The Tower and the Hive (4 page)

Didn't you think you'd miss him, Thi?
Gravy asked, cocking her head at him.

Actually, no, but I do.
And that surprised Thian.
And if you say he's only a thought away, I'll... I'll...

“Quickly now, Prime, think of something,” she teased, and ruffled his hair.

He patiently smoothed it back with his free hand just as the com unit bleated.

“Yes sir,” Thian said promptly, for the call originated from the Admiral's ready room. Ashiant's rugged face filled the screen.

“Will you and your team please join me for dinner tonight, Prime Lyon?” Ashiant asked.

“We'd be delighted, sir,” Thian replied. “Did your steward get all he ordered?”

“He's still checking, but I understand the manifests included all his requirements and wishes to make full use of the freshest.”

“Very thoughtful of you, sir,” Thian replied.

“My choice, Prime,” Ashiant said, and disconnected.

“No more than he should,” said Gravy staunchly. “You should get pick of the crop.”

“He doesn't mean me, does he?” asked Lea Day, surprised. CPOs did not normally dine at the captain's table.

“You're part of the team, Lea,” Thian said. “What's the matter? Don't you like slumming in officers' territory?”

“Not really... if it's only us, the team, I mean. I try not to disappear from my station, you know. Might cause bad feeling.”

“We'll avoid that whenever possible,” Thian said, though he doubted the problem was immediate since the whole squadron was still elated by their destruction of the final Hiver sphere. As Lea Day had been part of the Talent team to help effect that destruction, she was a
persona
very
grata.
But envy was common among the non-Talented for those who had a measurable quantity of psychic ability. Maybe he should discuss her position with the Admiral and see if Lea could be bumped up to ensign. He suspected she'd rather stay a CPO, top of her own pile, than become an ensign and bottom of another. Not that, in the final analysis, a Talent was ever bottom of anything.

She was an attractive woman, her dark hair crew-cut like a velvet skullcap in the acceptable fashion that did not, in her case, disguise her essential femininity. In her early forties, she was nearly as tall as he, lean and trim in her shipsuit; a career petty officer, having come up from the ranks: a native of Earth from the old American continental mass who'd joined as soon as she was old enough to enlist. Her electrical skills—especially her uncanny ability to avoid live wires and unnecessary shocks and to dowse exactly the trouble spot in the mass of circuit conduits needed by spaceships—should have alerted someone long ago to her latent Talent. Commander Kloo had spotted it when CPO Day had been assigned to the crews examining the captured sphere that Rojer and his father had teleported back to Phobos Moon Base. Admiral Ashiant had had her transferred to the
Washington
on Kloo's recommendation.

“Now that Rojer's gone,” Thian went on, to put Lea at ease, “we'll be needing you more, rather than less. We'll add another of the crew Talent to keep you company. By the time we're through with you, Chief, you'll definitely be able to integrate into any Talent team.”

“Gee, Talent Captain, sir, that's real nice of you.”

Thian wanted to grin at her ambivalent reception of that threat. Instead he took her rejoinder at face value and gave her a bow.

“If that's all, Talent Captain, sir?” she said, coming to attention, “I'd best return to the profession of my choice.”

“Can we send you on your way?” Thian asked, his lips twitching to keep his grin under control.

“Thanks, but no thanks, sir,” she said as she strode on quick long legs to the door. “I can do just fine the ordinary way.” She closed the door firmly behind her.

They all had a good laugh then at her hasty retreat.

“Any truth in what she said about envy, Rame?” Thian asked the commander.

Kloo made a face and tilted her head from one side to the other. “I haven't
heard
of any disgruntlement. I'll keep an ear open. Mind you, that power weasel can take care of herself. She's been in the Navy long enough to know how. But you're wise to shift around with the other lower Talents. Give all of them a break as well as practical lessons.”

“Some are much better than others,” Clancy said. “See you at dinner?” he added as he and Kloo also took their leave.

 

Well?
asked the Rowan, Callisto Prime, pointedly of her husband, Jeff Raven, Earth Prime.

Well what?
was the innocent response.

I'm waiting for Damia ... Ah, there you are,
Jeff said, ignoring the exasperated snort from his wife.
All your kids are fine and healthy in tone and we shipped every single one of those heavy supply drones with nary a variation on either gestalt support. Rojer and his 'Dinis are now on board the Columbia, and that should prove interesting.

Are you sure about Thian?
Damia asked.

Can't you feel the truth in my mind?
Jeff asked.

Don't be difficult, Father,
Damia said.
You keep taking my children and depositing them where you want them, and wonder why I worry.

It isn't as if they haven't improved,
her mother said in a slightly censorious tone.

Just remember the pressures they are not subjected to right now,
Jeff said with no humor at all in his mental touch.

Is it getting worse, Dad?
Damia asked contritely.

Anything we can do to help?
added Afra. The two Primes had sensed his presence, but Afra waited for the appropriate moment to join conversations between his wife and her parents.

More ships?
asked Afra.

The Navy wants six Washington-class so it can reduce the number of support vessels needed. They plan to use the Constellations and Galaxies to stand guard on Hiver worlds that might be about to send off a new colony ship.
Jeff's tone was droll.
That Genesee ploy the kids invented has given both Navies tremendous confidence.

Too much?
Afra asked.

