Eldri gave Brad a beseeching look and spoke in English. "I don't understand what they want. Why won't they tell me about Roca?"

Brad seemed troubled. "I think they're giving you an IQ test. It measures intelligence."

Garlin frowned. "Intelligence is not sand or water, that you can measure it."

"I will ask." Brad's mood of foreboding disquieted Eldri. Nor had he realized Brad knew so many languages, though perhaps he should have guessed it from how fast Brad had picked up Trillian. The Earth man spoke to the Skolians in their language, and they answered in short sentences. Eldri could tell, from their minds, that they were guarding their responses.

Brad turned back to Eldri. "They want you to find the patterns in the holos."

Eldri was growing angry. "They havenopatterns. Why do these people keep asking me such bizarre questions?"

Brad's look was unnerving, as if he were watching Eldri fling himself off a cliff. "The pattern is easy.

Can't you see it?"

Eldri glared at him. "If you see it, then tell me, I will tell them, and you can translate."

"They'll know. They're recording this session."

"Recording?"

Brad indicated the woman with the screen. "She is a Memory."

Finally Brad said something that made sense. Eldri nodded to her with respect, but his unease was growing. These strangers werestudyinghim. He felt it. They a.n.a.lyzed his every move.

"I think they understand English just fine," Eldri told Brad. "They pretend otherwise because they think it will make us careless with our words, so we might reveal useful information."

Brad spoke dryly. "I wouldn't be surprised."

Eldri turned to one of the soldiers, a man with short, dark hair. "Do you understand me?"

The man glanced at Brad. After Brad translated, the man spoke in his own language. To Eldri, Brad said, "Major Ba.s.s can pick out some of my English words because he has a spinal implant with a language module, but he can't follow your speech at all because of the harmonics created by your vocal cords."

Eldri glared at him. "Whatever you just said, I am certain I don't believe it."

Garlin let out an explosive breath. "Brad, it never makes sense. All these words-do you mock us with them?"

"No. I swear, no." Brad sounded miserable. "Eldri, I'm sorry. You must answer his questions. I'm not sure why, but it is important."

"Very well." Eldri gave the Skolians his most implacable look. "Proceed."

They started over, asking him to "identify patterns." Frustrated, he gave up trying to understand and answered according to games he played with each symbol. He grouped them in eights and imagined them reflecting, inverting, and translating through their centers. He varied his responses according to how the images changed color. It made sense to him, though he doubted it was what they wanted.

So they continued.

21.

Children of Flame.

Roca sat in the dark, rocking Eldrin. Her chair responded to her movements, making her comfortable.

She cuddled her sleeping child and sang as she went back and forth. In the three weeks since she had returned to the Orbiter, she had come to love this routine with her son.

She dozed for a while, then stirred enough to put Eldrin in his cradle by her bed. As she tucked him in, the front door chimed. She kissed Eldrin's cheek, then left the room, pausing in the doorway to look at him. He was an angel, sleeping so peacefully. Already she saw his father in him. She missed Eldri so much, it was a fissure in her life.

The chime came again. Roca sighed. Rather than asking the house EI to screen the visitor, though, she went to answer herself. This valley where her family lived was one of the best-guarded places in the Imperialate. No one could enter without clearance. Supposedly that meant no one in Valley posed them any danger, though Roca had her doubts. Security could protect them from outsiders, but no one could protect them from one another. Their pa.s.sions injured their hearts.

She opened the door to find a slender, dark-haired woman outside in the twilight, the breezes of Valley rustling her hair.

"Dehya! Saints almighty." Roca grasped her sister's arm and hauled her inside. "When did you arrive on the Orbiter?"

Dehya laughed and hugged Roca, her head against her sister's shoulder. "G.o.ds, we were so afraid."

Roca embraced her, grateful to see her. After several moments, they parted and Dehya stood back, wiping tears off her face. "Ah, Roca, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that. But when you vanished, we all feared something terrible had happened."

"It did." Roca touched a panel on the wall, making the door shimmer closed. "The a.s.sembly voted to start a war."

"Actually," Dehya said, "they voted to reclaim the regions of the Platinum Sectors the Traders stole from us."

"Same thing."

Dehya smiled gently. "Can I come in?"

Roca reddened, mortified that she had let her sister stand in the doorway while she grumbled. She saw Dehya so rarely and loved her so dearly. "Yes. Please. Come in."

As they entered the living room, with its brighter light, Roca was once again struck by how much her sister resembled an ethereal version of their mother. Unlike the queens of their ancestry, Dehya was fragile, though only physically. But she had the cla.s.sic hair of a Ruby queen, long and luxuriant, hers glossy black rather than streaked with gray. She also had their mother's green eyes, slanted and large. A shimmer of sunrise colors overlaid hers, a vestige of their father's inner eyelid.

