Grail - Elizabeth Bear [59]
But it was playacting, an exercise in creativity, and any rational, rightminded individual had to accept that a world without avoidable hunger and war—a world in which diverse human beings could work together to find compromise positions without the crippling barriers of fanaticism and ideology—was superior to one where they were at one another’s throats constantly.
Sophipathology had not been eradicated. But it was a treatable illness now. Danilaw wished he could be more certain that the incoming Jacobeans would see it the same way.
Captain Amanda spoke first, with the most aggressive analysis. “We have to be prepared to defend ourselves, Administrator Danilaw.”
“You’re in charge of that,” he said. “Have a defense plan for me in two days, please. You can work on it while we pack.”
“We?” Jesse looked like he wasn’t exactly overjoyed by the idea of a field trip. Danilaw knew his primary was heavily pregnant, and the culmination of a reproduction license wasn’t the sort of thing you wanted to miss just because you’d drawn City Admin duty. Especially when you were working on making the psychological shift to primary nurturing duty any day now.
“Captain Amanda and I,” he said. “We’ll go out to greet them, barring any major pushback from the Ciz. We both speak their language, passably if not fluently. And it will appear to be a gesture of trust and goodwill if I go.”
“They’re hierarchical,” Captain Amanda said. “If you go yourself, you will weaken your apparent position with them. They will be used to dealing with administrators as persons of rank, veiled by layers of flunkies and functionaries whose only purpose is to create a haze of isolation around the decision maker. We’re talking about an extremely alien manner of thinking.”
“Well, then,” Danilaw said. “They’re supposed to be New Evolutionists, aren’t they? They’ll adapt.”
Dust’s second visit to Dorcas came in the dead of her local night. He found her in a low tent, pitched against the sheltering trunk of a bent palm. Fur-tips wet with the irrigation falling in the Heaven, he crept to the edge of the pallet where she slept, arms folded mantislike to her chest and mouth open, breath rasping in and out with rough regularity. A black-backed synbiotic snake curled against the backs of her knees, basking in whatever heat radiated through her blankets. A sheen like oily rainbows covered its back. Its tongue flicked out when Dust approached; he made well sure to keep the sleeping woman between the rodentlike form he inhabited and the curious snake.
He touched the damp tip of his nose to the woman’s eyelid, prepared to jump back if, on awakening, she swiped at him. But not prepared enough, apparently. She might be Sparrow Conn no longer, but the body she inhabited had all of Sparrow’s hard-won reflexes.
Dust found himself on his back, spine twisted and pinned to the ground, the Go-Back’s hand pressing into his belly. He squeaked surrender, going limp, and bared his minuscule throat to her.
A too-long silence followed. When he opened his eyes again, he found her still shoving him against the ground, the heavy head of the cybernetic cobra swaying at her left shoulder as it regarded him with baleful, candy-colored eyes.
“So,” Dorcas said. “Are you volunteering to feed my snake?”
“However this small one may serve,” Dust said. “But if this small one may suggest, it may be more advantageous to you to listen to the message I bring.”
“Still looking for alliances?” Her voice was not friendly, but she lifted her hand and let him right himself. If he’d chosen to fight, he could have made her regret laying hands on him—but that was hardly in keeping with his current mission of diplomacy.
“I bring more this time.” Because he could not bite, he groomed, busily washing his face and paws. His fur was gritty with soil. Also, the washing made him look inoffensive. “My patron would like to speak with you in person.”
The Go-Back reached out and let the back of her hand brush the cheek of the cobra. It did not withdraw, but its flared hood smoothed