Starplex

"No," said Glass. "This time I promise I will not forget you, or the parts of our past you have shared with me." He paused. "Good-bye, my friend."

The forest simulation, along with its motionless sun, daytime moon, and four-leaf lucky clovers, melted away, revealing the cubic interior of the docking bay. Keith started walking toward his travel pod.

Glass stood motionless in the bay as it opened to space.

More magic; he needed no space suit. Keith touched a key, and his pod moved out into the night, the six-fingered pink nebula that had once been Sol staining the sky on his left, the robin 's-egg-blue dragon receding behind him. He flew the pod toward the invisible point of the shortcut, and as he made contact, he felt a faint itching inside his skull. He had just been thinking about — about something…

It was gone now, whatever it had been.

Oh, well. The ring of Soderstrom radiation passed over the pod from bow to stern, and Keith 's view was filled with the sky of Tau Ceti, Grand Central Station visible off to his right, looking odd in the dim red light from the newly arrived dwarf star. As he always did when he came here, Keith amused himself for a few seconds finding Boetes, then locating Sol.

He nodded once and smiled. Always good to know that the old girl hadn't gone nova…

Chapter XXIII

Keith had always thought Grand Central Station looked like four di

Like Starplex's own much-smaller central disk, the outward facing edges of the plates were studded with docking-bay doors, many of them bearing the logos of Earth-based trading corporations. The computer aboard Keith's travel pod received docking instructions from Grand Central's traffic controller, and flew him in toward a docking ring adjacent to a large corrugated space door bearing the yellow-script symbol of the Hudson's Bay Company, now in its fifth century of operation.

Keith looked around through the travel pod's transparent hull. Dead ships were floating across the sky. Tugs were arriving at the docking bays hauling wreckage. One of the station's four plates was completely dark, as if it had taken a major hit during the battle.

Once his pod was secured, Keith exited into the station.

Unlike Starplex, which was a Commonwealth facility, Grand Central belong entirely to the peoples of Earth, and its common environment was kept precisely at terrestrial standard.

A governmental aide was waiting to greet Keith. He had a broken arm.

It likely occurred during the battle with the Waldahudin, since the bone-knitting web he had on would normally only be worn for seventy-two hours after the injury. The aide took him to the opulent office of Petra Kenyatta, Human Government Premier of Tau Ceti province.

Kenyatta, an African woman of about fifty, rose to great Keith.

"Hello, Dr. Lansing," she said, extending her right hand.

Keith shook it. Her grip was firm, almost painfully so.

"Ma' am."

"Please, have a seat."

"Thank you." No sooner had Keith sat down in the chair — a regular, nonmorphing human chair — than the door slid open again and another woman came in, this one Nordic in appearance and a little younger than Kenyatta.

"Do you know Commissioner Amundsen?" said the premier. "She's in charge of the United Nations police forces here at Tau Ceti."

Keith half rose from his chair. "Commissioner." "Of course," said Amundsen, taking a seat herself, "'police forces' is a euphemism. We call it that for alien ears."

Keith felt his stomach knotting.

"Reinforcements are already on their way from Sol and Epsilon Indi," said Amundsen. "We'll be ready to move on Rehbollo as soon as they arrive."

"Move on Rehbollo?" said Keith, shocked.

"That's right," said the commissioner. "We're going to kick those bloody pigs halfway to Andromeda?"

Keith shook his head. "But surely it's over. A sneak attack only works once. They're not going to be coming back."

"This way we make sure of that," said Kenyatta.

"The United Nations can't have agreed to this," said Keith.

"Not the United Nations, of course," said Amundsen.

"Dolphins don't have the spine for something like this. But we're sure the HuGo will vote for it."

Keith turned to Kenyatta. "It would be a mistake to let this escalate, Premier. The Waldahudin know how to destroy a shortcut."

Amundsen's sapphire eyes Went wide. "Say that again."

"They could cut us off from the rest of the galaxy — and they only need to get one ship through to Tau Ceti to do that."

"What's the technique?

"I — I have no idea. But I'm assured it works."

"All the more reason to destroy them," said Kenyatta.

"How did they sneak up on you?" asked Commissioner Amundsen. "Here at Tau Ceti, they sent one large mother-ship through, and it disgorged fighters as soon as it arrived.

I understand from what Dr. Cervantes said while she was here that they sent individual craft after Starplex. How was it that you didn't notice when the first one arrived?"

"The newly emerged star was between us and the shortcut."

"Who ordered the ship to take that position?" asked Amundsen.

Keith paused. "I did. I give all the orders aboard Starplex.

We were engaged in astronomical research, and had to move the ship away from the shortcut to facilitate that. I take full responsibility."

"No need to Worry," said Amundsen, gri

"What?"

"Don't call them that name. They are Waldahudin." He managed to say the word as a bark, with perfect accent and asperity.

Amundsen was taken aback. "Do you know what they call us?" she asked.

Keith shook his head slightly.

"Gargtelkin," she said. "'Ones who copulate out of season.""

Keith suppressed a grin. But then he sobered. "We can't go to war with them."

"They started it."

He thought of his older sister and younger brother. He thought of an old black-and-white movie with dueling anthems, the Marseillaise drowning out Wacht am Rhein.

And he thought most of all of the sight of the young Milky Way, cupped in his outstretched hand.

"No," said Keith simply.

"What do you mean, 'no'?" snapped Amundsen. "They did start it."

"I mean it doesn't make any difference. None of it does.

There are beings out there made of dark matter. There are shortcuts in intergalactic space. There are stars coming back from the future. And you're worried about who started it? It doesn't matter. Let's end it.

Let's end it here and now."

"That's exactly what we're talking about," said Premier Kenyatta: "Ending it once and for all. Knocking the pigs on their hairy asses."

Keith shook his head. Midlife crisis — for all of them, humans and Waldahudin. "Let me go to Rehbollo. Let me talk to Queen Pelsh. I'm supposed to be a diplomat. Let me go and talk peace. Let me build a bridge."

"People have died," said Amundsen. "Here at TaU Ceti, humans beings have died."

Keith thought of Saul Ben-Abraham. Not the horrid picture that usually came to mind, Saul's skull opening like a red flower in front of his eyes, but rather Saul alive, great wide grin splitting his dark beard, a home-brewed beer in hand. Saul Ben-Abraham had never wanted war.

He'd gone to the alien ship looking for peace, for friendship.

And what about the other Saul? Saul Lansing-Cervantes — unable to carry a tune, sporting a silly goatee, shortstop on one of Harvard's campus baseball teams, a chocoholic — and a physics major, the kind they would draft to be a hyperdrive pilot if it came to war. "Humans have died before, and we have not sought vengeance," said Keith.