Boxmaster's Home
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Chapter One

Family Crisis

Boxmaster's Guild

Internal Memo

From: Guildmaster Bertrand Horowitz

To: Guildmaster Dennis Wu

Re: Scuttlebutt

 

I don't want to hear any more superstitious drivel about The Legendary Boxmasters!

 

 

Boxmaster's Guild

Internal Memo

From: Guildmaster Bertrand Horowitz

To: Guildmaster Charles Foxcroft

Re: Meeting Agenda

 

Charlie, we've got a problem.

As of this date, Boxmaster Yran has equaled his trainer's record of running ten boxes in the field for seven years without losing a box. And every one of his boxes still produces absolute pristine recordings with original clarity and range.

Yran was old for an apprentice when Lyle Odirin trained him and is now passing his physical prime, even allowing for his Kethsem aging pattern.

After fourteen years in the field, Odirin still has ten boxes. And he is well past his prime for a human. The press and the liability lawyers are poised to leap on the Guild the moment one or the other of The Legendary Boxmasters fails - simply because they are legendary.

These men are too old to be doing this work. If they get killed retrieving a recording from a disaster site, the Guild will be held responsible for forcing them into the job of a youth. If either loses a box with the liability information it recorded during a disaster, the Guild will be sued for malfeasance, having assigned a middle aged boxmaster to do a young man's job. No matter which way this legend ends, the Guild will lose.

I submit this issue must be placed on the Agenda for the next meeting of The Committee.

 

 

Boxmaster's Guild

Internal Memo

From: Guildmaster Charles Foxcroft

To: Guildmaster Bertrand Horowitz

Re: Meeting Agenda

 

You're right, Bertrand, we do have a problem with The Legendary Boxmasters, but fate may have handed us a solution.

Union Military Intelligence just reported that Kethsem has been invaded by the Sxome Alliance. (That's under wraps - won't hit the news for a good while yet. Could start a panic on Simmerflux.)

Remember that both our Legends have boxes on Kethsem. I'm on my way now to a meeting that should take care of matters without creating an awkward Agenda Item for the Guild Committee. Lyle Odirin is a patriot who could never resist a challenge.

Just be sure that Guildmaster Rudy doesn't hear about any of this until it's too late. Rudy has always been ferociously loyal to the Boxmasters he supervises, and these two have made him a legend, too. His stake is personal.

 

Boxmaster's Guild

Internal Memo

From: Guildmaster Adrun Rudy

To: Guildmaster Dennis Wu

Re: Scuttlebutt

 

Dennis, what the hell is going on?

 

Boxmaster's Guild

Internal Memo

From: Guildmaster Adrun Rudy

To: Dr. Earl Bern

Chief of Guild Medical

Re: Scuttlebutt

 

Earl, what the hell is going on?

 

Boxmaster's Guild

External Dispatch

From: Guildmaster Adrun Rudy

To: Thyra Vandermot

Union of Stars

Committee on Treaties and Agreements with Foreign Powers

Re: Kethsem rumors

 

Thyra, what the hell is going on?

 

Sxome Alliance

Intelligence Division

Simmerflux Headquarters

From: Dru Sig

To: Dru Pak

Relocation Command,

Wandibai Division

Re: The Legendary Boxmasters

Report #526

 

You may proceed as planned. The Boxmasters will be too busy with domestic strife here on Simmerflux to pay any attention to Kethsem. I have them nailed down tight.

#

The house looked the same - from the outside.

This whole business has me too keyed up, thought Boxmaster Yran.

Standing in the dusty yard in the shade of the tall trees, Yran breathed the desert air of Simmerflux and surveyed the rambling structure of Lii Wesdayne's house. My home.

The architecture itself bespoke home to a disowned renegade Kethsem exile, as did the rock garden and water fall Tsjaim had built at the edge of the parking area.

Yran came here as often as his Guild duties permitted because during the seven years he'd known Lii and his spouses, Wesdayne had become his family. Lii's dream of founding the first Kethsem clan to reside off their home planet had become Yran's own dream. And some day, I'll be free to marry them all, formally, correctly, properly.

A boxmaster's primary emotional bond was to his shards, the fragments of rock he had cut, boxed, and psychically tuned to his own mind. Loss of that psychic connection could be a deranging personal devastation, so boxmasters didn't marry until they had lost all their shards and survived to become Guildmasters. Will I still feel the same about Lii then? Or will the loss change me the way it does most humans?

There was no way to predict, but he worried at that question every time he returned to Lii's house which was usually twice a year, sometimes for forty days at a stretch. Every time he came home to Lii, Yslanta and Tsjaim - and young Terrel, the sight of this house reignited the bone deep yearning for what the home this almost was to him, and every time the intensity of that yearning was a shock, a revelation.

This time, because he'd been gone much too long, it hit with a paralyzing explosion of need. He had to stand there in the hot dust of the yard, waiting for it to subside before confronting Lii because he knew he couldn't stay to assuage that need. He had come for a brief, clandestine meeting with Boxmaster Lyle Odirin, his superior in the Guild. Odirin also lived here when duty permitted, though being human he would never want to marry into the family with formal vows and a physical binding.

Yran kicked at the dry dust and peered through the stand of trees into the gently rolling landscape, searching for the family among the farmed acres or outbuildings. But there were no dust plumes, no signs of anyone stirring in the peak heat of the late afternoon.

Maybe they've picked up a job contract somewhere? The strange van parked beside Yran's rental might have been provided by a new employer, and Wesdayne needed the income. He walked around the vehicle, inspecting it. Still, he couldn't shake the sense of threat that had plagued him since he'd received the senior Boxmaster's cryptic message.

"Okay, I'll see you at home for Lii's anniversary. And I won't tell them about the surprise party you're planning if you don't tell them about the one I'm planning. Deal?"

Yran had not sent Odirin any message and he was planning no such party. Lii's anniversary was a specific date - today - but not an occasion of note even within the family. Odirin knew that. It was a coded message. The situation had to be dire indeed for Odirin to resort to such a device.

Surprise party had to be code for upsetting news, probably an emergency, and something that had to be kept from Lii. When Yran had called Guildmaster Adrun Rudy for permission to make a quick stop on Simmerflux, Rudy had reminded him sternly of the schedule he had to keep.

So where is everyone? When he'd opened the gate at the top of the drive, the security system must have announced him. He squelched visions of them all lying dead and dismembered inside. He'd dug his boxes out of too many places devastated by Sxome attacks. Never happen on Simmerflux. Still, Yran hitched his sidearm into place.

Standing at the front of the strange van, he now saw it sported an official logo with Union ID flashing on the crawl strips. He couldn't imagine what the Union could have hired Tsjaim or Yslanta to do.

He fished his door key out of his uniform pocket and climbed the steps of the porch Odirin had built.

The human had insisted a real house had to have a porch with rocking chairs and swings - without ever having seen the house on the mountain where Yran had been born. When Odirin was home, he always sat on the porch, usually with Terrel, to watch the sunrise and set. And lately, when he left, he always made sure he'd contributed to the family's finances without making a conspicuous point of it.

The front door opened at his key's signal. Waves of shouting voices washed over Yran. Terrel screamed childish terror, voice pitched above the human hearing range.

A human adult snapped, obviously pained by the inaudible shriek, "Terrel, be quiet!"

Yran stepped through the door into the foyer.

Suddenly, the air reeked of primal challenge, Lii's challenge, protecting his child.

A splintering crash shattered the air. Then silence. In the main room.

Yran drew his sidearm and plunged through the arch into the main room, crouched, ready for the fight of his life.

With the weapon's muzzle pointed at the floor, he searched for a target in the crowd, every nerve and trained reflex primed to protect Lii.

"Boxmaster!" gasped a human female at sight of his uniform. Her conservatively cut, yellow suit with striped trim might as well have been a government uniform, less prestigious than his but more powerful. The van. "Don't shoot, Boxmaster!"

