Sten had drawn Ecu into his involvement with the tribunal with a simple gift: a kit-built holographic display of an ancient Earth " air circus," where ground-bound humans jeopardized their lives by riding in twin-wing combustion-powered aircraft any self-respecting archaeopteryx would have sneered at.
Seeing the model, Sr. Ecu had marveled:
"Did they really do that...I've never really appreciated before what it was like to be permanently grounded by an accident of genes. My God, how desperately they wanted to fly. "
"Beings will risk a great deal," Sten had said, "for a little freedom."
He wondered how the human was doing in his assignment in the Altaic Cluster. He hoped well—but he suspected, especially considering the recent news blackout on the area, that the situation, already bad, was growing worse.
He considered if Rykor somehow thought his mad theory to be correct, whether Sten would be brought in. How? In what capacity? he jeered at himself. And to do what?
Are you starting to do what these humans do, and think that any time a seemingly irresolvable problem appears, the solution is to collectively throw up your hands and turn everything over to a ruler in shining armor, who, of course, turns out to be a tyrant?
That was what had created the present situation.
That, Ecu corrected himself, and AM2.
AM2. That was the stumbling block. Without AM2 everything in the Empire, its triumphs as well as its crimes, would be lost.
And AM2 was what would prevent, Ecu finished morosely, finding any real solution to this problem.
The horizon cleared, and he saw an island ahead. It was as grim and uninviting as the rest of this world, jagged rocky spires jutting up from bouldered shallows. Desolate—but his white sensing whiskers told him there was life down there.
Then his eyes confirmed his other sense, as he saw movement on one of the island's rocky "beaches." More beings, like the one who had waved to him, were sprawled on the icy wave-washed slabs as if they were humans basking in a tropic sun.
He heard a bellow over the wind-howl as one of those beings stretched to its full height on rear flippers, and hoonked a greeting. Rykor... it must be.
The being humped a few awkward meters on land, dove, and became eely grace into a breaking wave, then vanished.
Now, Sr. Ecu thought in irritation, how am I supposed to emulate her behavior? Am I supposed to follow her underwater like I'm triphibious?
Then black rock moved aside and there was the entrance to a wide tunnel yawning in the middle of one of the island's cliffs. Around it and above, on the cliff top, antennae bristled.
Ecu tucked and plummeted, reflexively curling his winglets even though the tunnel was more than wide enough to allow a medium-size starfreighter entry.
This was Rykor's home-and her office.
Ian Mahoney frequently compared Rykor to a walrus in jest. But in fact, the similarities were only physical-to a degree-and Rykor's species was also aquatic by evolution and preference. The physical resemblance wasn't that great-Rykor was a third again as big as the biggest Earth Odobenus, with a body length of over five meters and weight of more than two thousand kilos.
Her species, however, was known for its intellect, particularly in areas requiring intuitive analysis and the ability to draw extrapolative conclusions from fixed data. Therefore, they were poets. Philosophers. City- and world-planners. And, as in the case of Rykor, psychologists.
When she retired, she was the highest-ranked psychologist in Imperial Service. She also had been used, sub rosa, by Ian Mahoney-then head of Mercury Corps and Mantis-as his specialist in the headworkings of spies, saboteurs, assassins, and traitors, Imperial and unfriendly.
She had been convinced to come out of safety and seclusion by Sten, when he had set up the tribunal. She had then, like everyone else involved in what had seemed triumph at the time, been offered anything and everything. But after the Emperor's return, she had realized why she had retired in the first place: there were volumes to be written on human and other species' behavior patterns that she and no one else had experienced and could possibly explain.
Plus Rykor had a surfeit of what was, truthfully, bending her skills into the service of someone else to convince the analyzed person/culture to behave in a certain manner.
Now she was being asked to use her talents once more. But for a far greater purpose-this time by Ecu.
"This is most unusual," Rykor apologized. "I had this chamber constructed to deal with my land-bound friends and clients. And also as a personal joke, since I spent so many years serving the Empire from either a saltwater tank or a gravchair.''
Sr. Ecu waggled his sensing whiskers, politely indicating amusement-his species needed no ego reinforcement for being clever.
This chamber was fitting revenge. It was a high-ceilinged, wide-mouthed tidal cave, whose above-water entrance had been closed with a transparent wall. Ecu thought the wall was probably mobile and would rise and fall with the tide. Looking out to sea, there appeared to be nothing between the crashing surf and the viewer except those spray-drenched boulders that formed a partially sheltering lagoon outside. Wind and sea sounds were miked and their level controlled by a mixboard. Entrance to this cave was by living under the wall for Rykor and her fellows, or by solid passageways for land beings.
Ecu hovered just above the artificial shelf Rykor had built for land-bound visitors. It, too, was tide-responsive and would rise and fall so that it always was a few centimeters above the gentle waves inside this cave.
The shelf was fitted with all sorts of comforts and devices, from viewers to coms to computers. Above this conference room were apartments and dining areas.
Rykor's own quarters and work areas were reached by underwater tunnels that led from chamber to chamber. The equipment Rykor used in her normal course of work was either environmentally insensitive or sealed.
"I am," Rykor said, "somewhat unfamiliar with the... etiquette, let alone the practicalities, of entertaining an aerial being. Do you, well..."
"Roost?" Ecu's whiskers twitched once more, and, after a moment of slight embarrassment, Rykor's own face bristles ruffled and her sonic-blast laughter echoed around the chamber until the active acoustic system damped it.
"No," he said. "My race lands but seldom. And then for specific purposes." He did not explain; Rykor did not ask.
"May I offer you refreshment? Since the Manabi are not the most commonly entertained race in this Empire, it was most hard to learn what you preferred to ingest. But I gather the following, in spray form, is considered pleasurable. Even though these microorganisms aren't exactly duplicated on this world, we have synthesized the mixture."
Her flippers stretched and touched keys on a floating panel beside her. An overhead screen flashed a chemical formula. Ecu scanned it. Again, he "laughed."
"Your source was correct, Rykor. We do enjoy that organic compote. But it also renders us hors d' flight, and we become 'pissed as newts,' as our mutual friend Kilgour puts it. Perhaps later. Perhaps when we have begun our discussions I will feel less like a fool, less worried, and more able to relax.
"Or you may wish to sedate me with that formula, since I fear my basic neural reactions are becoming unpredictable."
"Manabi," Rykor said flatly, "don't go insane."