Boxmaster's Home
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Chapter Five

Bewildering Dual Gendered Laws

Yran eased the rover up behind a produce truck loaded with melons, glad the rain had slackened. The rover's windscreen was just glass and allowed the filthy water from the road to contact the surface. He'd become too accustomed to galactic luxuries.

They were in line at their first checkpoint and Odirin's disguise was about to be tested by offworld eyes and instruments. The Sxome at the checkpoint were in groundside combat armor. This Sxome Alliance species was humanoid, though long in the torso and bow-legged. Their helmet instruments made them seem beaked.

Odirin said, "Looks like they're either Wandibai or Tahonen just from those legs."

"Wandibai, I think. Tahonen have shorter legs proportionately. That means the helmets are full of instrumentation."

"Misdirection is the key to this disguise, remember. Instruments that aren't consulted won't reveal anything."

But the human didn't smell as confident as he sounded.

As they waited, they listened to a canned announcement booming out over the line of trucks. The invader hacked through the Oaurdin language sounding like an illiterate who suffered a neglected speech defect, but the gist of it was that the invaders were here to stay and any native who helped the Sxome Alliance would be rewarded.

After declaring that all previous laws governing the city had been repealed, the speaker recited the new laws.

After the fourth repetition, during which they crept forward only one truck-length, Odirin asked deliberately jabbing his thumb rudely toward the announcer, "What do you make of that?"

"I don't know. I keep getting stuck on the idea of repealing the laws previously governing the city."

"I got that part. Pretty standard. Can't you hack his accent?"

"Ayyl, there are not and never have been any laws governing that entire city. It would be impossible to make a single set of laws that every clan could abide by without doing something immoral in their own terms. There are customs and mandates and conventions and rules and manners, and writs and regulations and even a decree or two. But no laws. Who would make them? And as I understand it, only those empowered to make a law can repeal one - so how could the nonexistent laws have been repealed? You can only have laws within a clan, not across a city, because there's no way to enforce a single law across clan lines."

"I didn't know that, and I've been here dozens and dozens of times."

"Watch your language. Dozens can't be used that way. A dozen refers to the average breeding satisfaction level of a ral. It's an emotional state not a definite number. It isn't appropriate for an ansha to refer to that state except among his own family. You should say I've been here many times. You may hear me say dozens in various contexts - often as a slang phrase appropriate to our cover. Don't copy my usages. You're not neral."

"And I thought I knew the language a little."

"Lii would be proud of you. You've doubled your vocabulary in a matter of days and your accent improved a thousand-fold from the tapes on Hytril. Your manners aren't so bad either. Within a private family context, your usage is impeccable."

"So I shouldn't open my mouth in public. How am I going to get through this inspection?"

"Judging from that recording, the Sxome wouldn't notice if you offered fornication in public," scoffed Yran a bit more loftily than he'd intended.

Odirin smelled as if he'd discovered something rotten in his salad. And his eyes were focused on Yran. For days now, the human had studied Yran through his expanded sensory awareness, but this was the first time Yran had sensed him respond emotionally and appropriately to Yran's own output. And it has to be when I'm ashamed of myself.

"I shouldn't have said that quite that way. That recording represents an amazing linguistic feat that deserves respect not scorn."

"But you don't feel any respect. You felt disgust. But now it's shame. I think."

"You're right. You've made a lot of progress. You're going to make it through this well enough."

"You weren't testing me. That was a genuine reaction - but it's just not like you to - oh, what's the idiom? - put someone down simply for being non-Kethsem. There's a real danger here, Yran. These Sxome are enemies. The surest way to lose a war is to underestimate your enemy."

That was one thing Lii drilled his Deadly Arts students in - accurate assessment of threat.

"Look, Ayyl, it's just my early education coloring my attitudes. I know it's inappropriate, but even after all these years, I have a reverence for the precision use of Oaurdin. I could recite the epistemology of dozens tracing it through six languages, four of them dead, three of which I used to speak fluently."

Yran moved the rover up when the truck ahead of him rolled forward. He added, by way of apology for bragging, "My early training was strict, extensive, and specifically neral in content - very long on linguistics, diction, elocution, rhetoric, and the proprieties with special attention to history, psychology, music, poetry and art. Very short on physics, math, chemistry, engineering and crafts. In those I am self-taught - at least I was until I reached the Enclave and was exposed to Union resources."