The Filiksan male beside her was clad in a white uniform - local constabulary. Armed. His large, ridged head and oddly proportioned limbs didn't seem at all awkward as he matched Yran's combat posture, though he froze with his hand halfway to his weapon. At his feet, lay the shattered remains of an official notepad with a slightly bent datacase stuck part way into the slot, showing official seals.

One of the Kethsem adults must have thrown it - to scare, or the Filiksan would be dead. Considering the rage in the air, that bespoke phenomenal control.

Yran straightened, stowing his weapon and showing open hands to placate the Filiksan. "Apologies, Constable. I heard screaming - sounded like a slaughter in progress." The silence was total except for the air-conditioning and subtle hum of electronics - a hum most other species couldn't hear.

"You must be Boxmaster Yran," said the human - a female.

"Yes." He looked to Lii for a cue. The ral was relaxing from guard posture. So, these two were legal if unwelcome and ill-mannered intruders.

The woman said, "Then you're the one who discovered Terrel as an infant and brought him to this family."

The child cowered behind Lii, smothering the sound of his whimpering against Lii's waist. The ral, instincts raging, sheltered his child.

Yran answered the human. "I delivered Terrel from his mother's dead body, brought him here, and gave him to Lii to raise."

"But you're not a blood relative of the child. Genetically related, that is."

"Not the way Union law looks at it, no. But at the time, I had legal custody." If Kethsem were not the only planet his species inhabited, they'd have some political power in the Union of Stars. As it was, Union law governed them, no matter how irrational that dual-gender based law might seem to Kethsem's four-gendered psychology. By every measure Yran knew, Terrel was his own child - and Lii's even though he had never met Lii until well after Terrel's birth. For that matter, he had never known Terrel's birth parents.

With a gesture at the shattered notepad, the human woman said to Lii, "So the adoption is not valid! Therefore the judgment of the court will prev- "

"What do you mean the adoption isn't valid!" howled Yran lunging into the room.

"The court has decided that it's in the best interests of this child to remove him from this fosterage - "

"What!" Yran took two steps toward Lii, riveting the ral with his gaze. "You didn't tell me - "

Yslanta imposed her body between them, defending Lii. She warned, "Don't, Yran. He can't take any more of this. You have to make them understand we can't - "

The ral's condition finally got through to Yran. The very air trembled with it. The ral's pheromone emissions - an intangible which humans and Filiksans couldn't discern, didn't react to, and usually discounted - had the whole Kethsem family at the edge of endurance. No wonder the yelling.

No other species in the Union bonded to their children and spouses through pheromones exactly the way Kethsem did. Galactics couldn't understand that Terrel was in fact and indeed Lii's child through that bond, though he'd had no more part in the making of Terrel's body than Yran had.

Trembling with Lii's inchoate terror, Yran turned and invaded the human woman's personal space in a dominance display a human could comprehend, then pitched his voice low to seem perfectly rational in human terms. "May I speak to you? Privately?" Terrel stifled a whimper of terror at the sound of Yran's voice verging on the irrational.

Yran tried to project calm to the Kethsem but he was neral - a neutered-ral, not the font of mood and emotion dominating pheromones that Lii was. And Lii was a powerful ral, the kind of ral whose output would control the emotional pitch in a household of several ral and all their spouses.

Right now, Lii teetered on the edge of a fit of insane violence. If he went over that edge, so would Yslanta and Tsjaim - and Yran himself. And Terrel. Then there would be a dead human and a dead Filiksan to explain. Union courts didn't understand about the ral instinct to protect children.

The human stepped back. "There's nothing to - "

"Let me rephrase," murmured Yran calmly, stepping toward her. "It's imperative that I speak with you privately. In a different air space than this. Now. Without delay." Before Lii's fit gets to me, too.

Even though Yran, as a neutered-ral couldn't affect the environment that Lii controlled, he did affect Lii. Kethsem civilization rested on the neral's effect on the ral, and the magic of Yran's gender was already working on Lii.

As Lii relaxed, Yslanta and Tsjaim stood down from the raw edge of overt violence to let Yran handle the intruders. That normally should have been Yslanta's role but without a neral in the room, she had been drawn too deeply into Lii's terror.

The oblivious human said, "But I've explained - "

"If I get it from them, I'll never get it straight. Believe me, you have no chance here without my cooperation." He flicked a glance at Lii and projected a silent reassurance - which she won't get. He was rewarded with a surge of hope from the ral.

She wavered, and Yran pressed his advantage, using all his hard-won skills at speaking the human silent-language. "Just a few minutes," he coaxed. "We can talk in the office right down this hall." He opened the hall door on the left. The door on the opposite side of the living room that led to Terrel's wing was shut tight.

As he passed, he said to Tsjaim, "Get everyone something to drink. "

Tsjaim turned toward the kitchen which opened off the living room, gratitude and utter confidence written in every line of his body. But it was Lii's gratitude, and Lii's confidence that infused Tsjaim.

Yran led the woman into the hallway then moved ahead through the partition that led into the private part of the house where outsiders were never allowed. Quickly, he shut the doors to Odirin's room, then Lii's room while behind him, the woman paused to say to the Filiksan, "Watch the child. I'll be right back and we'll be out of here in no time."

Less than that, I hope. Yran had to get the domestic situation under control before Odirin arrived with what would probably be a greater challenge - surprise party.

With all the bedrooms closed, he beckoned her past the guest rooms and she came, unconsciously spewing stranger-human smell everywhere. They proceeded to the office at the end of the hall.

Obviously, the woman and the constable had no idea he'd just saved their lives, but everyone else, including Terrel, did. No sane person would deliberately trigger primal terror in three normally very sane and well controlled martial arts instructors.

But how could he explain a ral's primal terror to her? Her comment about Terrel's genetic heritage revealed the depth of her ignorance of Kethsem. If she was typical of humans, she assumed that because only the scal and ansha contributed genetic material, only the scal and ansha were parents. The term ral had originally been glossed as neuter, and neral as neutered-neuter, because dual-gendered galactic xenologists considered the third and fourth Kethsem genders irrelevant, non-contributors, even objects of pity.

In truth, the ral was the principle parent, the transmitter of heritage, talents, temperament and clan name. Without a neral spouse, a ral would simply use any convenient scal and ansha to produce children, then enslave the scal and ansha to support the children just as every animal species on Kethsem did. Without neral, each ral would be a jealous and vicious island unto himself, unable to cooperate even with a distant neighbor ral. There would be no clans, no families, no civilization. Until Yran had walked into the house, Lii had been driven to functioning as a ral without a neral.

Yran ushered the woman into the household office at the end of the hall, then closed the door behind them, squinting as his eye-shields adjusted to the afternoon light streaming in the window. The front room windows had been shielded, the light normalized for Kethsem eyes.

Mindful of human dominance games, he took the cushion behind Yslanta's desk leaving the human to pull up a pile of cushions from an alcove next to a file cabinet or perch on Odirin's settee farther from the desk, or move it closer. She chose to stand which left her staring down at him awkwardly.

Using the desktop, Yran flicked an adjustment to the windows, to cut ferocious sunlight and shift the spectrum part way to the longer wavelengths of the Kethsem sun. His eyeshields, the implants under his brows, relaxed. He watched his image in the reflective surface of the desk.

The pale oval of his face became more humanoid as the dark black splotches over his eye sockets dissipated. The fluffy nimbus around his head, his sarone, was plastered against his skull making him look to Kethsem eyes as terrified as he felt. At least it looked somewhat more like hair in that condition. When his eyes had become visible, he arranged his mouth in his friendliest human smile, letting his teeth and lips show, and looked up.

The human's implanted eyeshields had misted over as they compensated for what, to her unaided eye, would seem red dimness. But her eyes were visible, too.

Hands flat on the desk, he commanded, "Please, do sit down."

She pulled the largest cushion over and perched stiffly before him.

"Thank you," said Yran. "Now will you please explain the problem to me."

The woman sighed heavily. "Boxmaster Yran, I have spent the last two hours patiently trying to explain the situation to those three - presumed adults and getting nothing but incoherent shouting in return. Their behavior alone would warrant the constable's removing that poor child from this so-called home this very minute. The forms are in order. Our efforts to make them understand are only a courtesy - because for some unknown reason they don't have their own lawyer here."

