"Can I do something?"
"Just go on being Midnight."
She hugged him. "Sometimes I wish you were human."
He understood. "Sometimes I wish I was, too." He extricated himself carefully. "My Swordsmaster had a motto. ‘When in doubt, attack.' The moment seems appropriate. No. I don't mean physically."
She did not seem reassured, though.
He encountered the girl Tina before he had gone a dozen steps. She said, "Blessed wants you."
"I was just heading up to see him."
"You're amused?" Blessed demanded.
"Bored," Turtle said.
"Bored?"
"I've been around a long time, boy. You think I'm a virgin? Thieves have been trying to twist my arm for ages."
"Thieves?"
"You going to tell me you want me to join a holy alliance to make the universe a better place? Or admit you're out to grab whatever you can for yourself?"
Blessed grunted.
"Thieves."
"That's a harsh view of commerce."
"Commerce? We're talking predation. Except the true predator kills only to assure its own survival. You live better than all but a handful of beings. What need have you for more?"
The boy was off balance. He could come up with no rationalization quickly enough to counterattack.
Time would tend to that.
"You don't have a need. You have a want. Power. We Ku look at things differently. Our villains know they're villains and don't try to hide, especially from themselves. They don't understand what compels them but they recognize its impact upon external reality.
"You humans lie to yourselves."
"Is there a point to this?"
"Several. The least is that you and the Ku will both go ahead regardless. Your true purposes are not external. You are trying to placate a demon within. I want you to know that when your demon is whispering in one ear, I'm going to mutter into the other."
Blessed looked puzzled.
"You think Kez Maefele might be useful. Perhaps. But I'll always remind you what you're doing to others. I'll drench you in their heartbreak."
"Our research indicates that you were the most dangerous of your ghifu. That a literal translation of your name might be, ‘Revenge of the Ku Race.' But you haven't been doing anything about revenge."
The boy's comm blinked as Turtle replied, "Of course I have."
Blessed listened to the comm with one ear. He snapped, "Bring in that antique maxiscreen we shoved in with those broken-down cleaning robots. I can look at it on that." Of Turtle he demanded, "How?"
"By constantly rubbing the villains' noses in the consequences of their villainies."
A staffer shoved in, pulling an old 220cm vision plate that crackled and popped.
"Over here. What's wrong with the picture?"
"It's all right when the plate isn't moving."
"That's good. Right there. All right, Ku. One of the real villains of our time has just broken off the Web."
"A Guardship?"
"VII Gemina. Probably headed for Starbase. Our strand is one route in. But they don't stop here."
Turtle looked. "It's been in a fight. Must have run into somebody tough."
Blessed glanced at him. "I wonder who won."
"Self-evident. The Guardship wouldn't be here if it had lost."
"Yes."
The Guardship had found the mouth of hell somewhere. It had not recovered its secondaries. Its exterior had been slagged.
"There's the ancient enemy, Ku. Suppose you could command a battle fleet again. Would you?"
Turtle stared at the wounded Guardship. "I might." The genes. He could not be one of the villains, could he?
"Could you give them a better run?"
"I could. I could have before, given the tools. But those tools are rare and dear. I don't believe they could be gathered." By the Prime! He was being tempted.
"Not in Canon space. But there's a lot of Outside."
Turtle concentrated on the Guardship, willing his wizard side out of hibernation. He had to be very careful.
The boy had grown tense. His games had ended. Because of that Guardship.
"It might be arranged, Kez Maefele."
"I might be interested. If I knew what you were talking about."
The boy studied the Guardship, too. Then, "We're at a point of no return, aren't we?"
"Are we?"
Blessed left his desk. He paced. Turtle reached into the past for tools with which to calm hormonal storms. The Prime was determined to drag him past the mouths of the guns of fate.
Blessed stopped. "I learned most of what the artifact knows."
"She can't help herself."
"What you see is my grandfather's handiwork. He may be dead now, along with a man named Lupo Provik, who might have been your match. They had the help of aliens from beyond the Rim." Blessed looked at him hard. "Two people in this system know what I've told you."
A child had put a knife to his throat.
"Grandfather must have made a showing."
A hell of a showing. It spoke well for the alliances he had forged.
"That, and your name, would make great arguments when we go back to those creatures. There they go. They weren't looking for you."
The Guardship had climbed back onto the Web.
It was walking-through-the-fire time, staying-alive time, and being the fastest and deadliest thug around was not going to be enough. Was he ready to take up the lance and enter the lists for one more tilt with the dragon?
The boy hurled his comm unit at the vision plate. The plate crackled and popped. He said, "That was Cable Shike. The Guardship helped itself to station's data while it was here."
"That's routine."
"There was stuff about your arrival still in the system. Think about that. Then think about the fact that we're stuck here till I get a parole from Tregesser Prime."
Turtle stared at the now blank plate.
— 66 —
WarAvocat wakened relaxed. He swelled a little with the thought that he would see Midnight soon.
It had been tense there, off the Web, getting that runaway drive well damped, more because of the carping of Makarska Vis's coterie and Ops and Service people than because VII Gemina was in any danger.
But the crisis was over. The bad feelings had bottomed out. The technicians should have the well relined, new casements set, and the tractors recalibrated before VII Gemina reached Starbase.
No. The bottom line was political. The Dictat election had delivered some disappointments. OpsAvocat, hoping to become the second living Dictat of the century, had drawn only cool support while Hanaver Strate, whose campaign had consisted of an admission that he would stand, had drawn approval from sixty-eight percent of the electorate.
WarAvocat's new fellow Dictat was the Deified Aleas Notable, a little known former WarAvocat taking office for the first time. Her genius was a cipher. She had been one of the longest reigning WarAvocats ever, but her term had run smack in the middle of the longest period of peace in VII Gemina's history.
WarCentral was quiet. The boards and wall had nothing interesting to say. Quiet time was useful, though. This he could use to establish a working relationship with Aleas Notable. They had to get along for a year.
A staffer said, "Sir, there're rumors Tawn has been seen."
"Really? Where? It's been a couple hundred years."
"The usual places. Empty corridors and whatnot. One man supposedly touched her. She paralyzed him with the fire in her eyes."
"I might look into it. I'd like to meet her myself."
"Nobody who goes looking for her finds her, WarAvocat."
"You're right." Not even the Deified could find the Guardship's tutelary spirit. Gemina claimed she did not exist. Even so, Tawn turned up after every spate of combat. A savant once suggested Tawn was a dream. Gemina had enough spare capacity to create a platoon of phantoms real enough to touch.