At first, Filip didn’t detect any reaction to Rena’s shout. Then a Tdegan soldier safed his weapon. He eyed the loading chamber, removed a cartridge, and rolled it between his fingers.
Rena stepped closer to Casimir. Instantly suspicious of her intent, Filip synched with her. He sensed a flash of memory that included Tam Vandam and three non-empaths. She lunged. Her helmet bounced against Casimir’s.
“Rena, no!” He seized her arm. With her other hand, she grabbed Casimir’s helmet collar. She held on with the painless strength of youth. Casimir flailed his arms, tried to back away, and stumbled against Osun Zavijavah.
Filip tugged Rena toward nexus, trying to calm her. Her inner frequency only intensified. She was empathically stronger than he. He couldn’t save her—or Casimir—that way. He dropped off synch and opened his eyes.
Osun Zavijavah lunged forward and slid his hands inside Casimir’s transparent helmet collar. To Filip’s shock, Zavijavah clutched, working his fingers against Casimir’s throat. Probing for the airway.
Filip shouted at the Tdegan troops. “Get him off!”
Two black-suited soldiers jumped forward and seized Zavijavah. Zavijavah flung back his head. He squeezed his eyes shut, clamping both hands over his ears.
Filip clutched Rena’s shoulder. “Rena, no! Not that way.”
“Let me go,” she sputtered, but at least he had broken her lethal concentration. “He’s evil. Even his friend wants him dead. If we don’t shut him down, he’ll destroy everyone.”
Gamal Casimir slowly turned circles in the sand, blinking and waving both hands in front of his face. Rena had done something to him. Stunned him, maybe.
Bellik must have realized the same thing. He seized Gamal’s left elbow. “Malukulu,” he cried, “get two of your people. This man has been mentally injured, but he’ll survive. You need bodies. Take his.” Bellik grappled Gamal’s helmet and tried to wrench it off. It didn’t budge.
Bellik hated him, too? His nephew, his heir?
Two brawny men wearing short pants and sandals sprinted forward. “This is locked on,” Bellik said shortly. “Take him that other way.”
“Wait,” Filip cried. “He’ll recover. Don’t—”
“Are you certain?” Bellik narrowed his eyes. He glanced at the fallen triad. “Recover? I’m not sure they will.”
“No.” Filip had to speak truth. “But I will not give up my people’s lives.”
“Get him out of our sight,” Bellik ordered, “before I kill him myself.”
The Sunsisans clutched Gamal Casimir by both elbows and led him toward the huge building. Bellik lowered his voice and fumed, “Disarming my troops.” His helmet fogged.
“You didn’t know?” Filip asked.
Bellik worked his left hand. “No. And he would have given me to the aliens sooner or later, too. I’ll be kinder to him than he would have been to me.”
Briefly synching, Filip realized Bellik’s ambition ran as deep as Gamal’s. Apparently, the poisonous power-mongering infected that whole family.
“But the parasite will leave him as quickly as it can find another—” Between strips of his helmet, Filip saw something move behind Bellik. The Tdegan who had been checking his weapon aimed it at the trio stumbling toward the huge building. He fired. After a loud report, nothing else happened.
“She was right,” the soldier shouted. “These are dummy loads!”
Gamal Casimir struggled against the Sunsisans. None of his troops moved to help him.
“Good riddance,” Rena muttered.
Filip hesitated. Not even Gamal Casimir deserved to be invaded and crippled by an alien parasite, but every human here would enter those doors unless he kept the Chaethe talking. Unless he brought them to a different agreement. He could not order the Outwatch to abandon his colleagues and defend Gamal Casimir. He must make it clear he shared Casimir’s risk, though.
Llyn had rushed forward when the confusion broke out. She couldn’t guess what Rena had done to her father—she’d never seen his facial muscles go slack like that—but if walking Gamal Casimir to the infestation building wasn’t justice, she didn’t know the meaning of the word.
