“Now, being as we’re family, we do from time to time get family visits. We weren’t expecting Emissary Twelve, but she’s not unexpected either, if you get my drift. She’s got a message and a proposition. When we’re sure we’ve got the whole story—and like I say, it could be a week or two coming—we’ll turn it over to the Council of Bosses, and they’ll put the news out on the street.”

  She paused, reviewed what she’d said, and nodded at the six rapt faces.

  “Who has a question?”

  * * *

  Well, it turned out that there’d been questions, none of them having to do with alien invasions, which she was inclined to think her preemptive speech had put to bed. The remaining questions had to do with the likelihood of finding Emissary Twelve on the street and how to deal with her, if so.

  “Be polite, bow. Answer whatever questions she might ask. She talks Terran—not streeter, unnerstand, so talk slow. You don’t know the answer—say that. Clutch Turtles value truth, and they can smell a lie like you can smell a blizzard.”

  Miri looked ’round the room again. “More questions?”

  There weren’t any.

  “All right then. If you think of something else, you come by again. The office is back to the reg’lar schedule now.”

  She paused, but nobody even asked why the office’d been closed, and she let that just slide away.

  The comm on the desk buzzed. Miri leaned forward and touched the switch. “Yes?”

  “Captain, there are eight people here, who wish to talk about Clutch Turtles.” Nelirikk’s voice was admirably clear. Her little crowd of half a dozen got themselves onto their feet and were buttoning their coats.

  “Let your bunch know that there will be people exiting the front door,” Miri told Nelirikk, “and to step back until the room’s clear. When everybody from the last session is gone, the new folks can file in. We’ve only got the chairs we have, but if some can lean against the wall in the back, we can get this done.”

  “Yes, Captain,” said Nelirikk.

  She thumbed the switch off and straightened to see her first Clutch seminar packed up and ready to go.

  “Thanks, Boss,” more than one of them said as they filed out.

  The door closed behind the last one, and Miri had time to take a deep breath and review a mental relaxation exercise before the door opened and the second class filed in.

  Jelaza Kazone

  • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

  “I foresee that the technical team will require insulating robes as they go about their work on the planet surface,” Emissary Twelve said, as she and Val Con crossed the brittle field toward Yulie Shaper’s land.

  Val Con threw her a quick glance. “Are you cold? Please do not stand upon pride. Cold kills on Surebleak.”

  “I am somewhat chilly, but not, I judge, in a dangerous situation. I am able to regulate my own body temperature somewhat.”

  “Pray keep me informed of your physical state,” Val Con insisted. “And, please, when we return, allow the House to provide you with a cold-resistant garment.”

  “You are gracious, which is nothing less than he whom you know as Edger had said to me. Tell me now, this ally, Yulie Shaper, has he experience with Clutch?”

  “Mr. Shaper has lived his life on Surebleak. He devotes himself to growing food and tending plants. He is very knowledgeable in his field, but he has been known to be timid. I cannot predict how he might react to yourself. Allow me to precede you, to lessen the impact of any dismay he might feel.”

  “Of course.”

  They walked on in a not-quite-companionable silence. As he had not yet been persuaded to accept a comm unit in his house, the only way to gain Yulie Shaper’s attention was to walk over to his house. This approach held its own dangers, as he had, in the past, had a tendency to view anyone arriving on his land as a threat to the cats and, as such, likely to be shot at. This immediate escalation to armed warfare had been decreasing due, so Val Con feared, to the influence of the small Tree given to him by Jelaza Kazone, and also very possibly to the influence of his recent Bedel assistants. Four had come away from the kompani to assist him in the harvest, and had stayed after, beguiled by the promises enclosed within the three-ring binders, which told of the intended use and capacities of the facilities, in addition to outlining maintenance schedules, optimum crop rotations, and plans for expansion.

  It was heady stuff, and Val Con understood its attraction for the Bedel. He had feared, at first, that the four helpers had been part of a scheme to relieve Yulie of his farm, but here he had been proven a poor judge of character.