Dehya glanced toward the bedroom. "Is he in there?"

"Yes." Roca's voice softened. "He's sleeping."

"May I see him?"

Roca lifted her hand in invitation. "Please."

They padded into the bedroom, to the cradle. Dehya peered at the baby. "He's beautiful," she whispered.

Roca felt her heart go tender. "I think so."

"Even Kurj thinks so."

Roca scowled. Then she stalked out of the room.

Dehya joined her in the living room. "Sister."

Roca crossed her arms. "What?"

"He is your son. Not your enemy."

Roca grunted.

Dehya regarded her steadily. "Kurj voted the way he did to protect all the babies whose lives the Traders will destroy if they conquer us."

"How can you defend him?" Roca demanded. "You voted against the invasion."

"A mother should not hate her son."

Roca lifted her hand, then dropped it in frustration. "I could never hate Kurj. That's what makes this so wrong. I hate the things he does, but I will always love him."

"You and he must come to terms with this."

"I don't know if we can this time." Her memories of Kurj as a boy eased into her thoughts. "But still, he is my firstborn, my golden child."

Dehya sighed. "Now you have two."

Roca heard the longing in her sister's voice. "Are you and Seth still trying?"

"Not anymore." Dehya walked with her to the couch. "We tried for decades with the best doctors we could find. But finally-well, it just hurt too much to keep failing." As they sat on the couch, she said, "I am happy for you, more than I can say. But-ai, Roca, I envy you, too. Sometimes I long for a child so much, I am breaking inside."

"I'm sorry," Roca murmured. Although she had sensed Dehya wanted a family, she hadn't realized how deeply it hurt her sister that it had never happened. Dehya had married an Allied military officer, William Seth Rockworth, in an arranged marriage, part of an Allied-Skolian treaty.

"Ah, well." Dehya tried to smile. "I have nephews."

"Don't give up yet," Roca said. "It wasn't easy for Tokaba and I to have Kurj. We went to many clinics. The doctors said I could never get pregnant, not unless we were willing to have the child's DNA altered so it wouldn't be a psion."

Dehya sat up straighter. "That is what they told Seth and me! Ruby genes have too many lethal recessives. The combinations that made our family may be the only ones that produce a viable fetus.

Artificial methods never worked for us, not even cloning." She shook her head. "Why can't we figure out why Ruby children survive only if they gestate in the mother? It is an injustice."

Roca remembered the difficult time when she and Tokaba had struggled to accept that they would never have a child of their own. Even manipulating their DNA to delete the genes of a psion might have failed, given the difficulties. Nor did she think they could have made such a decision. It would have been like taking away the child's sight.

She spoke in a low voice. "When we found out I was pregnant with Kurj, it was a miracle."

"I can imagine." Dehya's face gentled. "Father thinks Eldrin is beautiful."

"Very beautiful." Roca smiled. "Not that I'm biased."

Dehya laughed. "Not at all."

"Perhaps Eldri and I managed better because his people have been separate from ours for thousands of years. Apparently we don't carry many of the same recessives." She thought of her difficult pregnancy.

"It was easier for me to carry Kurj, though, probably because he is more like us."

"What does your husband's DNA show?"

It gratified Roca that her sister referred to Eldri as her husband, a reference most of the family avoided.

"I don't know. Kurj hasn't given me the results yet."

"Ah, Roca." Dehya obviously understood what she left unspoken. "He will come to accept his stepfather."

"I hope so." But Roca knew it would never happen.

Dehya was watching her closely. "You hurt."

"I miss Eldri." Softly she added, "And it tears me apart that he can't see his son."

"Why can't he come here?"

"Kurj." Roca put a world of anger into that one word.

"He threatened you?"

"Not me. Eldri."

Dehya stared at her. "This is wrong."

Roca made an effort not to grit her teeth. "Tell Kurj that."

"I will."

Roca laid her hand on her sister's arm. "No, don't. I will deal with it. I don't want you caught in the emotional shrapnel from this."

"I would like to help."

"Support me in the a.s.sembly when I speak of Eldri."

Dehya didn't hesitate. "All right."

"I am glad you voted against the invasion."

She spoke awkwardly. "Kurj has asked for my help on it."

"You said no of course."

"Actually, I agreed."

Roca went rigid. "How could you agree?"

"And if I don't?" Dehya pushed back tendrils of hair curling around her face. "ISC wants me to improve the EI security on their ships. It could save lives. If that is within my capability, I must do it, regardless of how I feel about the invasion."

"I admire your integrity," Roca said dryly. "I doubt I could do the same."