To her astonishment, Regent Salbari reached for his helmet clasps, released them, and pulled it off again. “Please, Winnow,” he said to the Sunsisan woman. “You sensed our effort to speak mind to mind. You said telepathy was one of the Two.”
“But only one.” Winnow shook her head. “You did not complete the circle.”
The legendary circle of listening and speaking: did these beings have the same concept?
Regent Salbari spoke again, but Llyn could tell he was only stalling. “We want to communicate from our natural state. Give us a little more time. Let us try to find a way.”
“Have you ever been in pain?” The woman frowned. “You want it to end.”
Llyn’s newly doubled memory thrust up the image of Jahn, chained by his ankle somewhere in the Residence while Gamal had him tortured. She shuddered.
“I understand,” Regent Salbari began, “but—”
Llyn caught motion at the edge of her vision. She spun to look. Karine was lunging toward Casimir’s troops. “Shoot everyone—shoot everyone!” she cried. She dashed at Regent Salbari, brandishing her needler.
“Down!” Rena flung herself against Llyn and dropped with her. Prone on the sand, Llyn couldn’t follow the scuffle, but half a minute later, Jahn was backing away and Regent Salbari held Karine’s hand weapon.
Rena helped Llyn stand and brushed sand off her shift.
Karine had seized Regent Salbari’s helmet. She thrust it at Llyn. “Put it on! If he’s stupid enough to take it off here, of all places—”
“Don’t you have more important things to do?” Llyn cried. Her own voice sounded harsh. Several brightly dressed Sunsisans hurried up behind Karine. “Look at them!” Llyn said. “Are you going to help Regent Salbari or hinder him?” In that moment, she realized that her father had taken the electromagnet’s remote switch with him into the building. They were defenseless.
“Gen Malukulu, Gen’n Winnow.” Even now, Regent Salbari maintained a serene tone of voice. “Please control them. There’s still time to talk.”
Karine pushed Regent Salbari’s helmet at Llyn again, whispering, “Take it, you ungrateful infant.”
Llyn turned away from Karine, grabbed Jahn’s hand, and held tightly. Out in the Outwatch circle, she spotted Lieutenant Metyline, who would rather die than suffer—and who was ready to make it happen, to face eternity and the Creator. Uncanny calm settled over Llyn. “Regent Salbari,” she said softly, “let me try talking with them.”
Karine grabbed Llyn’s shoulder. “No! You’re not capable! It killed Qu Yung.” She glared at Jahn. “And your mother’s dying from trying it—”
Llyn felt Jahn resist the urge to strike her. “Be quiet,” he snapped.
Regent Salbari took a step toward Llyn. “You’re not afraid.” She heard surprise in his voice.
“I was,” she said, “and I will be again. But not now. I’ve had to adjust to two universes.” She glared at Karine. “Maybe I could understand these people. I want to try.”
“You’ll need a synch specialist.” Karine seized Llyn’s free hand at the wrist and slid her hand up Llyn’s arm. “Salbari, I’ll assist my charge. I’m willing to die with her—”
Regent Salbari grabbed Karine’s hand and flung it off. “Get back,” he said. Llyn had never seen such a fierce look in his eyes.
Karine backed two steps away.
“Go. Stand with the group.” Regent Salbari beckoned to the Antaran Ambassador. The tall, gray-haired man strode out of the Tdegan escort group and laid a hand on Karine’s shoulder.
Karine glowered at him, at Salbari, at Jahn. She pointed at Llyn, spearing the air with one finger. “You are the most deceitful, ungrateful—”
“Enough,” Llyn shouted. She would not tolerate any more verbal abuse. Right or wrong, she made her own choices now. And she was grateful for many things. But not for this. Not now.
“Hold her down if you have to,” Regent Salbari ordered the Ambassador. Karine backed away with him.
Regent Salbari leaned close to Llyn. “She’s ill,” he murmured. “She loves you, but even her love is sick.”
“I know.” She nodded. “And I know that the Sunsisans aren’t as terrified as we are. I hear it in their voices.”
