He checked the condition of his friend, James Medart; if Kranath hadn't a.s.sured him Jim would live, Tarlac would have been sorely tempted to intervene. Knowing the older Ranger was in critical condition hadn't prepared him for the sight of Jim hooked up to a roomful of life-support machinery, not in even a low-grav bed but submerged in a tank of rapid-heal solution. That was further evidence of how seriously he'd been wounded; Tarlac had only heard of the technique a couple of months before leaving Terra, as an experimental treatment for ma.s.sive injuries.

It wasn't quite first-tenth at the clanhome, about 0730 Palace Standard Time, when Tarlac stopped amusing himself and went back to work. His new power made it simple for him to use his ID code alone to access the Imperial priority band, something he'd done before only with highly sophisticated equipment, and project an image of himself in open-shirted uniform to the Palace, to the Emperor's private comset.

He made the comscreen's viewpoint his own, to avoid mistakes, so when the screen activated he found himself looking at the Emperor's head, bent over the inevitable stack of printout paper, from the familiar low right three-quarter view. "Just a minute, please," Davis said tiredly, without looking up.

"Of course, sir." Tarlac sensed the Emperor was too fatigued, too distracted, to recognize his voice right away. His Majesty had changed in the three months since Tarlac had left Terra; his short-clipped hair was almost totally white, his shoulders were less erect, and his shirt more rumpled than he had tolerated then.

When the Emperor did look over at the screen, Tarlac was shocked to see the strain etched into his face. Davis looked ten years older, and utterly worn out. Then fatigue gave way to a startled grin. "Steve!

You did it! Will you be back soon?"

"Yes, Your Majesty, to both. I'm on the Traiti Homeworld, and I'll be leaving, aboard one of their cruisers, in about five hours. Palace ETA is noon tomorrow, your time." He raised a hand to forestall the Emeror's beginning objection. "I know that's impossibly fast by Imperial technology, sir, but we'll be getting a one-time-only boost from a sort of super-computer the Others left here."

"The Others." Davis frowned, then shrugged. "I won't look a gift horse in the mouth. Captain Willis reported what Fleet-Captain Arjen told you. Steve, can you end this d.a.m.n war?"

"I can't, sir, no. What I can do is arrange things so you and the Traiti rulers, their Supreme and First Speaker, can try to end it."

"Good enough. After those people we ma.s.sacred on Khemsun, I'll take anything I can get." Davis looked bitter, angry. "Maybe you'd better give me the whole story; I can ask questions later. I don't want you missing your ship."

Tarlac grinned. "They'd wait for me, sir, but that is a good idea.

And if you wouldn't mind taping it, I think it should be made public."

"You're the Ranger on-scene; recommendation accepted." Davis touched a control on his comset. "All right, Ranger Tarlac. This is for the record."

"Very well, Your Majesty. I a.s.sume the record already holds the Empress Lindner's log tapes."

"That is correct. Go on."

"Yes, sir." Tarlac began with his first meeting with Hovan and went on to the adoption, a description of Homeworld and the Traiti civilians which included their gender ratio, his greeting at the Ch'kara clanhome, his special Language lesson--"The Traiti attribute it to the Circle of Lords, their G.o.ds; whether to believe it was them or the Others' computer, which this report will describe later, will have to be an individual decision."

Then, in an outline that would be suitable for public release, he told of his seduction by Daria and her subsequent pregnancy.

Davis stopped the recording. "Are you sure you want that on record, Steve? If you pa.s.s the psych retests--" He broke off at the look on Tarlac's face. "You're that sure you'd fail, then."

"No doubt about it, sir. I shouldn't have pa.s.sed them the first time, any more than Shining Arrow should have. Sharing young is an important part of the Ordeal because their best have to be fertile. Daria and our daughter are important to me, Ch'kara is important to me-- personally. This is my last mission . . . but I can't regret even that, if it brings peace and keeps them alive."

The Emperor sighed heavily. "Another one down. You say you were allowed news intercepts--did they mention that Jim's been critically wounded?"

"Yes, sir, the day before my Scarring. Shall I continue?"

"Go ahead." Davis touched "Record" again, and nodded.

Tarlac described his schooling and wilderness experience with no particular emphasis, and then had the screen show Kranath's Vision, as he and G.o.dhome remembered it, translating the Language. He waited, ready to give the Emperor the same emotional support he'd given Ch'kara if it were needed.

It wasn't, quite, though Davis was shaken enough to stop recording again when it ended. "Good G.o.d, Steve! You know what'll happen when the newsies get their hands on that!"