Two hours! If a scal like Yslanta couldn't handle this in two hours, it had to be because Lii had been out of his mind the whole time. So why didn't she have their lawyer here? Couldn't afford it? Or Lii didn't tell her anything about it either? Of course, a ral wouldn't believe any notice - not even a legal one - that said someone would take his child away.

Yran temporized, needing time to think. "Might I know your name, since you know mine?" He composed himself as the picture of serenity.

"I'm Deputy Archer of the Union Child Protective Services, and I'm here with Constable Fridor who has tried to serve a Court Order on Lii Wesdayne to remove the foster-child Terrel from his care. As soon as we leave here, I'll accept custody in the name of the Union courts."

"And may I know the exact nature of the charges?"

"I'd be glad to show them to you, but your - Lii - destroyed the notepad and datacase attacking the constable."

"Excuse me. Lii didn't attack the constable. He did the only thing he could to avoid attacking him - " considering the state you'd driven him into. "Let's please stick to the facts."

"You weren't there. He threw the notepad at Fridor. Hard. Do you know what it takes to break one of those things? If it had hit Fridor - "

"If he'd thrown it at Fridor, he'd have hit Fridor. Lii doesn't miss - ever. He's a master in more martial arts techniques than I can name." And Yran had never known him to lose control like that before. Of course, Terrel had never been threatened like this before.

She folded her arms beneath her petite breasts, neat small breasts that made her look like a pubescent ral, therefore not to be taken seriously. "That is one of the charges against Lii. It has been reliably established that all three adults in this household teach martial arts, and that they drag that poor child with them to their work, exposing him to all manner of unsavory characters, teaching him violence as a way of life. From the way they've all behaved today, I've no doubt the allegations are true. The child must be rescued from this environment."

Yran clamped down control on his outrage with the strength born of long practice. "Is there a Union law against a parent passing on his craft to his offspring?"

"Not if he were, indeed, the child's parent. But the law provides that Terrel's deceased parents' intentions for him should be upheld. In the absence of a will, the law lists the intentions to be presumed. In this case, that the deceased parents would not have wanted their child to grow up to be a criminal."

"Criminal?"

"Violence begets crime. You come from a world that doesn't even have a history of war. How could you disagree with that?"

"So that's the charge - that his parents are turning Terrel into a criminal by exposing him to the dojo? And for that, Terrel is being taken away?" No, that's impossible. The Arts are respected throughout the Union.

"Not exposure to just any dojo - but one with a reputation among the university students as the place to learn to be unbeatable, and to survive anything if they get conscripted for the war. And in this dojo, they force the poor boy to work, and he's not eight years old yet."

"To work? But he's just a student."

"He's been observed being thrown through the air, being forced to stand in awkward positions, motionless, for cruelly extended periods of time, and - oh - I don't remember all the specifications but it is indeed horrifying. No child should be exposed to such treatment. Classes, yes - periodically, for an hour or so, but that child is there ten or twelve hours a day, almost every day. It can't be permitted."

"Unless the child is genetically related to the parent who's doing the exposing?"

"Even genetic relationship does not confer unlimited power. A child has rights."

"Of course. I don't - "

"There is more, much more. This household has an irregular and undependable income. If they were to be evaluated today, they'd never pass the financial stability tests for fosterage nevermind adoption. And it has been established that when the adoption became final, they had already lost the stability that had qualified them in the first place."

Yran couldn't argue that. The Union's war against the Sxome invaders had reduced the number of university students and those who were left had little time or money for attending a dojo - unless they expected to be drafted. Simmerflux was located too close to the war front to be the first choice of students with money, so Yslanta's tutoring business didn't thrive despite her galactic degree in philosophy. And though Tsjaim had a degree from a galactic university in environmental design, no one was building on Simmerflux these days. So the once affluent Wesdaynes were now scraping for odd jobs.

At Yran's hesitation, the woman pressed her advantage. "They force the child to work at that dojo for pay because of it. And because they have him there most of the time, he doesn't go to school as he should."

"Terrel is ral. Ral don't attend school after - "

"This is not Kethsem and that boy will have to make his way in a competitive galaxy. The law entitles him to the same schooling other children - "

"He is being trained in a useful profession," countered Yran defensively.

"Useful - " She choked on her indignant protest.

He fixed his gaze on his reflection in the desk between his hands and breathed. If he screamed at her the way everyone else had, the family would lose Terrel.

Yran had chosen not to make Terrel neral at birth, as he, himself, had been neutered. Soon, as Terrel's crisis of maturity approached, the ral child would lose all patience with any schooling for the next few decades of his life. His gender's imperatives would rule: to attract scal, ansha spouses, to induce fertility in them, to take their children and raise them as Wesdayne. Humans always assumed ral were forced into a gender-based cultural role by an oppressive society. Union laws against that didn't take Kethsem biology into account.

"Where did this action against Wesdayne originate?"

"With your own people." The human head tilted to one side.

Was she placating? Or curious about why he didn't know. Yran couldn't always read humans. "Our own people?" We have no own people. Every one of us is an exile.

"It was brought to the attention of a Union xenology expedition on Kethsem that it is highly improper for a group of only three adults to raise a child, that a ral child should never be raised in a household without an adult neral, and must never be raised in a household without a neral sibling of about the same age - preferably younger.

"When this fosterage was arranged," she continued, "these facts were not known. The court has acknowledged that this household jeopardizes Terrel's future acceptance among his own because of the unsanctionable parenting - a fact Lii neglected to mention when he applied for adoption. If Terrel is to be denied acceptance among his own, then he must have the schooling to make his own life. This household denies him both advantages, and maltreats him, too."

Yran sat stiff, silent in shock and pain at the truth buried in the allegations. Lii had begged him, any number of times, to take the vows that would bind this family under Kethsem law, to come to live here full time.

"Surely,," said Yran, "Union law recognizes many variant lifestyles. As irregular as the income from the dojo may be, this family has always provided well for Terrel. He attends the dojo because that's where his parents are, where his schooling needs can be met. He is not paid to work there."

"That is an even more damning admission. Slavery of children is definitely against the law."

Yran repeated, "Terrel doesn't work at the dojo, he studies there. He doesn't attend school - for cultural reasons, not for lack of money."

"Gender discrimination in the matter of education is against Union law - even Kethsem is signatory to that provision. Every child is entitled to education."

"Terrel has gotten a fully competitive and appropriate education. He has never been physically or emotionally abused - except for the lack of siblings, a situation that can't be remedied in the usual way because Lii is sterile. That wasn't held against Lii in the original fosterage agreement nor in the adoption proceedings - and I know that the forms disclosed the barrenness of this household. At that time, the lawyers couldn't see why we made a point of that disclosure, but we made that point anyway. Why should Lii's sterility be an issue now? Just because investigators on Kethsem think they have a new fact about one clan, one culture?"

As if I haven't been frantically combing the galaxy for a neral sibling for Terrel. But abandoned Kethsem children were even more rare than Kethsem exiles roaming the galaxy. Terrel had been born from a scal's dead body, surrounded by his murdered ansha and ral parents. Even after generations of membership in the Union, Kethsem just didn't dwell off planet - unless they were hopelessly peculiar. And very few traveled at all.

"Lii's sterility is not an issue," said the woman. "Terrel's home life is."

"I see. Tell me, Deputy Archer, if you take Terrel out of this house - where will you take him?"

"To the local shelter. In a few days, when the forms have all cleared, he'll be sent to an orphanage - somewhere that has room for him - probably on Dulash since the planet was colonized by a mixed-species consortium."

"Amphibious species. No Kethsem are resident on the planet."

"You know the place?"

"Very well." An orphanage, he knew from association with Odirin who had grown up in one - was a dump for unwanted children. There was nothing even vaguely resembling such a thing on Kethsem, not in any culture nor in all of history. It was biologically impossible.

