Skolian Empire Fan Fiction Index

Part VIII

 The Price of Peace

Chapter 36

In which two public meetings are disrupted.

            The next morning, Ricki was putting the finishing touches on a particularly inane piece of dreck when Zachary poked his head into her office.

            “Isn’t that vid mix done yet, babe?  The techs are waiting for it.”

            Ricki stared into her screen despite the poor quality of its current offering, and tapped a key.  “Done.  Though I don’t think any amount of tech wizardry is going to salvage this.  Del Arden, it’s not.”

            “It talks about being misunderstood and hints that sex might be the solution.  Don’t worry, the teens’ll buy it.”

            “Good for them.”

            It was an uncharacteristically subdued response for Prime-Nova’s blonde barracuda, and Zachary was sufficiently concerned to ask, “What’s the matter, doll?”

            Ricki continued to stare at the blank screen, absently noting the improvement over what had previously been playing.  “I’m just wondering what lapse of judgment ever gave us the temerity to sign a Ruby Prince.”

            “Is Arden giving you a hard time again?”  Zachary shook his head in annoyance.  “Look, that foreign prince thing is great publicity and all:  the fans really eat it up.  But you gotta remind the kid that as far as Prime-Nova is concerned, he’s just an act.  A good one, yes, but we hired him to sing, not to put on airs, and he needs to remember that.”

            “God, no, it’s not that!”  She finally turned and looked at her boss with haunted eyes.  “Del introduced me to his mother last night.”

            “Good, good,” the Tech-Mech King said absently, patting her shoulder.  “Is she a nice lady?”

            Ricki stared at her boss in disbelief.  “Del’s mother is Roca Skolia, Zachary.  She’s next in line for the Ruby Throne and she’s been running the Imperialate’s foreign policy for over eight decades.  She’s here as the closer to finally force through the treaty that our Senate has been stalling all summer.”  Seeing that her boss still didn’t get it, she simplified.  “She’s a goddamned empress, Zachary, and we’d better never, ever forget that, because for sure she won’t.  She’s not a titular head of state like King Edward of England or Queen Kristina of Denmark, either.  She’s got the sort of power Axil Tarex could only dream about, not to mention enough wealth to buy Prime-Nova on a whim out of petty cash.  And we signed her son as a holorock singer!”

            “She gave you that hard a time?”  Zachary actually looked sympathetic, in an absentminded sort of way.  “I didn’t think any society dragon could rattle you like this.”

            “No, she was perfectly polite.  Gracious, even.”

            “So what’s the problem?”  Her boss was starting to look impatient at what he obviously considered a fit of female vapors.  Ricki was tempted to just drop the subject, but it was important that Prime-Nova’s decision-makers know the nature of the tiger whose tail they had grabbed so thoughtlessly.

            “She dismissed the Ambassador,” she tried again.

            “What was that, babe?”

            “When Del brought me over to introduce me, his mother was in conference with the Skolian Ambassador.  Roca Skolia broke off the conversation to greet me, then sent Ambassador Tron away so she could talk to me.

            “That’s great, babe.  Real polite of her.”  From the calculating look in Zachary’s eyes, the Tech-mech King was already looking for angles on how to use Del’s mother in a promotion. 

            Ricki wished she were big enough to shake some sense into him.  “Zachary, I don’t understand a word of Iotic, but it’s reasonable to assume that Roca Skolia was being given a confidential, high-level briefing regarding the treaty negotiations.  She’s the Skolian Imperialate’s goddamed Councilor for Foreign Affairs, remember?”

            “So Arden’s mother has a job.  What’s that to us?”

            “She postponed a critical briefing on the treaty negotiation between the Allied Worlds and the Skolian Imperialate in favor of meeting me.  What does that tell you about how Del’s family views his importance?  And about what they’ll do to Prime-Nova, if we fuck up and Del gets hurt because of it?” 

            Ricki watched as at last, partial comprehension penetrated the Tech-mech King’s customary self-absorbed haze. 

            “Oh, shit,” he said.

            “Yeah,” she agreed.  “Oh, shit.”

            For a long moment, silence reigned in the office.

            “One thing’s sure,” Ricki observed finally, as she turned back to her screen to call up the next bit of dreck in the queue.  “If Roca Skolia guards the interests of the Imperialate with the same zeal with which she guards the interests of her family, God help President Loughton and the Senate.  They don’t stand a chance.”

            That evening, Mayor Mildred Forndyke called to order what should have been a routine meeting of the Greater Annandale City Council in the unexpectedly packed gymnasium of Thomas Jefferson High School.  The turnout bewildered Mayor Forndyke, who double-checked her agenda to make sure that there were no school closings to be discussed.  It wasn’t a school-closing crowd, though:  there were relatively few obvious parents.  Instead, there was a mix of biker jackets, letter jackets, and even a few sleek Italian suit jackets in a sea of Del Arden T-shirts, of all things.  Perhaps it was the two liquor license applications from prospective nightclubs? 

            Prudently, she decided to call for the bids on the Annandale Manors playground reconstruction to be presented, instead.  Young people, and particularly young men, had notoriously short attention spans.  If she could drag the playground discussion on for half an hour or so, many of the younger crowd might decide that actually attending an existing nightclub was more entertaining than talking about whether there should be new ones.

            Two contractors whose companies were experiencing slow quarters had contacted her office to offer bids on the playground job, which was pretty straightforward: demolish the melted existing structure and replace it, with a budget not to exceed the funds that had been raised, plus the matching funds from Wrexley Utilities.  The only real issue for the city council to decide was which of two very similar, commercially available climbing structures to select.

            The two contractors gave their presentations in bland monotones that left many of the council members with glazed eyes.  The discussion that followed was about as animated as one might expect.  The holorock fans were still there at the end of it, so in desperation Mayor Forndyke opened the discussion up to comments from the floor.  The elderly Duane Freeborn was in his usual front-row seat and could be counted on for at least ten minutes of rambling discourse on any subject whatsoever.

            Freeborn walked with a cane, however, and he was still getting to his feet when a charging stampede swept past him to capture the mic.  For a moment, the Mayor thought there might be a riot on hand, but after some milling around, a young Hispanic in a biker jacket took possession of the mic.

            The captain of Los Lobos had never attended an official government meeting before, outside of a few juvenile court appearances.  However, he was a quick study, and James Huthberg had researched and briefed him on the appropriate forms of address.  Speaking slowly and clearly, he said, “Madam Mayor, members of the City Council, I am Manuel Diego de la Mendoza.  I live in Annandale Manors; I used to play in the park that was damaged.  The plans these two men have talked about are cheap and shoddy, and show no respect for our neighborhood and its children.  We have another plan that we offer for your consideration.  Norton, show them.”

            While Mendoza talked, three other kids in Del Arden T-shirts, but without Mendoza’s leather jacket, had been setting up a fairly elaborate holo projector.  Another group in Georgetown letter jackets was clearing stray chairs and people out of a generous space before the table behind which the council members sat.

            The leader of the trio managing the equipment touched a button, and a holo of the Lobos’ playground design, as modified by the collected Tuesday night patrons of Niccolo’s, sprang to life in the cleared space like a fairy village.  It was a thing of beauty, especially after some art major friends that Silas the dungeon master had met at a poetry slam had elaborated on the Lyshrioli designs from Prince Havyrl’s farmhouse. 

            Mildred stared at the holographic offering.  It was obvious that the youngsters had put a lot of effort into their design.  It was artistic, original, a genuine showpiece…and totally impractical for a playground in an impoverished slum like Annandale Manors.  “Thank you for showing us this,” she said, with real regret.  “It would make a beautiful playground.  However, you can’t just draw a picture and build something.  You have to make sure the plans are properly designed and everything is structurally sound…”

            She paused as Mendoza stepped aside for the geeky Norton.  “Madam Mayor, I’m Norton Wallace, a graduate student of structural engineering at Georgetown University.  These plans have been checked for structural integrity and approved by my major professor, Dr. Nesbitt, who teaches structural engineering, by the department chair, Dr. Appleboum, and by damage control engineers Major Barghatt and Lieutenant Quoth of the Skolian Imperial Space Command.  We’ve got signed affidavits from all of them.” 

            Mildred blinked.  That, she had not expected.  “I’m afraid it’s too expensive for our budget.”

            “It is not so expensive,” Mendoza was back at the mic.  “We show you how we do it.”

            The group shuffled again, leaving a middle-aged Hispanic man in grease-stained coveralls staring dubiously at the mic.  “I’m Javier Neuvos,” he ventured shyly, after some urging from his fellow conspirators.  “My brother Riccardo and I, we own the J & R Welding and Body Shop in Annandale Manors.  My staff and I, we will cut up the old climbing bars after work, if our shop gets the scrap metal.”

            “That’s demolition for nothing,” Mendoza pointed out, reclaiming the mic.  “Norton, talk about materials.”

            The geeky student tapped his com, and an itemized list of materials appeared.  He went over the highlights as two pretty Hispanic girls distributed paper copies to the council members.  “As you see,” he ended, “the materials do not exceed the budget. Much.”

            “There’s still labor costs,” Mildred pointed out.  “That’s an elaborate structure.”

            Mendoza nodded.  “Besides J & R, there are over twenty skilled construction workers living in or near Annandale Manors who have said they are willing to volunteer for this project, as long as we do it on the weekends.” 

            He stepped aside for a tall, athletic boy in a Georgetown letter jacket who introduced himself as “James Huthberg the Third, Ma’am, Captain of the Georgetown hockey team.”

