At its beginning what happened at Mistworld thirteen years ago had been like a dress rehearsal for the war that might be starting in Narsai’s space now. Certainly it had been sparked by the same issue: conflicting claims on limited resources, by groups who needed those resources in order to survive.
Mistworld had been the last truly inviting M-class planet to be discovered in the Outworlds, out beyond Mortha where most of the available planets were marginal or downright hostile to human existence. No sooner were Commonwealth homesteaders established there, then those homesteaders had been attacked—by a flotilla sent from an overcrowded principality elsewhere to dislodge them, to clear the planet for that principality’s own settlers. The homesteaders had called for Star Service protection, and a battle group commanded by Catherine Romanova had arrived at Mistworld to drive the invaders back to their own sector.
Romanova had anticipated making short work of that assignment, since she had more ships than the enemy did; and at first, things went just as she expected. Then both sides started losing ships—not to each other, but to energy discharges from the planet’s upper atmosphere. Her sons had been among the first of her people to die that way, when one of those deadly blasts had engulfed two vessels—one already crippled by a conventional shot from their known enemy, the other rushing to its aid before it could be incinerated as it was drawn down into Mistworld’s atmosphere.
For both fleets to gather their survivors and retreat was not an option at that point, because the settlers were still there and stranded. The invaders had fled, and hadn’t been heard of again; but Romanova had been obliged to stay and determine what was causing those devastatingly accurate energy discharges—and to find a way to halt them, so that traffic could move once again between the planet’s surface and space beyond it.
To withdraw, to abandon the settlers and wait off-shore while a fast shuttle made the trip back to base and summoned more sophisticated scientific aid, would probably have been the wisest course of action; and for the pregnant Romanova to have claimed a berth on that shuttle would have been completely understandable, too. But while she had thought about doing that, at the same time that she and Linc had been alternately savoring and grappling with their first mind-to-mind communications in which she played any conscious part, other minds had joined them.
These beings who lived in Mistworld’s atmosphere had not objected when the first settlers arrived, because travel through their domain by humans who wanted only to reach the planet’s surface or to return from there to space had no effect on them at all. When the ship-against-ship conflicts began, they were not concerned because the initial fighting took place further out than the levels where they existed; but as the battle intensified, and as it shifted and came closer, they had started feeling its effects. So they had begun fighting back, in the only way that they were able to do so.
They told Romanova, when she asked them how they knew she was the fleet’s commander and the person with whom they should negotiate peace, that they had no real concept of what a “fleet” was or a “commander.” But after the fighting had stopped, when they explored the minds of those few creatures aboard the remaining ships that could accept telepathic contact, they had discovered that if they did not disclose both their presence and their true nature they were very likely to be located and eliminated without their enemies’ ever realizing that they were fellow sentients. Then they had sought to know which of the bewildering array of individuals—these scraps of consciousness isolated within fleshy envelopes, as humans and even Morthans appeared to them—had the power to control the others’ actions. And they had been relieved to learn that although the individual they sought was among the “humans” with whom they could not communicate directly, her mind was nevertheless accessible to them because of its strong ties to that of a more flexible being.
Today Romanova was credited for the successful negotiations that had followed, with Casey’s role left out of the historical accounts. That omission still suited him. He had cooperated completely, had eased his friend and captain through the strange experience and its naturally attendant terrors. He had, in fact, been grateful that her need for his help had made it impossible for her to draw away from him after the shock of learning that he could perceive her thoughts; but he had not particularly wanted anyone except the cloud-beings (as humans soon started calling them) to know what he had done. And Katy had respected his wishes; so when the Commonwealth’s scientists and diplomats arrived and telepathic interpreters took over to finalize the treaty, her bond with Linc became a private thing once more.
A private thing, a sacred thing, that Casey had permitted those strangers to violate only because the survival of both of Mistworld’s resident species had depended on it. But never once after they left Mistworld had any third being except Maddy been allowed to share in his communion with his love, until now.
The human settlers surviving on Mistworld had remained there. They were permitted to replace their communications link to the rest of the Commonwealth, to resume traveling through the atmosphere to and from orbit; in most ways the terms that emerged from the final round of negotiations allowed them to go back to their lives almost exactly as they had lived them before. But they agreed to ban energy discharges within the cloud-beings’ zone of residence, and they were required to open an on-going dialog with those beings in order to avoid future misunderstandings.
Katy Romanova had never expected to encounter the cloud-folk again. Certainly not here, in her home star system; and certainly not with the cloud-creatures traveling in ships the way humanoids traveled. But they were here, she recognized them unmistakably now, and the soft voice inside her mind was continuing to speak.
“When you understood what we were, you led your people to make peace with us. And there are some among your own kind who condemn you for that even now, because to them it seemed an unnatural act on your part.”
The voice was gentle, as if its owner or owners understood perfectly what losing her boys had meant to this human mother. But other humans had indeed accused her of lacking normal feelings, for negotiating peace with the beings responsible for her children’s deaths; and the first to charge her with that had been George Fralick, arriving on the first ship to reach Mistworld in response to her appeal for diplomatic and scientific back-up. And while Katy had never been able to blame her former husband for his grief-driven fury, at her and at the cloud-folk, the memory of how viciously he had raged at her was just as hurtful now as it had been then.
“Of course I did.” She felt herself swallowing painfully as she acknowledged that recollection. “If I couldn’t have done that, I’d have had no right to call myself a captain. Being able to admit it when a fight is caused by misunderstanding is something every command officer has to be able to do, otherwise you go on wasting lives long after you could have stopped the killing.”
“That is why we are willing to deal with you now, on behalf of the many humans and other corporeals—on our own world, and on less hospitable worlds nearby—who have become our responsibility.” The word “responsibility” was not a precise rendering of the alien concept, Romanova knew that; but it was as close as her own thoughts could express its true meaning. “We came to Narsai because Narsai is best able to supply the support that our charges need, but finding you here is good fortune. For us, and for those who think of themselves as your superior authorities. There are many beings now among our corporeal charges who can communicate as we do, but we nevertheless need you or someone like you to speak for them with those of your own kind who have the power to change that which needs changing.”