"Can you explain to me, Deputy, how this Dulash orphanage would improve Terrel's qualifications for acceptance among his own people? How it would provide the necessary contact with appropriate siblings? How it would improve his chances of finding appropriate mates? Can you explain to me how the custodians of such a multi-species orphanage have suddenly become qualified to socialize a pre-adolescent from a species with four active genders when not even one other child there would have any concept of what that meant?"

"Four - " She started. Then she waved that aside rather than argue her textbook knowledge against Yran's personal experience. "That was the argument which placed Terrel in this household originally. No Union sponsored establishment can provide those things - but we can stop the abuse and danger he's exposed to here, and we can provide him an educational opportunity that will suit him for a place in the galaxy, and later, we can find him a more appropriate home."

"Can you?"

She knew, and she knew he knew, they couldn't. Wesdayne was the only whole Kethsem family not on Kethsem itself. But since Yran hadn't officially married them yet, it wasn't really a whole family.

"The law will protect the child," she insisted.

"From what? Shaky finances? I will gladly accept responsibility for the family's debts."

"A Boxmaster - "

"I have sufficient funds, and steady employment. Wesdayne is named as my insurance beneficiary, so the danger of that employment is not an issue. And through that employment, which entails considerable travel and access to multitudes of databases, I have a better chance of finding a suitable companion for Terrel - just as I found Wesdayne when Child Services could not." Actually, it had been Odirin who had found Wesdayne, but his human friend wouldn't quibble if Yran took the credit for strategic reasons.

"However, your profession, Boxmaster, is the last, and most potent indictment against this household's environment. Is it, or is it not true that this building has a boxing laboratory in the basement? That two boxmasters regularly lay over here, and often bring active boxes into the house?"

"It is true." Where had they gotten this private information? Could this be why Odirin had called him home? Guild security had been blown to smithereens? By Child Protective Services?

"Isn't it also true that such boxes can be a dire danger to the sanity and to the life of non-members of the Guild?"

"Yes. But - " Since shard was psychically tuned to the boxmaster who cut it, anyone else who touched it could be mindblasted into a vegetable state. "But we protect - "

"That a child should be exposed to such danger is nothing short of criminal."

"The laboratory is fully secured!"

"Curious children are fiendishly clever! That laboratory is an ever present danger to Terrel's life and sanity - or so the court has ruled - and the presence of it in this house proves the foster parents have no regard for the child's welfare. Terrel will not remain here even one more night, certainly not while you and your boxes are here. And as long as you are an active member of the Guild with boxes in the field, you will not, under law, be considered fit to parent a child. That is not a moral judgment, Boxmaster, it is the law. For a boxmaster, his boxes come first above all else - even his own child's life."

Which was exactly why Yran had refused to pledge himself to Lii. His heart belonged to Lii's hypothetical Wesdayne clan, but only second, not first. A neral who took responsibility for a family had to put that family - and that ral - above all else.

He made his voice low, his tone steady as he asked, "So if I had violated my Guild's rule and married into this family officially, there would be no charges of financial or moral irresponsibility against Wesdayne, but Terrel would still be removed because my work requires the presence of dangerous instrumentation when I am here and because as a boxmaster, I am not considered a fit parent?"

"Put like that, it does sound irrational, but this is not my personal decision. This is an order of the Court which has evaluated the cumulative evidence and moved to protect a helpless minor. The fact that the family ignored all prior notices - "

"What notices? How long has this been going on?"

"About two standard months. They didn't even bother to turn up at the court hearing. We sent fifteen notices - the Wesdaynes ignored official inquiries about why the child wasn't in school. They ignored a subpoena for violation of the child-labor laws and the citation for endangerment of a minor by the presence of that box laboratory in the residence. This current proceeding is the result of their negligence."

"All those notices were sent addressed to Lii?"

"Of course. He is the signatory of record in the adoption. None of that involves you except insofar as you are responsible for the endangerment by bringing shard into this house. Your Guild will probably take a very dim view of that when the publicity breaks. They may fire you from your lucrative position."

Publicity? As the first non-human Boxmaster, Yran had had enough galactic publicity to last several lifetimes. He'd promised himself, when it died down, that he'd never, ever, do anything spectacular - ever again. But he would. For Terrel, for Lii, he would. If she thinks the Guild can fire me, she has no idea what a Boxmaster is.

"Let me be sure I understand you, Deputy. Even if I remove myself - and my Boxes - from this household, Terrel will be taken - even if all the bills are guaranteed?"

"I'm afraid so. The child-labor charges alone are enough. The rest is a pattern that can't be ignored."

That's it! I've got her. "Surely you have some discretionary maneuvering room in all this?"

"My recommendations count for a great deal but are not the only consideration. The child has rights. That's why the constable is here. To protect Terrel's rights."

"Deputy Archer, what if we could provide proof that Terrel is being schooled in the arts and crafts crucial to his future adult ability to make his way in life? And those arts and crafts are not available in any Union school's curriculum? And that schooling - at home and in the dojo - is not in violation of child-labor statutes, and is administered with love and gentle affection to which Terrel responds in kind? Proof positive. Proof absolute. Proof no court could possibly impugn that despite the shortcomings of this environment - which could not be made up for by your institutions - there is no endangerment to the child here. If I offered you such proof, would you still take Terrel away tonight?"

"There couldn't possibly exist any such proof."

Done! "This house, and the dojo, are within the effective recording range of two of my own Boxes - which are emplaced on the University campus by Guild contract. Eighty or ninety percent of Terrel's time is spent within range of one or the other box. My Guild exists because we provide unimpeachable data, accurate to the smallest detail, admissible in any Union Court."

"There's the matter of conflict of interest - the recordings reside in your boxes, and so only you can produce them."

"The Guild has long since established with the Union Courts the efficacy of our ways of getting around the problem of subjectivity. Box recordings can prove the absence of an activity as conclusively as the presence of it because a box records everything within range indiscriminately. If there is any record of that child being endangered or abused, I could not suppress that record during a court proceeding."

"I don't think a box recording has ever been used in a custody case before."

"I expect not." The expense alone would be prohibitive. If such testimony did become a part of a court proceeding, though, Yran would make headlines again, and very likely open a whole new application for the Guild's services. With the war on, more demands for boxmaster testimony was not what the Guild needed.

"Deputy Archer, the proof exists, but I'd rather not have to use it. I'd rather spend my time eliminating the very real problems in this family, not fighting for the right to live the only way we can. If you remove Terrel, the affairs of this family will preempt my attention from my Guild responsibilities. Eventually, the Guild will send its lawyers to attend to the matter, and your department will find itself in a pitched battle in Court. Remember, the Guild is crucial to our defense against the Sxome invaders. In the name of the war effort, your Department will have to settle."

"Are you threatening me with an imaginary scenario?"

"No. I'm explaining so we can arrive at a mutually agreeable course of action. You don't want to be caught between the Guild's lawyers and the Union's lawyers. Careers have been ground to powder by less. I don't want to invoke the evidence that resides in my boxes - the notoriety would not be good for Terrel. But I will not - I can not allow Terrel to be taken from this house, not tonight, not anytime."

"Terrel's rights can't be sacrificed for the convenience of adults who might be a little camera shy, nor can child abuse be excused by the needs of the war. And I don't believe the Guild would consider your lovers' problems a galactic emergency."

Yran took a closer look at the woman. She had dark hair and eyes, and smooth cream-white skin. Very smooth skin even around the eyes. Seven years ago when he and Boxmaster Odirin had been a galactic news item, and their private affairs had been a galactic emergency, she had probably been about fifteen years old which would explain her naiveté. Now, all she appeared to know about boxmasters was their reputation as the footloose seducers of the galaxy - which the human boxmasters, in fact, were, male and female alike.

Perhaps she'd once been jilted by a boxmaster, and thus hated the Guild. And she was very young. The war had catapulted the young into positions of authority beyond their years. Even so, she had to be good at her job to be a Deputy.