            “We have two Georgetown art students lined up to do the paint job if materials are provided and they can get it approved for class credit,” Huthberg continued.  “The Georgetown Botany Club will give us any extras left over from their plant sale for the landscaping and Annandale Audubon will donate three bird feeders.” 

            He spread his hands in concession.  “We still need to find a competent professional contractor to supervise the crews and organize the logistics.  We estimate that the total cost will come to about six hundred dollars over the budget.  We are designing a fundraising campaign to make up the difference with assistance from the Georgetown chapter of Tri Delt.  They raised over twelve hundred for last year’s Homecoming dance; six hundred for a good cause shouldn’t be a problem for them.  Those ladies can be persuasive.”

            Mildred shook her head helplessly.  “I’m really sorry, but the city council has to follow our established procedures.  We have two licensed contractors who submitted proper bids for the work, both of which were under budget.”

            “Uh, Ma’am?” one of the contractors said, with a face as sour as if he’d been sucking on a lemon.  “I’d like to withdraw my bid in favor of the one proposed by these upstanding young people.”

            “Yeah,” the other contractor agreed, casting a nervous, sideways look at a pair of large men in fancy Italian suits who were standing next to them.  “It’s a great design.”  The larger of the Italian-dressed pair gave him a nudge and he added with a wince, as if it hurt him to say it, “In fact, I’d be happy to coordinate the project as contractor of record.”

            Mildred noticed that her mouth was hanging open and closed it.  “If that’s the way you want it,” she said.

            “Oh, yeah,” the hapless volunteered said, with a wan smile.  “I’m looking forward to it.”

            When the vote was taken, the Lobos’ plan was officially adopted, pending the acquisition of additional funding.  At the same time, the playground was renamed the Del Arden Municipal Park, ensuring that the newsfeed searches would flag local reporter Ginny Alvins’ coverage of the meeting for Del Arden fans. 

            The following day, the fundraising effort began with an announcement on the quad by Georgetown University’s Delta Delta Delta chapter, supplemented by the cheerleading squad.  The engineering student association, the chess club, and the hockey, football, and basketball teams were out in force to support the effort.  The curious mix of sponsoring organizations attracted wide attention, and the cash began to flow.

            Thomas Jefferson High School had a sister fundraiser coordinated by the Madrigals.  During the following week, motorcycle street racing fans discovered that overpriced refreshments were suddenly available at their clandestine races, and when the Annandale police set up a series of random traffic safety inspection checkpoints, they somehow forgot to stop the panhandling motorcycles working their way down the waiting line of cars.

            Three hundred dollars were raised in two days by these means.  During the same period, an additional five hundred dollars poured into the relief account started by Ginny Alvers, donated by Del Arden fans across the country whose imaginations had been caught by their hero’s involvement with the story.  The drive was judged a success and officially closed, and the extra money was budgeted toward refurbishing the fence, additional landscaping, and a maintenance fund.

            The official state dinner at which Allied President Hannah Loughten welcomed Skolian Foreign Affairs Councilor Roca Skolia to Earth took place a week after her arrival.  While suitably grand and properly formal, the affair was noticeably less tense than that at which the President had entertained the Councilor’s youngest son.  Nobody among the Allied Worlds government underestimated Roca Skolia’s formidable power and expertise, but that power and expertise were firmly concentrated in the political and diplomatic arenas.  The chances of some random hostile comment from a low-ranking idiot starting a war were therefore much reduced.  Roca Skolia also spoke some English, with the assistance of a language mod installed on her internal node, which made the conversation less subject to creative translation by her holorock-singing son.

            Fitz McLane arrived early, dressed for battle in a crisp, medal-festooned dress uniform.  As usual when dealing with the Skolians, he had no idea what to expect.  They had been told that the Councilor was to be accompanied not only by Ambassador Tron, but also by both Prince Del-Kurj and his newly arrived brother, Prince Havyrl.  Del was at least a known quantity.  ASC’s file on Prince Havyrl was much less extensive, although it did mention that he had masterminded the highly effective civil disobedience campaign that had forced the ASC occupation to leave Skyfall.  The potential for diplomatic chaos this represented was somewhat mitigated, for the President at least, by the news that the Skolians would also be bringing Sasha, Melanie, and Eddie back to the White House. 

            The guests of honor arrived an hour before the dinner was to start, giving the President time to greet her children.  While Eddie clung to her, the girls gave her a quick hug and promptly announced that they had promised to show Prince Havyrl the White House vegetable garden.  Prince Del-Kurj accompanied them, leaving his mother with President Loughten, Ambassador Tron, and Fitz, who was to join them at the head table.

            They chatted politely for a while in a mixture of Roca Skolia’s mod-generated English and Iotic, the latter ably translated by Ambassador Tron.  It was determined that the weather had a seasonally-appropriate moderate chill, that Roca Skolia’s journey to Earth had been uneventful, and that all present and their extended families enjoyed robust health except for President Loughten, who was recovering from her gunshot wound as rapidly as the medics expected.

            It was all very diplomatic.  By iron-clad custom, no subject of actual interest to either party ought to be broached until the official sessions started.  Which was why Loughten threw Fitz an astonished look when he admitted, “You know, my technicians are still sitting up nights, trying to figure out how Imperator Skolia programmed the failed meshnode at Gettysburg in just two hours, and how Prince Del-Kurj and several other members of your family were able to access and apparently reprogram it at will.  It doesn’t behave like any code they’ve seen before, either.”

            “Have your technicians the training as telops?” Roca asked, with the assistance of Ambassador Tron.

            “No,” Fitz admitted.  “The only telops on Earth are Ambassador Tron’s people.”

            “Ah.”  The absurdly youthful golden face smiled.  “If so it is, you tell your people should, some rest to get.  The core programming they can’t see.”

            “Why not?”  The General had his suspicions, but they were absurd on their face.

            “Because it not in this universe is,” Roca answered, making a graceful swan dive down the proverbial rabbit hole.  Frustrated by the limitation of her node’s translation program, she switched to Iotic and gestured for Ambassador Tron to translate.  “Kelric wove the Gettysburg node in Kylespace—that’s how he could do it so much faster than your techs.  A part of it, by necessity, remains connected to the Kyleweb.  Del accessed and controlled the search program through that link.”

            Loughten’s brow furrowed.  “I thought accessing Kylespace requires specialized equipment?”

            “For most psions, it does,” she agreed with a fond maternal smile.  “Del never got any formal telop training, but he has his father’s intuitive grasp of the Kyle.  His symbolism might be unusual, but when he asks a Kylenode a question, it does its best to provide him with an answer.”

            “So that was Kylespace?” Fitz McLane asked, remembering the pastoral plain with its blue-green reeds and blue clouds floating in the improbable lavender sky. 

            “No.  You’re not a psion, so you can’t enter Kylespace.  What you saw was a virtual reality projection of Del’s perception of Kylespace, if you see the difference.” 

            “I’m afraid I don’t,” the General admitted.  “It was much more vivid than any virtual reality setup that I know.”

            Roca’s shoulders shrugged, a fluid gesture that rippled down her whole body.  “Del has a very vivid imagination.”

            And that was all she would say on the subject.

Chapter 37

In which diplomatic communiqués are delivered.

            Three hours later, Hannah Loughten was breathing a sigh of relief that dessert had been finished without any major embarrassments.  There were definite advantages to entertaining professional diplomats rather than warlords and foreign-born holorock stars.  Under his mother’s stern eye, even the volatile Prince Del-Kurj refrained from making trouble.

            As crisply uniformed waiters removed the dessert plates, the ASC orchestra settled into place at the south end of the ballroom, the bright colors of their crisp uniforms muted by the low light.  Hannah looked at them with a wistful smile as they began tuning their instruments, then turned back to Roca Skolia.

            “Our custom is for the hostess to start the dancing, but my physicians have threatened to have me confined to quarters if I indulge,” she murmured.  “Would you do me the great honor of acting as my deputy?”

            “That happy would make me, but I Earth’s formal dances not know,” the Councilor admitted.

            “You’re in good company, then,” the President reassured her.  “I doubt that anybody else here has learned them, either.  If you can adapt something you do know, perhaps?”

            Roca Skolia tilted her golden head as the strings struck an opening chord and a flute trilled in response.  “Ah, Strauss’s Tales of the Vienna Woods.  I think we manage something.”  She stood with the lithe grace of the twenty-year-old she so resembled and held out a hand to her younger son.  “Vyrl?”

            Prince Havyrl set aside his napkin and stood, taking his mother’s outstretched hand.  As the flute began a solo, rippling up and down the scale, they whirled out onto the floor, reaching the center in time for Prince Havyrl to lift his tall mother slowly into the air with a controlled grace that would have done credit to a professional ballet dancer from a top troupe.

            They held the pose as the flute solo ended.  A zither took up the melody, and then the two Skolians began to dance.  First together, then apart, they whirled and leaped in perfect synchrony with each other and with the music.  The whole room watched, enraptured by the sheer beauty of the performance.

            “I can see our intelligence agents missed a few things when they assembled their dossier on your mother,” President Loughten remarked to Prince Del, who looked slightly embarrassed as he watched his mother and brother move across the floor.  “I’m something of a ballet enthusiast, and I can spot formal training when I see it.  Where did they study and perform?”

            “Mother soloed with the Parthonia Ballet for a few decades under the alias of Cya Liessa before she met father,” Del admitted.  “Vyrl was at least sensible enough not to dance in public.  Until now, that is.”

            As the endless evening wore on, Hannah found keeping the polite smile on her face more and more difficult.  The painkiller the medics had given her before the guests arrived had long since worn off and her shoulder was starting to throb under the bandage.  It didn’t matter.  As President, she had a job to perform, and the Allied Worlds could not afford to offend the Skolian Pharaoh’s sister.

