He swore again, then inhaled deeply and made himself relax. All right, it wasn't the end of the world. He couldn't change the timing on the detonation, but as he'd just told Horus, he was responsible for backing up her security detachment whenever she visited Earth. It shouldn't be too hard to arrange the right sort of backup. Sloppy, yes, and with the potential risk of pointing a finger at him after she was dead, but the operative point was that she—and the rest of them—would be dead by the time anyone started asking questions. He'd already set up an in-depth defense against such questions, and with Ninhursag killed along with the others, Security Minister Lawrence Jefferson would be the one responsible for answering them. Better still, he could probably make it look like a Sword of God operation, and with the Narhani branded with responsibility for the bomb and the Sword with responsibility for Jiltanith's assassination, he'd have all sorts of threats to justify whatever "temporary" special powers he chose to assume, now wouldn't he?
He smiled thinly and nodded. All right, Your Majesty. You just come on home to Earth. I'll arrange a special homecoming for you.
"Got those mat-trans logs you wanted, Ma'am."
Ninhursag looked up as Fleet Commander Steinberg entered her office. The newly promoted commander handed over the massive folio of datachips, but her face wore a thoughtful frown, and Ninhursag cocked an eyebrow at her.
"Something on your mind, Commander?"
"Well... ." Steinberg shrugged. "I'm sorry, Ma'am. I know I'm not cleared for everything, but this—" she gestured to the folio "—seems like a pretty peculiar, ah, line of inquiry for the head of ONI to handle personally. I know I'm not supposed to ask questions, but I'm afraid I haven't quite figured out how to turn my curiosity off on cue."
"A serious flaw in an intelligence officer." Ninhursag's voice was severe, but her eyes smiled, and she waved at a chair. "Sit, Commander."
Steinberg sank into the indicated chair and folded her hands in her lap. She looked like a uniformed high school student waiting for a pop quiz, but Ninhursag reminded herself this was the ice-cold interrogator who'd gotten them the break that proved the bomb's existence. Commander Steinberg had been a major asset ever since her transfer to Birhat, and Ninhursag had already added her to her mental list of possible successors to take over at ONI when she stepped down in another century or two. She had no intention of telling Steinberg that, but perhaps it was time to bring her up to speed on Mister X and see what her talents could do to push the bomb search here on Birhat.
"You're right, Esther," she said after a moment. "It is a peculiar thing to ask for, but I've got a rather peculiar reason for wanting it. And since you can't turn your curiosity off, I think you've just talked yourself into a new job." She flipped the folio back to Steinberg, and smiled at the commander's look of surprise. "You're now in charge of analyzing these for me, Commander, but before you start, let me tell you a little story. You've already played a not so minor part in it yourself, even if you didn't know it."
She tipped her chair back, and though her voice remained whimsical, her expression was anything but.
"Once upon a time," she began, "there was a person named Mister X. He wasn't a very nice person, and..."
"Good to see you, 'Tanni. Maker, you look wonderful!"
"Art a poor liar, Father." Jiltanith smiled and returned Horus' hug while Tinker Bell's pups lolled on the rug at their feet. "Say rather that I do most resemble a blimp, and thou wouldst speak but truth!"
"But I always liked blimps," her father said with a grin. "Zeppelins were nicer, though. Did I ever tell you I was aboard the Hindenburg for her first transatlantic crossing in 1936? Didn't appear on the manifest, because I was hiding from Anu at the time, but I was there. Won eight hundred dollars at poker during the crossing." He shook his head. "Now there was a civilized way to travel! I was always glad I wasn't at Lakehurst in '37."
"Nay, Father, thou didst not tell me, yet now I think upon it, 'twould be the sort of thing thou wouldst like."
"Yes." He sighed and his smile faded. "You know, despite all the terrible things I've seen in my life, I'll always be glad I've seen so much. Not many of us get the chance to watch an entire planet discover the universe."
"No," she said, and his eyes darkened and fell at the involuntary bitterness that cored the single, soft word.
" 'Tanni," he said quietly, "I'm sorry. I know—"
"Hush, Father." She pressed her fingers to his mouth. "Forgive me. 'Tis only being sent to 'safety' once more maketh my tongue so bitter." She smiled sadly. "Well do I know thou didst the best thou couldst. 'Twas not our fate to live the lives we longed to live."
"But—"
"Nay, Father. Say it not. Words change naught after so many years." She smiled again, and shook her head. "Now am I weary, and by thy mercy will I seek my bed."
"Of course, 'Tanni." He hugged her again and watched her leave the room, then walked to the window and stared sightlessly out over Shepard Center. She would never truly forgive him, he thought. She couldn't, any more than he could blame her for it, but she was right. He'd done the best he could.
Tears burned, and he wiped them angrily. All those years. Those millennia while she'd slept in stasis. He and the rest of Nergal's crew had rotated themselves in and out of stasis, using it to spin their own lives out beyond mortal imagination in their war against Anu, yet he hadn't been able to let her do the same. He'd kept her in stasis, for he'd been unable not to, and his weakness was his deepest shame. Yet he'd lost too much, given too much, to change it. Her mother had never escaped from the original mutiny aboard Dahak, and he'd almost lost 'Tanni, as well, when her child's mind broke under the horrors of that blood-soaked day.
No, he told himself bitterly, he had lost that child that day. When one of his own Terra-born granddaughters managed to heal her, somehow, she'd been someone else, someone who'd survived only by walling herself off utterly from the broken person she once had been. A person who never again spoke Universal, but only the fifteenth-century English she'd learned. One who never, ever again called him "Poppa," but only "Father."
He'd been unable to risk that person again, unable to bring himself to lose her twice, and so, against her will, he'd sent her back into stasis and kept her there another five hundred years, until Nergal's dwindling manpower forced him to release her from it. He'd turned her into a symbol, his defiant challenge to the universe which had taken all he loved. He... would... not... lose... her... again!
And so he hadn't. He'd kept her safe, and in doing so, he'd robbed her of so much. Of the foster mother who'd saved her mind, of her chance to fight by his side for all those centuries—of her right to live her own life on her own terms. He knew, knew to the depths of his soul, how unspeakably lucky he was that, somehow, she'd learned to love him once more when he finally did release her. It was a reward his selfish cowardice could never deserve, and, oh Maker of Grace and Mercy, he was so proud of her. Yet he could never undo what he'd done, and of all the bitter regrets of his endless life, that knowledge was the bitterest of all.
Planetary Duke Horus closed his eyes and inhaled sharply, then shook himself and walked slowly from his daughter's apartment in silence.