Dushau

"Would you like a map, Krinata?"

She started. Arlai's simulacrum stood in the corridor before her, large as life. "Have you seen Imp?"

"Daren't take my eyes off the miniature monster! Here." He gestured graciously toward a portal. Within, she found a large unfurnished room with a tank of water in one corner in which Imp splashed, merrily chasing a fish. She watched through the transparent side of the tank while the piol secured his fish and emerged to eat it, holding it in his long claws which Arlai had not trimmed.

"You are a consummate host, Arlai—but don't you think piol food would do just as well?"

"Nutritionally, yes. But I've been training Imp. We can't have wild animals loose aboard ship, you know. Here, let's see if he's learned yet. Imp, come!"

To Krinata's total surprise, the piol carefully set his half-gutted fish aside and scampered to the simulacrum's imaged feet. He spotted Krinata then, and instead of swarming up her clothing, sat up and chittered questioningly.

"He wants you to pick him up," said Arlai. "Do please reward him for the good behavior."

Krinata obliged, holding the wet animal away from her but making affectionate sounds at him. Then she deposited him beside his fish. "Arlai, you're amazing. That creature was probably born wild."

"Definitely was. His brainwaves show it. But he learned to endear himself to people to beg scraps. He's young and intelligent enough to learn good ma

"Jindigar," repeated Krinata, unable to be diverted by the piol anymore. "When can I see him?"

"Can't we give him more time?"

"You said he needs Dushau companionship. Maybe I can talk him into ordering you to take him home."

Heavily, Arlai said, "I doubt that."

"Why?" she demanded. "Has a shooting war broken out at Dushaun?"

"No. I doubt if it will, either."

"Then why not go there?"

Arlai didn't answer, his eyes flickering aside as he apologized in that same compulsive way Jindigar had. She realized he'd been told not to discuss this with her, and she said, "Ask Jindigar if I can come talk to him."

"I will, as soon as he's awake. Dushau can sleep longer than humans, and stay awake longer, too. He's had a rough time. He needs a full sleep cycle."

And with such excuses, he put her off for the rest of that day, and most of the following day. She spent the time alternately pacing, fretting, hounding Arlai, and sitting herself down to survey her options rationally and plan her future like an adult.

But where could she go? She assumed Jindigar would drop her at some port between here and Dushaun, because that was where he had to go. She sat on the bridge at Arlai's astrogation console and pulled up a list of all the convenient planets where she might live. But if she so much as set foot on any of them, the Emperor's hand would close on her. She'd forged his seal and stolen his prisoner. That was certainly treason. She'd disgraced her family name. The magnitude of it all crashed in on her, paralyzing her mind.

Hours later, when she forced herself to confront it again, she visualized trying to beg herself a place on Dushaun—the only Dushau world, for they hadn't colonized. But the Dushau had never been hospitable to offworlders. There couldn't be more than a few hundred offworld diplomats in residence on Dushaun, and they'd be gone by the time she got there. She had no desire to live apart from her own species.

Again she paced and fretted, and addressed the problem anew. What about the frontier worlds that had always attracted her? None were on the route to Dushaun from here, but she might ask to be taken somewhere. She had, after all, saved Jindigar's life. Perhaps, after he visited Dushaun to complete his grieving, he'd take her to a settlement where her record wouldn't follow her. She stared at a list of open colonies greedily until she remembered Dushaun was now under siege by the Allegiancy. It was problematic whether Truth could get in, and patently impossible to get her out again. If she went home with Jindigar, she'd be trapped until the Allegiancy came to its senses. Yet if she read Arlai right, Jindigar urgently needed Dushau company. It was a need he couldn't neglect without peril to his life, and she wasn't going to ask that of him after all she'd sacrificed to save him. What are we going to do?!

She shoved away from the bridge console and paced again, her stomach churning. She couldn't face going back to the mockup of her apartment. Pangs of homesickness such as she'd never known lurked beneath her tight control. I've cried enough. More won't help. I'm not sorry / did it. I'm not.

Gradually, she adjusted to the loss of her old life, realizing if she could have anything she wanted, she'd opt to work with an implanting Oliat on a raw, new world being colonized by at least some humans. Since the Oliat teams had been withdrawn, she'd accept almost any hospitable new world. After all, without an Oliat, they'd need trained ecologists.

But what would she have to settle for? How could Jindigar help her when he, himself, needed help? The idea of asking for his help in return for saving his life made her want to curl up in a ball and never show her face again. But she didn't want to be trapped on Dushaun. Could I stand it, if I have to? She didn't know.

Midafternoon of the second day, when the tension in her had mounted to where she was fighting tears again, Arlai finally a

She followed the moving shaft of light through the dim hallways. She was wearing a long, sleeveless blue tunic over baggy black pants. Arlai had provided an ultraviolet screening lotion for her exposed skin, but even so she could already see herself ta

As they moved through the ship, she was acutely aware that oils was a purely Dushau environment: Dushau art, light, scents, thick atmosphere. Arlai kept a reduced gravity under her wherever she went, but Dushaun itself pulled almost a third more than she was accustomed to.

The sickbay room she was led to was furnished in the Dushau ma

Amid the shadows of an alcove formed of thick draperies, on a low padded platform, wearing a pale yellow robe, Jindigar sat coaxing soft music from a polished urwood whule that must have been as old as he was. His head was bent over the long fretboard, eyes closed, as he produced ululating tremolos with a complicated bow. An aching frown played between his eyes, and the set of his mouth bespoke a pain no living creature could surmount.

Krinata couldn't imagine how Arlai had led her to intrude on such a moment of nakedness. She didn't dare breathe.

Determined to wait until she was noticed, she crossed her ankles and silently sank to the floor.

Plucking an occasional string with a pick or a soft fingertip, Jindigar's elegant hands produced wails of agony, howls of anguish, gut-twisting groans, and plaintive melodies that progressed across scales of loneliness and around harmonies she seemed to hear with her whole body. Every ghostly note pled for mercy, surrendered to pain or yielded only in the broken extremity beyond the end of strength.

Before long, the riptide of Krinata's own emotions scoured her nerves like a sandstorm driven by the fury of Dushaun's sun. Ponderous inevitability thundered through her bones. She forgot Jindigar, barely knew there was music, and lived within the sphere of her loss and the hopeless future.