“Really?”
She nodded again. “They’re afraid—they’re in pain—but it’s different from what I’ve heard in Gen Zavijavah.” And it was. She couldn’t guess why, but there was a different tone when they spoke.
Regent Salbari caught the Sunsisan pair’s attention again. “This woman is Llyn Torfinn. She—”
“She was introduced to us as Luene Casimir.” Winnow straightened her thin shoulders.
“That is also her name,” Regent Salbari said. “She has lived on two Concord worlds and inside another reality. She has earned the right to speak.”
The Sunsisans, Malukulu and Winnow, bent their heads together, talking and gesturing.
Regent Salbari beckoned Jahn closer. “What has happened between you and Llyn?”
Her cheeks warmed. She felt oddly embarrassed. Jahn stepped in, making such a tight triangle that his elbow touched her arm. “I’m not sure. It’s not painful, like they say enmeshment is. It’s a communion, like … No. It’s not like anything.”
“Could you listen and hold a nexus? Simultaneously?”
Jahn eyed the Sunsisans. “Nexus should be easy. We’re almost there already.”
Regent Salbari raised his eyebrows.
“I could try,” Jahn said. Llyn sensed his fear. And his willingness. “I will try.”
Regent Salbari studied Llyn with warm eyes. “Whatever happened between you two, it is good. May we all survive to learn what it is.”
Jahn had been watching Salbari for hand signals. Now, he caught “listen deeply.” He synched to catch Salbari’s message. He respected Salbari, but he’d never envisioned the man as a leader in life-and-death crisis.
A shaped thought slid into his mind from outside: Qu died trying what you’re about to attempt. Your mother is alive but stunned, and I don’t know if she will recover. Nor the others. Are you willing, knowing that’s the risk?
How could he succeed where his mother, a fully trained, mature talent, had failed?
Llyn echoed his alarm but quickly regained her resolve. She would not be content until she tried this.
We are willing, he formed plain words.
Try Winnow. She seemed willing to give information. He heard Salbari’s gratitude in those words. If any of us survive, you will be honored. If you are killed, I will try to assist Llyn. If we fail, the others will enmesh. They will attempt a unison effort.
Jahn understood. He took Llyn’s hand. “Are you ready?”
Warm wind tossed her dark hair around her shoulders. She looked small and delicate, with just two qualifications to face an alien race: her past and her courage.
She nodded.
He quieted his mind and listened for the Sunsisan’s inner frequency. Again he felt two phenomena. Winnow, the human, was alert and afraid and in pain. The other sensation was a high-pitched, warbling whine superimposed over her frequency.
He pitched his own inner frequency to the warble. Gently, he gathered Llyn deeper into nexus, synchronizing their shared frequency onto an oscillating rhythm that approached but did not achieve the alien vibrato. This was like trying to block synch, but much more precise.
I don’t think I can, he admitted to her.
Let me.
But you can’t—
He was wrong. She could. And she did. He felt her imagine a clipped height and an irregular downslope, entering the oscillation. He matched it. She deepened its trough, and he matched that.
Thousands of voices shrieked inside his head. Her optimism surged—cautiously. Can you hold that? She seemed to be modulating the vibrato, like a transmitter superimposing information onto a radio wave, even controlling its volume. Where had she learned to do that?
Abruptly, he knew. I can. I will, he answered.
Laying down control of a nexus might kill him, but that was a better fate than Gamal Casimir faced. He hid that fear from Llyn and backed down. She seized and held the frequency.
He did not die. He wasn’t even stunned.
She’d done it.
He quieted all thought and effort, except what it took to support their shared inner frequency. It now was a wild—but controlled—oscillation.
Llyn, too, felt initial contact as a babble of shrieking voices, but an instant later, it focused. Geometric imagery appeared where the stark Sunsisan landscape had vanished. She knew this music. This mindscape had other inhabitants!
Turning back to Jahn once more before plunging forward, she formed a thought. Are you all right?
