She could feel her face beginning to flush. "It is no concern of yours."
"How did you feel?"
"What do you mean, Kia?"
"Carrying your child, being a parent. How did you feel?"
"I spent a lot of time throwing up, a lot of time being ugly, a lot of time feeling guilty. Is that what you wanted to hear?"
"No. And I do not think you tell the whole truth. When the male, Mallik, was living; what was it like then?"
"It…" Joanne Nicole felt the tears come to her eyes. "It’s none of your business."
"Joanne, I find it difficult to imagine how a man regards a woman; how a woman regards a man; how they both regard a child; how a human child regards its parents." Kia was silent for a moment. "I am to be a parent. Sin Vidak was composed completely from my parent’s own fluids. But Heliot Vant and Tora Soam mixed fluids to conceive me. It took two beings to bring me into existence."
"And?"
"My child, in a manner of speaking, will be the same. Our fluids did not mix-"
Nicole sat upright. "Just what are you saying?"
"-but if it were not for you, I would not be carrying my child. The act of conception wreaks violence upon the parent. If I were only a few years older, the act would have killed me. My child, if it lives, will owe its life to you."
Nicole snorted out a laugh. "Kia, you owe as much to the dark and to your drugs. Perhaps more. Would you make them your child’s parents, as well?"
The Drac stood and moved to Nicole’s couch. Kia took her hand in its, and held it. "Joanne Nicole, what has become of your own child? The child of Mallik and Joanne Nicole?"
"I don’t know." She pulled her hand free of Kia’s grasp. She sat, trying to swallow her tears; then she turned her face up toward the Drac. "When Mallik was alive, it was a wonderful thing. But have you ever had a close friend die? Have you?"
"Several. Upon Amadeen."
"And what did you do, Kia?"
"Do?"
"Didn’t you remove from yourself everything that reminded you of them? Even thoughts? Just to reduce the pain? Didn’t you?"
Kia was silent. Then it spoke. "It is true. But a child is different than a gift, a letter, or a memory. It has a life of its own. The pain of the parent is the price to achieve the child."
Joanne Nicole pushed herself to her feet. "I don’t even call it-think of it-as my child, Kia. That part of my life is history-dead!"
She felt her way toward the door of the compartment, but Kia’s words made her pause. "You wish that it were dead, Joanne. But it is not so. Your child lives."
Nicole moved into the corridor and felt her way to her compartment.
As the ship approached Amadeen, Joanne Nicole sat and stared with her sightless eyes at the forward wardroom’s unshielded viewport. She reached out her right hand and placed it upon Leonid Mitzak’s arm.
"Describe it to me, Mitzak."
He remained silent for a moment. "Joanne Nicole, it should not be so, but… I find it strange."
"What do you find strange?"
"At a certain distance Amadeen looks like Earth, Akkujah, Draco-deep blue oceans mantled with wisps and whorls of white clouds. Only now have the images of the land formations become distinct enough to tell the difference. We are facing the full light, and I can see most of the Dorado and Shorda continents. They are enormous, the Dorado filling most of the upper left quadrant and the Shorda filling most of the lower right. Between them, the Iron Channel is under clear skies."
"The strangeness?"
"It… it still seems familiar. Almost as though the land masses of the planets we know had been rearranged to fool us."
"Mitzak, can you make out the demilitarized zone?"
"No. But I can see large areas of both continents that look like deserts."
"Amadeen has no deserts."
"It does now."
Nicole removed her hand from Mitzak’s arm and, rubbed her eyes. "Have you noticed a change in Tora Soam since we learned of Heliot Vant’s death?"
"Yes. As you know from your work with the computer, the autopsy showed that Heliot had ingested a large quantity of poison-pronide. It is a human way of killing. And the poison is widely distributed among USEF soldiers."
Nicole lowered her hand to her chair’s armrest. "Tora Soam must realize that those facts point equally toward a human murderer or a Drac murderer’s frame."
"Tora Soam, I fear, needs to see no such thing." Mitzak paused for a moment. "The joining between Heliot Vant and Tora Soam obscures many things."
"Mitzak, I know, you know, Kia knows, and more than anyone else in the universe, Tora Soam knows." Nicole sighed. "More and more I feel that Lita is out there netting us with its rules-"
"-And Tora Soam is now in Lita’s net?"
"Exactly. Perhaps all of us. Which makes our positions-yours and mine-rather precarious. We are traitors to the humans, and are humans to the Dracs."
"Including Tora Soam, our only protection?"
Nicole nodded. "Yes-"
Familiar footsteps entered the compartment as the door hissed shut. It was Tora Soam. "I have been in communication with Indeva Bejuda, the acting Jetah of the Dracon Chamber’s mission to the negotiations. I have been appointed the mission’s representative to meet with a similar representative from the United States of Earth’s mission. Joanne Nicole?"
"Yes?"
"You will assist me. We are to discuss with the humans the particulars for opening again full negotiations. Leonid Mitzak?"
"Yes, Ovjetah?"
"I want you and Kia to meet with Fourth Officer Hajjis Da. Hajjis is the officer in charge of the Drac security unit on the orbiter. Hajjis has the information regarding Heliot’s death. I have already made the arrangements. You will all be issued Blades of Aydan to badge you as members of the Dracon Diplomatic Mission. Mitzak?"
"Our task, Ovjetah?"
"Find out what Hajjis knows about Heliot Vant’s murder. You must learn, as well, everything that can be known about the orbiter and every being that inhabits it. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Ov-"
Tora Soam abruptly turned and left the wardroom. There was a silence in the compartment until Nicole heard Mitzak turning the control that governed the wardroom’s viewscreen. "We are almost ready to dock at the orbiter."
She heard Mitzak lean forward in his chair. "What is it, Mitzak?"
"I am not certain." He leaned back. "It is a feeling."
"Describe it."
"I can see the orbiter looming out there-looking like some huge, abandoned, malevolent thing. Something asleep, but with jaws. I think I am frightened."
"Of what?"
"That the stakes in this game are higher than we imagine, and that Lita has already said, I win."
SEVENTEEN
"I have stood where the Kathni have stood, and the universe is a different thing through their eyes. Long ago Lurrvanna taught us that logic is a creature of context and invention. If this was true for beings inhabiting the same planet for uncounted thousands of years: can it be less true for beings evolving from separate environments, inhabiting different planets?"
Scant hours later, Nicole sat before a table, nervously fingering the hilt of the ceremonial dagger thrust into her waist wrap, and listened as Tora Soam introduced itself and her to the two humans negotiators. When the Ovjetah had finished, one of the humans coughed. "I compliment you on your English, Ovjetah. My name is Nikos Eklissia. The man sitting next to me is my assistant, Colonel Richard Moore.