  Far from robbing Yulie of his birthright, the Bedel who had come to assist him wanted to assist him. He was treated as a brother, for his own sake, as Val Con understood it, as well as for the sake of Rys, who had survived the Department of the Interior only to fall among the Bedel and become a son of the kompani—and for the sake of Rys’s gadje brother, who had been surprisingly accepted as such.

  Yes, the Bedel were a good influence on Yulie Shaper, Val Con thought, as he and Emissary Twelve reached the crack that was the shared boundary of their land. In fact, he allowed himself some optimism, that Rys’s brother Udari—Nathan, by another name—would soon prevail upon the farmer to accept a comm unit.

  In the meanwhile…

  Across the healing crack in the land, something moved among the dark shadows of the trees. Val Con froze, and moved his arm out, fingers signing stop, before he realized that Emissary Twelve probably did not read pilot’s hand-talk.

  The shadow moved easily out from among its fellow shadows, and became…Yulie Shaper, wearing a good warm jacket, and a peaked cap.

  “There y’are, Boss,” he said cordially, as he approached. “Was wonderin’ if I’d got it wrong.”

  “Not at all,” Val Con answered. “I hope we haven’t kept you waiting long.”

  “Not in the scheme o’things. Woke up with the notion in my head you was bringing a young lady over to see me, and I should go meet you at the boundary. Got up and grabbed a cup o’coffee, thinking it was the tail of a dream, but it had a hard hold on me, so I come on out to see was you here—and here you are.”

  He grinned. “Ever hear anything like it?”

  “From time to time,” Val Con said. “In fact, I have had similar wakings. One must blame the Tree and its love of meddling.”

  “Well, I don’t mind that, s’long as it’s useful,” said Yulie, and looked over Val Con’s shoulder.

  “This the young lady?”

  “Exactly so.”

  He motioned Emissary Twelve to step forward, which she did do, until she was at his side. She stopped then, and stood calmly, three-fingered hands in plain sight, and her yellow eyes with their vertical slits opened wide and guileless.

  “Emissary Twelve, I give you our good neighbor and ally, Yulie Shaper. Mr. Shaper, here is Emissary Twelve, who will be setting up a field office in advance of the arrival of repair technicians.”

  “Sounds busy,” said Yulie, with great good nature. “Come on across, the two of you. Too cold to be standing out in the wind, when we can talk inside. Miss Emissary don’t hurt cats, right?”

  “I had not had much experience of cats until last night,” Emissary Twelve said composedly, following Val Con across the boundary line. “I sat the night watch, and two came to share the duty.”

  “That’s cats,” said Yulie wisely. “Always eager to share the work. You’ll do fine, just be gentle with ’em. If it looks like they’re upset or unhappy with you, you freeze and give them a couple cat smiles—like this”—he squinted his eyes together deliberately—“and they’ll know you mean to be friends.”

  “I am obliged,” said Emissary Twelve. “I will do my utmost to be gentle with the cats.”

  “That’s good then. Right down this way.”

  * * *

  “Now, that’s better,” Yulie Shaper said, as they all three sat around a small table in a far corner of the kitchen, each with a mug of hot…beverage before them. If the room was not as warm as Val Con preferred, it was certainly warmer than outside, and the lack of breeze was a boon.

  “Thank you,” he said. “It is very much better.”

  Yulie grinned at him. “You’ll get used to the cold, Boss. Give it a couple winters.”

  “It may be,” Val Con said, foregoing any mention of the project to gradually increase Surebleak’s temperatures to something more temperate year round.

  Yulie took a drink of his beverage.

  “So, you need an office, Miss Emissary?”

  “Yulie Shaper, I do. I need a very specific sort of office. When I mentioned this requirement to our mutual ally, the delm of Korval, he immediately thought that you might assist me.”

  “I’d be happy to help, but what I got here’s a working farm. Surebleak being what it is, and the need for food being what it is, most of the growing’s done underground in environmental units. That way, we can guarantee our crops. Which—Surebleak being what it is—is important. Office space—well, you see what I got here—” He waved an arm, showing them the kitchen table obscured by binders and stacks of paper.

