* * * *
Looking completely unruffled and unsurprised, the servants brought breakfast for all of them to Linda’s room the following morning. Apparently, they—the Atlanteans—hadn’t considered it viable to try to pretend they weren’t monitoring their ‘guests’.
Natara informed Cassie that High Councilor det Ophelia was expecting her as soon as she had eaten.
Cassie’s heart sank. They’d effectively nixed the possibility that she could discuss the matter with the group privately beforehand and prepare for the questioning. It took an effort to smile and pretend she wasn’t upset about it. “I guess you guys will have to go without me. If it doesn’t take too long I’ll meet you by the boat.”
“We’ll wait for you here,” David said. “No point in going if we can’t all go together, right?”
When they asked for food they could carry with them to picnic, the servants smiled and said they’d be happy to serve them where ever they preferred to eat.
“In that case,” Carl said evenly. “We’ll just eat when we get back. We wouldn’t want to put y’all to any extra trouble on our account.”
The servants looked unsettled about that. Natara forced a smile. “It would be no trouble at all.”
“Thanks, but I insist,” Carl repeated.
None of the servants seemed to know how to get around that. Finally, they simply bowed politely and left.
“They’ll show up at the boat, sure as hell,” David muttered.
Carl exchanged a speaking glance with him but managed an off handed shrug.
“We’ll just wait to go after the noon meal. Cassie’s liable to be tied up a while anyway, and we don’t want to leave her behind while we’re out having fun.”
Breakfast consisted of some fruit-like substances, a variety, although none of it was actually identifiable as fruit any of them were familiar with.
“How’d they get fruit? That’s what I’d like to know,” Jimmy muttered.
“They must have gotten the synthesizers working,” Cassie said. “I wonder what kind of synthesized fruit this is? Anybody ever had anything like it?”
“Synthesizers?” Linda prompted.
“Natara told me they synthesized meat instead of keeping animals for food. I guess if they can do that they can synthesize anything. But I still wonder where the fruit came from. You think it’s from their home world?”
“They
grow
meat?” David demanded, obviously revolted.
“I take it you aren’t a vegetarian?” Cassie observed, amused. “We grow human skin and even organs now. I’m sure it’s the same principle, just a different purpose. I actually like the idea. Just think what it would do for our environment if we did that 104
instead of keeping animals? To say nothing about it being a lot safer to eat—no E. coli problems or mad cow disease.”
“No avian flu either,” Linda added.
“No jobs for the people that make their living that way, either,” Carl said.
“True, but there’s no way to make progress if people can’t be more flexible. New jobs would be created. That’s the same as saying we shouldn’t go to electric cars because it would cost jobs in the oil industry. What we need is for our government to get up off their fat asses and make themselves useful for a change. If they’re so hot to control everything, they could be busy coming up with new jobs for people to make a living at and still protect everybody by shutting down the jobs that are ruining our environment,”
Cassie pointed out.
“They control too damned much as it is,” Carl snapped. “I’m sure as hell not in favor of giving them any more control.”
“He’s got you there,” Linda said. “The whole country is going to rack and ruin since
that
man took office! It’s like living in a police state already—and the ‘you know who’ is like the Gestapo. Complain out loud and you’re liable to end up in the Prez’s private torture camp down south, never to be seen or heard from again.”
“Good point,” Cassie said wryly. “Well, maybe if they eased their stranglehold,
people
would be able to come up with the new jobs?”
“While they’re commuting between their second and third jobs, I guess?”
“Rich people could do it. They’re always looking for ways to get richer.”
“Except they guard their pennies as if it was their last cent.”
“OK. It’s hopeless,” Cassie agreed. “Since I can’t save the world, I guess I’ll go take a shower and see what I can do to help finish it off.”
“That’s the spirit!” Linda said with a sardonic chuckle. “We might not be good at much, but we’re great at fucking things up.”
* * * *
Despite Cassie’s efforts at flippancy, she had a knot of dread in her stomach about the size of a bowling ball when she arrived at the High Councilor’s private audience chamber.
It didn’t help to discover Raen waiting. He was standing stiffly at attention and she couldn’t decide if that meant he was there on guard duty, or if he was actually laying in wait for her.
She sent him an assessing glance, hoping to read something in his expression that would give her some clue of how to behave and what to say. His expression was carefully neutral, though. Deciding that neutral was better than angry, she smiled at him tentatively. “Sorry about last night.”
Something flickered in his eyes, but his expression only tautened. He looked as if he was wrestling for something to say, but the door opened before he’d formulated whatever it was on his mind.
Feeling both relieved and vaguely disappointed, Cassie returned the councilor’s greeting and entered at his invitation. Raen followed her inside.
Not that it made that much difference, she supposed. Obviously, he and the councilor had already discussed what she’d said or she wouldn’t be here now, so if she tried to say anything differently the councilor would know.
It still intensified her nervousness.