            Hoping to sharpen her wits, she motioned for one of the hovering waiters to refill her coffee cup.  As she reached for the cream pitcher, she felt something let go in the shoulder and wetness crept under the bandage.  She was hard put not to swear.

            Roca Skolia leaned closer.  “President Loughten, I have private message from my sister, Pharaoh Dyhianna.  Can…may we go to someplace more…restful?”

            The last thing Hannah wanted to do at the moment was carry on high-level diplomacy with a very prickly almost-ally with decades more experience than she could claim.  However, there was only one possible response.  “Of course,” she agreed as she stood, hoping her legs wouldn’t betray her. 

            Fitz gave her a questioning look and she shook her head minutely, keeping him in his chair.  “Please see that my guests are comfortable, General,” she murmured.  “Councilor, I am at your service.”

            “My thanks,” Roca said, standing and linking her arm through Hannah’s good arm in a companionable fashion.  Her two strapping sons also rose to accompany them.  Eldrin walked at her other side, although he did not try to take her injured arm, and Del wandered out in front of the others as they made their way across the crowded dance floor.  While that meant that Hannah would be outnumbered when the Pharaoh’s message was delivered, at least their presence prevented her from being accidentally jostled.

            She was feeling distinctly light-headed by the time they made it out of the ballroom.  As the heavy doors closed behind them, Roca turned to the usher, Mr. Forthan, who had approached them to discover how he might facilitate this unscheduled diversion from the official script.  “Tell medic come to President Loughten’s quarters,” she ordered briskly.

            “I will be fine,” Hannah protested weakly.  “I just need to catch my breath for a moment.  You said you had a message from Pharaoh Dyhianna?”

            The golden head nodded.  “If sister of mine here was, President Loughten, she say more progress be made tomorrow, after you rest.”

            Del made a rude snort as he and his brother moved in on either side of Hannah, half holding her up as they walked her toward the stairs.  “Aunt Dehya wouldn’t say anything of the kind, and you know it, Mother,” he corrected.  Looking down at Hannah, he explained, “She’d tell you to stop being an idiot and get to bed before the meddlesome medics rush you off to the hospital.”

            “Yes, she say that,” Roca admitted.  “Reason it is, she is lousy diplomat.”

            Hannah managed a wan smile.  “It is good advice, however it is delivered,” she admitted.  The presidential mansion’s entryway showcased a formidable antique staircase, all dark wood and carved newel posts.  It stretched endlessly up to the unattainable heights of the second-floor landing.  “I don’t think I can manage the stairs,” she admitted reluctantly.  “There’s a freight elevator over by the press room…” 

            And what the assembled reporters would make of her current state would present a formidable challenge for her press secretary.

            Del shook his head.  “Why throw scraps to the gorpals?”  He glanced at his brother in one of those unsettling, nonverbal Ruby Dynasty communications.  They linked arms, forming an improvised seat.  “Sit,” he ordered gently. 

            She did.

            As the trees on Del’s estate lost their leaves and settled into winter slumber, his mother settled in to high-level cat-herding in the Allied Senate.  With the disappearance of Mr. Williams, the Eubians had largely lost the ability to put quiet pressure on selected Senators and block all progress without anybody noticing.  The Senators who had been most open to their influence were now reluctant to cooperate with more overt Eubian efforts, fearing to be viewed as collaborators with their colleague Greeley, who was awaiting trial for treason.  The question of whether there ought to be a treaty at all no longer being in contention, the diplomatic teams turned to the even more controversial question of what form an alliance between Skolia and the Allied Worlds might take.  Gradually, the details of the agreement President Loughten and Kelric had sketched out began to take shape.

            Except for his mother’s continued presence, and therefore Ricki’s continued absence, little of this affected Del personally.  The band played two concerts in Tampa and Los Angeles, these southern cities being less affected by winter chills, but they were comparatively routine.  The latter concert did allow Randall to visit his parents, who threw a party in his honor and generously invited the whole band to attend.  The guests clustered around the fire pit in their small, suburban back yard were an eclectic mix:  neighbors, former colleagues, Mr. Gaithers’ golf partners, some of Randall’s childhood friends who were still in the area, and a pair of distinctly blue-collar scrub jays who would fly down from their perches on the overhanging wires and snatch a peanut from your hand.¹

            With harvest in and plans made for the following growing season, Del put the time he’d been spending tending the land into translating several more songs.  He also composed a new one he called “Lost In Translation,” a humorous account of the attempts of a traveling salesman with a poetic bent to woo the ladies at several points of call, all foiled by the technically accurate translation of his loyal EI.  The hapless lover did end up fabulously wealthy due to some inadvertently-traded-for mementos: a racehorse, an orchid farm, and a solid diamond asteroid. 

            The only public function Del attended was the dedication for the new playground in Annandale Manors.  Mayor Forndyke led the parade that wound through Greater Annandale, sitting beside Police Chief Kauptmann in an open vehicle, the weather having decided to cooperate.  The Lobos drove behind them in formation, showing off their best tricks for the crowd.  They were followed by the Georgetown cheerleading squad, the Thomas Jefferson High School Madrigals, several uniformed college sports teams, and the uncoordinated mob of volunteers who had built the structure.  There were even a few children young enough to actually play on it in attendance.

            Late one November evening, Del was relaxing in front of a roaring fire in the main room.  Over bowls of popcorn, he and the rest of the band were brainstorming possible visuals to go with the new songs.  This pleasant activity was interrupted when his mother returned from a late session.  Instead of heading up the stairs to change and get some well-deserved rest, she sought them out.

            “Del, I had an interesting conversation with the Eubian Ambassador today,” she announced in Iotic. 

            Randall, who had started to grasp the concepts of “need to know” and “plausible deniability,” got to his feet.  “We ready to seek rest, anyway,” he admitted.

            Roca shook her head.  “Stay, all of you,” she invited.  “It involves your entire band.”  She sat gracefully on the couch next to Anne, whose pregnancy was starting to show, then stared into the fire a long moment.

            “The Eubians,” she began, with no little satisfaction, “find the events of the past few months not at all to their liking.  We have succeeded in hammering out a rather strong and favorable alliance between the Allied Worlds and Skolia, and what is left of their agents are unable to influence enough of the Senate to block it.”

            “Such a pity,” Del said. 

            “The Traders also have unrest at home, caused by your song Carnelians Finale.  Their security experts have not been able to block its spread into their territory, largely because they can’t prevent their fellow Aristos from stealing mesh-links that they don’t have the telops to properly control.”

            Del snickered, slipping into English. “What is the phrase?  I weep alligator tears?”

            “Crocodile tears, actually,” Jud corrected, in the same language, “but yes.”

            “The situation is serious enough that they fear active rebellion,” Roca continued.  “You recall how Ur Qox handled a similar uprising.”

            Del’s good humor disappeared.  “Yes.”

            “According to his ambassador, Jaibriol the Third is a bit less bloodthirsty than his grandfather, or at least more practical,” Roca continued.  “Instead of wiping out those Eubian worlds where people listen to your song, he would prefer to just wipe the song from the mesh.  All the mesh, in Eube, Skolia, and the Allied Worlds.”

            “That’s impossible,” Anne said.  “Isn’t it?”

            “It is, for the Eubians.”

            “They want the Imperialate to take care of it for them?” Del asked, staring at his mother in disbelief.

            “Yes,” she said simply.

            “And what contortions of logic have convinced them that the Dyad would do such a thing?”

            “Their Emperor will consider the continued presence of Carnelians Finale on the mesh as an act of war perpetrated by Earth. On the other hand, if we agree to suppress the song, he will instruct his ambassador to actively support the treaty.”

            “What do Kelric and Aunt Dehya have to say about it?” Del asked.

            “Kelric doesn’t think they’re bluffing, but he also thinks the song is enough of a problem for them that that there’s a good chance they would abide by the terms of such an agreement.  Dehya says she thinks they could manage to erase the song from the mesh if they work from its source, Earth.  And she’ll only try if you and your band agree.”

            Del dropped his barriers, letting the emotions of the others in.  They were angry, but also afraid, particularly Anne, whose arms wrapped around her belly protectively.  The Allied Worlds had carefully avoided the space-spanning wars that had decimated Eube and Skolia, but its citizens understood just what sort of destruction they had left behind. 

            It was true, the band was a very small sample.  However, he didn’t think that the other people he had met here on Earth would feel any differently, from President Loughten and Fitz McLane down to the Grey Wolves and their unlikely playground-construction coalition.  He looked into the fire for a long moment, considering his lack of options, then reluctantly nodded.

            “If it will buy peace, and prevent wholesale slaughter in three empires, the song is a reasonable price to pay.”  He grinned in defiance.  “But don’t forget to remind the Eubian Ambassador that I can make other songs, if the actions of his Empire provide sufficient inspiration.”

            His mother’s return smile was frankly predatory.  “Oh, don’t worry.  I’ll leave him in no doubt of that.”

            Previously, Randall had only thought that the security at Del’s Annandale estate was tight.  The Ruby Pharaoh’s immanent arrival sent the Jagernauts into a flurry of activity as they reviewed procedures and checked equipment.  More Jagernaut reinforcements were brought in from the Skolian Embassy in Washington, D.C.  Cameron’s ASC Marine colleagues threw up an outer perimeter around the estate. Annandale Police Chief Kauptmann borrowed extra officers for crowd control. 