  “Yes. I would not intrude upon your work, Yulie Shaper. I have unique necessities. My people—on our homeworld, we live, some of us, on the planet surface. Others of us do not. But all of us have access to the deep places—caverns, tunnels and the like—where we may renew ourselves, and sleep safe.”

  Yulie paused with his mug nearly to his mouth.

  “Caverns, is it! Well, then, the Boss here brought you to the right place! I got deep places—told you about underground rooms, right? So happens I got a—well, call it a spare room. What it is, see—it was the first room built. It was the field office an’ staging area for the rest of the construction. Wasn’t ever really used for anything after construction was done. Me an’ Nathan’d been talking about what it could do for us best, but the trouble for us is it’s backwards to the rest of the rooms. There’s a skinny little connector hall, but nobody used it. Truth is, it wasn’t really needed. Be pleased to see you use it, if you think it’ll do you.”

  “We will,” Val Con murmured, because Yulie Shaper tended to forget his own advantage in discussions like this one. “We will pay you a reasonable rent should the space prove adequate to Emissary Twelve’s needs.”

  Yulie looked at him, somewhat owlish, and it came to Val Con how much he was altered from the timid, inarticulate, and nearly savage person he had first met. The small Tree that had been granted to Yulie Shaper was meddling at a rate that was truly astounding. One wondered what it might portend, besides an inclination toward tidiness…

  “Well, Boss, if you gotta, I guess you will, but what I’m thinking is, if the young lady is coordinating repairs and like that—” He turned to Emissary Twelve.

  “What sorts o’repairs were those, Miss? ’Cause if you come to need local help, we got a crew on-world I’m told can fix anything.” He held up a hand. “Ain’t saying that’s factually true, but I got four of ’em working for me, and I’ll say they can fix a lot.”

  “I thank you, Yulie Shaper, for your offer. It may be that I will require the assistance of the local population. I must perform a detailed survey and analysis. The case is…” She put a three-fingered hand flat on the table next to her mug of beverage. “The case is that the planet has undergone trauma. There is a flaw in the structure of your world, Yulie Shaper. If it is not repaired, the world will die.”

  “Well, that ain’t good,” Yulie said solemnly. “Ain’t zackly a surprise, though, the way the Agency did bidness. They was mining, but according to what my grampa heard ’bout it, they wasn’t using best practice so much as they was using what would get ’em the fastest profit. Wouldn’t much cared, if they’d known, which I ain’t saying they did or didn’t, if they cracked the planet—they’d bought an’ paid for it. If they wanted to break it, too, that was their lookout.”

  There was a sharp silence. Val Con thought he heard Emissary Twelve gasp.

  “This…Agency seems to have been remarkably shortsighted, even for—your pardon. Such a policy seems very shortsighted.”

  “Not the best company in bidness, but there—they left us here, an’ ’bandoned their claim, so it’s ours to tend now, like you said.”

  He looked to Val Con.

  “I reckon I can let her use a room I ain’t using anyways, so she can get it set up to save the world.”

  Val Con inclined his head.

  “B’fore you make any decision, though, you’ll be wantin’ to see the place.”

  Yulie Shaper stood with rare energy, and looked down at them, grinning.

  “Show it to you right now, you got the time—b’fore things get busy here.”

  “Yes,” said Emissary Twelve, rising in her turn. “That would be most useful, Yulie Shaper. Thank you.”

  * * *

  It was an unexpectedly large space, in need of cleaning and perhaps some furniture. The temperature was cool, but not nearly so cold as the outside air. At the touch of a switch, light glowed gently from panels on the walls and ceiling.

  “Door to that inside hallway I was telling you about, that’s right here,” said Yulie Shaper, crossing the room and touching a blue switch on the opposite wall. A door slid silently away into a pocket, and lights came up in a thin corridor beyond. There was the sound of distant voices echoing off the walls.

  “Just leave this shut and you won’t be bothered by any of our noise,” Yulie said, sealing the door again.