In his perception, the shrieking had faded to a frightening but nonlethal babble. He was hearing simultaneous, unintelligible speeches where she perceived bitter but familiar song. He didn’t seem to be in danger.
She stopped clutching his perception. She let herself float. Voices sang and spoke, not with words, but with seventeen-tone chords and harmonies.
She plunged into midstream. A thousand bright images floated alongside her, wafting through space unmarked by grid lines, rushing ahead of the current, urging her to greater speeds, and it felt wrong. Wrong!
The Chaethe were trying to draw her too deep, too quickly! Was this what they’d done to Jahn’s mother, or was it a second defense against outsiders who survived to make contact?
She sang herself away from them using Jahn’s simple melody.
Abruptly, the multitude swirled back toward her, quieting. She felt spotlighted, as if Tdega’s stars had all stopped twinkling to watch her.
She had never set words to this tonality. She wasn’t even sure it was possible. {Is this …} she began, and as if she perceived the words with some sense other than hearing, they flicked at the edge of her mind.
Silence waited.
{Is this … how you give voice?} Her thought translated oddly, but the tonality sounded natural.
A burst of joyous color erupted around her. {You speak!} A rose-colored entity whirled toward her. It sparkled like an oval jewel.
Llyn tried again. {I am learning,} she answered softly. The rose-colored jewel drew closer. {I desire to sing with you. Is this how you … you do it?}
{What are you?} The rosy oval whizzed past so quickly that she thought for a moment she’d been run through.
{My …} There was no term for “name.” {I am Llyn. I am human. We have wanted to communicate with you for many weeks.}
A brilliant, amethyst-purple shape moved toward her—or had it grown larger? It projected a deep, resonant bass. {We dance at many levels, Llyn Human. Vocal speech uses symbiont tissues. It survives, it survives from our early civilization. We use it to control the symbionts. Your race commands tamed creatures. You understand.}
Llyn formed mental pictures of Alun’s dog, Bear, and the clinic dedo, Squeak. Trying to show the bass entity these images, she found herself singing a melody she could not consciously follow. She tried to control it. It faltered. She tried releasing herself to sing instinctively again, but once she had choked, that was difficult.
The brilliant shape quivered. {Yes,} it sang. {Like those animals.}
The rosy jewel swooped closer, beckoning her to dance as the green geometric had done so long ago. This time, Llyn understood, it was not only permissible but imperative to join in.
The jewel led her in a slow, solemn sweep that orbited the brilliant amethyst-purple shape. Slowly, Llyn realized that the rosy oval wanted her to orbit in a position opposite its own, forming a balance.
Once Llyn took that place, thousands of shapes swooped into other orbits.
Together they created a sphere.
Erratic modulations shivering through the nexus meant nothing to Jahn. Only the sense of Llyn’s presence—which flitted from one emotion to the next, deep in some incomprehensible experience and obviously communicating with something—assured him that his efforts were successful.
He slid into a marginal trance and maintained his inner frequency at the oscillating alien rhythm. If he let it falter, he might lose Llyn. Whatever she was doing, however and wherever she was doing it, she must do it herself.
Yet obviously, she had them talking.
{Listen now,} the brilliant amethyst nucleus boomed. Llyn made a supreme effort to concentrate. A succession of geometric dancers slipped into her orbit. Each briefly took up a satellite orbit around her. As they danced, they flooded her with information.
{We nearly went extinct …}
{Silent, silent forever,} chorused the multitude.
Llyn felt their grief and fear. {Silent,} she wept with them.
{Our bodies had begun to die …}
Through the matrix, superimposed onto her mind’s eye, appeared an image of small but noble creatures with long, nimble fingers. The Chaethe originally had bodies! But when plague struck—a plague that destroyed nervous systems—many died before one Chaethe, forever honored in memory, created a way to encase their neural clusters in metal and use other species as symbionts. Other species had larger bodies and accessible skull openings. A tragically small minority survived the change to free parasitism. The new Chaethe learned to accelerate their own reproductive cycles to suit shorter-lived symbionts—but they had not been made that way.