            Ambassador Tron spent an evening briefing the estate’s non-Skolian residents on protocol and etiquette.  Mostly, that seemed to involve staying out of the way of the Pharaoh’s staff and not making any sudden moves that her bodyguards might misinterpret.  Given the respect with which Tyra, Wasther, and the other Jagernauts spoke about the elite Abjai Jagernauts who guarded their sovereign, Randall sincerely hoped that nobody would be foolish enough to try their patience.

            All in all, the prospect of hosting the mysterious, reclusive, incredibly powerful ruler of the Imperialate, the legendary Shadow Pharaoh who lurked unseen in the meshes of three empires, seemed to be sending everybody in both governments to the verge of a nervous breakdown.

            Only Del seemed untouched by the hysteria. 

            “You’ll like Aunt Dehya,” he reassured his fellow musicians.  “She’s great.”

            And there matters stood as Earth awaited the Ruby Pharaoh’s arrival on the Firestorm battlecruiser Pharaoh’s Shield.

            Two days before their august guest was expected, Randall finished the morning’s regular rehearsal and headed back to his rooms to change.  The increasing atmosphere of siege at the estate was suffocating him.  He needed a change of scene, badly, so he planned to go look around the hardware store.  He had an idea for a latches-and-fasteners toy for Anne and Cameron’s soon-to-arrive son, and now seemed as good a time as any to see what raw materials were available.  Besides, the hardware store was two miles away and the weather was decent enough for him to use his bicycle, for a change.

            As he turned into the corridor that led to his quarters, he saw a tiny woman in a simple white jumpsuit standing and looking out the window, which had a lovely view of a green expanse of pasture and orchard.  Long black hair streaked with gray flowed down her back and Randall suddenly recalled that Angela’s grandmother was supposed to be visiting soon.  Not wanting an innocent to get caught in the unforgiving Skolian security, he asked in Spanish, “Are you lost, Grandmother?”

            The woman turned to look up at him.  Her features were delicate—she looked like a strong wind could blow her away—but the dusting of gold glitter on her eyelashes was definitely not Hispanic and her eyes were green. 

            “Wait a moment,” Randall said, dropping back to English, then he switched to his imperfect Iotic.  “My apologies.  You are not to be Angela’s grandmother, you are Del’s aunt!”

            “Why, so I am,” she agreed. 

            He was congratulating himself on finally recognizing a prominent Skolian when he realized that he had just addressed the Ruby Pharaoh, ruler of nine hundred star systems, using the informal phrasing that Iotic reserved for family, close friends, and lovers.  Both Del and Kelric preferred the informal mode, rather than the formal phrases Ambassador Tron insisted were appropriate between even equal-ranked colleagues, much less when addressing royalty.  Randall, lacking Del’s talent with languages and raised in Southern California’s relentlessly informal culture, had resorted to the forms with which he was most familiar.  The result had been unforgivably over-familiar.

            The stringer player blushed scarlet and bowed hastily.  “My greetings, Pharaoh Dyhe…Diyhe…?”

            “Dyhianna,” she provided, her green eyes sparkling with sympathetic amusement.  “Which is why everybody calls me Dehya except Councilor Tikal, when he’s being exceptionally tiresome.” 

            Del was right.  Ruler of a third of the settled galaxy or not, his aunt was delightful.  Randall couldn’t help himself.  In mock protest, he objected, “But Ambassador Tron is work so hard to teach everybody, how polite to be!” 

            His effort won him a trilling laugh, then the Pharaoh sobered.  “There are times when formal courtesy is necessary, particularly when people who don’t much like each other have no choice but to work toward a common goal.  Showing respect is the simplest way to build trust, after all.”  She grinned suddenly, looking rather like an urchin planning a particularly clever prank, or like her nephew Del when he was in a mood for mischief.  “On the other hand, it’s deadly dull, and I for one avoid it when possible.”

            Randall laughed.  He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised to find that Del’s aunt refused to stand on ceremony unless it was absolutely necessary.  He had yet to meet a member of the Ruby Dynasty who did.

            The Pharaoh’s head cocked sideways, birdlike, and she asked, “I don’t suppose you could tell me where my scapegrace nephew is hiding?”

            “Del is change clothes to work outside after singing practice,” he answered.  “I can show.”

            “Thank you, Mr. Ga…Gaithers?”  She pronounced his last name correctly, but with some of the same caution Devon Majda had displayed.

            “Kelric—Imperator Skolia—tell me ‘Randall’ is more easy than ‘Gaithers’ to say for people speaking Iotic usually,” he offered, leading the way down the hall.

            “Indeed it is, Randall,” the Ruby Pharaoh agreed.

¹Jays are corvids, and like their larger cousins the magpies, crows, and ravens, they are smart, opportunistic, highly territorial, and have the ability to recognize individuals of other species.  Thus, they easily remember which people are likely to have peanuts in their pockets and might be persuaded to surrender them.  Western scrub jays adapt readily to urban forests and with only a little patience, can be trained to hand-feed.  Videos of this are common on you-tube; two of the best can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuMr4iexAAI and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNRAjEe9t1w

My resident pair is better trained, however: they will actually stay on my hand and crack the peanut before grabbing the nutmeat and flying off.

Chapter 38

In which General Fitz McLane seeks diplomatic advice from a decidedly undiplomatic source.

            Just how paranoid the situation had made his own government was brought home to Randall when he left the hardware store, bag of latches and fasteners in hand, and discovered a military transport waiting for him by the bicycle rack.

            “Oh, for goodness sake,” he groaned in disgust.  “I should never have mentioned where I was going where Mac could hear.  Or was it Cameron who blabbed?”

            “Put your bicycle in the back and get in, son,” General Fitz McLane said, declining to name his informant.  “I need to talk to you.”

            Grumbling, the stringer player obeyed, perching on the seat next to the general.  Sitting at the controls in front, a frowning Major Baxton eased the vehicle into the traffic stream.  When he went left at the corner instead of right, it became clear that he was under orders to take the long way around.

            “So, General,” Randall demanded, making no effort to hide his impatience with this cloak-and-dagger meeting.  “What’s so urgent that you drive out to Annandale to corner me at the hardware store, instead of comming me like a civilized person?”

            “The Ruby Pharaoh’s visit,” McLane answered succinctly. 

            “What about it?  And why can’t you find out what you want to know from Cameron and Mac?  It’s their job to talk to you.  My job is to play in the band.”

            “Sergeant Cameron and Mac Tyler don’t have quite as much access to the Ruby Dynasty.  You probably know things that they’ve missed.”

            Randall shrugged.  “I do know that, outside of the whole business with the song, Del is looking forward to his aunt’s visit.  Now that I’ve met her, so am I.  She’s a wonderful lady.” 

            General McLane frowned.  “Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that the Ruby Pharaoh is a harmless old auntie,” he warned.  “She’s the most dangerous, least predictable member of the Ruby Dynasty, even if she does look like a fragile porcelain doll.”

            “She’s powerful, yes,” Randall agreed, more than a little taken aback by this description.  “She is the Ruby Pharaoh.  But dangerous and unpredictable?”

            The General met his eyes levelly.  “Yes.  She overthrew her own government, after all.  Besides, the Eubians didn’t agree to stop blocking the treaty on condition that she scrub their meshes of that damned song on a whim.  They did it because they firmly believe that she—and only she—can do it.  Have you thought about what that means, Mr. Gaithers?  The Eubians—who have spent centuries gathering intelligence on the Ruby Dynasty—have absolute confidence that Del’s favorite auntie can gain command-level access to every single planetary mesh and sub-mesh in all three human empires.  No matter what security protects them.”

            “If you’re so worried about it, why did you go along with the treaty in the first place?” Randall asked.

            “Two reasons,” McLane answered.  “First, President Loughten has chosen to sign this treaty and she is my Commander-in-Chief.  I know the Eubians and Skolians think we’re slightly insane to have civilian control of the military, but the tradition has worked well for us and I for one have no intention of trying to change it.  And second, we can’t win a war against the Eubian Concorde.  Or the Skolian Imperialate, either.  If they agree on this, the best we can do is go along with it gracefully.  It’s not as if we can stop the security breech, after all.”

            “Oh, come on,” Randall scoffed, shaking his head.  “It’s not as if Del’s Aun…the Ruby Pharaoh can just wander through ASC’s secured mesh at will, any time she wants to.  There has to be one of their fancy meshnodes with a Kylespace link first.”  The stringer player was fairly sure of that, at least, because he’d overheard Del and his mother talking about having to make sure there were working telops at all the central nodes at the Skolian embassies in Eubian and Allied space.

            General McLane gave the stringer player the Look one reserves for somebody who has said something particularly stupid.  “Exactly what sort of meshnode do you think your good friend the Imperator installed at that fancy estate of yours?”

            Randall blinked in surprise.  “You mean I’m playing Panda Commando on a Kylespace-linked meshnode?” he yelped.

            The General shrugged.  “We haven’t been able to get a close look at it, but we’re pretty sure it is.  It sure deflects hacks way better than a purely mechanical node.”  He smiled thinly.  “Either the Ruby Dynasty really, really wants Del not to have an excuse not to phone home regularly, or they thought it might be handy to be able to access Earth’s mesh at will.”

            The stringer player considered, then shrugged.  “My guess is, more the former than the latter.  Del’s mother was royally pissed at him for not calling her more often. Pun intended.”  He couldn’t resist adding, “Besides, nobody in Del’s family is at all concerned about hacking any Allied security they please.”

