[157] “I don’t imagine those beings are so grateful to us they’ll make their discoveries public.”
“Would you in their place, honored one?”
Lissa laughed a bit. “No, probably not.” Though in the long run, now that the great secret is out, everybody will know everything that can be known about it.
She stroked Orichalc’s head. “Go rest, then,” she said. “Pleasant dreams.”
“I fear yours will not be,” he replied.
Her hand froze where it was. After a space she said, “Well, of course you feel what I’m feeling.”
“I feel that you are woeful. I wish I could help.”
“And, and him?”
“He was full of pride and gladness, until there came a dread I believe was on your account. That was the last I saw of him, about a quarter hour ago.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I do not worry much about you, honored one. You are undaunted. He— But go, since that is your wish. May the time be short until your happier day.”
Lissa walked on.
In the crew section, the assistant physicists had already closed their doors and must be sound asleep. Deck, bulkheads, overhead reached gray and empty, save for the tall form that waited.
She jarred to a stop. They stood for a time. Air rustled around them. “Lissa,” Valen said finally.
“I should think you’d be resting, or else in conference with Moonhorn and Ironbright,” she stated.
“This is more important.” He made as if to approach her, but curbed the motion. “Lissa, why are you here? Why not the cabin? When you didn’t show, I asked Dagmar, and—”
“If you please,” she said, “I am very tired and need some rest of my own.”
Bewilderment ravaged the haggard features. “Lissa, what’s [158] wrong? We saved those beings, we’re safe ourselves, why do you look at me that way?”
Get this over with. “You saved them. It was your decision, your will.”
“But— No, wait.” He swallowed, straightened his shoulders, and said, “I see. You’re angry because I put your life at risk. No, that’s unfair. Because I gambled with everybody’s. Including mine.”
“No,” she sighed, “you do not see. It’s because of why you did.”
He stared.
“Worse than staking us, you staked what we’d gained here for our people,” she told him. “It was in fact a crazy thing to do, from any normal viewpoint. Maybe, morally, it was justified. Seven lives, a valuable ship, and an invaluable store of knowledge, against half a hundred other lives. We did win through, and we may have gotten some goodwill that our leaders can draw on in future negotiations. But … Valen, none of this was what you had in mind. Not really. Was it?”
“What do you mean?” she barely heard.
She shook her head, like one who remembers a sorrow. “You redeemed yourself. You met again with the Terror you’d run from, and this time you overcame it, first in your spirit, then in reality. Even if you’d died, you’d have won what mattered, the respect of your peers back, and of yourself.
“I’d come to know you. Orichalc’s now confirmed my understanding, but it wasn’t necessary. I knew. What mattered to you above all else—the only thing that mattered—was your own redemption.”
“No,” he croaked, and reached for her.
She denied the wish to lay her head on his breast. “Yes,” she said. “Oh, never fear. You’ll receive the honors you’ve earned, and I’ll speak never a word against them. But I can’t stay with any creature so selfish. Please leave me alone.”
She dodged by him, into her cubicle, and shut the door. The light came on. She doused it and lay down in the kindly darkness.
XXX
HEBO sat on the verandah of a lodge in what was once Nepal. A mild breeze bore a fragrance of jasmine and flaunted the brilliant hues of rhododendrons against cloudless blue. Birdsong blew on it. Before him woodland climbed upward, and beyond it shone the mighty snowpeaks. The scene and this small house belonged in the days of his first youth; he’d backpacked hereabouts. He suspected the place had been sited and shaped as it was just for him. Easily done, after those memories had been read. His stay here, these past two or three weeks, must be as much a part of the healing process as the mental exercises programmed for him. He didn’t mind.