Then, alas, they tried to take the Devastators. That race had a hive mind and resisted parasitism with terrible, perfectly coordinated violence. That disaster hardened the Chaethe multitude to a new way of thinking. Parasites by necessity now, and communicating telepathically with their hosts, their new ethical requirements would exclude very few species from infestation.
Surely, they longed to be re-bodied. But the universe was filled with marginally intelligent life for their use.
The stream skipped ahead. {We meant to colonize fertile Tdega …}
{Tdega, Tdega,} chorused the multitude.
{Tdega!} Llyn agreed. The lush, beautiful planet was unlike any other Concord world. Of course they would want to settle there. Somehow her partners had danced all that information into a sense she did not know she could use. Was this how Tdegan honeybees beat out messages?
Vibrating contentment, her current partner shot out of orbit. Another geometric took its place. The music became modal, with a longing tone color. {One of us entered a Tdegan. Our brother had never learned to sing harmony. It was faulty.}
{Faulty,} chorused the multitude. {Flawed, broken.}
{How sad,} Llyn sang back. The brilliant nucleus reverberated a somber basso, underscoring her response.
Two smaller presences jumped into orbit with her partner, creating a tiny lunar system around Planet Llyn. She found herself dancing—absorbing information—too quickly and in too complex a way to comprehend. This time, she simply let it happen. Once they danced away from her, she understood that this canta—this multitude—was a research team that had been dispatched to the Concord cluster. Its mission was to see whether humankind should be officially approached. Because they suspected—
That train of thought cut off abruptly, and Llyn could not tell whether they were deliberately hiding something from her, or whether they were simply returning to topic. The defective Chaethe, sang others who surrounded her partners, had ridden its new symbiont back to Tdega. It had refused to wait for official colonization of the new, fertile world.
Rider? Gen Zavijavah’s Chaethe parasite was defective, an outcast?
Yes, indeed. It had also stolen one of the colony’s prized physical possessions, an artificial-reality unit built by previous symbionts to Chaethe specifications. Isolated in a small, non-multitudinous spore group, with this apparatus the research team had hoped to re-create inner space in a way that even other creatures might experience. The unit could train a Chaethe’s descendants—the spores released into new symbionts—to impress within a canta.
Her inner world! Llyn swiftly shifted her orbit to ask a question. {Canta? You used that term before. What is a canta?}
All the Chaethe shivered gleefully, creating a vast rippling laugh. {This is a canta. We are a canta. A choral multitude. Our joy and our strength.}
So they lived as interlocking awarenesses. Less than a thousand—maybe ten thousand—apparently seemed lonely to them. This must have been another reason, besides adapting to those second symbionts, to learn to reproduce so quickly and so young. Too young, maybe.
Struck by another realization, Llyn responded. {So you don’t often communicate with your carrying creatures because that would mean leaving this dance!}
{Of course, of course, of course …} She felt their joy.
{Of course,} Llyn thought on, {you would want this for your children.}
{Yes, yes, yes …}
A shape wafted toward her. It was green and covered with glistening spikes, and to her shock, each spike had its own voice. Again she found herself too deep in simultaneous speeches to understand immediately.
But she understood—something. Gamal Casimir had been the multitude’s first target in the Concord, as the most powerful human on a lush, desirable world. At first, the multitude feared their defective songmate would try to penetrate the man—or liberate one of its descendants into him—before they made him a true canta member’s symbiont. Then came an even greater disaster: Casimir stole the AR unit for his own purposes. The defective Chaethe willfully and reprehensibly left its first Tdegan carrier, and Casimir would not allow it access to the AR. Unable to reimpress with the canta, it became an increasingly dangerous renegade, rebellious and ambitious, lost to the dance.
Zavijavah. Unquestionably.