            “I noticed,” McLane said sourly.  He looked down at his hands glumly for a moment, then continued.  “Given that we can’t keep the Ruby Pharaoh out of Earth’s mesh, that brings us back to making the best of things.  That starts with making the Ruby Pharaoh’s visit as pleasant as possible.  We don’t want her in a bad mood while she’s tiptoeing through ASC’s secure meshnodes.”  He looked up at Randall, somewhat skeptically.  “Which is where you come in.  Has anyone let slip any information about small luxuries she likes?  A taste for Belgian chocolates, maybe?  Or a favorite coffee blend we could serve at the State dinner to welcome her to Earth?”

            Randall rolled his eyes.  “Right.  Because State dinners have been working so well for you, lately.”

            The General actually winced.  The official welcome for Roca Skolia had placed President Loughten back in the hospital for a week, as the medics repaired the damage to her reopened shoulder wound.  “There are diplomatic forms that must be observed, to avoid giving unforgivable offense to the Imperialate,” he protested, a little weakly.

            “Bullshit.”  Randall looked the commanding officer of Allied Space Command in the eye, something that didn’t even strike him as strange any more, and said, “It’s the Ruby Dynasty you don’t want to offend.  I do know that Del and his mother are both worried that the Pharaoh will over-extend herself with this stunt, and that empaths generally don’t handle crowds well.  To me, that says the last thing the Pharaoh needs is to be paraded before hundreds of self-proclaimed Washington insiders looking for a photo op.”

            Major Baxton pulled over to the side of the road at the command post from which ASC was coordinating their outer security perimeter around Del’s estate.  Six uniformed Marines snapped to attention when they saw their commanding officer in the back seat.  Randall ignored them and reached for the door handle.

            “It would be an unforgivable snub not to have our President officially welcome the Ruby Pharaoh to Earth,” McLane pointed out as the stringer player hopped out of the vehicle.

            “Fine,” Randall shrugged, and reached for his bicycle.  “But why does a State dinner have to part of it?  Why can’t the President just come out to Annandale and welcome her here?  That shoulder injury offers a perfect excuse to give the Skolians what they’d prefer.  Hell, if food has to be part of an official welcome, she can bring the kids along and take pot luck.  I’m sure Melanie would love a chance to pet the pony again.”

            Without waiting for a reply, he pedaled away.

            “It’s an interesting idea,” President Loughten’s aide Lauren admitted at the following morning’s breakfast Cabinet meeting, after McLane brought up Randall’s advice.  “Although I can already hear the screams of horror from our protocol experts and the accusations of censorship from newsies across the known galaxy.”

            “How much do you trust your source’s judgment, Fitz?”  The President took a carefully measured sip from the one, precious cup of morning coffee the medics would allow and returned to the scrambled egg whites they insisted would provide her body with the protein required to heal her shoulder.  As usual, they were a flavorless, gelatinous mess.  The dry wheat toast wasn’t any better. 

            “Randall Gaithers is twenty-seven years old and has no patience whatsoever for official diplomacy,” the General admitted.  “He also comes from Southern California, where the informal backyard barbeque is considered an appropriate form for official state functions.”  He took a less-than-diplomatic sip from his third cup of the excellent White House coffee and shrugged.  “On the other hand, Gaithers has more and better access to the Ruby Dynasty than anybody else we can consult.  If he says they’re worried that a State dinner will over-stress the Pharaoh, I have to assume that they are.”

            “Pharaoh Dyhianna is known to be a recluse,” Lauren observed. 

            “That didn’t stopped her from going out and conquering her own government.”  Fitz spread his hands in frank admission that the source of his information might not be completely reliable.  He looked around at the other Cabinet officials who had gathered for the morning briefing.  “Gaithers does have a point that the President’s injury offers us a legitimate excuse to forgo a more formal welcome, if we want to take it.”

            “I’ll take it under advisement,” the President agreed, and the conversation moved on to the appropriation of funds for disaster relief on Varnen Seven, where unseasonal floods on the one habitable continent had caused widespread destruction.

            At the end of the following day’s groundbreaking session, at which no less than three technical details of an admittedly minor treaty sub-clause regarding the textile trade were clarified, Lauren sought out Roca Skolia for a woman-to-woman chat.  With unfeigned candor and concern, she admitted that the President was recovering slowly from her latest encounter with the surgeons and could not easily face another State dinner so soon.  Would Skolian-Allied relations be irretrievably tarnished if President Loughten offered the Ruby Pharaoh an official welcome from the Allied Worlds of Earth in a more informal, less taxing setting?

            As it turned out, Skolian-Allied relations would not suffer in the least.  The event was delayed until Saturday evening, both to allow the children to attend without violating school-night curfews and to give Kelric, who had finished cleaning up the mess the pirates had made of Quivan Five, time to return to Earth.  While Fitz McLane found the return of the Imperator and his flagship a mixed blessing, Eddie Loughten was so excited about the prospect of seeing his “Gold Man” again that he refused to nap at all for two days in a row, lest he miss the treat.  This left him tired enough sleep a full two hours after lunch on Saturday, much to his mother’s relief.

            The protocol aides of both empires had been horrified when they learned that President Loughten was to officially welcome the Ruby Pharaoh to Earth at a potluck barbeque held at the estate of her nephew the holorock star.  Camp David at least had historic tradition going for it, they argued, but a nowhere, unincorporated suburb like Annandale?  At an event and venue to which the Press Corps was absolutely verboten?  With a guest list that would not include most of the Washington power brokers?  It simply wasn’t done they insisted, loudly and to no avail.  More wails of outrage accompanied Del’s flat refusal to do away with his accustomed buffet-style serving and open seating, or to delay the meal to a properly late, political-Washington hour. 

            Deprived of the chance to negotiate seating plans, orders of precedence, and other diplomatic ways of thumbing their collective noses at the opposing team, the protocol aides occupied their time choreographing the initial meeting of the two potentates and their retinues down to the second.  The Allied party was to enter the building through the main entrance and proceed at a stately, measured pace to the dining hall, where the Skolian dignitaries would be waiting.  Halfway across the room they would stop, and everyone except President Loughten would bow to the Ruby Pharaoh and Imperator.  At exactly the same moment, all the Skolians except the Pharaoh and Imperator would bow to President Loughten.  The three principals would nod in acknowledgement.  The two parties would draw closer and pause again, while Prince Del-Kurj, as the official host of the occasion, formally welcomed his guests to his home.  The Allied party would then approach to something resembling a normal conversational distance, at which point the Secretary of State and Ambassador Tron would introduce the members of the two parties, alternating back and forth in strict order of precedence, ending with the Ruby Pharaoh. 

            The introductions made, President Loughten would make a gracious speech welcoming the Pharaoh to Earth, humanity’s home, and extolling the virtues of peace.  The Ruby Pharaoh would respond with a speech of her own.  Everybody in both official parties had been drilled exhaustively on their marks, their lines, the proper style and depth of bow, and every other detail of the proceedings. 

            The Presidential cavalcade arrived mid-afternoon.  Fitz McLane helped Hannah Loughten out of the limo and offered her his arm.  The Secretary of State and several aides fell into place behind and their party was shown into the bare-raftered dining hall where Anne Moore’s wedding had taken place.  A small but equally elite group of Skolians awaited them: the Ruby Pharaoh, her sister the Foreign Affairs Councilor, the Imperator, Princes Del-Kurj and Havyrl, several aides and attaches, and Ambassador Tron. 

            The President’s children had, of course, been deemed too young to participate in this initial meeting.  Unfortunately, the aide responsible for watching them had other duties as well.  He watched Melanie and Eddie wiggling with excitement, and knew from hard experience that the situation would degenerate into a full-blown squabble in short order if nothing was done. He had been hired because he had proved himself to be willing and able to think outside the letter of his orders and take the initiative, when necessary.  Opening the limo’s door, he shooed all three children out onto the half-acre of lawn around the house.

            “Go run off your excess energy and stay out of trouble until we can rejoin your mother,” he ordered. 

            Then the hapless aide made the mistake of answering his com, forgetting that the children had spent several weeks at the estate and knew all the back ways.  By the time the aide finished his call, the children had already ducked through a side entrance, searching for the friends they had made during their stay.

            Inside, the Allied party had almost reached their marks, halfway across the dining hall.  The President’s aides were frantically trying to remember exactly how deeply each was to bow, and to whom.  The non-royal elements of the Skolian party, for whom bowing was a normal part of state etiquette, were more worried about making sure they didn’t bow that crucial fraction of a second before the Allied party, and thus lose face for the Imperialate. 

            The bows were accomplished with almost military precision by the Skolians and in an approximately simultaneous wave by the Allieds.  The Allied guests advanced and Del took the prescribed six steps forward, trying to remember his lines.  He knew the forms in Iotic, of course, but they did not translate easily into the less formal English.  As everybody stopped and looked at each other, there was a clatter behind the swinging doors that led to the kitchen, loud in the momentary silence.  Then three small figures burst through, chattering at the top of their voices.  Not having spent the past week being drilled by a protocol team, they ran straight for their host and offered their own idea of a proper greeting.

            “Hi, Del!” Sasha cried, beating out her sister to hug the prince.  “We came to visit you.  Where are Babica and Angela and Juan-Carlos and…”

            Melanie, blocked from her initial charge by her larger sister, grabbed their mother’s hand instead and pulled her toward the Skolians.  “Mommy, come say hi to Del and Vyrl and Roca and everybody.  Then we can go outside and see the pony!”

            Eddie had his own priorities.  “Gold Man!” he cried, scattering the Skolian aides aside and flinging himself at Kelric.  In the process, the stuffed toy Jag that Kelric had given him at Del’s Baltimore concert went flying.  One of the Abjai bodyguards fielded it neatly before it could land in the lemonade bowl and returned it.