"Yes, sir, and there's worse to come. At our first meeting, the First Speaker promised me a tape of the initial contact. I gave you Kranath's Vision first, for background. Now here's the contact tape."

He showed it, feeling Davis' helpless rage, so like his own when he'd seen it, as it played and was recorded. The Emperor hit the "Stop"

b.u.t.ton with his clenched fist when it was over, cursing in a language Tarlac had never heard but which sounded remarkably well suited for that purpose. Davis spun the tape back and watched the first contact again. When it ended the second time, he looked haunted. "All right, Steve. Finish your report."

Tarlac did so, conscious that after the contact tape, the story he was telling sounded a bit anticlimactic. "I had to tell them about our common heritage, of course," he finished, "and to be believed, I had to finish the Ordeal. So here I am, with Honor scars. And that's it, sir."

Davis touched his controls again, and Tarlac was suddenly conscious of his intense scrutiny, his reputation for almost telepathic discernment.

"Is it, Steve?" he asked quietly.

"He is close to the truth," Kranath's thought came. "Will you deny it to him?"

"No," Tarlac replied. "I told him it was up to the individual, and if he figures it out, okay. Working it like this, not many should, even though the Traiti won't keep it any secret."

"Will you then confirm it for him?"

"He won't need it."

The Emperor nodded slowly. "You never could play poker, Steve. You've been holding out on me, and just now you were thinking of . . .

something. And maybe you've made a couple of mistakes. Your transmission--or should I say illusion?--doesn't have a background.

That might have a lot of causes, but could Kranath's Vision have been a reenactment? There were no mindprobes around five thousand years ago to record it." He glanced again at the comscreen control panel, its master switch turned off. "You, or part of you, is right here, Lord Esteban Tarlac--isn't it?"

"Yes, sir," Tarlac admitted, unable to repress a smile and a rueful headshake. "A moment ago Lord Kranath told me you were close to the truth and asked me what I intended to do about it. Absolutely nothing, except to ask you not to make it official. If I'm being so obvious, too many people may pick up on it anyway."

"It wasn't obvious, except to someone who knows you well. I don't think anyone but your . . . former . . . colleagues will catch it. And I won't make it official; you know the Empire doesn't promote any religion. But--will you give the Empire the same support your new colleagues give the Traiti?"

Tarlac laughed, relieved that the Emperor could see and grasp this opportunity as readily as ever, in spite of the circ.u.mstances. "Your Majesty, if this succeeds, all of us will be working for the interests of both races combined."

A driving surge of hope erased some of the Emperor's fatigue. "What do you want me to do?"

The next morning, as promised, the Supreme and First Speaker met Tarlac and Hovan at the Hermnaen's loading ramp. Fleet-Captain Arjen, in uniform again and obviously proud of this honor, was waiting to greet them. He bowed respectfully to the human in Ranger green. "Lord Esteban."

Tarlac touched his shoulder, to emphasize the fact that he was still using a physical body. "Not necessary for now, Fleet-Captain. Let's keep things looking as normal as possible."

Arjen straightened. "Yes, Lord."

Tarlac turned to the two rulers. "During the night I contacted the Emperor and asked him to order a cease-fire; it should be taking effect by now. Would you give the same order?"

"Of course, Lord," the Supreme replied. "But how can it reach all our ships in time?"

"The same way I contacted them yesterday," Tarlac told him. "Just talk at me as if you were giving the order over a transmitter."

Taking him at his word, the two rulers gave the orders and Tarlac relayed their images and words to the Traiti ships' communications equipment, as he had activated the Palace's comm channels the night before. There were no objections from the Fleet, though acknowledgments ranged from almost enthusiastic to openly skeptical.

Tarlac pa.s.sed them all along, thinking that it didn't matter. With racial survival at stake, the Lords would be monitoring both the human and the Traiti ships. There would be no accidental--or intentional--infractions of the cease-fire.

Once they boarded the Hermnaen, Tarlac accompanied Arjen to the control central and took a place standing behind Arjen and Ship-Captain Exvani.

Liftoff was routine until the ship reached the safe transition distance of ten diameters out. Then Tarlac spoke up. "Master Pilot?"

"Yes, Lord?"

"Program out-transition for Terra's position exactly one day from now, please."

The Master Pilot, unlike the Emperor, showed no surprise at the speed that order implied, and moments later there was the twisting sensation of hypers.p.a.ce entry. The sensation continued for almost a minute rather than brief seconds, however, and the viewscreens, when they cleared, showed swirls of shifting color instead of the featureless gray of hypers.p.a.ce.