"Education can be a big advantage."

"So can heritage. You have a much better chance of understanding these Sxome than I ever will. The three Sxome Alliance species we know of have just two genders, like all the species of the Union. Oaurdin must be fiendishly obtuse for anyone with such a bias. So explain to me these new city laws."

"Yran, laws aren't based on gender or sexuality."

That's what you think. Yran had discovered otherwise by violating every unspoken operating principle behind the laws at the Guild Academy. "I don't need the theory right now, I need to know what not to do so I won't get killed. That seems to be the only penalty the Sxome have for law breaking, and from all reports nobody else in this city understands it either. I'll bet you can figure it out."

"Well," said Odirin gesturing toward the announcer's voice, "it sounds like all the usual occupation procedures. The idea is to gain control of the population, get a head count, find out the vulnerable points, and make sure nobody tries to overthrow the new regime. So, anybody found on the streets at night will be executed. Any room in any building can be searched at any time. There'll be no privacy, not even in the most intimate of moments. All orders issued by the invader's troops must be instantly obeyed - instant death is the penalty. Obviously, they're searching for the resistance they know must be armed and preparing to strike at them from hiding."

Aha! Dominance was the objective. Of course. I should have seen that. "A lot of wasted energy." The Kethsem population wasn't going to respond to dominance displays the way a dual-gendered population would. But it made a weird sort of sense to Yran now that the human had explained it so clearly. Law was the tool a government used to impose dominance on its own population while war was the same tool used to dominate other populations. But the objective was identical - to control the behavior of others.

Odirin said, "Don't celebrate too soon. They may have fingered one Kethsem vulnerability. That last provision on the list? They're requiring all residents to wear a patch identifying gender."

Yran stared at Ayyl. "I didn't hear them say that."

"Listen again, here it comes."

The message cycled through again, and this time Yran paid enough attention to decipher the garbled words. "You're right," conceded Yran. "They're planning something, but I don't think they know what they're up against."

Troopers appeared at the side windows of the rover and motioned them out then stood back for the doors to open. Weapons were leveled at them as they climbed out on either side of the rover. The rain had stopped, though the overcast was low and heavy. The mud was slippery.

The trooper on Yran's side of the rover yanked his arm forcing him to face outward. Yran lost sight of the human. Another trooper ran armored hands all over his body and even through his sarone. He trembled reflexively at the personal invasion. Only his martial arts training kept him from striking out. He wondered how anyone else stood it.

Then a trooper with a translator moved in.

"What's your gender!"

"Neral," he answered stiffly.

"Wear this affixed to your right shoulder at all times. If you're found without it or with the wrong patch, you will die. Do you understand?"

"Yes." Not really.

"What's your age? In years."

Yran paused to figure that out. "Thirty-eight."

They had not discussed a fictitious age for Ayyl. Would he say something plausible?

"What's your cargo?"

"Camping equipment."

"If you sell camping equipment in this city you will be executed."

"It isn't for sale. It's ours."

"Why are you going to the city?"

"Religious pilgrimage."

"That's a new one," said the translator aside to one of the armed guards. "Search them very carefully."

To Yran, he continued as if reciting, "Tomorrow at noon, the roads out of the city will be closed. You are responsible for reading the posted announcements. If you do not comply with a law, however new, you will be killed. At noon tomorrow, each neral between thirty-five and forty years of age must report to the capitol to be identified. Thereafter, you will be required to wear your identification on your patch. Neral between the ages of thirty-five and forty years will report for identification at noon tomorrow. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

Without pausing to hear Yran's answer, the translator turned away, saying to the guard, "Religious pilgrimage. I don't envy you this one. Could be your career. Nothing is more dangerous than religion." The translator rendered the words to Yran's hearing even though they were spoken aside.

The guards and the translator moved to the truck behind them, a cargo of grain bagged against vermin for storage.

Another group of armored Sxome came from the truck ahead of them and proceeded to search the rover. When they got into the cargo compartment - which was crammed - they required Yran and Ayyl to empty it and deploy the tent.

They called the interrogator back to inform them they could not live in the tent in the city, even for religious purposes. They would be killed. The translator watched for a reaction, but Yran stepped forward and said, "We understand."