            The formal diplomatic moment the protocol aides had worked so hard to create was irretrievably lost.  That was fine with Del.  He’d never cared much for formal diplomacy.  He grinned broadly and hugged Sasha back.

            “I’m glad you could come!” he said.

            By this point, Melanie had dragged the President over, chattering nonstop about the stable, the pony, the cow, and the chickens.  The rest of the Allied retinue straggled behind them in various degrees of confusion.  Down the hall, Del’s band, hearing childish voices in the dining hall, released the estate’s own pack of children to join the party. They swept in, calling loud and enthusiastic greetings to Sasha and her sister in three languages.

            Del spread his arms in feigned helplessness, returned Melanie’s hug of greeting, and fell back on the familiar traditions of the Lyshrioli Bards.  First among them was one ironclad rule.  “Never, ever try to upstage a child,” his father had often warned.  “It doesn’t work, it frustrates the child, and it makes you look ridiculous.”

            “Welcome to Annandale, all of you,” he greeted the Allied party, summarizing the three-page speech that had been written for him.  “Come meet the rest of my family.”

            After that rough beginning, the unscripted portion of the day went smoothly.  Sasha and Melanie showed their mother around the estate, with particular emphasis on the stable and the equine- and bovine-feeding virtues of carrots.  Del and Vyrl accompanied them to make sure no small fingers got nipped.

            When the supply of carrots was temporarily exhausted, Sasha and Melanie joined an impromptu soccer match that the estate’s children (and some of their parents) were holding on the lawn.  The adults returned to the dining hall, where they found the Allied and Skolian retinues bravely jousting, trying to score diplomatic points on each other while everybody else pretty much ignored them.  In and among the guests, the estate’s employees worked to set up the buffet.

            Chef Choong Lee had taken to heart the pretense of an informal “pot luck barbeque,” despite having the military and civilian leadership of half the human species in attendance.  He had slow-roasted a pork shoulder, smoked it with some of the wood he’d saved when the apple trees were pruned, and served it with fresh corn tortillas.  There was also a dish he called “random roast vegetable soup,” which started with orange squash and added roasted carrots, onions, garlic, and anything else that was sitting around.  These offerings went surprisingly well with the fresh bread, kimchi, and bread-and-butter pickles that went on the table at every evening meal.

            Del left President Loughten in the care of his mother and aunt, grabbed a glass of iced tea, and set out for the corner where his brother Kelric stood conversing with Fitz McLane.  The conversation was somewhat hampered by Eddie’s attempts to use the Imperator’s broad chest as a runway for his stuffed Jag.  For some reason, the Allied general seemed to find this disconcerting.

            Fitz was apparently still trying to make sense of what he’d seen during Del’s search of the Gettysburg Kylenode.  “…But my experts tell me that the program you left in the node was reprogrammed to refine and control the search parameters while it was running.  What I don’t understand is how your brother was able to control the program so directly from a virtual reality simulation.”

            “Oh, that part was easy,” Del explained with a shrug, interjecting himself uninvited into the conversation.  “I told the fruven to find and catch those gorples who attacked us, so it did.” 

            “You told the…fruven…to catch gorples?”

            “Yup.” The singer frowned at his brother.  “A real fruven isn’t nearly that cooperative, though.”

            “Fruven are fussy, argumentative creatures at the best of times,” the Imperator agreed blandly, turning his face aside to protect his eyes as Eddie’s stuffed Jag performed a particularly acrobatic maneuver.  “Just like lyrine.  Why do you think I prefer Jags and tau missiles?”

Chapter 39

In which Ricki Varento plays with really rad meshware.

            The morning after the reception to welcome the Ruby Pharaoh to Earth, Del and his band held their regular rehearsal in the estate’s studio, ironing out some of the remaining wrinkles in the new songs they would start recording on Monday.  Halfway through the session, the studio’s door opened and two figures slipped quietly inside.  Jud and Randall were too busy hotly debating the merits of alternative riffs to notice, but Anne froze when she saw them, her drumstick suspended.  Del was standing with his back to the door, but he didn’t have to look at these particular visitors to notice them, at least not when his barriers were partially down.

            “We’ll do it Jud’s way before the second and third choruses,” he decided, breaking into the incipient argument.  “He’s right, we need simplicity there.  Randall, I like what you came up with, too.  We’ll use it for an instrumental break between verses three and four.  Jud, can the two of you pass that theme back and forth a few times to build the tension?  Then a flourish from Anne, and we go to the final verse.”

            Jud, who was the best music arranger among them, stared off into space for a moment.  His lips moved as he mentally envisioned the effect, then he nodded.  “Yeah, that’ll work.”

            “Good.”  Del turned to greet the visitors in Iotic.  “My greetings, Aunt Dehya, Kelric.  What brings you here?”

            “Your song,” his aunt replied.  “The one that’s sent three empires to the brink of war, and then to the peace table.  That’s quite an accomplishment, you know.”

            Iotic had remained the language of choice for the Skolian noble houses for a good reason: it was very, very precise at conveying nuances of social status and favor.  In this instance, Dehya’s choice of phrasing made it clear to Del, if not the others, that she and Kelric were here in their official capacity as Web keys, but that she, at least, was firmly on the side of Del and his band.

            “I know,” he agreed, following her lead with regards to form.  “It will be hard to see it vanish.”

            Dehya looked at him thoughtfully, then at the rest of the band, each in turn.  “Three empires have agreed that your song’s disappearance is a fair price to pay for avoiding another war.  In the end, though, music belongs to the people who create it, not to their governments.  We wanted to make sure that you agree, too.  All of you.”

            Jud, Anne, and Randall nodded slowly, leaving Del to respond for them.  “We agree that preventing another war is worth the loss of the song.  But we don’t want our listeners to think that we are withdrawing Carnelians because it isn’t true.  We feel we owe them an honest explanation of why the vids they paid for—or pirated, in the case of the Eubians—won’t play the song any more.  We’ve come up with something.  We were going to use it instead of Carnelians on our next anthology.”  He nodded to Anne, who tapped out a rhythm.  Jud and Randall joined in, and a moment later Del sang the Iotic version.

            When they had finished the short piece, Del asked, “Would it be possible to replace Carnelians with that, instead of just erasing it altogether?”

            Dehya nodded thoughtfully.  “I think so.  The two songs associate well.”

            “Can you have it ready to go in four days?” Kelric asked.

            Del frowned.  “We like our current arrangement.  Bonnie’s coming over tomorrow afternoon, so we can record the music portion then.  The slow step is production.  We know exactly what we want for the visuals, but it usually takes Ricki a week or two to find appropriate images, get the rights to use them, and blend them into the recording.”

            Dehya shook her head.  “That’s too long.  The treaty will be signed tomorrow.  The portion requiring us to remove your song goes into effect four days later.”  She tilted her head sideways and looked at Del thoughtfully.  “What sort of images are you after?”

            Del mentally ran through the song, imagining the embellishments he and the others had discussed.  “Ideally, we’d want images that illustrate the price all three empires paid during the Radiance Wars.  Images that will make it clear to all our fans just how much they, personally, had to lose if we’d refused to let go of Carnelians Finale.”

            Dehya nodded decisively.  “You work out what images you want, Del, in as much detail as you can.  Get your Ricki over here tomorrow night, while Kelric and I are in the Kyle, and we’ll all go look for them.”

            Kelric chuckled, dropping back to the least-formal mode of Iotic that he preferred.  “Do you have a Highton version of the song, as well as English and Iotic?  I’d like to see the Aristos try to convince their people that we’re apologizing for your ‘subversive propaganda’ when their restless slaves have heard your side of it.”

            Del grinned back at his brother.  “Oh, yes.  I’ve translated it into Highton.”

            Monday morning, the band reported to one of Prime-Nova’s studios for their recording session, so that Ricki and the choreographers and techs could debate how to stage the three new songs for their new anthology and for live performance.  Halfway through, Zachary Marksman poked his head into the studio.

            “New songs?” he inquired, as usual not waiting for a reply.  “Good!  Just make sure they work with that Carnelians thing.  It’s still your most popular song, so we’re re-releasing it on your new anthology.”

            “I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Del said.

            “Why not?”  The Tech-mech King glared at Del in a fashion designed to make it clear which of them was the corporate vice-president in the designer suit and which the hired talent who pranced around stage in revealing costumes. 

            Unfortunately for Zachary, his star performer was immune to such set-downs.

            “It isn’t possible because the treaty your government just finalized with the Skolian Imperialate and Eubian Concord, and which is being signed and ratified even as we speak, requires that all copies of Carnelians Finale be permanently withdrawn from circulation on the mesh in any form.”

            “That’s censorship!” Zachary barked reflexively.  “Freedom of speech!”

            “One of many freedoms that the non-Aristo slaves of the Concord don’t enjoy,” Del pointed out.

            “This isn’t the Eubian Concord, kid.  The song is Prime-Nova’s intellectual property, not the government’s.  It’s not obscene, the copyright is clear, and if the government tries to force us to censor it, we’ll tie them up in legal knots and go right on selling it.”  Zachary seemed to think this settled the matter. “Don’t worry, Arden, Lantham already put Legal on it last week.  They’ll stall enforcement of that treaty for as long as the anthology sells.  You just make sure the new songs go with it.”

            “Your legal team will tell you that a treaty entered into by your government supercedes Prime-Nova’s commercial interests,” Mac warned the Tech-mech King from his seat by the side of the stage.  “You might be able to sue for eventual compensation of some sort, but you won’t be able to sell copies of Carnelians Finale after the treaty goes into effect on Friday.”

