Damia (46 page)

Her mother turned white and her hands grasped the
arms of her chair as she stared back at them. Damia received a shaft of denial colored by a sense of betrayal before the Rowan exerted a clamp on her emotions. Her father did not have quite so violent a reaction, but surprise was uppermost in his mind, and consternation, before he closed off.

“The bonding is remarkably complete,” Afra went on in his quiet voice. Only Damia knew that he was trembling, for she could feel it through his hands on her shoulder. Once she would have been defiant and hurt that her parents had shut their minds to her. “Though I have known my own heart on this score since Damia returned from Deneb, I could do nothing until she recognized in me a genuine suitor.”

“I do not feel alone anymore, Mother,” Damia said with gentle intensity. “Please understand that. You should understand that!”

“But with Afra?” cried the Rowan.

To everyone’s amazement, Jeff started to chuckle, rubbing the side of his face in a restless gesture and shaking his head. Then his chuckle became more relaxed and his shoulders shook with genuine mirth. “How often, Rowan dear, have we told Afra that he should form an alliance? How often have we tried to find the right person for him? Not to mention trying to pair Damia off to any young,” and Jeff emphasized the adjective, “Talent we could find. Come, now, Rowan love,” and he leaned across the distance that separated them, “it’s a surprise, even a bit of a shock, but who better than Afra? If you consider it objectively?”

Jeff rose then, and took the few steps to the couple. He kissed his daughter in the most benevolent fashion—though he also subjected her to the most intense probe. Then he embraced them both warmly, his blue eyes sparkling with a mixture of amusement, surprise, and—Damia noted with intense gratitude—acceptance.

“Mother?” she asked, timidly extending a hand in the Rowan’s direction.

“I just don’t understand it,” the Rowan said, not looking
at anyone. “I’ve known Afra for twenty-eight years and I never expected . . .” She halted. A rueful look crossed her face and, with a huge sigh, she regarded them. “Afra, you have always been part of our family, a cherished friend. But it’s going to take me a little while to get used to thinking of you as a son-in-law.”

“Well, don’t make a big thing of it, Angharad,” Isthia, who had maintained a tactful silence long enough, said. “You certainly know that Afra doesn’t jump into things . . .”

“Oh, but he does, and has,” the Rowan replied, jerking her chin up and reminding Afra of exactly how he had come to Callisto Tower. Then, with a characteristic twitch to her shoulders, she began to relax. “It’ll still take some getting used to. And,” she frowned with some petulance, “I’ll have all the bother of training a new assistant. I’m not sure I’ll forgive you for that, Damia.”

“I thought Gollee Gren was working out well for you,” Afra said.

“Oh, well enough,” and the Rowan dismissed that notion with a flick of her hand, “but he’s just not you!”

“I could remain at Callisto,” Afra offered, and Damia caught her breath, not finding that solution palatable at all for reasons she could not immediately identify.

“No, no,” and Jeff waved that aside, and he began to pace up and down the porch. “Afra and Damia have to stay here with the Mrdinis, so he couldn’t come back to Callisto for a while anyhow: at least not until verbal communications have been established between our species. You work far better with Gollee than you know, luv. Once you accept that the appointment is permanent, you’ll relax into a good partnership. Have you any more of those hot pastries, Damia? I’m starved. Never thought sleeping half the day would increase my appetite.” He turned his charismatic grin impartially on all.

“Oh, you!” his wife said, exasperated as well as outmaneuvered.

If the subsequent excellent meal had its moments of
tension, Isthia deftly turned the conversation back to the Mrdinis and how to improve communication with them.

“Always supposing that I’m not kicked out of my Tower for this,” Jeff said.

“They couldn’t, could they?” Damia asked, appalled at the thought.

“Not likely,” Isthia said tartly. “They need him, and you all, too much.”

“Well, getting Curran on our side is a distinct advantage, considering his initial reaction at Deneb Tower,” Jeff replied. “There’ll be the usual bureaucratic waltzing about, throat-clearing, data-collecting, hemming-hawing, all that fugue,” he went on, pushing back from the table, tilting his chair onto its back legs, and ignoring his mother’s disapproving glare. “However, their final analysis will have to be that getting a powerful ally in the Mrdinis compensates for any eccentricities.”

