The border between Darkovan Thendara and the Terran Trade sector had blurred over the years, leaving a zone that was a blend of the two cultures, sometimes exotic, sometimes awkward, sometimes the worst of both worlds. Danilo came alert at the sight of a pair of Spaceforce officers in black leather uniforms, but one whispered to the other and they stepped aside.
As they approached the glass and steel tower of Terran Headquarters, one of the guards stationed there smiled and nodded, “Good morning, Lord Hastur.”
Regis refrained from pointing out that as long as his grandfather lived, Danvan remained Lord Hastur,but the man was well-meaning. It would be a waste of breath to chide him for simple ignorance.
After exchanging a few pleasantries, Regis and Danilo passed within, where a receptionist informed them that the Legate was expecting them. If Lord Hastur would wait but a moment, she would summon an escort.
“I know the way,” Regis said mildly. “As you see, I have brought my own escort.” Before she could protest, he and Danilo strode past her into the bowels of the building.
Regis had never been comfortable within Terran walls, but at least here the likelihood of an armed attack was less; the Terrans did not permit their own people to carry weapons inside Headquarters.
Dan Lawton, the Terran Legate, bowed to Regis. Over the years, a sympathy had grown up between the two men, for Lawton was Darkovan-born but had chosen to live as a Terran. Lawton could not have been much more than forty, and that was not old by the standards of Terran medicine, yet his lean, angular face was careworn, etched by the habit of worry.
“It has been too long, Lord Regis,” Lawton began, then smiled as Regis invited him with a gesture to move to a less formal basis.
Regis slipped off his heavy outdoor cloak and took the proffered seat. Danilo sat down as well, clearly at ease.
“You look well, Regis. And you, too, as usual, Danilo. How is Mikhail?” Lawton asked.
“My sister writes he is strong and healthy,” Regis answered. After finishing his term in the City Guards cadets, Mikhail had spent the winter in Armida, learning the duties of a Domains lord. In choosing Javanne’s youngest son for his legal heir, Regis had done better than he expected. Mikhail, although still young enough for occasional foolish high spirits, showed an underlying steadiness of temperament.
In response to a polite inquiry, Lawton replied that he himself was well, that his son and wife had gone for an outing in the Old Town.
Lawton had married a few years prior to the time of the World Wreckers. The couple had met off-world during Lawton’s diplomatic certification training and had wed after a brief, intense courtship. Regis had met the woman once or twice. She was strikingly beautiful, with pearl-bright skin and lushly curling black hair, exotic on a world that fostered pale-skinned redheads. Yet Regis found something unsettling in her manner, beyond the expected awkwardness of a wife who has found herself on a world far from home, confronted with strange customs. He had tried without success to draw her out in conversation. She was the wife of a Terran dignitary and, more than that, of his friend.
“I don’t believe I have ever met your son,” Regis said.
“His name is Felix,” Lawton said, and they both smiled, for the name was popular and much-honored on Darkover. Many Comyn, Regis among them, bore it somewhere in their long string of names. “He’s eleven, and a handful.”
“May the happiness of his name follow him through his lifetime,” Danilo said.
“Thank you,” Lawton replied. “He’s still at the most trying age, no longer a child and not yet a man. If it were up to me, I’d send him to be fostered for a few years at Armida or Carcosa, so that he could use up some of that exuberance learning to ride horses or cutting brush on fire-lines, but his mother won’t hear of it. Today they’re out looking for ‘native treasures’ as offerings for her grandfather’s saint day.”
“I’m not familiar with that custom,” Regis said. “Is it proper to offer best wishes?”
Lawton frowned. “Not on Temperance. Tiphani’s grandfather has been dead for twenty years now, but his entire family still feels obliged to offer sacrifices for the atonement of his sins. Whatever she sends home will be purified and then burned. It seems a waste to me, but it’s their way.”
“Was he as terrible as that?” Regis was familiar with the concept of a punitive afterworld. As a youth, he had studied for some years at the monastery school at St.-Valentine’s-of-the-Snows. Altogether too aware of the universality of human frailty, Regis had little sympathy with the monks’ obsession with purity and perdition.
Or,he added silently, with a quick glance in Danilo’s direction, their condemnation of certain expressions of love.
“I never met the man,” Lawton continued. “For myself, I prefer to be remembered for the good I achieved and the happiness I brought to those I loved.”
“So should we all.”
Lawton turned back to the console on his desk. He engaged the visiphone with a few efficient strokes. “I’ve set it to play the priority message that arrived on coded frequency for you. I’m afraid it’s formatted as play-and-destruct, so you’ll only be able to watch it once. Touch this panel to begin and this one here to record a reply, if any.” He got to his feet, bowed again, this time in an abbreviated, less formal manner, and left Regis and Danilo in privacy.
“What’s this about?” Danilo asked, coming around to view the screen as Regis took Lawton’s seat.
“I assume it’s from Lew Alton. I can’t imagine who else would want to contact me in such a manner.”
Regis pressed the panel Lawton had indicated. The screen’s background pattern dissolved into bits of iridescent gray. An instant later, the familiar scarred features of Lewis-Kennard Alton, one of Regis’s oldest friends and now the Darkovan Senator to the Terran Empire, came into focus.
Since his ordeal fighting the immensely powerful, illegal matrix known as Sharra nearly twenty years ago, Lew had never looked well. The battle had left him battered, a widower aged beyond his years, and in despair. Time and a happy second marriage had softened his expression, but his gray eyes still looked bleak.
“ Vai domRegis,” Lew began formally in casta.Regis imagined him leaning forward, choosing his words with care, masking the urgency behind them.
“I can’t risk sending this through normal channels, although soon enough the news will be broadcast everywhere. You may think me overly cautious. Paranoia is, after all, an asset in this profession. If I’m right, however, you’ll need all the advance warning I can give you.”
Lew paused and glanced down, consulting his notes. “The debate over changing the constitutional structure of the Empire has been going on for three years now, most of it behind closed doors. The people promoting it, particularly Sandra Nagy and Augustus Verogist—sorry, those names won’t mean anything to you, but they are two of the most powerful politicians in the Empire—have managed to keep all reports to the level of rumor so they can move ahead while no one takes the issue seriously. I’ve just learned through my own sources that the proposal will come up for a vote in the full Senate this session. Nagy and her allies are planning a preemptive strike against their opponents.”