I felt myself blush. I couldn’t even look in the admiral’s direction.
"Kaisho did have… a facial condition," Festina said. "You don’t need to know the details. But when she got infected with the Balrog, the condition cleared up. The Balrog actually tinkered with Kaisho’s genes and hormones to cure the problem. I suppose the Balrog was trying to be nice; it could read Kaisho’s surface thoughts well enough to know how she hated the… blemishes. In a way, clearing up Kaisho’s face was like a wedding gift — a demonstration that being bonded to a Balrog wasn’t all bad.
"But from Kaisho’s point of view," Festina continued, "her face and its flaws were key parts of her life. Her identity. To have that identity casually erased by an alien parasite… well, imagine being subjected to cosmetic surgery till you didn’t look like yourself. It wouldn’t matter if you ended up more beautiful than you’d ever dared hope; you’d feel violated. Especially if your hideous old face was what made you feel like an Explorer, and that was the one thing in your life you felt proud of."
Festina suddenly sucked in a sharp breath and turned away from me. "Anyway," she muttered, "I’m sure that’s what Kaisho feels. Her mind gets more and more integrated with the Balrog every day, but still there’s a part of her, outraged and bitter over what the damned moss did to her face. Making her look ‘normal’ instead of like herself. So she hides behind her hair in shame — she doesn’t want to be seen as she is now."
Odd. Someone hiding and ashamed for being made better than she was to start with. Of course, "better" is always in the eye of the beholder… but if I were Kaisho, I’d cover my legs, not my face.
The Balrog’s inspection didn’t take long. One circuit around each Mandasar, then Kaisho announced, "They’re acceptable. No more homicidal than the rest of you."
Festina grimaced. "Not what I’d call an effusive recommendation."
"What do you expect?" Kaisho asked. "Humans and Mandasars are borderline at best. With luck in the gene lottery, and no crisis that stresses you past the breaking point, you can stay sentient all your life. If luck goes the other way… you flunk the sentience test. Nothing to be embarrassed about — both your species are still evolving in the right direction. You just have farther to go before you reach the exalted level of… oh, a certain mossy race that modesty forbids me to mention."
Zeeleepull muttered, "Evolve, evolve, evolve, and end up as moss? Stupid universe."
"Now you know how the dinosaurs felt," Festina told him.
"All right," the admiral announced, raising her voice to the assembled Mandasars, "as you probably know, my name is Festina Ramos and I… I’m heading for Troyen, where I hope I’ll find information to solve your recruiter problem." The kids gave a cheer, but short and polite… like they wanted to hear more before they got really enthusiastic.
"In the meantime," Festina said, "the recruiters should be lying low. Last night, they murdered one of your people as he bravely protected Consort Edward and me; as a result of Wiftim’s sacrifice, the police can’t ignore your problems the way they’ve done in the past. With luck, Mandasars all over Celestia will be able to demand better protection… and the cops will have to take them seriously."
That got a slightly bigger cheer. I could imagine how frustrated these kids must be, getting dismissed every time they complained to the Civilian Protection Office. Now, as Festina said, the police had no choice but to put the squeeze on recruiters.
"So I hope," the admiral continued, "you won’t have trouble while we’re gone. Just in case though, I’m leaving this skimmer which I rigged last night with a Mandasar-shaped control seat. You can fly patrols over the valley and keep watch for anyone suspicious — this baby has the navy’s best sensor equipment, able to pick up human heat signatures ten kilometers away. Nobody will be able to sneak up on you."
Everyone in the crowd was beaming now — especially the gentles, who’d probably get into a big fight about who should drive the skimmer. All gentles love to operate expensive machinery… and each one is absolutely convinced she’s the best driver in the universe.
Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing I was heading off to Troyen; for the next little while, Celestia might get pretty dangerous.
Particularly Celestian airspace.
"That’s settled then," Festina said. "I hope we won’t be gone more than three weeks, but you never know. Whatever happens, we’ll be back as soon as we can." She smiled. "In the meantime, cooperate with the police but don’t let down your guard. The recruiters hurt themselves badly last night when they resorted to murder; they’ve suddenly lost a lot of friends. Even companies that buy employees from slavers will think twice about dealing with killers. So there’s a chance the recruiters will grow stupid and desperate in the coming days."
"If that’s true," said a gentle in the crowd, "why are you taking Teelu away from us?"
Festina glanced at me. "You want to answer, or shall I?"
"Um," I said. Then I found words coming out of my mouth, with no direction from my brain — taken over again by whatever had grabbed me before. That worried me; I’d hoped that getting possessed was just some weirdness from being poisoned. Why was it happening now, when I felt okay and healthy?
"Children of Troyen," my mouth said, "the next few weeks may be hard for everybody; but if we succeed, you’ll never need to fear recruiters again. Just as important, good people have been abandoned on the homeworld and they deserve to be rescued… if they’re still alive. They’ve been forced to fend for themselves a long long while. It’s time we did something to help them."
"Teelu" Kaisho whispered, "are you speaking of our poor lost Explorers… or someone else?"
Festina looked at her curiously. Kaisho just chuckled. Her legs flickered, as if the Balrog were laughing too.
The crowd let themselves be shooed back, clearing a patch of ground beside the skimmer. Festina walked to the center of the area and set down a small black box covered with horseshoe-shaped inlays of gold. I’d seen such a box before; it was a Sperm-field anchor, designed to attract and snag the tail from a starship. Festina flicked a switch on the box’s lid and immediately skipped back a pace.
For three seconds nothing happened; then, fluttering out of the sky like the funnel of a tornado, a milky white tube swept down and slapped silently against one of the anchor’s gold horseshoes. The tube was filmy and unsolid, with sparkles of blue and green twinkling deep in its creamy body — like a glittery sleeve of smoke rippling up and up into the blue. It was transparent enough that I could look straight through the tail and see boggled Mandasar faces on the other side.
"Don’t worry," I whispered to Counselor. Which meant I was back in control of my body again — I’d been so busy gawking at the tail, I hadn’t noticed getting unpossessed. "Don’t worry," I repeated, "it’s just a sort of elevator up to a starship."
"A starship in orbit?" she asked.
"Yes."
"But the starship must be hundreds of kilometers above us!"
I nodded. "Sperm-tails are really elastic. You can pull them out thousands of kilometers long."
Counselor swallowed hard. "What do we do?"
"Um. If you stick your hand into the tube’s open end, you get… drawn up. All the way through the tail and into the spaceship overhead."
"Teelu," Counselor said, "if someone dragged me by my arm for several hundred kilometers…"
"It won’t hurt you," I promised her. "As soon as you put a single finger into the tube, the outside universe kind of shoves you in the rest of the way. You don’t get pulled, you get pushed. And once you’re inside the tube… well, it feels very strange, but it doesn’t do actual damage."