"I would have loved to see the Zoo."
"Probably gone by now. Things don't last among Moties."
Joyce and camera faced him. "So it's a blockade again, but with Moties in charge."
"Subject to approval from home."
"Of course." Joyce switched off the camera. "Off the record? You don't have any doubts, do you, Kevin?"
"Plenty. How do we use the worm here? We could pick a faction on Mote Prime-maybe King Peter's family survived-and distribute it. Or not. Or not yet. The Crazy Eddie Worm is still experimental. Say..."
"What?"
"Bear with me a second, Joyce. Victor! Dammit, that worm's done it. Mediators really do all look alike now. Victor? All just out of adolescence."
The Mediator who had been the Tartars' Victoria bounded toward them in a low arc. "Kevin?"
"Yeah. Victor, sooner or later you'll be in contact with Mote Prime. We want certain bodies returned to us for proper burial. Three human males, Midshipmen Potter, Staley, Whitbread. They may have been dissected, God knows what, but please retrieve them at your earliest convenience."
"It will be done. If there is any successor to the group that held them. Things change rapidly there."
"Some don't. Try."
"Yes. Anything else?"
"Yeah. Joyce, guess what the Bandit Group was guarding?"
"Some weapons cache that was too far away to use," Joyce said promptly.
"No. It was the Khanate's main base, including all their wealth. They offered it all as bribes to their allies, and the allies have turned it all over to Medina. Victor, did your people find any surprises?"
"Not to us. We'll make holos, Kevin. Their Engineers are ingenious; you'll see some interesting innovations in the hardware."
Joyce considered the nuances. She turned the camera on Victor.
"Then it's over? The Khanate didn't just surrender, they meant it."
Kevin caught Glenda Ruth Blaine's semaphore wave, halfway up the Great Hall's curved roof, and her all-too-knowing smile. Kevin grinned and waved back. No hiding anything. Dammit, Joyce had caught it, too.
"We control all of what was Khanate wealth," Victor answered. "The families have returned from hiding at Bury's Star, and all of them now carry the worm. I see no way in which they could harm us or you, ever again. Their line is at an end, unless we choose differently; would not that satisfy Horace Bury's anger?"
Joyce answered carefully. "As much as I came to know Bury, I think he had no anger left for Moties. This was his last corporate war. I believe he enjoyed it very much."
The Motie smiled and moved on. Kevin felt his eyes begin to sting. He said, "That was wonderfully well said."
"Thank you. I actually miss him, Kevin. Not like you, I expect. Almost thirty years."
"Yeah. But he did go out a winner, and .... can't seem to decide how to feel about finally being free of the old man's power games, Life is about to turn simpler."
"What was the smirk about?"
"Smirk?" Joyce's black eyebrows came together and he said, "It's a secret. There are still secrets. Dammit, Joyce, is every woman going to go around reading my mind for the rest of my life?"
"This isn't any diplomatic secret, Kevin. And it isn't a scandal because you'd never be stupid enough ... you wouldn't."
"Joyce, there is a secret you should not hear. Just like last time, when Eudoxus read your feet."
She swallowed her first answer. "Maybe, but I have to have it."
"Okay." Kevin Renner began to talk.
Inner Base Six had been following the Empire ships. Renner took his own sweet time returning thence, sending the Blockade Fleet ships on ahead, thrusting at half a gee while he and his people healed. It still took him only eight days.
On the afternoon of the sixth day he found Glenda Ruth perched on the arm of his chair with a tray in her hand. He settled in with his lunch and said, "Talk."
She didn't seem able to.
"Freddy," he said. "Aristocrat. Just a touch lazy by my admittedly rigorous standards. Didn't want to join the Navy. He'll have precious little choice now. They'll hit him with major medals and a Reserve commission."
"Good motivation," Glenda Ruth said. "Put him in charge of avoiding a war so he won't have to work."
"He tenses up when you're around. What's he afraid of? You're too sensitive?"
"Squeamish," she said. "Whoever gets hurt around me, child or adult or cat or Motie, I feel it. But I had as much to do with saving us as he did. More. Kevin-"
"Glenda Ruth."
"Oh. Sorry." She shifted to the navigator's empty chair and slumped a little and smiled at him.
"I was going to say... oh." That wide, her smile looked a little vacuous. "You got it."
Glenda Ruth said, "Please turn down the sex appeal because it makes me uncomfortable."
"Yeah. And I don't doubt you could turn it up again if I need to remember what gender I am."
"Maybe not. Kevin, you've stopped thinking of me as not quite human."
"Don't test that out, okay?" Unless you mean it ....o, dammit, seducing Lord Blaine's daughter is one of the many things I'm going to skip in this life. "Sure you're human. You may be a great many humans. Every child does a lot of role-playing. You and Chris would do it better than most. What kind of role have you been playing with Freddy?"
"I haven't been playing! Uncle Kevin, I was running a game on the Tartars, for our lives and the Empire. There wasn't room to play that many games. He's seen what I am. I'm squeamish. When it all gets too much for me, I hide."
"You could get him back. He can't drop you, he's got obligations, and if you work on him for an hour, he'll never want to again. So what's really bothering you, Glenda Ruth? Turn it off!"
She shifted in her chair. The blood was thundering in Renner's ears. To his skewed perception she was going off and on like a light bulb. She asked, "What if I'm serious?"
"Get frivolous!"
"You're so wary of rubbing up against a lord's daughter. I can talk anyone into anything, Kevin. I can make mistakes and damage people, and I've done it, and so's Chris. You'd think I was a real fool, wouldn't you, if I weren't testing my limits?"
Kevin considered retreating to his own cabin and locking his door. But first he said, "I'm not just your randomly chosen dirty old man. I'm the junior officer who ordered Lady Sally Fowler to Captain Roderick Blaine's room when I felt it necessary to their survival. You're my responsibility."
She stared, then burst out laughing. That was better. He asked, "What do I have to do to get you to turn off?"
She was off. She said, "I'm sorry."
"I'm human. You don't need proof."
"I've been in Freddy's bed. He'd have gone crazy... well, antisocial, at least, if I hadn't. But I've only just got some freedom. What I think I want to do is turn Freddy loose with the option to marry him later. But he saw me do something he didn't like, and now I could lose him."
"Let's see. He'd marry you-"
"Because he'd have to."
"You're a nineteen-year-old girl. Being confused is part of the game. But look: he thinks he'd like to avoid you for a while. Let him. You free him of all obligation, you make it clear you mean it, and you're not mad. He'll be meeting you for years, lady! You're the heroes of the Mote Conquest! When you want him back, flash him. Agh! Not me!"
"Yes, Uncle."
"I think you'll want him. Good genes, good attitude, your families will approve, and in a pinch you're both survivors. Finding that out can be very expensive."
"Still breeding Blaines, are we, Uncle?" And she'd gone away. And Kevin Renner was suddenly very tired....
"So I went for a nap. And two hours later you were at my door-"
"Horny as hell."