  He turned to Emissary Twelve. “Whatcha think?”

  “I think this will do well for me, Yulie Shaper.”

  She walked to the far wall and placed her hand, palm flat against the ceramic. Drawing a breath, she sang, two inquisitive notes in the midrange that made the walls shiver around them.

  For the first time that morning, Yulie Shaper looked spooked; eyes wide.

  Val Con slid two steps nearer to him.

  “It is a measuring protocol,” he said softly, which it was, among other things. “There are species on other worlds that are essentially blind. They navigate by casting their voice ahead of themselves and following the echoes. This is a similar tool.”

  “Right.”

  Emissary Twelve turned from the wall.

  “There is another small, pocket cavern behind this wall. If it becomes necessary, may I install an access door?”

  “You talk to me before you do that,” Yulie said, surprisingly firm. “I’ll be needing to take tolerances and load and best practice equations, so we don’t disrupt the working rooms. Can’t have that.”

  “I understand. If I find it necessary to have access to the room behind, I will contact you so that you may do proper analysis.”

  “That’s all right then. You’ll be moving in?”

  “Yes.”

  “The House is able to clean the space for you and to provide furniture from stores, if that will assist you,” Val Con said.

  “Yes,” she said again. “I will come with you to stores, if I may. We must solve the problem of the insulated garments.”

  “You can come and go as you want,” Yulie said. “Let’s just get your palm print for the door…”

  * * *

  It had taken some persuasion to convince the door to accept the palm of Emissary Twelve, but the thing was finally done, and the three of them entered Yulie Shaper’s kitchen again, worn but victorious—

  —to find Nathan, Rys’s brother Udari, standing at the kitchen table, his hands flat on the pile of binders and his head bent.

  “What’s wrong?” Yulie Shaper asked sharply.

  Nathan raised his head, showing a swarthy face gone pale, and tears glittering in his eyes. He glanced at Yulie, nodded, and turned his eyes to Val Con.

  “The ship,” he said huskily. “It is coming.”

  Surebleak Port

  Office of the Road Boss

  • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

  “Anybody else?” Miri asked, her voice a trifle raspy.

  “Captain, no. We have come to an end.”

  “Good. Put the OUT TO LUNCH sign up on the door, and let’s—”

  The scanner, running at low volume on Nelirikk’s desk, screamed.

  “This is the portmaster. Lock down! All port personnel, get inside, and lock down! Flash mob in the port! Port Security has been alerted. Get inside, lock down, wait for the all-clear!

  “Message repeats…”

  Nelirikk was already at the door, the sound of the locks snapping into place punctuating the portmaster’s announcement. Under the racket, Miri heard a chime and spun, dodging chairs to get into her office, and hit the comm.

  “Robertson,” she snapped.

  “McFarland,” came an answering snap. “You in and locked?”

  “And I’ve got an Yxtrang between me and a ’splosion-proof door. Val Con’s at the house. We’re fine. What’s going on?”

  “Riots,” he said shortly. “Funny kind o’riots, you want my opinion. All over the city, and on the port, too, which is funny enough, given there ain’t been any hints we was cookin’ unrest on the street. But the really funny thing—you being a native ’bleaker, you’ll ’preciate this.”

  “What?”

  “They all started at the same time, just like somebody rang the start-shift bell.”

  Miri blinked at Cheever McFarland’s big square face in the comm.

  “Pull the other one,” she said.

  He grinned. “Knew you’d like it. Stay put ’til the all-clear.”

  “Got that. Cheever!”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can you get me a feed?”

  “Patching through now. Stay safe, Boss.”

  “You, too.”

  The screen blanked, then bloomed with action: a sidewalk crowded—too crowded—with people pushing, shoving, punching; here and there a Watch uniform among the heaving mass of ’bleaker motley.

  There was sound, too: voices shouting, screaming, and crying; glass breaking; horns honking; the pop of a pellet pistol so sharp and clear that Miri involuntarily ducked to the left of the screen, her hand dropping to—

 

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