105
There was a woman already in the Councilor’s office, she discovered. She looked to be around her age—maybe a few years older—and her bearing was definitely military even if not for the fact that the seamless, one piece suit she was wearing looked like a uniform.
She was going to have to learn, some day, how to curb her impulsiveness—assuming she got the chance. Given the way the ‘Gestapo’ worked these days, she was liable to find herself charged with high treason and buried in prison for the rest of her natural life if they found out what she’d done, and she had a bad feeling they were going to.
Councilor det Ophelia smiled at her. “This is Admiral Valora of the Andromeda Prime. Admiral, Lady Cassia Pendell.”
Cassie reddened and shifted uncomfortably at the title but didn’t bother trying to correct him. She’d noticed that was the way they referred to all of the Atlantean women and assumed it was their equivalent of Ms.
She felt an instant antipathy for the Admiral. She didn’t know if it was because the woman seemed so haughty and arrogant, or if it was because the woman looked Raen over like he was a particularly choice piece of meat, or if it was just plain old envy because the woman was beautiful and had a flawless figure, but she didn’t like her.
“I hope you won’t mind that I invited the admiral to join us. She’s been deeply involved in negotiations, and I felt it would be better for her to hear this first hand than to read a report.”
Cassie felt the blood leave her face. Negotiations didn’t sound good at all, although she supposed it was a hell of an improvement over
no
negotiations. She pasted a false smile on her face. “NO! I don’t mind—although I’m not sure she’ll find anything I have to say the least bit helpful.”
“Could I offer refreshment?”
Cassie’s smile was starting to feel wooden. “Thank you,” she responded, wondering if he meant to offer her anything like she’d had the night before and if she dared drink it if he did. As nervous as she was, she couldn’t actually
afford
to relax.
To her consternation, he offered her exactly the same thing everyone had been drinking the night before. She stared at the glass, feeling her mouth go desert dry and wondering if he’d be insulted if she asked for water instead. She finally took a microscopic sip as the councilor settled across from her.
Raen had taken up a position near the door. Unfortunately, he was facing her, not behind her back. She would’ve been keenly conscious of him anyway, she knew, but at least if he’d been behind her he wouldn’t have been able to watch her expression.
“Raen was telling me you seemed to have a good deal of insight about the best way to handle this delicate situation we find ourselves in,” the councilor prompted.
It took an effort not to glance at Raen. She curled her lips in the plastic smile again and forced a fake chuckle. “Oh! Everybody dabbles in politics,” she said as carelessly as she could manage. “And, naturally, we all think we’ve got it figured out.
Thing is, though, we don’t get much of a say in anything.”
Councilor det Ophelia frowned, glancing at the admiral, who hadn’t done more than nod at the introduction and was studying her as if she’d just discovered someone had shit on the couch and left the stinky little memento for her to find.
106
“Still,” Councilor det Ophelia continued after a moment, “you know your government far better than we do.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. They can be damned secretive. All we know is what we read in the newspapers and hear on TV, and they’ve been caught lying so many times now it’s hard to believe much of anything anymore.”
Councilor det Ophelia frowned thoughtfully at the liquid in his glass. “You are reluctant to speak frankly, I see. May I ask why?”
She hadn’t expected him to go right for the jugular. What was the world coming to when politicians were so blunt? She looked down at her own glass, thinking frantically and finally decided she just wasn’t cut out for duplicity. “I was thinking with my heart, not my head,” she said finally, embarrassed to admit it.
“But now you believe there is a conflict?”
“Isn’t
there?”
He was silent for several moments. “I wanted to speak to you because I had hoped to avert the possibility.”
Cassie dragged in a shaky breath. Oh, that was low, and just like a politician!
Now she had to try to figure out whether she was aiding and abetting the enemy, or willfully ignoring an opportunity to promote peace and help her fellow countrymen? “It’s very doubtful that anything I could tell you would be the least bit helpful to you in this situation, but it could get me in serious trouble with my government.”
“Only for speaking to us?” Admiral Valora asked abruptly.
Cassie narrowed her eyes at the woman. “
You
are a soldier, and he is a politician.
I’d think you were both trained and experienced with dealing with treachery. I’m just an ordinary citizen, and I’ve got no experience with either. Regardless of the fact that I tend to be impulsive, I’m not stupid. When I saw what had happened here, I was just thinking about how terrible it was for everyone—thinking of all of you as if you were just like us.
You’re not, though. You’re not friends or neighbors, and that means you could be enemies, may have already decided to be enemies. And that means that anything that I say or do that could be used against my own people would make me a traitor to them.
“I might not like my government—in fact, I don’t—but I love my country. I’m not going to betray them to help you.”
Admiral Valora smiled at her thinly. “You already did consort with the ‘enemy’, though, didn’t you?”