“Remember to mention,” Isthia said with one of her enigmatic smiles, “that the Mrdinis made the initial contact. And, by the way, did you find out why the Mrdinis approached the Denebian system?”

“Yes,” replied Jeff, his expression lighting with a grin. “Remember in the initial battle how we flung the one ship back the way it had come? As a warning? Well, the Mrdinis had been monitoring the Leviathan, to be sure it wasn’t headed in the direction of their colonies—and they’ve been extremely candid about how many they have and what systems they’ve explored—so they saw the ship return. Which evidently those ships don’t do.”

“That made the Mrdinis very interested in whoever had been so bold,” said the Rowan, her eyes gleaming as she took up the tale. “They took a fix on the Leviathan’s course and direction but had to return to their home planet for instructions and provisions. The instructions took longer than the provisioning,” and she grinned maliciously. “I suspect there might also have been a perfectly understandable reluctance to annoy a species that could lob back a Beetle scout ship.”

“Which is one reason why they were hanging about beyond
the heliopause when they found the DEW devices,” Jeff went on. “They weren’t even sure they’d got to the right place because, at first, they couldn’t find any trace of the Leviathan. In their lexicon, Hive ships are invariably victorious.” He turned to Damia and Afra. “It was your discovery of the Beetle hull fragment, and then its transportation back to the City, that registered on their equipment. They’ve been probing every planet in the system: probes that were too small to register on the DEW net, but sensitive enough to pick up traces of Beetle metal.”

“So that wretched artifact prompted the dreams,” Damia said.

“Exactly. So the Mrdinis broadcast to this area, hoping to make contact with minds that were, as they put it, sensitive to and repulsed by Beetle metal.”

“We were so lucky to be able to turn that Leviathan from Deneb,” the Rowan said, shaking her head at the narrowness of that escape.

“But we’ll make that extremely clear when we speak to the League,” Jeff went on. “The Mrdinis gave us chapter and verse on Beetle colonization procedures: brutal. If we hadn’t held . . .” He reached out, cupping the Rowan’s silvered head with a grateful and affectionate hand. “The Beetles are compulsive colonizers, driven by the fact that the queens tend to massacre each other, the winner devouring the eggs of the loser. To prevent that, Hive ships leave the home world—and the Mrdinis are still trying to locate that system—and find likely worlds. First, scouts are sent off to locate planets. On finding one, ships are dispatched to ‘prepare’ the planet for occupation, which means ridding the surface of any other life-forms. The Beetles are basically vegetarian. The initial force lands and begins digging out caves for the Mothers’ eggs. When the Hive ship arrives at the prepared planet, the ships transfer the eggs to the caves: then they are free to repeat the process. When that planet can support no further hives, the Mother ship is stocked up with appropriate workers, and they go on the prowl again. According to the Mrdinis, there are far too many Mother ships roaming in space. The incredible
part is that the Nine Star League has only had two incursions.”

“That’s not good news,” Isthia said.

“Not at all,” Jeff replied. “We’ve been far too complacent and our luck could run out anytime. That’s one reason the Mrdinis had been so urgently trying to warn us, despite their apprehension about our abilities. The Deneb DEW net is all well and good, they tell me, but we all know that not all the League systems are protected.” He frowned, ducking his head as he paused in reflection. “You know, Damia, Afra, there’s no reason you two couldn’t as easily work with the Mrdinis language people on Aurigae as here on Deneb . . .”

“First, we have to get League permission, Jeff,” the Rowan reminded him.

He waved aside that contingency. “I only need to get a few sensitive Senators to sleep with the Mrdinis and we’ll get some immediate action.”

“Senators?” Isthia gaped at her son, her eyes bright with merriment. “Sleeping with Mrdinis? Jeff, you are the living end!”

“So long as I’m still living in the end, I don’t care what it takes to get the necessary done. But we can’t have a weak link in the defensive chain and a T-4 isn’t sufficient to protect Aurigae.”

“Remember that nibble at the DEW’s in Procyon. Was that the Mrdinis?” Afra asked.

“I haven’t established that yet, Afra,” Jeff replied, “but it certainly wasn’t the Beetles. They’d’ve just plunged through the system.”

“Dad,” Damia began hesitantly, “there’s no chance, is there, that the Leviathan could have got a message back to other Hives when mother and you destroyed it?”

Jeff shook his head and gave a cynical laugh. “You mean, like ‘stay away from here—bad vibes’?”

