The Best of All Possible Worlds (25 page)

His eyes followed me, still wary but also alight with a sort of intrigued amazement.
“If I may ask, why did you do that?”

I felt—let me confess it—a little feminine thrill at the deepened tone of his voice.
“Just checking, Councillor,” I said smugly. “I wanted to confirm that I was correct
in telling Nasiha that I do not find you objectionable in any form or fashion.”

Zero hour plus one year seven months fifteen days

Lian rarely spoke to him, perhaps in part to avoid Joral, perhaps still conscious
of that time he had needed the persuasion of a pistol to follow instructions, but
Dllenahkh was not offended. Lian was perfectly professional and mostly kept to the
Commissioner’s side, with Delarua and Fergus being the only social exceptions.

(He did wonder once if Lian’s distant attitude might stem from a mild bias against
Sadiri, but he quickly rejected the unwanted thought.)

A few days after the upheaval in the team’s roles and allegiances, he went into his
shelter to find Joral staring in fascination at a plainly wrapped box on his small
desk.

“What is it, Joral?” he inquired.

“Corporal Lian brought it for you,” Joral said, still staring at it.

Dllenahkh frowned in puzzlement, shifted Joral gently to one side, and opened the
box. Inside was a small card atop a quantity of springy padding. He read the card.

He cautiously parted the packing wool.

“Oh—” Joral began, and fell silent.

“How did Lian find this?” Dllenahkh asked in amazement. It was a bottle of Sadiri
spirits, only three years old, which was young for that particular brand but still
incredibly precious as the last from a now-extinct distillery.

“I … may have mentioned something,” Joral said.

He sounded miserable. Dllenahkh looked at him in surprise, but in an instant it was
terribly clear—Lian, talking to Joral, asking questions, showing interest for the
first time, and it was only to get information out of him.

He cleared his throat. “A kind gesture, no doubt connected to our managing to retain
Delarua as a colleague. We should …” He paused and rested a hand on Joral’s shoulder
to better transmit his concern, regret, and reassurance. “We should have a little
now and save the rest to drink at your wedding.”

We’ll drink at your wedding
. The phrase was a common Sadiri jest said to young and old, married or not, as a
roundabout way to wish them well. It sounded hollow and strange.

“Or yours, Councillor,” Joral replied bravely. “That seems more likely to happen.”
There was no bitterness, none, only mild teasing.

“Yours and mine, then,” Dllenahkh said, playing along. “After all, I must set a good
example, mustn’t I?”

“Yes, Councillor,” Joral agreed, sounding more like himself.

“Good. And tomorrow … tomorrow we will both register with the Ministry of Family Planning
and Maintenance. Fetch the glasses and let’s drink to that.”

FALLING

I
yawned widely, raising
my handheld to my face to hide my weakness from my Sadiri colleagues. The late nights
were killing me.

I’d had some vague idea that since I was in effect an addition to the Sadiri team,
I would have less work to do than I’d had when I was with the government. After all,
Joral was there, Nasiha was still going strong, Tarik remained as quietly diligent
as ever, and Dllenahkh led from in front as always. Surely the work would not multiply
in order to accommodate the number of persons available to do it.

Yes. I know. You’d think I’d never worked in the Civil Service.

When Dllenahkh said he had the highest regard for me, it wasn’t just a consoling compliment.
It was myriads of reports and manuals downloaded to my handheld for background knowledge,
attending all Sadiri-led meetings, writing my own contribution to the mission report
being compiled for the Sadiri government, and speaking the Sadiri language on every
possible occasion to “strengthen understanding of the nuances of the vocabulary.”

Do you know that there are about ten variants of the Sadiri word for
“the right thing to do”
? There’s the thing that’s right to do because it’s beneficial to all concerned. There’s
the thing that’s
right to do because it’s been done that way for the last seven generations. There’s
even the thing that’s right to do because it will impress your superior. And they
mostly get translated as—you guessed it—
“appropriate.”
I think there’s a particular inflection that means “this may or may not be the right
thing to do, but if I say that it is, you might shut up and get on with it.” I knew
I was in deep trouble the day Dllenahkh said to me, “It would be appropriate if you
completed the Advanced Grammar module by the end of next month,” and he managed to
combine two variants
and
that tricky little inflection with just three syllables, a rising tone, and an encouraging
little smile.

I have never worked so hard in my entire life.

Of course there was no way I was going to let them down. They’d taken a risk bringing
me back onto the team in a nose-thumbing gesture to Central Government—although, to
be honest, it was less of a nose thumbing and more of a “we are continuing to experience
the traumatic aftereffects of the disaster and would welcome any concessions to maintaining
stability and familiarity in our interactions.” For a people who claim that deception
is inappropriate, the Sadiri know how to spin a manipulative sentence or two, let
me tell you.

Failure would be an embarrassment not only to myself but also to the people who had
bailed me out. No way was I going to let that happen, but there were never enough
hours in the day. Qeturah’s carefully suppressed pleasure at my return transformed
into mild alarm, and finally, after nearly two solid months of watching me run myself
into the ground, she pulled the doctor thing on me and took me aside.

“You look like hell,” she said callously.

“Well, don’t spare my feelings,” I retorted. “Instead of flattering me, why don’t
you do something helpful like writing a small prescription?”

She gave me a very long look, then handed over a packet of the small adhesive patches
I remembered all too well from my university days. “I’m only giving you a week’s supply
of these. Use them sparingly and do
not
come back for more. If you haven’t adjusted to your new duties without chemical aid
by the time they run out, you’ll have to find another solution.”

“Fair enough,” I said.