Cassie felt the blood drain from her face. Not that the comment was exactly a news flash. She’d already figured out that her soft heart had led her to flap her lips very unwisely. “Well, we can’t all be cold blooded bitches like you!” she snapped angrily. “I can’t help being a soft hearted idiot. I can’t undo what I already did, and it’s for damned sure I’m probably going to pay for it, but I’m not going to add to it and make things worse!”
Councilor det Ophelia turned red-faced with fury. Even as coldness washed over Cassie, however, he rounded on the admiral. “That was not only uncalled for and stupid, it is completely untrue! You may be certain that I will report your attitude to your superiors, Admiral!”
He turned to Cassie. “Please disregard her remarks, I implore you! We are not enemies of your country. We have no
desire
to be enemies—only to promote peaceful relations. I didn’t ask to you come to try to trick you into betraying your country. I 107
asked you to come because we have a poor understanding of your world and the politics of your country. Raen seemed to think that you might have a way to prevent this situation from escalating even more and, perhaps, getting completely out of hand because we don’t understand who we’re dealing with or how to negotiate peace.
“The presence of the Andromeda Prime seems to have been enough itself to provoke a military response. We had no facility for your language before we had learned it from your party, and that has put us at another disadvantage because it was interpreted as an unwillingness to negotiate rather than an inability to so. And now they are both challenging our right to be here because the Atlantis is within territorial waters they claim and also claiming the Atlantis because it is within that territory and threatening to attack if we attempt to move elsewhere.”
Cassie reddened with embarrassment. “That sounds like our government alright.”
Councilor det Ophelia studied her for a moment. “You do understand them.”
Cassie gnawed on her inner lip. “Sort of,” she conceded.
“Will you at least consider helping us?”
“Even if I tried, there’s no saying it actually
would
help,” she pointed out. “I’m just an ordinary citizen. I’m not trained in this area. I’d just be guessing.”
He spread his hands palm upward in a gesture that was so familiar it was easy to see how she’d been able to think of them as ‘just people’ instead of the aliens they actually were. “We are only guessing ourselves and without the knowledge you have.
And I will be frank with you—nothing that we have tried up to this point has seemed to appease them.”
“That doesn’t surprise me either.”
“You will think about it?”
She couldn’t help but feel that he was being completely sincere with her—but then he
was
a politician and she wasn’t the best judge of people. She nodded, realizing even as she did so that she was not only leaning toward doing something she knew wasn’t in her best interests, but that she was anxious because she knew, even if they didn’t, that time wasn’t something they had a lot of if they wanted to defuse the situation. She couldn’t just mull it over and hope she could avoid committing herself and possibly winding up in prison, or worse, because of her involvement.
She was going to have to make a decision based on her conscience and take a stand.
Raen followed her out as he had followed her in. Instead of taking up a guard post outside the councilor’s office, however, he followed her into the corridor. She stopped, turning to look at him questioningly.
He looked uncomfortable. “Will you walk with me?” he asked finally.
Cassie eyed him warily but managed a polite smile. “My friends are waiting.”
He frowned, seemed to wrestle with himself and then spoke again. “They will not know that you are not still with High Councilor det Ophelia.”
She studied her toes. “You aren’t going to make this easy for me, are you?”
When she met his gaze again, she saw that he was studying her with a mixture of wariness, confusion, and discomfort. “I am not certain I understand.”
Because he hadn’t figured out, yet, that she was ripe for him, she thought wryly.
And if she fell for him, she was going to be hurt. There weren’t any ‘maybes’ about this situation, unfortunately. She couldn’t just take the plunge and hope for the best, knowing 108
she at least had a fifty-fifty chance of coming out a winner. “Never mind,” she said finally, shaking her head. “Where did you have in mind?”
He studied her for a long moment—almost as if it took a few moments to understand what she’d said—and then he smiled.
And when her brain began to function again and she managed to catch her breath, Cassie knew that she was lost.
“I wanted to show you something—in the city.”
Still struggling to tame her wayward heart, Cassie nodded, turning a little blindly.
He caught her hand, drawing her in the opposite direction. “It’s this way.”
Cassie stared down at their entwined hands, too thoroughly confused to feel much of the embarrassment that rose in the periphery of her mind that she’d been so dazzled by his smile she’d been completely disoriented. “Everything looks the same,” she mumbled.
She was almost sorry when he seemed to realize he was still holding her hand and released it, even though she’d begun to wonder if she was going to faint from the heart palpitations she was having. It didn’t seem to take nearly as long to reach the exit as it had before, but then she’d been in something of a daze.
Her silence seemed to trouble him. He kept glancing at her, and she had a feeling he was trying to think of something to say.
Then again, maybe she was imagining it? He didn’t strike her as the shy type.
“Did you like the gifts I sent you?” he asked finally as they left the ship.
Cassie glanced up at him in surprise. “Gifts?”
He frowned. “She did not give them to you?”
Cassie shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m confused.”
His lips tightened. “I gave Natara scented soap and a comb to give to you. She promised that she would.”
“
You
gave me those? I had no idea. She just left them—at least I thought she did.