“Not that anybody’s paying much attention to it,” Carmela observed. She waved an arm. Nita turned toward the center of the big space—the gating hexes having been emplaced well off to one side, where they wouldn’t interfere with people socializing—and saw that a whole lot of that was going on under the highest part of the ice dome. There were easily a thousand people milling around, the cacophony of their voices rattling off the ice in the enclosed space. “Wow,” Nita said again. “This is a big deal, isn’t it?”
“You’d know better than I would,” Carmela said. “But look who’s here!”
Nita smiled as she caught sight of the low-slung shape breaking away from the crowd, because for a change it was almost easy to see him coming. Normally when you met the Master of the Crossings these days, it was in the midst of thousands of other aliens of every kind. But here there was nobody but the humans, and him. Sker’ret came pouring himself along the white-ice floor toward them, stalked eyes gazing all around him as he came, segmented legs working, and a glimpse of his gleaming segmented magenta carapace reflecting itself in the icy surface. You’d think he’d be slipping around on this more, Nita thought, and scuffed one shoe against the floor. But no, looks like they’ve put a high-friction field on this. Good. Somebody’s thought it through . . .
And then he was in among the hexes with them, rearing up half his body to throw a bunch of those segmented legs around Nita. She laughed, and hugged him back. It was like getting into a clinch with a very friendly coat rack. “Sker’ret, baby,” she said, “are you getting bigger again? Have you had another molt?”
“Two,” Sker’ret said, “but who’s counting?” He chuckled, producing a sound like pebbles rattling in a tin can. “We’ve loosened up dietary regulations at the Crossings for my people since I’ve been running things. And after all, the Stationmaster has to set a good example . . .”
“Well, I’d say you haven’t been slow about that,” Carmela said, taking her turn to hug him. “You have to be twice the size you were this time last year. You’re going to be taller than Filif soon!”
“That’ll take some doing,” Sker’ret said, “because—have you seen him recently?”
“Don’t tell me I need to take him ornament shopping again,” Carmela said, with entirely too much relish.
“But I’m surprised to see you at one of these dos,” Nita said, reaching out to rub the top of Sker’ret’s head between the eyestalks. “Has to seem like the Little League from your point of view.”
“Oh, no,” Sker’ret said. “This is the type of professional engagement that needs serious legs-on handling. When subsidized worldgating transport on a given world picks up for short periods, the way it’s going to pick up here—especially a world with Crossings-legacy worldgates, old naturally occurring ones like Chur that’re finicky to deal with—then I have to be here to keep some eyes on things. At least until I’m sure the ancillary systems I’ve installed, the automation and so forth, are running smoothly.” And then he laughed again. “Besides, I have friends involved in this competition. People whose basement I’ve lived in. Couldn’t miss that for the worlds! Though I can’t let other worlds in our work group know about that, because they’d get jealous and start screaming that I was showing favoritism—”
“Well, let them scream,” Carmela said, looking smug. “Their problem if they can’t cope with the realities of interstellar politics.”
From off to one side, some hard rock started echoing off the roof—something very metal-sounding, with a dark multivoiced rap overlay that sounded like it might have been in French. Beyond the area from which the music was coming, some large tables were spread out—probably the buffet, Nita thought. But her stomach was churning, and the thought of food just wasn’t working for her. Why am I so intimidated by this? she thought. I’ve been in much more dangerous places, seen a lot worse . . .
“Wondered when you were getting here,” came a voice from off to their left. “Did you come via the Galactic Rim or something? Oh, hi, Sker’—”
Nita turned, then stared at the apparition strolling up to them. Over dark leggings and dark flats and a long, silky, unconstructed above-the-knee tunic in a green that was so dark it was almost black, Dairine was wearing an ankle-length shawl-collared open vest—Wellakhit casual wear, in a heavier silky stuff of a more forest-green shade. It did nothing whatsoever to hide the heavy gold torc at her throat with its centered yellow gem, the gleam of it cooler than usual in this icelight. Dammit, Nita thought, and now all of a sudden I look underdressed. She also noted (and tried not to show that she noted) something Dairine was wearing wrapped twice around her narrow wrist as a bracelet. It was a double chain of emeralds strung on what at first glance appeared to be a faintly green-glowing chain. But the second glance showed this to be not a physical thing, but a construct of pure energy: simply a single sentence in the Speech, impossible to read for the smallness and fineness of the characters, and elegantly intertwined through itself like braided wire.
“Nice,” Nita said, glancing at the Sunstone again as Spot came ambling across the floor behind Dairine on his many legs, his lid-carapace burnished shining black and gleaming in the cool radiance from the skylight. “Pulling rank, are we?”
Dairine shrugged. “If you’ve got some pull somewhere, you may as well wear the trappings. It’s a qualification. And a pretty one, so why not?” She looked Nita up and down. “You don’t look too bad, anyway. But then you’ve got the Crossings’ best hominid stylist working you over.”
Nita had to laugh at that, and Carmela preened with the expression of someone who found the assessment accurate. “You didn’t sound last night like you were going to be in that much of a hurry getting here, with all the talk about ‘boring forced socialization.’ Surprised to find you here early.”
Dairine grinned mischievously. “Well, once I found out this was being held in the UFO Caves, no way was I going to be fashionably late . . .”
“The what?” Nita stared around her.
Dairine burst out laughing. “There were these conspiracy guys online . . . you know, the people who see a UFO under every rock . . .”
“And not the real ones.”
“Yeah. They were looking at some Google Earth imagery and decided they thought they saw ice caves down here with UFOs buried in them. Now naturally as soon as you hear something like that, you start wondering, so some wizards from Australia came down to check into it. Who knew, maybe somebody from off planet did get lost or confused and crash here, and need help. You have to check.” Dairine shrugged.