But-whence this curiosity? This disturbing presence that she seemed to have? Breetai turned to look out upon Zarkopolis and suddenly understood that these characteristics were things manifest in all Zentraedi, in times past. That they should surface again now was, it could be argued, a very good sign.
"Very well; I shall." He started off again and she fell in with him. Breetai led the way down into the city, pointing this way and that, telling her the things that had come buzzing back into his head with the return to Fantoma and, all of a sudden, not hiding in the gaps in his memory.
"In that hall we met to thrash out problems, all of us; it took a very long time to cut the stone columns perfectly, so that they would support the weight of the roof, and even longer to assemble the roof."
A little further on, "Here, the clones were grown, coming forth when they were ready for work, descending those steps over there to adulthood." Steps he had never walked until recently; Breetai antedated the city, had helped raise it.
And so they went. Breetai was pleased, for reasons he couldn't name, to have someone with whom to share his memories. At last they came to a nondescript little house in a tract of them. It was only slightly more prestigious than the mass barracks in which most Zentraedi had lived.
Breetai pressed a button with an armored finger; the airlock swung open. Kazianna could see that it had been refitted to function again after a span of centuries. She had no doubt that Breetai had done it. Lightning was breaking again, and the odd, emphatic thunder of three-g Fantoma was sounding as the outer hatch slid shut.
Inside, the place was unprepossessing, the quarters of a worker/engineer. He had cleaned up the mess, but there were still a few models left, still a few mounted sketches, from the days when a different Breetai had dreamed larger dreams than all the Robotech Masters' fantasies of galactic conquest-dreams of building.
Breetai saw Kazianna looking around, and realized how spartan the furnishings were. In the age since he had lived in that place, he had learned to deceive, but he spoke the simple truth now. "I was the biggest and the strongest of the miners, the first of them," he said. "Only our leader, Dolza, was bigger than I; only he and Exedore were older.
"But-I had few friends-no life, really, except in my work. It seemed to me that they all thought me-"
He stopped, astonished, as she cracked the seal on her helmet and threw it back. Of course, her suit's instruments would have told her there was breathable atmosphere in the tiny quarters-atmosphere he had put there. Only he hadn't seen her check her instruments, and suspected she had done it on what the Humans called "instinct."
"They all thought you what," Kazianna Hesh encouraged him, walking around, glancing at his sketches, opening the other seams in her armor. "Thought you too stoic, thought you too formidable, great Breetai? Treated you so that you felt easier when you were either working or alone?"
She had always been deferential toward him, but now she sounded somehow teasing. She had made her circuit of the tiny living room and stopped now to flick the control that broke the seal on his own helmet. "They didn't see what was there inside?"
She unsealed his helmet and lifted it off, having to rise on her tiptoes to do it even though she was tall. The reinforced floor groaned beneath them. Breetai was too astonished to speak, and the wall was behind his shoulders so he couldn't retreat.
"Couldn't see the real Breetai?" she went on. "Well, my lord, I can." She pulled his head down to her, like some Human, and he found himself being thoroughly kissed. How had she learned about things like this, forbidden to the Zentraedi?
Many of his race had spent time Micronized to Human size. Maybe that had affected her somehow, or she had seen or heard something.
But he had little time to wonder about that. A kiss; the sight of such an act had almost debilitated him once, when Rick Hunter and Lisa Hayes performed it on a Zentraedi meeting table. He was awkward at first, self-conscious, but Kazianna didn't appear to mind and in fact didn't seem to know a great deal more about it than he.
When the kiss ended, he would have caught her up in his arms for more, but she held him off and began alternately popping the seals on his suit and her own.
It suddenly came to him what she had in mind. "You…this is proscribed."
"By whom? By Robotech Masters who have fled beyond the stars? By laws that were never really ours?"
Breetai thought about that, and considered his hunger for her, too. The bed was refurbished; he had slept there once or twice on his off-duty hours, waiting for the past to filter into his mind once again.
Breetai put his arms around Kazianna and kissed her carefully, very happy about it but aware that he had a great deal to learn. Then he took her gauntleted hand and led her to his sleeping chamber.
Since he had built the house back in the early days of the Tiresian Overlords who were to become the Robotech Masters, no one else had ever been in that room.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
In spite of her resistance, he presses her. His great evil is attracted to her illuminating goodness, like some primal circling of forces.
Does he sense that he only continues to live on my sufferance? I believe so; something in him is too animalistic to miss the emanations. But he has only a little time to mend his ways.
Otherwise, I shall kill Edwards in the next day or so.
REF #666-60-937
"A little to the right. No, no! My right!"
The enlisted men hanging the REF SERVICE CLUB sign were certain that it was centered and even, but not surprised that Minmei wasn't satisfied. The club had been her obsession ever since the council had given her the go-ahead. Her headache and her firstborn, all wrapped up in one.
Minmei tried to be patient and remind herself that the techs had volunteered their own time to help. But the sign was just about the last thing to take care of; the club would open that night. And she had been through a lot to see her dream come true. But soon-in hours-she would be standing under the spotlights again, singing out to the dim sea of faces, making contact with fellow Human beings in the only way that had ever been possible for her, really…
Speaking of ongoing problems-General Edwards's military limo pulled up right behind her, almost tickling her bottom with one of the flags mounted on its front fenders.
Edwards, in a rear seat bigger than some living quarters, lowered his window with the touch of a button. "How's our nightingale's cage coming along?"
She wished he would stop talking like that, but Minmei knew she was walking a fine line again.
Offending him would no doubt make him withdraw his support from the project, and that might very well be the end of things.
On the other hand, she didn't know how much longer she could keep him at bay. Since that very first interview he had kept her on the defensive, and Minmei was running out of excuses-why she couldn't have dinner with him, give a private recital for him, attend a diplomatic function on his arm, or take any one of a dozen other first steps on a path that ended at his bedside.
"Top drawer, sir, as you can see. The doors open at 2000 hours SDF time." She saw a flicker of frown cross the exposed half of his face; she still wasn't using his first name.
Edwards pressed another button and the door lifted out of the way, brushing against her.
Minmei started for the club entrance as if she had something to do, but he caught up with her in moments.
The volunteer techs watched the two enter the club, looked at one another, then began fixing the sign into place.
Edwards took her elbow as if to assist her through the doorway, but in reality he was simply grabbing her-was just barely restraining himself from shaking her. He swept a hand at the club's main lounge-the stage and tables and chairs.