            “I don’t see why our government would agree to such a thing.”  Zachary shook his head.  “What do they have to gain by it?”

            “A peace treaty,” Mac said.  “The first ever among all three human empires.”

            “That’s all well and good,” Zachary dismissed universal peace with a wave of one hand, “but what’s in it for Prime-Nova?  We’re the ones who suffer if we lose a hit song.”

            “Prime-Nova benefits when our customers don’t have to worry about being blown to bits,” Ricki pointed out, unsurprised at this display of single-minded corporate greed.  “War is very bad for the entertainment business, most times.”

            “It’s a typical carrot-and-stick Trader deal,” Del explained.  “If the song is scrubbed, well and good, they’ll let us finalize our peace treaty.  If the song is still out there on Saturday, the Traders will consider it an act of war by the Allied Worlds and respond in kind.”

            “The Eubians don’t want another war,” Zachary protested.  “They’re still recovering from the last one.”

            “It wouldn’t be a war, just an easy, profitable conquest,” Del said quietly.

            “Del’s right,” Mac agreed reluctantly.  “The Eubian Concord probably couldn’t take the Imperialate at present; they lost too much in the last war.  On the other hand, the Imperialate’s losses were also tremendous—probably too severe to protect themselves and help us, too.”

            “If the Eubians used their freelance pirate fleets to tie down ISC,” Del admitted, “the Allied Worlds would make a fat, easy target for their military.  You’d all be wearing slave collars in short order, and I don’t think you’d appreciate that particular fashion accessory.”

            “General McLane agrees with that analysis,” Randall added.

            Zachary’s lip curled and he looked down his substantial nose at the stringer player.  “Since when do you know a five-star general, Randall Gaithers?”

            Randall was no longer even slightly intimidated by mere corporate vice-presidents.  He grinned ironically at the band manager.  “Since Mac introduced us.”

            Mac nodded confirmation of Randall’s claim and Zachary gave up that digression in favor of a return to his main point.  “The Eubians aren’t going to start a war over one holorock song,” he insisted.  “They must be bluffing.” 

            “Kelric is pretty sure they’re not bluffing,” Del said with a shrug.  “And as my oversized baby brother is so fond of pointing out, he’s got the best covert intelligence service in three empires.”

            “Covert intelligence service?”  Zachary shook his head in confusion.  “Your baby brother?” 

            “Imperator Skolia,” Mac elaborated.

            The Tech-mech King promptly dismissed that information as too strange to process and inconsistent with his mental image of Del as talented meat for the Prime-Nova grinder.  “They can’t force us to stop marketing the song without due process in a court of law.  Even if we end up losing in court, that will take more than long enough for your anthology to have a nice long stay on the top ten list.”

            “You can’t market what you don’t have,” Del pointed out.  “A week from now, there won’t be a copy of the Carnelians Finale surviving in human-occupied space.”

            Zachary snorted.  “It isn’t possible to erase a song that’s gone viral from the mesh.”

            “It isn’t, mostly,” the prince agreed.  “Unless you can simultaneously control all the planetary meshes from a root node.  That’s why the Traders are willing to make such a huge concession: they need the Kyleweb Keys for this.”

            “Kyleweb Keys?” Zachary barked, clearly annoyed by Del’s continued use of what he considered gibberish.  “What are Kyleweb Keys?  Some of that fancy Skolian mesh tech?”

            “Not what,” Mac corrected.  “Who. 

            “Kelric and my Aunt Dehya,” Del elaborated.  “Most especially Aunt Dehya, for this.”

            “Your Aunt Dehya?” 

            “The Shadow Pharaoh,” Mac elaborated.  “Her command of the meshes is unparalleled.”

            “We’ll refuse to allow access to our company mesh without due process of law,” Zachary growled.  “And our mesh security is the best money can buy.”

            Del laughed in spontaneous, whole-hearted amusement.  “Your security is not designed to block a Kyle-based attack.  Trust me, it won’t even slow Aunt Dehya down.”

            “We’ll hire experts on these Kyle-based attacks.”

            “Zachary, don’t waste Prime-Nova’s money on a charlatan.” Del kept his voice calm, trying to reach through the denial.  “The only person who can even theoretically block a Key is another Key, and while Father might have been subtle enough to hide something from Aunt Dehya if she wasn’t specifically looking for it, Kelric is about as subtle as a bludgeon.  Besides, he’s never been happy that I signed with Prime-Nova.”  He waited a moment, then continued, “Be content with the new songs.  They’re good ones.”

            As Del spoke, Zachary Marksman’s shoulders slumped in grudging defeat, finally admitting the theoretical possibility that he would not be able to bluster his way past this particular roadblock.  That didn’t prevent him from throwing a defiant order over his shoulder as he left the studio:  “Arden, from now on, keep your family business to yourself!”

            “It can’t be done,” Ricki protested that evening, after Del had lured her into his private recording studio and explained what he wanted.  With the Pharaoh and Imperator returned to space after the treaty signing, she had finally agreed to spend an evening at the Annandale estate.  “Not in four days.  Not even for a short song.”

            “I’ve seen you work, Ricki,” her almost-fiancé argued.  “You play that console of yours as expertly as Jud plays his morpher.”

            “It’s not the production itself,” she explained.  “It takes time to find good images, and more time to get permission to use them.  Without permission, I can’t touch an image.”

            “Prime-Nova must have a standard release form for such permissions.”

            “Of course.  The copyright owners of each picture have to sign it. Once I have those, yes, putting it together can be done quickly…if you’re willing to settle for something that looks like a rush job.  It takes time to crop and layer images and smooth out transitions, zooms, fades, and the rest.”

            “Is that all?”  Del’s irrepressible grin lit up his face, and he took her hand, leading her toward the mesh console.  “Perhaps Prime-Nova’s meshware is just slow and clunky, like most Allied programming.  I’ve got an excellent system here, and with Bonnie’s help, we have a good recording.  Let’s see what we can do with it.”

            Ricki knew Prime-Nova had the best meshware in the business.  Any non-purpose-built private mesh system paled in comparison.  Still, she couldn’t help returning his smile.  Whatever else her relationship with this prince from a distant star might be, it was never boring. 

            She remained skeptical after Del played her the recording and explained what he wanted in more detail.  Still, the challenge intrigued her, and it wouldn’t hurt to show her holorock star lover some of the hard work that went into making his vids look good.  She looked at the mesh access console and frowned.  While the recording equipment had been purchased locally, apparently the mesh link had not.  “This keyboard uses Skolian glyphs.”

            “It does?”  Being illiterate, Del probably hadn’t noticed which alphabet was printed on the keyboard he couldn’t use anyway.  He shrugged.  “I usually use this link through a VR interface, with voice controls.  Let me get that running.”

            Ricki could see that this session wasn’t going to be productive.  Still, she had agreed to try.  She waited while Del sang a dozen notes that brought the screen to life, then settled into the chair in front of it.  “All right, your theme is the cost of war.  But first we have to set the stage: the vastness of space.”

            “What about using shots of the sky at the beginning of each version?  As seen from orbit above the capitol world of the empire I’m addressing?”

            “That would work,” she agreed, once again seeking to show Del the complexity of the task.  “But you’d need a high-quality, panoramic shot.  Like something that would be taken at a good observatory—and academics are notoriously slow to respond to use requests from entertainment producers.”

            Del shrugged.  “Let’s see what we can come up with, anyway.”  He briefly addressed the console in Skolian, and it responded in the same language using a deep, rumbling voice that sounded almost familiar, although she couldn’t remember where she’d heard one like it before.  “I’d better expand the screen space, too.”  A moment later, the walls of the chamber lit up with a starscape that prominently featured an unfamiliar world: white clouds swirling over a verdant globe, densely populated, judging from the sparkling cities that formed a network through the half that was in shadow.  It was a busy hub: no less than three space stations were visible, floating like toys in the vastness of space.  Despite the sketchiness of the search query, the image was of startlingly high quality.

            “There’s Parthonia,” Del said.  The picture shifted to a darker, less busy world surrounded by a multitude of small, brightly colored moons.  “Glory…”  The picture shifted again, this time to a familiar blue-and-white planet with a single, outsized moon.  “…And Earth,” he concluded unnecessarily. 

            Ricki stared at the image of her planet.  It was familiar, and not in a generalized sense.  Those dense clouds over the Midwest…  She keyed a weather report on her com, and it was as she’d suspected.  The cloud patterns were the same, although the perspective was a little different.  “That’s a very recent shot,” she said.  “Has your system hacked into the weather satellites?  If so, we can’t use it.  I told you, we have to have permission, on record, for any non-public domain image we use.”

            Her com chimed.  She frowned; she thought she’d told it not to bother her with meshmail this evening.  Pulling it out of her pocket, she glared at the screen in irritation.

            The screen showed a new message from an unfamiliar address that looked like random characters.  Spamazoola, then, but it was flagged high priority.  She called it up to discover what spam artist had broken through Prime-Nova’s meshmail filters and discovered three signed copies of Prime-Nova’s release form, meticulously filled out to allow the use of the starscapes to illustrate any live or recorded performance by Del Arden and his band.  She couldn’t read the signatures—they were written in the same Skolian glyphs as the keyboard.  The accompanying message, however, was in English:  “Compliments of Devon Majda.”

            “Del.”  She looked at her lover with growing suspicion.  “Who is Devon Majda?”

            “She’s the captain of Kelric’s flagship, Roca’s Pride,” Del said, as casually as if he were talking about the bartender on a friend’s private space yacht.  “A Firestorm battle cruiser has sensors to equal any academic telescope, as you see.  The Earth and Parthonia starscapes are real-time; the other one is archival.” 