"Perhaps," he conceded, "the Guild wouldn't consider my problems a galactic emergency, just a Guild emergency. After seven years, I still have ten boxes in the field. Should I die, those ten boxes and all their recordings will be lost to the Guild - and there is a drastic shortage of boxes because of the war. If we had more boxmasters, we might even be winning by now."

"Your profession's importance - which I grant - is irrelevant."

"Maybe not. If you take his only child away from Lii, he will die. The Guild physicians have established that without Lii to provide certain pheromones, I will die young.

"Deputy, I submit that the Court's action to protect Terrel from a non-existent threat is a direct threat to my life and will be seen as such by the Guild, and probably by the Courts." She wasn't too young to remember the court decision which classed an attack on a boxmaster as treason because of the war.

"This is becoming - melodramatic." She squirmed.

"Not really. Your job is to defend the rights of children. My job is to thwart the invaders' saboteurs and spies. My job, as a boxmaster, is to provide you with a safe place in which to do your job, a safe place for children to grow up. There should be no conflict in our objectives. We both want what's best for Terrel."

"Exposure to a boxing laboratory is not best for Terrel."

"At the moment there is no shard in this laboratory. There is no better environment for Terrel than this house - where he is wanted, and needed, and loved beyond price. Where he is understood, and protected, and challenged and trained and strengthened for what life will bring. However precarious this household may seem to an outsider, it is stable and it will grow to meet all of Terrel's requirements." He sent up a fervent prayer that it would be so. "I can prove all that in court, if you force me to. But can't we find some more quiet way to go about this?"

She thought that over, her expression more amenable than it had been. Yran noticed that the sun had moved to its late afternoon slant. They'd been at this for nearly an hour. The family must be going crazy.

"If," she said, "I saw convincing proof that most of these serious allegations are unfounded, and the family's responsiveness to legal process was assured, then I would return the court's order with my recommendation that the household be monitored. We can't accept the argument that Terrel's rights are to be set aside because of some problems that the parents have."

"If you'll come back tomorrow afternoon, I'll have your proof here for you."

"I'll bring Terrel back at that time, then."

"No. You must not take Terrel. The trauma to him would be irreparable. And I'd be too busy dealing with Lii's trauma to have time to produce your proof." As it was, he'd be at it all night and most of the morning. He'd have to get Adrun Rudy's approval, then he'd have to debrief his boxes and edit the recordings to protect military security, and all while trying to deal with whatever shocker Odirin was bringing home.

"I have only your word there're no boxes in this house."

"You may inspect the laboratory."

Yran could see how the thought of that chore frightened her, but she said, "All right. And we'll be back tomorrow afternoon. We won't be put off again."

Yran rose and went toward the office door, working out a way to explain all this to the family - and to Guildmaster Rudy. As a supervisor, Rudy had always been very understanding, but Yran was already late on a contract.

As he reached for the door release, he heard the whoosh of a vehicle arriving in the front yard. Simultaneously, Terrel pelted down the hall shouting, "Yran, Yran! Hurry! It's Lyle. He's here. Come on!" The little fists pounded on the door urgently.

Yran opened the door, relieved that he'd settled the domestic crisis before his mentor arrived.

Immediately, Terrel hurled himself into Yran's arms. Yran picked the child up - no mean feat these days - and carried him back to the living room. As they arrived, Lyle Odirin strode through the front door resplendent in boxmaster's black thanahyde bellowing, "Anybody home?"

The front door clattered shut behind him cutting off the sun's searing glare and revealing the human to Kethsem sight.

Lyle Odirin had straight dark hair that lay flat to his head giving him a perpetually startled or hostile look. A little wave of hair kept falling over his forehead. His eyes were dark behind his eyeshields. He scanned the room with intimidating intensity, taking in the strangers present.

As he spotted the Filiksan in uniform and the human beside Yran, his posture shifted subtly to a formal wariness. His nose was a thin, straight line with a very sharp bridge. His fingers matched the nose, being delicate and thin, dexterous, sure, expressive. His lumpy, muscular human male physique would have made him seem ugly except for the vibrancy of gentle soul that no Kethsem sense of smell could miss, and the rich, musical voice with unusually pleasing overtones for a human. Though he had the command presence of a ral and a scal's professional attitude, he displayed a neral's sense of responsibility. But he had chosen to learn to project the impression of ansha gender when in Lii's house, mastering the body language, vocabulary, interests and attitudes. No one had asked him to do that - he had simply done it.

Yran measured the human's success by the effect it had on Lii. If the human's ansha persona hadn't been marred by his unmistakably human physique, Lii would have been uncontrollably aroused by the sight even knowing that Odirin wasn't interested in anything physical. Yran knew that Odirin hadn't considered Lii when he'd set out to fit into a Kethsem home. He'd only considered Terrel.

#Odirin'sPOV

As he opened the door, Boxmaster Lyle Odirin donned his ansha mannerisms and called, "Anybody home?"

The moment he stepped in, he knew something was wrong. By the time his eye shields adjusted as the door closed behind him, he knew that whatever it was had to be very bad. A death? God, no, not now with all this going on. The Guild needed Yran in top shape for this one.

Lii and Yslanta stood in the kitchen door staring at him with pleading - hope? - desperation? Odirin wished for the Kethsem olfactory sense so he could assess matters from Lii's pheromones. But Yslanta's arm around the ral's shoulders told the story. Something here was a threat to Lii - a primal threat that hit Kethsem in the instincts.

Then he saw the strange Filiksan standing with Tsjaim in the seating area defined by a large carpet and scattered with cushions. The constable seemed markedly discomforted as he turned toward Odirin. He wore a sidearm.

At that same moment, Yran arrived carrying Terrel, and there was another stranger, a gorgeous young woman in staid government-flavored civvies that muted her charms. Why had they been down in the private area of the house? The dojo students often congregated in the front room, and on occasion some selected favorites were invited to sleep over in the guest rooms, but strangers? What's going on here?

Tucking his key away, Odirin went to Yran and took Terrel from him. The child buried his face in the human's shoulder and moaned in Oaurdin the Kethsem language the family used in private, "Don't let them take me away, Lyle. Please!"

"Whoa! Hey." He cradled the small body, stroking the back of his neck as an ansha sotain would, to reassure the youngster while he studied Yran for clues.

Odirin had known Yran since before Terrel was born. Yran had been his apprentice, the first - and to date, the only - nonhuman boxmaster, though there were some promising apprentices. When they'd first met, Odirin had considered Yran a hopeless misfit in the galaxy. But in record time, the Kethsem had learned everything Odirin had to teach.

Still murmuring reassurances to Terrel, he inspected the woman who was studying him with an air of distaste. He queried Yran with a glance.

The Kethsem boxmaster stepped smoothly forward. "Boxmaster Odirin, may I present Deputy Archer from Child Protective Services. Deputy, this is Boxmaster Odirin."

The distaste became mutual. But Odirin reminded himself he was no longer a child, a victim of the system. His arms tightened around Terrel.

Yran faced Odirin but addressed the family. "The Deputy and I have decided to conclude our business tomorrow afternoon, but meanwhile I've invited her and the constable to tour the boxing lab." To Lii, he added, "There shouldn't be any further difficulty." To Terrel, he said, "It's just a misunderstanding. We'll get it all fixed up."

As Yran spoke, Lii moved toward the neral, primed for a physical expression of relief and gratitude that would, no doubt, offend the woman.

Terrel squealed his happiness, his voice soaring above human hearing into a "silence" that hurt human ears. Odirin intercepted the ral by handing Terrel off to him. The Filiksan fought a grimace of pain but said nothing.

Lii received the youngster gladly and cuddled him close. "Hush!" he commanded in Oaurdin. "You'll have the humans writhing on the floor in agony!" The screech descended to the audible. That helped - somewhat.

Then Terrel giggled and cuddled up in Lii's arms, but Odirin noticed the child had grown too tall even for Lii, the tallest in the family. Lii's relaxation spread to his spouses. It pained Odirin to disrupt the ral's mood, but he had to say, "I'm sorry, Deputy Archer, but I'm afraid Yran won't be here tomorrow. We've got to leave tonight. So you'd better conclude your business now."