{Why, why then, did it bring more humans here?} Llyn asked. {Here for your canta.}
{That was the work of Gamal Casimir Human. Our symbionts here are not like him.}
Llyn keened her grief, harmonizing with all her partners. In a silent corner of her mind, she tried to absorb all that information. Might Jahn be following the song, if not the dance? The renegade Chaethe—it had stolen the AR unit from these others. Her father had stolen it again. Jahn had explained how Casimir sent her to Antar. Now, she knew how her mind had been reshaped: and where, and why, and by whom. No mysteries remained. {Gamal Casimir Human’s body,} she wept, {it was the father of my body. But not of my mind. That is my own.}
The brilliant nucleus boomed out a new melody. {He betrayed his own species, as well. He attacked Ilzar Sphere and Antar Sphere. The act of a beast, an animal.}
They’d wondered whether humans could fight the Devastators. Her father had twisted that concern to fit his own aims—and so, now, the aliens wondered whether humans were nothing but another inferior, amoral animal species.
Drawn deeply into the aliens’ multiple sphere of view, Llyn slowed her own orbit using a burst of control music. {I feel shame,} she sang, relieved that a term for that concept existed. {Grief, on behalf of my species. Most of us see Gamal Casimir Human as a renegade, faulty like the dancer who left you. Those two formed a … a partnership, a duet.}
The harmonizing presences fell silent. She felt utterly alone.
She sang on without accompaniment. {My people fear you,} she grieved. {It is hard for us—like death, like silence—to be ruled by others. It causes pain like … like this silence. You should not …} Trying to think of a way to express infestation that would not offend them, she dropped several beats. {You should not use us,} she sang as she regained the rhythm. {Please understand how we feel.}
Another flood of information came through their dance, not their song: their culture was based on nuances of tonality too alien for Llyn to grasp. Even this dance barely approached their actual existence. This was recreation. This was a level where they could meet less gifted civilizations. But they did not live here.
Chaethe minds must be truly alien. {But there is too much pain,} she protested.
{What humans call pain is little compared with our danger sense. To us, physical pain is parallel to …}
Uncontrolled by Llyn, her memory rewound and fast-forwarded. At last, they went on.
{… To the human taste sense. If something tastes terrible, a human simply spits it away. Danger sense is purer than your pain. We never use it to control a symbiont. Spore pain is part of life, as when …}
Again, the eerie feeling of having her mind turned out and shaken.
{As at the time of birth. It is briefly unpleasant and soon forgotten. Symbionts dread pain, but there is so little compared with the benefits we bring them. If the Sunsisans’ pain seems bitter, tell your people—beg your people—to help them by yielding to us.}
Benefits? Llyn had caught that word. Now she recoiled. She had thought she’d been getting somewhere. Now she understood how limited her diplomatic powers were. She spun in place, exhausted. {I am not accustomed to this dancing,} she sang. {I am not strong in this music. I must rest a moment.}
Abruptly, the canta started streaming again. As before, it tried to pull her deeper. They did not want her returning to consciousness.
The rosy oval whizzed back into orbit around her. {Please do not fear us. We will make you welcome.}
{You will destroy me!} Llyn sang.
The rosy song turned bittersweet. {You learned to weaken us—}
To weaken them?
Other shapes whisked the oval out of orbit. Llyn braked with another burst of control music. Weaken them? She struggled to recall anything she had done that had affected them. Back in the AR, she had listened for other shapes’ control melodies. Muting them had made them disappear. But these were real intelligences, not programmed ones—and there were too many of them for her to mute individually.
The canta paused in its rush downstream. It created another orbit. Presences danced around her like electrons, complex orbitals forming rings, lobes, and clouds.
She tried not to see it. She tried to focus her eyes on the Sunsisan landscape. It had to be here—right here, in her line of sight. Her mind was overloading with strange senses.
Help! she cried. Jahn, let me out!
She felt herself lifted and shaken. The world turned bright and hot. She stood against Jahn, enclosed by his arms. A hot breeze flapped her shift against her calves.
She peeled away from him. He grunted, as if he were waking up. Sweat gleamed on his forehead.
