Empery Read Free

Cheia’s history. His concern is for the present and the future.”
    “Then he would do well not to accuse his only friend at Unity of being his enemy,” Sujata replied. “If my predecessor hadn’t chosen Arcturus as the site for the Museum, Mr. Whitehall would have had far less help and much more to complain about. Or would he rather the colony were without the people and materiel the Museum ships brought out on their final voyages?”
    The facilitator glanced nervously at Whitehall and read his expression. “Mr. Whitehall only wishes to make certain you understand that the present situation is not optimum.”
    “I understand that the lack of inbound traffic has affected Cheia’s growth plan. But I repeat, your problem is primarily with Defense, indirectly with Transport, and ultimately with the Mizari.”
    “And that is all you are able to offer Mr. Whitehall?”
    Sujata spread her hands wide, palms up. “That and my promise we’ll continue sending mothballed ships to the Museum as fast as they come into our hands, with as long a cargo and passenger manifest as they’ll bear. The Defense branch is building its own freighters even now. When they start to come on line, you should see an improvement in the packet schedule.”
    “Mr. Whitehall would be more at peace if that promise bore any specifics,” the facilitator said gravely as Whitehall began to rise from his chair.
    Though she did not seem to hurry, somehow Sujata was standing first. “Perhaps Mr. Whitehall would see the whole matter in a better light if he reminded himself that instead of being chosen to receive a unique asset like the Museum, Cheia might instead have been blessed with the Sentinel Support Node and all the interference from Defense that goes with it.”
    “ Fècuma ,” Whitehall muttered as he moved past her. An impolitic smile tugged at one corner of Sujata’s mouth, but she politely hid it behind one hand as she showed the men to the door.
    Coming from Ba’ar Tell, it was inevitable that Wyrena Ten Ga’ar would find Unity Center overwhelming. The communal cabin on the packet Moraji had been a new enough experience in itself, but at least she had had the company of others from her own world on the first leg, to Microscopium Center.
    M-Center was a greater shock, and one for which she had no cushion. The great space station, which had begun life as an Advance Base in the era of expansion, gave her her first taste of what her father disparagingly called Terran hive-living. Inevitably, Wyrena got lost repeatedly in M-Center’s eighteen levels during the three-day layover, confused to the point of tears by the quad-level-sector address system and the maze of look-alike corridors.
    From M-Center inbound to Unity, Moraji carried a more ethnically diverse group. Fully half the twenty beds were filled by Service staffers near Wyrena’s own age. She found them loud, mannerless, and intimidating. Two Ba’ar men were aboard, one a minor official of the Centrality and the other a student. But neither was from her home city of Farnax, and though she would have been willing to forgo clan rules for conversation and companionship, they made clear that they were not.
    Also aboard was a stiff-necked delegation from Daehne, whose attitude toward the rest of the passengers fluctuated between paranoia and condescension. Two of the Daehni made open sexual demands on Wyrena, which she escaped granting less because of her own will than because of the intervention of a member of the USS tutelary commission traveling with the Daehni.
    “Nothing personal,” the commissioner told her. “They just resent the fact that Ba’ar Tell has a Committee Observer and Daehne is still on the outside looking in. To get the best of a Ba’ar—especially a female—well, you understand.”
    After that Wyrena kept to herself, with little to do but think about the decision she had made, already afraid she had made the wrong choice. She smoothed over her fears by