Yran's sarone plastered tight to his head making him look almost human. Lii shifted posture and suddenly all the Kethsem were tense again - a burst of Lii's pheromones, no doubt.

Odirin, already tired and worried, had no patience with the nonverbal exchange that excluded him. "Will somebody please explain what's going on here?"

Suddenly everyone was talking at once. It escalated into a shouting match. In the end, the Filiksan took Odirin aside and explained, just hitting the dry facts.

In the middle of this, Yslanta corrected the Filiksan sharply, "He did not throw it at you. If he had, he would have hit you."

Suddenly, the constable became embroiled in a shouting match with Tsjaim and Yslanta. Perhaps Filiksans are sensitive to ral pheromones?

Archer broke away from Lii and Yran and, yelling to be heard over the din, explained the settlement she'd negotiated with Yran. "So Yran has to stay until he produces his proof, or I take Terrel now."

As it finally sunk in on Odirin what the family had been facing all afternoon, he stepped up on a low table and shouted, "Quite!"

Shocked silence.

"Thank you for the cogent recitation." The intruders laughed. The family watched him hopefully. He stepped down. "Yran, go get Adrun Rudy on live - use your priority clearance. We're going to settle this right now." He muttered privately to Yran in Oaurdin, "I've never - ever - seen Lii like this."

"I can handle it if we can get rid of these people."

"Let me handle Archer, then."

"Right." Yran went down the hall to the office, and the rest of the group broke and flowed about the room.

Odirin took Archer aside, moving in close to speak privately, "Guildmaster Adrun Rudy assigns our tasks and has direct access to the Guild legal staff. I'm going to get you off the hook on this one. The Courts have made an error, but that's for lawyers to handle. There's no reason for us work-a-days to take any of the blame. Come. While Yran is chasing Rudy down, let me show you the boxing lab."

He ushered her into the kitchen, and then down the cellar stairs. The lab had been built underground, extending beyond the current foundations along the line that would be - by Kethsem architectural notions - the next wing to be added as the family grew. But Lii's dream of attracting other Kethsem to his new clan had never materialized and Odirin had built the lab so he and Yran could spend more of their time at the house.

Rudy had assigned Yran a territory to cover with his boxes that centered on Simmerflux and included Kethsem, so he could visit his home planet and bring the family books and presents. Odirin's territory had gravitated into the region as the war front approached, and he often spent more time at the house than Yran did.

Using his key and three security routines, including a simple, old fashioned retina scan, he opened the lab door. The lights came up - dim red for Yran. Odirin flicked the switch and produced a friendly bright light.

The place was sparkling clean. A wet-bench stretched along one wall, equipment stowed in cabinets over it and under it. The boxing bench occupied the opposite wall with twenty slots for their boxes. In the middle of the floor three imaging stages lay folded into their crate-forms, probably unrecognizable to the woman. With a box seated into such a stage, a boxmaster could produce crystal clear images of whatever the shard within the box had recorded.

He went to the boxing bench gesturing to the empty racks over it. "Look - no shard, no boxes, no monitor shards. There's nothing here but basic equipment, all of it more harmless than anything in the kitchen upstairs."

He opened the cabinets over the bench. One contained several box casings.

"What are those then!" she exclaimed catching him in the lie.

"Empty - just cases." As he took down all four of the foot-square black cubes and flipped them open to display the cradle where the fragment of rock would sit, he wondered how he would tell her he'd brought a box with him. "These are empty, see? These are extras in case we have to rebox a shard. We do that all the time. Shard itself is delicate - the ability to survive all manner of disasters comes from the casing. But the danger to the untrained comes from the shard - not the empty case."

"Of course. Even I know that." She wandered around the lab opening cabinets, poking at things. "So the lab is empty now - but you're both here."

"And leaving." He polished up his smoothest technique and lied steadily. "Guildmaster Rudy called me just before I left my ship to give me my next assignment, and sent Yran a message. He didn't want to tell him personally that his vacation was canceled. We're spread pretty thin, you know. We've both been working too hard these last few months."

"I do follow the news."

There was less asperity to that admission, and Odirin played for her sympathy. "We're scheduled to be back here for an extended stay in eighty days or so, but the way things have been going lately - "

"It must be very hard on you."

There was a hint of warmth now. "The Guild does everything it can to make it easier. I'm sure that by the time we get back the courts will have sorted out the mess they've made. But if there's still a problem, well, then we'll be here and able to present evidence in court. It would be a big mistake to move on this family while we're not here to refute these spurious claims."

"Spurious?"

"Allegations. Without substance or merit. Could any seven year old child you know of get through that security door? Behind these walls is the same alloy ship's hulls are made of, primsett. Nobody comes in here without one of us. As for the financial situation - consider it taken care of. Terrel's education - I'm sure we can satisfy the court. And as far as Kethsem sanction of this family's lifestyle - well, that's not a legal requirement, is it?"

"No, but as part of a pattern of neglect of - "

"Do you still see such a pattern?"

"The way those people behave - "

"You've made them feel threatened."

"When a barrage of court orders and official inquiries couldn't budge any of them? They must really care about that child if they couldn't be troubled to answer a perfectly legal summons. They knew we were coming today, and they didn't even bother to have their own lawyer here."

Probably because Lii just didn't believe any of it. Judging from all the yelling, Odirin thought that none of the others had known anything about it. "I have to admit, Kethsem are the most peculiar people I've ever met. But one thing I know about this family. They love Terrel. They work hard so he'll have a chance at a good life."

"I haven't seen any evidence of that."

And suddenly it dawned on Odirin that he had the evidence she wanted in the box he had out in his car. A few months ago, that box had been stationed on the University grounds to cover an agricultural experiment, but it had been close enough to the dojo - at the very fringe of resolution.

"What is it?" asked Archer. "Is something wrong?"

"Deputy Archer, are you satisfied that there are no boxes in this lab? That there weren't any while we were gone? But even if there had been - it's secure."

"A planetary bank doesn't have a lot more security than this place. And I don't see any boxes."

He went to one of the folded display stages and began unlatching and unfolding it. "You've seen this type of display device on the news, no doubt, during coverage of trials or breaking news?"

"Yes, but I've never seen one up close."

"Take a good look." He showed her how the box would fit right into a socket at one side, how the boxmaster's contacts were recessed deep into protective sleeves so no one would make contact accidentally, how the stage area was surrounded with connections for various sorts of recorders. The holostage area on this one was round and just three feet across. "Yran was going to bring in one of his boxes and make a recording here to give to you. But, if you will permit, I can show you the proof you are looking for, proof you can take back to your department tonight."

"But you don't have a box here." She looked warily around the lab.

"No, I don't. Not here. But I brought one with me. It's out in the car."

He held his breath as she gasped. He watched her face as she visualized the dangerous black cube in the back of a car where Terrel could get at it.

"It's locked in the car. This particular box would have some images from the Wesdayne's dojo, and undoubtedly some of Terrel, several months ago. Would it help you to see what Terrel actually does at the dojo?"

Someone had spooked this lady about boxes. Odirin watched her thoughts churn behind her eyes. "Yes," she finally challenged. "Show me."

He couldn't fault her courage even if the fear she was facing was only a phantom. She didn't know it was a phantom.

He left her to play with the stage and its recorders while he went up and out the kitchen door, then around to his car where he dug out the box. Hefting the black cube, he flipped the guard aside and touched the contact point, the one spot on the sealed box where direct contact with the shard was available.

Mental images leaped into clarity and he sifted through them briefly. Yes, the dojo had been just at the fringe of the shard's range from the agro site.

He clicked the guard into place, locked the car, and went back to the lab. He found Archer attaching a video recorder to her notepad and sighting it on the holostage.

"I'll make you a clean recording," he assured.

She jumped and whirled to face him, saw the box, and backed away. He turned the cube, pointing, "See, the only dangerous spot has a guard with a very stiff spring." He snapped the guard so she could hear the action.

