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the Bucyrus delegation near the door, disengaged himself, went to greet her,
kissed her hand. Arm-in-arm they promenaded, the ideal New Age couple,
handsome, gracious but aloof, his formal black-
and-reds a perfect complement to her full-dress silver flight satins. Their
heads bent together, they were smil-
ing, chatting intimately, approaching Bucyrus.
"Don't you ever wear a dress?" Chaeron breathed, his lips hardly moving.
"Do you?" Shebat gave back, her expression sweet.
They greeted Bucyrus, his two aides, a pair of pilots, drifted away. "Is alt
this necessary?"
"What?" Chaeron accepted wine from a passing host-
ess, scanned the sea of guests, turned aback to Shebat.
One sip later, he took both their glasses and put them on the same woman's
now-empty tray.
"Unending pomp, welcoming committees at slipbay with you conspicuously missing
from them, Batdy's escort of honor, that damn intelligencer of yours. I want
to talk to you . . ." Somewhere, music swelled.
"Shall we dance? It's our obligation to start this one."
He led her through a pair of double doors into an adjoin-
ing hall where live musicians played and chandeliers glit-
tered like stars.
She hung back, looking at the empty dance floor in consternation. "Chaeron, I
don't know how!"
Over his shoulder, he grinned at her. "I never thought of that. No matter,
we'll manage. Just follow my lead.
It's slow, so we can make a lovers' spectacle of ourselves in good
conscience."
Squinting, as if by that means she could lessen her cha-
grin, she let herself be escorted out into the middle of the room, the slick
floor jarringly hard beneath her boots.
Then he cradled her against him, his lips to her ear. "Re-
lax. Just step left and right when I do. Good. Now "
over his shoulder she could see other couples venturing out to join them
" talk to me. I've put the primary se-
curity matrix down for recalibration, the secondaries erase themselves when
anyone but myself tries to access retrieval; our guests can't detect the
secondaries, so their
272 JANET MORRIS
scanning shows them to be surveillance-free- It puts peo-
ple at ease, loosens tongues."
"There's Softa!" she said, then: "Thank you for invit-
ing him."
"My pleasure. We are expediting his exoneration . . .
or sponsoring a motion to that effect, at least. That is, assuming you still
intend to press for it?"
"I insist," she whispered, stiff against him.
"He'll want to talk to you, I warrant. I think you can tell him whatever you
like. I'd be interested in anything you hear."
"Why are you not objecting that we cannot maintain our stance as Sofia's
protector's in the face of Mara-
da's ?"
"Because I have no way of knowing what will happen.
Your cruiser's log shows me only what they wanted to show me."
"You have taken time to confer with the Marada, then, but had no time for me?"
"I had a very delicate meeting with the Bucyrus-Tabriz
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delegation which ran overlong. My apologies. I did try to make up for my
absence ..."
"With Bitsy? And Baldy? And Ward? Not one of them can construct a simple
declarative sentence. And I de-
brief to no one but you."
"So I found out." He winced as she stepped on his toe.
"If you ran the tog review, you know that I have been removed as Draconis
consul."
"But you are still heir apparent. Really, Shebat, didn't you expect that?
Marada urged you into office only to be able to demonstrate your
administrative unfitness by ousting you from it. He knew very well that you
would not stay deskbound. There is no tradition demanding that the heir
apparent hold consular rank. I warned you when first he proposed it, so
transparent was his purpose. If that is all that you lost in Draconis, we
shall consider ourselves fortunate."
"I almost called him back and offered to guarantee a halt to your secession if
he would actually step down in my favor, but the Marada thought you might
misconstrue my intent."
"I imagine I might have. Not to mention the obvious
275
EARTH DREAMS
fact that they were not seriously offering you anything.
As I said, I took a look at the log of your meeting. 1
congratulate you on a difficult job well done."
"Congratulate me? I failed dismally. I cried halfway home."
"What a pity. And for no reason. But may I take your tears as a compliment?"
Shebat arched back to look at him. "My tears were for
Softa."
"You think I will not keep my word to you?"
"Up to a point, you will. But if your personal freedom were endangered, or our
primacy in Acheron, or the
AXV program permanently prohibited? Then, no, I do not think you would adhere
to our agreement... or that
I could demand it of you."
"I love you," he said, and kissed her ear. "Thank you for being rational. But
do not give up hope. I have ar-
ranged for our vote of confidence to be called by my friends in Draconis as
soon as the Hassid reenters Drac-
onis space from sponge."
"Oh, Chaeron, I am so sorry . . ."
"We have no choice." She could feel the tension in him as he spoke. The music
stopped, began again in a different tempo. He led her from the floor,
continuing:
"I did not want to drag us all through this particular mor-
ass, but Marada's actions demand an unequivocal re-
sponse. And who knows, I may be in secure isolation by that time. I have to
consider all contingencies."
"It is my fault."
"Greedy creature. I sent you there to bring things to a head. We could have
refused Wotfe's summons. We did not. Though I cannot say I expected exactly
this re-
joinder, I did anticipate something of the sort."
"You anticipated the arrival here of space-enders and
Marada's task force? It looks like an arms review out there. I couldn't have
gotten a parking orbit if I had wanted one."
"No, I did not expect the occupation forces. Nor did I
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expect him to put his scrapings from the bottom of evolu-
tion's barrel into my test city. New Chaeronea is, his peo-
ple insist, the only Earthly habitation which meets interspatial conventions
for convicts."
274
JANET MORRIS
The stress in his tone was evident but he left the sub-
ject before Shebat could pursue it, telling her, as he shepherded her through
the dancers and then the observ-
ers, of his sister's entanglement with Penrose and her subsequent flight to
Earth's uncertain shelter. "So maybe
I will have to send Rafe down there after her, though I
need him here to hold the guild-factions at arm's length.
Unless you think you could talk some sense into her?
Even Cluny Pope thinks that under the circumstances I
should withdraw my people from groundside. . . ."
"What circumstaces?"
"Bitsy was supposed to update you. . . .No? Marada's black-and-reds have been
vilely pre-emptory; they alien-
ated what friends we had made among the local popula-
tions, commandeering whatever residences they chose. A
woman was killed in a brawl between space-enders and
New Chaeronea's residents a local woman. There has been some evidence of what
might be troop movements in the hills, militia types; what we've seen from our
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