Grail - Elizabeth Bear [57]
Captain Amanda, the Free Legate, would be one such. It was a necessary precursor to the red jewel over her eye; no peace officer could afford to be too trusting. That was why she was so adamant about the potential dangers of the Jacobeans. And, still floating on that sense of goodwill, Danilaw reminded himself that it was her job to be so. He should respect her judgment. She had been left with those emotional cautions for a reason—to make her more able to protect the rest of her species from threats they might not otherwise recognize.
There had been species on Earth—island species, isolated populations—without fear of humans or any other predator. They were gone now, every dodo and Galápagos tortoise among them.
Danilaw smiled at the dodecapus, placing the palm of his hand against the portal near its limb. It curled a tentacle toward him, pressing sucker-feet against the transparency that divided them. A surge of fellow feeling and a fierce protectiveness filled him, warm and unmistakable as the sunlight. It had never learned to fear humans either, and if Danilaw had his way, it never would.
He’d find a way. He’d find a solution. For Fortune, for the Jacobeans, and for the future. He was suffused with vigor, with joy and hope. He turned from the portal, feeling as if his footsteps should have been effortless. Instead he dragged, heavy-limbed, as if still in a dream. The tiny bedroom, too, was full of light—streamers of it.
Everything surrounding Danilaw took on a crystalline super-reality, bright and warm and perfect—a holy and delighted space. He floated in the center as if the sun and water bore him up, filled with an ecstatic rapture. He let his head drop back on a soft neck. He spread his arms wide and breathed deep to fill his lungs with that divine, that healing, that heavenly light. Something touched him—something that loved him, that would protect him. Something vast and essential, that cared.
He knew the symptoms, though it had been years since he’d experienced them.
Seizure, he thought. A bad one.
The light gave way to darkness. He tried to cry out. But he could not tell if he made a sound as the perfect love washed over him and he fell.
When Danilaw opened his eyes again, it was in the same darkened room, and Captain Amanda sat on the edge of the bed—beside him—with a bud in her ear and her eyes tuned to her infothing. He lifted his head and she turned instantly, dropping the interface into her shirt pocket.
“Hey,” she said. “Feeling better?”
“How much time did I lose?”
She tipped her pocket open with a fingertip and glanced at the infothing. “Ten minutes,” she said. “I was napping in the next room and heard you fall. So. Temporal lobe epilepsy?”
Gingerly, he moved his skull and then his limbs, testing them. “Rightminded out years ago. Or so I thought. I still see visions sometimes, but I haven’t had the full tonicclonic experience since I was a student.”
No facial bruising and no pain in his limbs, for a wonder. His ribs ached when he breathed deeply, from which he deduced that he’d fallen across the foot of the bed, and the mattress had protected his head.
“Anything hurt?” Amanda asked.
“Just my pride.” Honesty compelled him. “And a few bruises.”
She was studying his face, frowning. The line it drew between her eyes puckered the skin around the Legate’s jewel. Danilaw imagined the shine of it recording, and looked down. Then she extended a hand, as if to assist him to his feet.
“All right,” she said. “Come on. We just have time to grab some food before duty calls.”
The Council reconvened after lunch, when everybody else had also gotten some sleep and the infosphere had had a good six hours to start consensus-building and weeding out the opinions of the hysterics and the