She subsided into wary watchfulness.

Odirin socketed the box on the holostage and enabled the recorder, saying, "I can't allow you to ask questions as a prosecuting attorney would. It would take hours to prepare for that, to make sure I wouldn't accidentally display classified information. But I have the dojo - it's not very clear, because the box wasn't placed to cover it. I'll just scan a random sampling of events there. Good enough?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Pick a date." He gave her a range of days to choose from and the hours the family normally gave lessons. She chose a day, and with a last adjustment to the image-filters for maximum clarification, he thrust his arms into the stage's sleeves and gripped the contacts which fed the shard's images directly into his brain. A boxmaster was always subliminally aware of shard in his vicinity, but with physical contact, awareness became a full sensory experience.

Archer watched the holostage light with images of the dojo while, for Odirin, it was as if he were actually there. With the discipline of years, he kept part of his attention on the holostage and panned the point of view.

The Wesdayne's dojo was called The Shed because it was nothing but a tent roof strung up on an empty lot between two downtown buildings. Located a short walk from the main entrance to the university campus, The Shed was a famous landmark, and crowds of passers-by lingered to watch the classes working out.

Only on stormy days were the walls of the tent rolled down to protect the students and the exercise mats.

Odirin established the date and time by focusing on the clock/calendar displayed in the dojo office and hit her choice on the first try. The office and showers were located in a narrow strip of building at one edge of the tented area. Walls were no barrier to shard imaging, and the calendar was readable - barely.

"Good enough?" asked Odirin.

"Yes, but it's so hazy."

He made another adjustment to the system's filters and improved the display marginally. "That's the best I can do."

"Well, the people are recognizable, anyway."

As they watched, Lii and Yslanta came into the office exchanging low voiced comments about the schedule. Yslanta made notations on a display board while Lii sat at the desk and entered data on student records, pulling up graphs to study. When voices intruded on the two Kethsem, they broke off and went out, Odirin's view following like a camera.

As they emerged under the tent roof, they found a class of university students, Filiksan, Jholair and human, species with similar physiques who could adopt each other's styles of movement, assembling on one of the mats.

As people arrived for the class, Terrel was leading the opening stretch and warm-up routine. The child's form had improved since the last time Odirin had worked out with him.

Odirin stole a quick glance at Archer. She had the look of someone who had just had her worst fears confirmed.

Serenely stretching, bending, lunging, kicking, Terrel executed the form with technical perfection if little grace. Odirin decided the child was in the midst of a growth spurt and didn't quite know where his hands and feet were. Upstairs, Terrel had seemed a hand span taller than he seemed here. That impression was born out when Lii and Yslanta came to their places behind Terrel and Odirin could measure the child against a known scale.

Lost in the rhythm of the form, Terrel took no notice when Yslanta pointed to first one then another student to come forward and join Terrel. The two second best students in the group, honored in a traditional way, joining the best student in leading the exercise. Odirin wondered how much martial arts tradition Archer knew.

The three continued in perfect synchronism, the adult students showing grace but marginal posture while Terrel hit every position perfectly with awkward moves between.

On the final repetition, Yslanta and Lii joined, exhibiting both grace and perfection as well as the subtle but necessary ingredient of power, directed and controlled.

Odirin noticed how the class responded to the image the masters presented, striving just that bit more.

With one, flowing continuous motion, Lii gestured the class to be seated and faced off against Terrel to begin a demonstration. At that moment, another student, a human woman, came racing out of the dressing rooms carrying an infant in a seat. At the edge of the mat, she set the carrier down and propped it up then kicked off her shoes to take her place with the class.

As she folded herself in among the students, the infant let out a wail.

Terrel broke discipline. Without even looking at his instructors for permission, he raced to the baby's side, and in a moment had distracted the infant from his miseries.

Odirin forgot all about Archer and her agenda. Fascinated, he brought the image in close on Terrel's face. The young ral was enthralled, but from his awed, hesitant movements, it seemed he had never encountered a baby human before.

Nevertheless, Terrel's instincts were engaged, something deep within him touched as never before. A moment, and the human mother was at Terrel's shoulder, Lii across from her.

The unguarded look on Lii's face told of fatuous pride in Terrel. Odirin let the images unfold in real time as the mother instructed Terrel in how to hold the baby and offer a bottle while Lii watched, eyes bright and yearning.

Pulling the image back to a wider view, Odirin noted that Yslanta and Tsjaim were presenting the demonstration for the class, eyes flicking toward Lii at every opportunity.

Odirin ran the images forward a few minutes and displayed Terrel cuddling the baby while Lii, Tsjaim and Yslanta put the class through new moves. He focused the sound to catch Tsjaim's muttered admonitions to various students as he corrected postures. "The objective here is to avoid becoming the victim of a violent attack without becoming the perpetrator of such an atrocity."

Odirin picked up Yslanta saying, "Always allow your attacker an opportunity to disengage without embarrassment."

On the other side of the mat, Lii murmured, "Accept the attack and guide the force of it around you. Use your attacker's energy, not your own. When confronted with overwhelming force, do nothing, be nothing, let it pass by."

Archer looked enlightened.

Odirin was about to terminate the demonstration when Lii's image turned from an argumentative student to ask Terrel, "What's the best thing to do when attacked by someone larger than yourself? Terrel? Terrel!"

Finally the child dragged his attention from the now giggling infant. Then Terrel answered absently, and with casual conviction, "Run away. Fast."

Lii asked, "When should you attack?"

"Never."

"When should you fight?"

"To protect a life." The child cuddled the infant close, protecting.

"Why do we practice powerful blows?"

"To avoid harming an attacker. If you don't have enough power, you might have to kill someone to stop them. That wouldn't be right. If you don't have control of your power, you might kill by accident and that would be even worse."

Lii started another question, but Terrel had lost interest. He put his own cheek down next to the infant's and closed his eyes, humming a little tune Yran had taught him.

Lii turned back to his human student and gave a perfectly human shrug. "Terrel has expressed the idea well enough, if informally."

The student, a short, stocky young man, said, "If I work real hard, in twenty years or so I might grow up to be Terrel's age."

Lii clapped a hand to the human's very muscular shoulder and answered, "If you don't work at all, you might make it sooner."

The man laughed. "You sound like my Sensei in London. Terrel's a bright kid. You must be very proud of him."

"We are. He is our dearest treasure."

"I believe it," he said watching Terrel gently stroking the baby's fuzzy head. "I don't know anything about Kethsem, but I know a lot about kids. That one has love in his heart because he was raised with love. And I hope that's not an insult in your culture."

Lii laughed. "We're in your culture now. We do our best to cope with it and ask forgiveness for any awkwardness." Odirin froze the image.

"Deputy Archer, have you seen enough?"

At her silence, he turned and found her dabbing at tears. She sniffed self-consciously, and nodded.

As Odirin dismantled the stage setup and pulled the record module, he said, "That was a fairly typical class." Except for the baby. "I'm sure Yran's boxes have captured many like it, and some with resolution good enough for court proceedings. You could spend hours and hours monitoring that dojo and only find variations on this." He handed her the module. "I hope this will help straighten this mess out."

She took it as if her hands were numb. Her eyes were still bright. "That was real, wasn't it? Not just something your fancy system fabricated?"

He chose not to be offended and gave the standard answer. "One of the reasons a Guild contract for coverage costs so much is that the Guild provides recordings of unimpeachable integrity. If this goes to court, the Guild seal will be on all the records submitted. The stage's system does nothing but sharpen the images, and there is no subjective component to the recording - other than selectivity. In court, objective experts will ask the questions and there will be no subjectivity in the answers. I give you my personal assurance that, when all of that is done formally and legally, the answer will be the same. What you saw is absolutely typical."

Odirin extricated his box and, with ostentatiously exacting movements, locked it in a high cupboard. Then he folded the stage up and secured it.

Cradling the data module in the palm of one hand, Archer examined it with unnecessary intensity. "I believed everything in that indictment. And everything that happened from the moment we walked into this house supported the allegations. Or maybe I just thought it did."