Regent Salbari, Bellik Casimir, Rena, and the two Sunsisans stood close by. Osun Zavijavah sat in the sand several meters away, rubbing his temples. Behind him, Tdegan soldiers stood in a cluster. They held their weapons like clubs.
So Zavijavah’s Chaethe was a defective outcast. Had it deceived her father into calling it an Ambassador?
“Are you all right?” Regent Salbari whispered. “You’ve been in a trance for almost an hour, and none of the Sunsisans have moved.” He looked side to side.
So did she. The Antaran Outwatchers sat in a second circle between Llyn’s nucleus and the outer orbital of Sunsisans. The similarity to what she’d just escaped struck her. Humans and Chaethe did share some concepts and images.
Was it enough?
Once Jahn’s eyes cleared, she sank down with him to sit and rest. Regent Salbari’s circle joined them. “Did you follow any of that?” she asked Jahn.
He rubbed his beard with both hands. He shook his head.
“Let me show you.” She shut her eyes and slipped into easy accord. It took several minutes—and his help—to recall the dance for him.
“Incredible,” he whispered. He turned and locked eyes with Regent Salbari.
Regent Salbari’s concerned expression softened. Slowly, he smiled. Llyn wondered whether Rena was making a nexus for the other empaths.
Winnow and Malukulu sat cross-legged, expressionless. Bellik disdainfully brushed sand off his black pant legs. Events were leaving him behind, stranded like a rock at the edge of a stream. “Luene,” he demanded while the empaths communicated, “what happened? Did you talk to the Chaethe? What did they tell you?”
Abruptly, she pitied her queued cousin. Antar detested him, and the Chaethe interpreted his—and her father’s—actions as bestial. What was happening to her father, or had it already been done? She winced, sympathizing. He’d been misled by a renegade, but he’d gone along. Willingly.
“The Chaethe don’t speak,” she told him. “They sing. And they dance.”
“Like an e-net show inside your skull?”
She grimaced. He was too full of himself to understand an alien viewpoint. “In an inner world,” she said.
“Hah.” Bellik smirked. “Training you worked, then.”
Yes. Maybe better than he or her father would have liked. They were not going to like the outcome. Did she dare hope that?
Bellik grasped Regent Salbari’s shoulder. “Did she tell you why she was able to communicate?”
Regent Salbari nodded, his expression somber. “They have little respect for your uncle, Commander Casimir.”
Bellik thrust his chin forward. “Why?”
“For attacking human worlds.”
Bellik raised his head. “They wanted to know we could fight. A military leader sometimes makes difficult decisions.” Bellik pointed at Llyn. “Explain how Tdega trained you to translate.”
“He knows,” Llyn murmured.
Gray-blond hair blew into Regent Salbari’s face as he spoke. “Gamal guessed right about communicating with them, but he tried doing it for greed and power.”
“And to save humanity,” Bellik insisted.
Rena had also pulled off her helmet. “But only Tdegan humanity.” She glared.
Llyn flicked her thumbs against each other. She couldn’t remember how she had weakened the canta. It had to be something simple. She reviewed all the techniques she’d used for controlling unpleasant images—
Was that why she’d lived when the other children died? Because she’d learned to protect herself? “Regent Salbari,” she said, “if I could keep the Chaethe from taking me too deep, I might serve as a translator. You should speak with them. I haven’t begun to convince them.”
“You should rest.” Regent Salbari shook his head. Sunlight glinted off the triangular garnet on his collar.
She managed a smile. Perhaps others had seen the jewel-drop imagery. She must ask.
Later.
Winnow twisted her hands in the lap of her loose flowered dress. “They’re stirred up,” she mumbled. “Please don’t stop.”
That, Llyn realized, had been the voice of Winnow, the human. Wrung with pity, Llyn touched Jahn’s arm. “Can you?”
Jahn took her hand between both of his. “They tried to trap you,” he said. “They don’t want to give us up as hosts. Be careful.”