It made sense. I didn’t want to build up a tolerance to them, and in truth I only
needed a little extra time to bring myself up to speed. I used nearly all of them,
but only at most dire need. I was almost in the clear, but then … there was a visit
coming up, and a rescheduling of another visit, and a possible insertion of a new
visit on the schedule, and suddenly more work appeared to fill up the space that had
been cleared on my handheld.

Which led to the present scenario: me fighting sleep during an interminable late-night
meeting.

I fished the last patch discreetly out of my pocket and pressed it gently to my side,
letting the warmth of my skin activate the adhesive. The kick was palpable but muted.
I’d be good for another two hours, nothing more. Better make it count.

“May I collate the pros and cons that have been laid out thus far?” I volunteered.
“We might find a decision easier to arrive at with a visual representation of the
matter.”

Two hours later, the meeting was wrapping up and I crashed. I don’t mean it figuratively;
I literally got up, stumbled, and fell over. I lay there on the ground, miraculously
unhurt in any way, thought, “How comfortable,” and closed my eyes for just a second.

I raised my head to find Joral and Dllenahkh looking at me expectantly.

“The visual representation, Delarua?” Dllenahkh inquired.

“Oh, yes,” I said, coming alert at last. “But I can’t do it without accompaniment,
you know.”

“That’s why I’m here,” said an amused voice.

I turned my head to see the minstrel bard of the Seelie Court tuning up his cithara,
quirking an eyebrow at me in a way that managed to be both cheeky and quite sexy at
the same time.

“Excellent!” I said happily. “I was afraid you hadn’t gotten the memo.”

“Pshhh,” he said dismissively as he slapped a miniamplifier onto the wooden frame
of his instrument. “Miss a sweet gig like this? Not likely!”

I sang the first few notes of the report so we could calibrate our output, then prepared
to begin in earnest. Suddenly, I caught sight of Nasiha and Tarik walking a tightrope
between a tree and our
t’bren
—walking
away
from us.

“Hey, guys, aren’t you going to stay to hear the report?” I asked, feeling a bit hurt.

Nasiha giggled. “Watch your feet, Grace!”

I had been walking toward them as I spoke, but when she said that, I stopped short
and looked down in a panic at my shoes. There was nothing underneath them but air,
leaves, branches, and more air.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHH …!”

Thud
.

I jolted awake, thrashing
wildly with the bedsheets. My hand brushed my side, snagging on the patch. I removed
it and was about to throw it away when I dimly saw some strange markings on it. The
light on my wrist comm illuminated it enough for me to view the words
SEE ME
in Qeturah’s best medical scrawl. I
groaned, tapped off my comm light, cast the spent patch aside, and walloped my pillow
resentfully. A dream about a good-looking man should
not
end in sudden death and a sanctimonious note from your doctor. Add to that the embarrassment
of having passed out cold in front of Dllenahkh … But I was too tired to dwell on
any of it. I curled up to fall asleep instantly.

“EEEEEEEE!”

You know it’s bad when you’re falling to certain death and all you can think for your
blessed last thought is
Damn, have I got a girly scream
.

Thud
.

I collided not with the unforgiving ground but with a pair of strong arms and a broad
chest, all connected to a form and face that I knew well.

What the hell? Dllenahkh?
I thought.

“My hero!” I cooed as he swooped up into the open sky, carrying me safely.

This is bad and wrong
, I tried to say.
Put me down, you idiot! I can fly for myself!

No words came out to break the silence, but he did in fact slow down and land at the
edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. There was an overpoweringly Technicolor sunset
going on at the horizon line, and the air was heavy with the scent of sea spray. He
gently set me down, gazing into my eyes with a savant-strength intensity that suggested
that some heavy data analysis or problem solving was going on in that complicated
brain. Gently again, he tilted up my chin with the knuckle of a curled forefinger,
slowly closed his eyes, and brought his lips closer to mine.

And the light went out.

When I opened my eyes, it was to see the beautifully mundane poles of a camp shelter
over my head and feel a government-issue
cot under my back. I groaned. Fade to black? When did my erotic dreams ever fade to
black? Come to think of it, when did my erotic dreams get so crappy and G-rated? One
of the side effects of the stimulant patches was odd, trippy dreams, but that was
plain weird. I didn’t want to dwell on what my subconscious was doing, so I swung
myself upright and decided to start the day.

I woke myself some more by washing in cold water, then dressed and dragged myself
outside. Lian was nearby, sitting beside a field stove, and there were good smells
in the air.

“Qeturah said I should let you sleep in, so I kept breakfast warm for you.” With a
flourish, Lian uncovered a plate of pancakes.

I eyed the scene distrustfully for a moment, waiting for Lian to break into song or
the pancakes to flap away, but when all remained sane, I muttered, “Bless you,” in
heartfelt relief and sat down with a rumbling stomach.

“How late is it, anyway? And where is everybody?” I mumbled through mouthfuls of pancake
and syrup.

“Wrapping up the visit to Piedra,” Lian replied, waving a hand vaguely southward.
“It’s about lunchtime now; the shuttle should return soon.”

“That was quick!” I said. “I know it was just a courtesy thing, since we have so much
data on them already, but I thought we were going to do an overnight, not a day trip.”

Lian gave me a puzzled look. “We did.”

“Did what?”

“We
did
do an overnight.”

“How? When? Without
me
?”

“Take it easy. No one expects you to bounce back immediately from yesterday’s ordeal.”

I frowned. “What ordeal?”

Lian hit the wrist comm, whispered furiously into it for a few seconds, then faced
me again with a smile that leaked panic at the edges. “Would you like to go lie down
again?”