exactly how much Elivath actually knew about the rumors regarding the Voice messages to Emperor Zindel and the Conclave. The original message from Regiment-Captain Velvelig, informing the Emperor and the Conclave that the Arcanans had asked for negotiations, had been released directly to the Voice network and the general public. The follow-on messages had not been, and neither had any of the Conclave's?or Zindel's?responses to Velvelig.

Ostensibly, that was to avoid further exacerbating public opinion by generating unreasonable expectations, on the one hand, or generating additional fury when the bobbles and stumbles which were undoubtedly inevitable in opening negotiations with a totally alien civilization occurred, on the other hand. Perthis supposed that the official reasoning made sense, but he'd picked up on a few very quiet rumors that it was because those follow-on messages from whoever was actually talking to these people included reports that the Arcanans weren't being completely truthful. He had no idea what they were supposed to be lying about, but the thought that they were lying at all was hardly reassuring.

"Well, let's assume it turns out they really did their best to save her life," Elivath said. "And that they really do want to settle this as peacefully as they can, given everything that's already happened. If all that's true, what kind of effect do you think it's going to have on the Conclave and the unification?"

"I don't know that I expect it to have any effect," Perthis replied. Elivath raised one skeptical eyebrow, and the Chief Voice shrugged. "By now," he pointed out, "the debate's taken on the life of its own. Besides, even if we manage to put the brakes on this current confrontation, we still know the bastards are out there, don't we? All of our conventional political equations are going to have to take them into account from now on."

"Do you really think so?"

Elivath grimaced and set down his tea cup. He sat turning it on its saucer for a moment, lips slightly pursed, while he gazed out of the green room's window at the Great Palace's well-lit grounds under the great, midnight-blue dome of the starstruck heavens. Then he returned his gaze to Perthis.

"I was talking to one of the Authority's theoreticians," the Voice correspondent said. "From the way he was talking, this may be the only point of contact we'll see with these people. So if we get control of it, or just seal it off, wouldn't that be more or less the end of it?"

"Only point of contact?"

Perthis leaned back in his own chair. To be totally honest, he'd never thought of Elivath as the sharpest pencil in SUNN's box. He respected the strength of Elivath's Talent, and his integrity, but he'd also always thought of Elivath as one of his correspondents who required rather more careful direction than many.