            Ricki could feel the blood drain from her face.  “What kind of game are you trying to play with me, Del?” she demanded.

            “It isn’t a game,” he corrected her sharply.  Indeed, Ricki thought, he was atypically serious.  It gave him a certain dignity that somehow turned the fallen-angel holorock star into a real prince, a persona he usually shunned. 

            “If it’s not a game, how come the captain of the Skolian flagship is sending me images for your vid?” she demanded.  “For that matter, how is she sending me a real-time view of Parthonia at all?”

            Del nodded at the keyboard with its strange glyphs and answered her second question first, “The Kyleweb, of course.  This console accesses the estate’s Kylespace-linked meshnode.  I can use the VR system as a telop link, too.” 

            A telop link to the Kyleweb.  She was looking at an example of the Skolian Imperialate’s legendary secret communications hardware: lost technology from the ancient Ruby Empire that nobody else could duplicate.  Even busy Skolian worlds seldom had more than one or two of them.  They could only be created and maintained by members of the reclusive Ruby dynasty.  Who happened to be her singing lover’s immediate family.

            “Kelric and Aunt Dehya both like the song,” Del continued, politely ignoring her consternation.  “They’re linking to the Kyleweb through the Command Chairs on Roca’s Pride and Pharaoh’s Shield, and they’ve agreed to help us finish the visuals off so that the song can be used to replace Carnelians Finale in four days.”

            As he spoke, images of two people appeared on the walls, as if they were floating in the starscape.  One was a tiny woman whose long black hair was streaked with grey.  She wore a simple white jumpsuit instead of the elegant dress the newsfeeds had shown, but Ricki still recognized her: Del’s aunt, the Ruby Pharaoh.  There was no such ambiguity about the other figure.  The massive gold statue in a beige pullover with ISC’s starburst on the front was Del’s unforgiving, disapproving brother, Imperator Skolia.  They both nodded to her in polite greeting.

            “There aren’t going to be any problems finding the images we want, Ricki,” Del assured her.  “Not with the ISC and Skolian government databases to look through.  There won’t be any delays while we wait for permission to use them, either.”

            Ricki stared at him for a long moment.  It was insane, that the resources of the Skolian Imperialate should be placed at the disposal of a mid-level Allied music producer to illustrate a holorock vid.  However, after the prompt response from the captain of the Skolian flagship, Ricki had to believe it.  She’d often wondered what she could do if she could arrange a vid to her liking, without the limitations working for Prime-Nova imposed.  Now she had the chance to find out.  Despite her misgivings, she couldn’t resist the challenge. 

            “All right,” she said, turning back to the main screen.  “We need images that evoke the waste and loss a war brings, without being so graphic that people look away to keep from losing their lunch.”

            “We can certainly locate plenty of those,” the image of Kelric Skolia said bleakly.  In perfectly understandable English.

            Ricki did a double-take.  “I thought your brother didn’t speak English?” she asked Del accusingly. “You used a translation program before.”  It had been months ago, when she and Del had taken a trip to the Moon together and he had told her he was a Ruby prince.  She hadn’t believed him, so she had tried to call his bluff by asking for an introduction to his aunt, the Ruby Pharaoh.  Instead, Kelric Skolia had answered the call.  Del had used a translation program so that she could understand what had turned into a monumental argument with his military brother.

            “He doesn’t speak English,” Del admitted.  “But a Kylespace link doesn’t carry sound, strictly speaking.  It carries thought.  As long as I think in English on my end, it works out.”

            An hour later, she stared at the images scattered over the screen.  Some showed the immediate costs of war:  ships exploding as space fleets engaged in battle, shattered buildings, desolated landscapes, memorials, and refugee camps.  Others, like the closed storefronts and downward-spiraling graphics, emphasized that a war’s economic costs harmed even those who were far from any actual battle.  They came from Skolian, Eubian, and Allied worlds, and each still image or clip was accompanied by a properly signed release form. 

            The English verse, they decided, would best be illustrated by images emphasizing the economic damage that trade loss and the arrival of waves of refugees had inflicted on the Allied Worlds during the two Radiance Wars.  The next verse, the Iotic translation, would move the imagery to the loss of life inflicted on the actual combatants and on the civilians who were unlucky enough to be caught too close to the conflict.  It would end with a clip showing the final, decisive battle in the First Radiance War:  the explosion that had claimed the lives of both Del’s half-brother, Imperator Kurj Skolia, and Eubian Emperor Ur Qox.  The final, Highton version would be accompanied by images of the Second Radiance War, with emphasis on the Imperialate’s successful raid on Glory.  During that raid, ISC forces under Del’s sister, Imperator Sauscony Skolia, had actually breached the security surrounding the Qox palace and captured Ur Qox’s son, Emperor Jaibriol the Second, the current Emperor’s father.  In retaliation, the ESCom defenses had shot down her shuttlecraft, killing captor and prisoner alike.

            “This is good material,” Ricki admitted, as she finished sorting the images and clips according to which verse they should accompany.  “Now we’ve got to blend the pictures and music together.”

            They set to work.  Del’s odd mesh interface didn’t have any of the software she usually used for production, but on the positive side, it was linked to essentially infinite processing power.  She soon discovered that if she could describe what she wanted to Del in sufficient detail, it happened. 

            It wasn’t just Del contributing, either.  Del’s Aunt Dehya—it was easier to think of Dyhianna Selei that way than as the Ruby Pharaoh, ruler of nine hundred planets—put together a breathtakingly beautiful, multifaceted graphic that detailed the economic collapse following the Second Radiance War and how it had devastated people in all three star empires.  Kelric Skolia lacked the artistic sensibility of his brother and aunt.  However, his ability to track down obscure material in the ISC databases was nothing short of extraordinary.

            Finally, after four of the most intense and creative hours of her career as a producer, she had Del play the whole song through from the beginning.  It was good.  Much better than anything she could have produced at Prime-Nova.  Nobody viewing it could have any doubts regarding what had been at stake, or why and under what circumstances Del had chosen to allow Carnelians Finale to be wiped from the meshes.    But.

            Something was still missing.  “We need something different to end it,” she decided.  “Something positive and upbeat.”

            Del considered.  “What about the treaty signing?”

            “An excellent idea,” Del’s aunt agreed, as his brother nodded.

            Ricki shook her head.  “Holovids of official state events like that are shot by newsies, or at least the good ones are.  They’re not going to come cheap, even if we can find a mesh service willing to let them be used for a holorock vid.  Besides, what we’d really want is an up-close, bird’s eye view of each signature being added.”

            Her com chimed twice as the wall lit up with images of the morning’s treaty signing ceremony, shot from two perspectives.  Both of which were a great deal closer to the historic event than the press box.

            “While we don’t generally like to consider ourselves cheaper than a newsie,” Del’s overlarge brother remarked blandly, “I think you’ll find enough to work with here.”

            She glanced down at her com, which as she had suspected had two more release forms added to the queue.  As she turned back to replay the images, she wondered how the folks at Legal were going to respond when they saw the names of the photographers:  Imperator Skolia and the Ruby Pharaoh.

            On Friday morning, Del got up before dawn, drew on the clothes he’d laid out the night before, and kissed the sleeping Ricki good-bye.  Then he slipped out the door, careful not to wake her.  He tiptoed down the stairs and exited the building through the same side door President Loughten’s children had used.

            The rest of his band was waiting for him outside.

            “We started this together,” Jud announced, handing him a cup of coffee.  “We’ll see it through together.” 

            “Or see you off, anyway,” Randall amended, taking a large bite out of a lemon poppy muffin.

            Del flashed them a nervous grin.  “Thanks, all of you.  That means a lot to me.”

            Cameron brought the van around.  Tyra and Ja’chmna were already inside, looking disgustingly alert.  Del and the band climbed in and Cameron set the vehicle into motion.  The van rolled through silent streets to the municipal airport, whose staff had long since gotten used to handling strange traffic at odd hours.  They waved Cameron through a service gate and he wound his way past sleeping light aircraft to where a Skolian military shuttle waited.

            Anne, Jud, and Randall stayed close to Del as they crossed the deserted concrete.  After silent hugs all around, Del and the two Jagernauts boarded the shuttle that would take them up to Roca’s Pride.  There, Del would use a more conventional telop link to join his brother and aunt in Kylespace while experienced staff tended his body.

            The shuttle lifted, dwindled into a pinpoint, and disappeared.

            “And there goes the King of Skyfall,” Jud said quietly.  “What an adventure it’s been!”

            “No kidding,” Randall agreed.

            “Let’s go home,” Anne suggested.

            “Yeah,” Jud seconded the motion.  “Breakfast should be about ready.”

            “Race you to the van!” Randall challenged them.  Glancing at Anne’s rounded belly, he added, “Last one there has to kiss Cameron!”

            He led the charge, Jud close on his heels.  Shaking her head, Anne waddled after them.  They were right: it was time to go home.

Epilog

            By Monday morning, every copy of “Carnelians Finale” in three empires had been scoured from the Kyleweb and its associated planetary meshes.  In place of the screaming indictment of Trader atrocities that had sent three empires to the brink of war, Del Arden fans received a musical apology in the same three languages:

            When Empires clash among the stars the cost can be profound.

            It’s paid by those who fight above and those upon the ground.

            It’s paid by worlds and creatures who don’t know that we exist,

            Their lives destroyed like eggshells crushed beneath a mighty fist.

            Once started, it is far too long before a war can cease.

            We’re sorry if you miss our song—it was the price of peace.

END
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