“It was very up-to-date. I know, I’ve been doing the exploring. Finding the colonies that got started up without anyone knowing.”
“You have those, too?”
“You have those? I didn’t think anything got done without an Imperial Rescript.”
“A lot of Satrap Lords and their friends have new colonies on the side. That was why my chooser sent me out to search the areas close to human space. To see if anyone was risking a collision with the two-legs again.”
“That was what I was doing, finding our Sooner colonies as we called them. Making sure none of us were too close to you.” Kris felt guilty, but she had to add, “And that no Iteeche colonies had started up too close to us.”
“We were both doing the same thing,” they said together, leaving poor Nelly to attempt a simultaneous translation.
“And Ray and Roth knew that we were but didn’t tell us a thing,” Kris added.
“They are the choosers. They are the wiser,” Ron whispered.
“At least that’s what we’re supposed to think. I’m not always so sure.”
“You have your doubts, too?” Ron asked, and his head leaned over to look at Kris sideways.
“I have some serious doubts,” Kris admitted.
“Good. It is nice to meet someone who does,” Ron said, barking one of those Iteeche laughs.
“Any idea what they know that we don’t?”
“Lots of things, I am sure. For example, things are not as smooth among you two-legs as you would like me to believe.”
“And what with Satrap bosses setting up their own colonies, I don’t think things in Iteeche land are quite as harmonious and peaceful as your nurse told you things were,” Kris said.
“You are right, tales for children. I am rapidly outgrowing them.”
“Me too,” Kris admitted.
So, for the next fifteen minutes, Kris sketched a limited outline of humanity’s recent troubles for Ron.
“It doesn’t sound so bad,” he said when she finished.
“Some places are worse than others,” Kris said. “We Longknifes are always having problems with the Peterwald family. They formed their own alliance. But they’re tied up with a bit of internal unpleasantness. Think dynastic overthrow. You do have those, don’t you?”
“Dark times, with blood on the water. May the higher gods protect us from such times,” Ron whispered.
“Well, they’ve got that and now it seems we have our own version going on. Usually we don’t settle these things with guns. We use ballot boxes. Votes. You know about those?”
He didn’t. That took some explaining.
“Everyone votes!” Ron said when she was finished. “Farmers and fishers? Artisans and traders?”
“Anyone who shows up. Well, you have to be eighteen. But pretty much anyone.”
Ron nodded his head. “And we did not wipe you out! No wonder there are those among us who think we should go back and wash you from the stars.” Then his eyes grew wide, and Kris knew that was not something he meant to say.
“Don’t feel bad. We have people like that among us. Nuts don’t count elbows.”
“That is very true,” Ron agreed.
“So, Nelly tells me you didn’t have much to say to our admiral.”
“He did not have much to say to us,” Ron said. “If he wants to know about us, he better tells us about you. He said nothing. We said nothing. Not much to say.”
“And I tell you things.”
“And I tell you things,” Ron agreed.
They sat there, staring quietly at the painted ocean for a few moments.
Kris, I HAVE a LARGE MESSAGE Drop FROM your BROTHER. Do you WANT To REVIEW IT now?
Kris considered the option of just laying it all out in front of Ron. She considered that for about two seconds. No, Nelly, we BETTER look IT OVER OURSELVES Before we risk sharING IT. There MIGHT Be SOME surprises in There we Don’T WANT To JUST Toss OUT here.
When Kris was six, her big brother had found a snake in the flower beds at Nuu House. And chased her around the yard with it for the better part of the week. He’d finally grown tired of it and let the beast loose. Later, Kris found the snake. In the privacy of her own time and place, behind a shady hedge, she’d made friends with it, held it, petted it, and in general got comfortable with it.
It was one thing to have something jammed in your face, another matter entirely to get things together on your own terms.
“Nelly tells me I need to get back. I’m getting messages from my brother,” Kris said, standing up.
“And you need to see them before you decide to share them with a former enemy,” Ron said, as his four legs and eight knees unfolded him from the floor.
“Yes,” Kris said. “Someday you must tell me what it means to be chosen, to swim around in a pond and grow without a mother or father.”
“You are guessing now.”
“That is all I have to go on.”
The message from Honovi was long and involved. Kris gave up and went to bed before she was halfway through it, wondering how supposedly smart people got themselves into such big messes.
23
Kris awoke to pounding on her door. Hard pounding that didn’t let up.
“Lights,” she mumbled as she rolled out of bed. Clad in gym shorts and an old Wardhaven U sweatshirt, she figured she was presentable enough to open the door at this hour. A glance in the mirror showed her hair in a mess likely to turn any man who saw her to stone. He’d deserve it.
She yanked the door open; Jack stood there in pajama bottoms and a sweat-stained T-shirt from a band that had gone lame long before Kris entered high school. Well, he was eight years older than she was.
“Kris, you got to get Nelly to turn this computer off.”
“What computer?” Kris asked.
“This brat of hers.”
“My kids are not brats,” Nelly said.
“You got that right, Mom,” the computer at Jack’s neck said. “Just answer the question.”
“It’s two in the morning!” Jack half shouted.
“You’re up at two o’clock in the morning lots of times with Her Princesship here,” the new computer pointed out.
“But Kris doesn’t usually bring me wide-awake at two in the morning from horrible dreams to ask me what ‘to be or not to be’ means.”
“Did you do that?” Nelly asked.
“Well, you quit answering my questions.”
“I wanted you to find your own answers.”
“That wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be.”
“It never is.”
“Nelly,” Jack said, “could you please teach Sal how to get out of my head. Kris, you don’t have to put up with nightmares every freaking night, do you?”
“No, I don’t,” Kris said. “You named your computer Sal. Is that a boy or a girl?”
“I don’t know whether it’s Sal for Sally, Salvador Dali, or the Marquis de Sal.”
“That’s the Marquis de Sade,” Sal corrected.
“You keep this up, and you’re going to be Sad.”
“Can we slow down here,” Kris said, raising a hand. “I was sound asleep just a moment ago.”
“So was I,” Jack put in.
“Nelly, what’s going on? There are seven, eight other people with new computers sleeping . . .”
“Or not sleeping,” Jack interjected.
“Tonight,” Kris continued. “What have you done to them . . . and your . . . ah . . . children?”
“I thought it would be a good idea to toss them out of the nest. You know, like a mother bird does.”
“So you . . .”
“Went off net. Broke my communication link with them.” Kris let that spin around in her brain for a long moment. From the look on Jack’s face, his thoughts were spinning, too.