She looked up. "I thought I was used to dealing with nonhumans. But maybe I've missed something here. These people look so human - except the females don't have breasts and they all seem to have feathers instead of hair and their skin is so white. Jholair look just as human, but they think and behave like humans, too. Maybe I was interpreting everything as if they were Jholair?"

"Let's go see if Yran has found our supervisor yet."

She stopped him at the door. "You're going to leave that box here?"

"No, I'll take it with me when we leave. Won't be more than a few hours from now. You don't have to take Terrel with you to protect him from a box." He gestured at the lab's security.

She looked around at the laboratory again, and he watched her digest a new viewpoint.

Odirin produced his most ingenuous smile. Gradually, she returned his smile meeting his eyes. "I think I'd better apologize to the family."

"The best way to do that is just to leave as quickly as you can with as few words as possible."

"You really understand these people?"

Odirin felt he had made contact with the human being inside the social worker's uniform. "I had to learn a bit about them in order to train Yran as a boxmaster. They can't handle this action against the family because it hits them in the instincts. The best way to get it straightened out is to let the Guild lawyers deal with the courts and - "

Yran's voice cut through the air. "Lyle? Rudy's waiting. He's on Myskord negotiating with the TivTav mine over that new box emplacement to monitor tectonic activity. This is an expensive call."

"Come on," Odirin said to Archer. As they passed Yran on the stairs, Odirin said, "Yran, lock up would you please?"

"No problem."

#

Yran secured the lab quickly, but by the time he got back upstairs, Odirin had closed the office door with Archer and the Filiksan constable inside. Yran stopped at the hall door looking toward the office. Lii's arm came around his shoulders and pulled him close. The ral was so much taller, Yran felt wholly engulfed. Lii asked with a tremor, "Will it be all right? She smelled so different when she came upstairs. A lot less hostile."

"I noticed. I'm sure she'll strike a compromise."

"Then why are you scared out of your mind?"

"Whatever has brought Lyle here - it isn't good."

"He said you're leaving tonight. I don't know if I can stand that."

Yran glanced at the room behind him. Terrel and Tsjaim were in the kitchen. Yslanta, gaze fixed on Lii, was cleaning the table Odirin had stood on.

Yran opened his senses to the waves of emotions beating off Lii's skin. He felt his body responding and let Lii take some of his weight as he absorbed the shock of physical response to a ral. He'd been feeling it for some time but ignoring it, fighting it.

His system had been dormant so long this time, he'd come to prefer the peace of dormancy. Now, suddenly, every cell of his body screamed for the awakening Lii offered. "I need you, too, Lii. Maybe there will be time before we leave. Adrun knows how long I've been away. There'll be a few hours. He wouldn't rob us of that."

Lii's arm tightened, every muscle clenched and trembling. "If it meant losing Terrel, would you still refuse me your vow?"

There lay the core of their only conflict. "Archer made it clear that even if I pledged to you, it wouldn't help because a boxmaster is by definition an unfit parent."

"That's for humans. It doesn't apply."

"I know." He turned and locked mouths with the ral, taking the pheromone and hormone infusion so eagerly offered. This usually happened the moment he walked into Lii's presence. The stress of the delay evaporated leaving him weak and trembling, eager for all the rest.

When Yran was able to break away, Lii asked again, "Would you take vows with me? If it would help?"

"Yes. But it wouldn't change anything between us."

"If you'd met me before you cut shard, would you have resigned from the Guild?"

"I don't know." Old questions. Old answers. He said what the ral had to hear now. "Probably. Yes, definitely. Lii, there isn't ever going to be anyone else for me."

"There was. Before."

Yran had been married twice before he left Kethsem. The first had broken up in ugly desperation that caused his own family to disown him. The second had ended in tragedy and death that had freed him to apply to the Boxmaster's Guild. "Yes, I've loved before - but I've never been loved before. I've given you my pledge that if I survive the loss of my boxes and become a Guildmaster, free to marry, then you will have all that you want from me. All."

"And it won't matter - the way I am?"

Sterile. The ral hadn't hurt over that in years. In a flash, he hated Archer for doing this to Lii. He turned and looked up into the ral's face. "No matter what else I am - or have been - I'm Wesdayne now. It's that simple, Lii. You've got me - all of me that isn't owned by shard and shackled to the Guild. And the Guild's part will diminish with time."

"I've been waiting so long. It wasn't supposed to be seven years. Why did you have to turn out to be such a great boxmaster?"

Yran grinned. "Because I'm Wesdayne, of course."

The ral arms surrounded him and lifted him off his feet. Their mouths met again and, greedily, Yran took what Lii offered, what he craved and needed. And it sensitized him. From clear across the room, he felt Yslanta responding.

With fiendish timing, Lii pulled back and said, "Promise you won't leave tonight. Yran, please. I need you."

Though sterile, the ral was whole in every other way. But because, from early youth, his normal ral behaviors had been scorned because of that sterility, he had learned more control than most. Losing it like this had to be terrifying.

Yran took a wild, irrational chance - because every neral instinct prompted it. "Lii, I won't leave until you tell me to."

"You mean that?"

"Yes. Absolutely." And he did. It was a commitment as binding as the vow Lii so desperately needed from him.

Lii glanced toward Yslanta in wild triumph. Then the ral fell helplessly into a vortex of cherished fantasy where Yran was his and only his. Yran, swept on the irresistible tide, barely heard Tsjaim come out of the kitchen with Terrel. "What is going on out here? Lii? Yran?"

Terrel blurted, "We're getting married! It feels so good."

Yran pulled himself together and threw a damper on Lii's reaction, using his neral skills to manipulate the fountaining ral, a stroke, a murmured word, a caress, and most important, his own response. When he had the atmosphere under control, he whispered, "The agency people wouldn't understand exposing a child to this."

Lii groaned something rude about immoral human sexual habits, then apologized, turning away to struggle with his control before the intruders returned. Yran went to Yslanta and wrapped himself around her, delivering Lii's kiss mouth to mouth. She felt perfect against him. Tsjaim came up behind Yran and peeled him away to claim his portion from the treasured neral of the family.

Terrel squealed, "I'm going to perform the wedding!"

Yran replied, "Well who else is there?" He broke away and scooped Terrel up, sitting down with him on his lap. The cushion gave under them, and Yran's back twitched and spasmed painfully as tension redistributed. "Terrel, listen. It will be many years before I can marry. Lii is happy because I promised to stay awhile. But only a while."

"Lyle, too? I like it best with both of you."

"Well, I don't know yet. But we always try to stay the longest we can. Always. And when we're not here, we think about you all the time."

"I know, but it's not the same."

"You're afraid?"

"Yes. I'll be alone when it happens to me."

"No. I'll be here." Yran's sarone fluffed out from his head as he prayed that wasn't a lie. But the young ral had to believe it. "Terrel, Adrun understands how important it is for me to be here when you mature. So I will be here. And if I can, I'll bring someone for you, a neral your own age to share your maturing."

"I pray for it. Lii taught me a wonderful new prayer to sing."

Now that's a new one! "A ral's prayers are always answered." He hugged the child, burying his face in the youthfully soft sarone. Terrel shook in his arms, and Yran imagined he felt the first, faint stirring of adulthood. Not yet. Oh, please, not yet. But who knew what growing up off Kethsem might do to a ral? And judging by how much he'd grown these last few months, it couldn't be long now.

The woman's voice drifted up the hallway as the office door opened. "So all this can wait until the Guild lawyer - Hoaglund was his name? - gets here. I must say, I'm impressed with the man's knowledge of my field."

Odirin ushered the visitors to the front door exchanging pleasantries with the woman fraught with a subtext Yran couldn't decipher, probably sexual. Yran had no patience for human games right now, so he buried his face in Terrel's clean Lii-smelling sarone and just enjoyed Terrel.

The moment the door closed behind the intruders, Lii turned up the air scrubbers and Tsjaim took the scent eradicator spray down to the office. Still, it would take hours for the airborne irritation to dissipate.

End Chapter One