Even if there's been such criticism about Talents abandoning our “traditional” noncombative role?
Damia asked, her tone wry. She'd been very proud of Thian and Rojer for coming up with a strategy that had ended the need of suicide missions to destroy Hiver spheres. It had gone against Afra's methody pacifism that events had caused his sons to think of such a tactic even if it had saved lives and, in another application, destroyed Hiver spheres.

Defense has always been permissible,
Jeff replied.
The Council now has other, more pressing worries.

Then the estimated ratio of Hiver-occupied planets has gone up?
Afra asked.

Those were all farther out from the original homeworld,
said Afra pensively.

True, so we've just begun to search.
The humorous note in Jeff's voice as he paraphrased an old adage showed his incredible resilience in the face of constant attacks and criticisms from the various factions of the two allies, Human and Mrdini.
I'm only the messenger,
he added, as if he had perceived Afra's thought. The two knew each other to their fundamental conscious levels.

For which we are all eternally grateful,
said the Rowan crisply.

What's being reported for the other side of the galaxy?
Afra asked.

My, we are getting fancy,
the Rowan said.

I'm so glad you got Perry and Morgelle away from old
.
David,
Damia said at the same time.

Yes, their Talent was being wasted,
Jeff replied,
especially since David is now willing to train up Xahra and that youngling Prime he just discovered in his own back-yard. I'll have to reassign Morgelle from Second Fleet shortly but she's learned enough, Flavia said, to run a Tower. You provoked him, you know, Damia, with all your brood...

That's a low blow, Damia,
said her mother and her husband almost in the same thought.

No one can regret the attack on Thian or Prtglm's outrageous wasting of Gil and Kat and its effect on Rojer more than I.
There was such deep remorse in her father's voice that Damia was immediately contrite, laving him with affection and apology.

They did mature from those experiences, Damia,
said the Rowan in a neutral tone ... and Damia was further rueful when she knew her mother obliquely referred to her brother Larak, dead these many years, lost in the necessity of countering the mental entity Sodan. She had been the designated focus, but Larak had gone in first and Sodan's mental strike, aimed at her, had killed her T-2 brother.
And we are all exceedingly proud of them.

Which David would like a little of, please, for his children,
Jeff continued, getting over that sad reminder quickly.
You'll be happy to know that Gollee Gren's found a half-dozen new potential high Talents. One who had a near-death accident bringing out latent kinetic Talent. He's testing well at the Two Level.

Is he? That's very good news.
Damia meant that sincerely.
So I get to keep my younglings awhile longer?

We'll see how they develop,
her father said in a teasing tone, as if he didn't expect much from the four younger Lyons.

Jeff chuckled.
You do leave yourself wide open for a tease, you know, dear heart. To business—when's the next ore shipment?

Miner Mexalgo has four big daddies but wants to wait till he has the full half-dozen. To make our effort worthwhile. Another hull from the mines of Iota Aurigae?
Damia's tone held pride for her world's ability to supply the raw materials that would become elements of the expanding Allied Fleet.
I'll let you know. It shouldn't be too long at the rate they're working: Humans and Mrdini.
She chuckled and heard her father echo that.

Iota Aurigae had as many Mrdini settlers now as it had Human. The 'Dinis missed their hot fierce primaries, but in a mine, who sees the sun? They had space, their own settlements including finer hibernatories, better than those on their home planets, Clarf and Sef, although there was considerably more prestige in going to a Clarf facility.

As a Prime Talent, Damia was far more aware than most people that the. Mrdini worlds were overpopulated and the pressure on them needed relief: much of her awareness derived from her oldest daughter, Laria, who was Clarf's Prime. The High Council had discussed the disposition of colonial expansion in private and public debates. Since the seven Human colony worlds had been free from the Hiver assaults until the Hivers' abortive attempt on Deneb—known as the Deneb Penetration—Human worlds were by no means as critical in population densities as the five Mrdini planets were. With the Alliance, fewer 'Dini were dying in combat against spheres, although their birth rate remained as high as it had been when more spacers were needed. The Allied Council had voted, almost unanimously, that the first nine suitable planets would be given to the Mrdini and the tenth made available for Humans. That decision had immediately met with resistance from a new faction, calling itself Planets for People, to the many disparate “voices” on the twelve Alliance worlds. However, the High Council was not moved to award an equal distribution of suitable worlds, since the intent of that opposition was specious.

In the first place, an “ideal” Mrdini planet would be hotter than those comfortable for Human habitation. In the second place, few Humans realized how desperately crowded the five Mrdini worlds were, in conditions no Human would tolerate. The Humans had only begun to spread out across the earth-type planets in the Capella, Deneb and Iota Aurigae systems. Their need was not as urgent—unless it was prompted by obvious tit-for-tat mentalities. On Clarf and Sef, the two most overpopulated Mrdini worlds, a corresponding faction immediately erupted, demanding that the first twenty suitable worlds should be Mrdini, since their race had struggled alone for two hundred years against the Hivers.

In the third place, the disposition of any new colonial worlds depended on many factors, the most important being that the relevant planet not already be occupied by an emerging sentient species. To which the obvious argument was that if the Hivers had already rid the planet of any large, possibly predatory life-forms, that wouldn't be a problem, would it? Since Talavera, a world that had been “prepared” for Hiver occupation, was ecologically ill, how many other prospective planets would be in a similar state?

There would probably be as many theories—and opponents of those theories—as there were M-type planets in the galaxy. And who knew what other intelligent spacefaring species might exist in the quadrants not yet explored by Mrdini, Human and Hiver ships?