“Let the government on Earth and Hivehom worry about that,” Matthias responded impatiently. “Our job is to try to take care of these people until they can safely return home.” She shifted in the chair, the transparent material of the deactivated rain cape crackling beneath her. “Let me see your latest.”
Harriman obediently called forth a series of descriptive projections. Viewing them while occasionally asking pointed questions, Matthias was not pleased with either the visuals or the figures. They were as remorseless and unforgiving as Bedara’s statistics. The conflict had to be brought to an end, and soon, or the ability of her people to manage the situation was going to fall apart. In the mayhem that would follow a collapse of local Commonwealth authority, deaths on both sides were sure to be numbered in the thousands. Then there was the still small but slowly escalating threat to her own people.
Her attention was briefly diverted by movement she glimpsed out of the corner of her eye. A pair of Sakuntala had entered the administration building. They were young but well dressed, with finely decorated and embossed strappings that served to emphasize their height. One was a Hata-nau, or Low Chief, while his attendant companion was a commoner. It must have taken more than the usual quotient of Sakuntala nerve to make their way here through the teeming mass of Deyzara refugees, she reflected. One of Harriman’s subordinates took them in hand.
Assuming they were on some kind of port-related business, she did not give them another thought until she saw them coming closer, picking their way carefully between workstations. Absorbed in their own assignments, staff engaged in manipulating data and projections ignored the two lanky green-and-brown-furred natives. They must have a question for Harriman, she was thinking even as she saw the Hata-nau reaching into one of the larger pouches hanging from his torso strappings. That was not what tipped her off: it was the ears. A strolling Sakuntala’s ears were always pointed outward, in opposite directions, to pick up as much ambient sound as possible. They pointed directly toward something only when their owner was engaged in person-to-person conversation, confronted with a threat—or about to pounce on prey.