As she nodded, the Rowan answered with a shake of her head. “No, we had the minds paralyzed and nothing left the Leviathan when the Raven-merge plunged it into the
sun. The Mrdinis believe that the Beetles are fearless. They are also numerous.” Her expression turned grim.

“Their basic drive is species propagation, nothing more.” Jeff turned to Afra. “Your account of our self-defense made a tremendous impression on them, and reinforced their desire for an alliance with us.”

“Oh?”

“They’ve been battling the Beetles’ incursions for a long time—how long we haven’t established yet—but a long time. So far they’ve found only one effective way to destroy a Leviathan,” Jeff replied, “and that at great loss of life. It involves suicidal missions of cruiser-class ships diving into the Hive and blowing it up. They have to send as many as forty such ships in the hope that one will survive to penetrate the Mother Hive. That’s why they want desperately to know how we effected such a kill.” Jeff grinned.

“Yes, it worked that one time,” Afra began.

“If necessary it will work again,” Jeff said. “The Beetles have no imagination. They just keep on repeating what they’ve done before.”

“Nothing succeeds like success?” asked Isthia drolly.

“Theirs or ours?” the Rowan responded. “Successful or not, I really wouldn’t like to have to make a career of merges that exhausting.”

“Wouldn’t be exhausting now, love,” Jeff said in an offhand manner. “We’ve three times as many top Talents now as we had then.” He snapped his fingers carelessly. “We could take out as many Leviathans as we needed to.”

“Jeff!” the Rowan exclaimed in rebuke.

“How much mental power do the Mrdinis have?” Afra asked, curious.

“They understand mind power, but I don’t think they are developed enough for a mind-merge or a focus,” Jeff said. “They have been successful with one or two other species in dream communications. We seem to be the most advanced species they have met. That’s another reason for their jubilation. And, frankly, mine. I welcome,” and when Damia felt his eyes on her, she was aware of his compassion,
“the chance to make contact with an alien species. I will have no hesitation in recommending to the League that we move forward to an alliance with no hesitation and great haste. We are aware of the dangers of the Beetles and we cannot be complacent behind the DEW.” He let his chair down with a thump and stretched his hand across the table to Damia. “You’re needed at Aurigae, daughter. It’s also a very handy place to send the Mrdini delegation for language study. And,” then he flashed her a grin, “I’m not as hard-hearted as that old geezer Reidinger was. Afra can keep you company.”

“Father,” Damia began formally with a twitch to straighten her shoulders, “why would the League trust me with Aurigae?”

Jeff Raven blinked in surprise. “Why shouldn’t they?” Then he gave her one of his lopsided grins. “The miners have been griping over your absence something fierce.”

Damia felt her mother’s touch, gentle but authoritative.

“I think Damia is concerned with the report on Sodan, Jeff,” the Rowan said.

“Oh,” was Jeff’s response, his blue eyes clouded and his face expressionless as he said, “Earth Prime reported to the Nine Star League that Aurigae Prime contacted an alien ship and, on discovering its hostile intentions, requested sufficient Prime assistance to destroy the intruder, an action that took the life of Larak Gwyn-Raven—” he paused and both he and the Rowan looked toward the peaceful spot where their son was buried—“and severely injured Damia Gwyn-Raven and Afra Lyon.” With an abrupt change, Jeff regarded his daughter with his usual charm. “Why?”

Damia faltered, as much because she felt the ache of Larak’s loss as because she didn’t want to admit how Jeran’s remark in the Tower had affected her.

“Jeran,” the Rowan said cryptically, and Jeff nodded with understanding. “You two have never quite mended your sibling quarrels, have you? Well, Jeran is only human . . .”

Isthia rolled her eyes.
That is still debatable.

“And you did,” the Rowan said bluntly, “run roughshod over his authority by contacting the aliens without notifying him.”

“We didn’t know where he was,” Isthia said slyly.

“Oh?” Jeff asked and, as he regarded his mother, his eyes became intensely blue.

Grinning, she waggled a rebuking finger at him. “Let’s not try that on your mother, dear.”

Jeff threw back his head and laughed. “I shouldn’t, should I?”

“You’re nearly as arrogant and audacious as Pete Reidinger was, Jeff Raven,” Isthia went on.

“He is not,” Rowan said loyally.

“Not around me, he isn’t,” Isthia said.