The troopers went through the motor compartment cautiously, as if expecting the entire rover to explode at a touch, then one crawled underneath with lights that were searingly bright. Even so, they wouldn't discover the monitor boxes which were encased in pipes that looked like part of the exhaust system, pipes covered in road muck like the rest of the undercarriage. Yran had made sure of the monitors when he'd fixed the hoses damaged in the accident.

As the guards emerged, casually flicking the light at the bystanders, Ayyl winced and gasped right along with Yran and all the other Kethsem drivers watching the procedure. The Kethsem bystanders, mostly scal and ansha, stamped and swore in high register and with lurid descriptions of alien body odors.

Ayyl raked the murmuring crowd with a glance, oddly attentive.

Once they'd repacked and passed through the checkpoint, Odirin relaxed back into the passenger seat and asked, "What was that having to do with the odors of the invaders and their use of a different light spectrum?"

Yran's sarone flexed embarrassingly. He felt Odirin reacting to the involuntary shift in Yran's odor. Odirin's reaction wasn't right but it was there. He wondered what a ral would make of that ansha/neral interaction.

"Forget it," said Ayyl. "Let's talk about tomorrow. You'll have to pick up my box at the Capitol, so I'll fetch yours from the spaceport and we'll be out of town before noon when you'd have to go register. The timing will be tight, though."

Not knowing which was the more sensitive topic, Yran addressed the language problem first, fixing his eyes firmly on the road ahead. He cast himself into the clinical distance from which he'd answer a direct question from Terrel. After all, everyone had to learn sometime. "They accused the aliens of - uh - becoming sexually aroused by the color of that light. There are those who - learn - to depend on light colors to trigger arousal and thus gradually lose the ability to respond appropriately to normal odors. Most people find such a practice revolting enough that the merest hint of an accusation can discredit a person."

"I see."

"I suggest that you avoid language of that sort. As with dozens the avoidance is rarely inappropriate, but the usage can be. You've taught me that sexual innuendo is the primary source of misunderstanding between species. In Oaurdin, almost every odor-descriptive other than the ones I've taught you is connected with sexual behavior or gender-specific experience, usually connected to conception." He added, in his most clinical tone, "Color-descriptives can be even worse because certain wavelengths can trigger torrential floods of pheromonal activity."

"Let's skip it for now."

Tempting. "Tomorrow you'll be on your own." He flicked a glance at the human - evaluating the job the surgeons had done. "You don't understand the effect your appearance has. The waiter at the restaurant saw it, the scal who helped haul you out of the stream reacted to it, every ral in that campground was left wanting, and everyone at that inspection point noticed. It's a good thing you elected to appear ansha - as a scal you'd be utterly devastating. As it is, you are a walking ral-burnout. And don't you dare use that expression!"

"So I appear attractive. I figured that from your reaction the first time you saw this costume."

"You did?"

"It doesn't mean anything."

"Oh, but it does. Lii would die if he had to look at you and not touch. And I'd have to forbid him to touch because you wouldn't welcome it and that would really hurt. It would hurt the whole family."

"I had no idea."

"I noticed you hadn't. The illusion you project is treacherous. You have to be extra careful what you say and how you say it."

Edging a little farther away from Yran, the human said, "But you understand - I don't mean anything . . .."

"I'm not capable of responding without Lii. You know that. But remember that other ral carry that same magic, enough to be uncomfortable even without direct contact. Everyone who's seen you has responded - sharply, definitely. And I don't think you've noticed."

"Well, no. I wasn't - paying attention."

"That's what gets boxmasters killed - inattention."

"I recall teaching you that."

It was the human's turn to be embarrassed and ashamed. It filled the cabin.

Gunning the rover onto a long causeway approaching an arched bridge over the last river they had to cross, he said, "So you have to watch your language or you could find yourself in a position you can't handle without your neral sotain. There are a lot of desperate ral in this city."

"Right. I'll be careful at the spaceport."

"Boxmaster," said Yran breaking the rule of address they'd agreed on for their sojourn on Kethsem, "I have a confession to make."

"Confession?"

The tension odors assailed Yran's senses again. "Yes. My box emplacement does cover the spaceport as the Guild contract requires, but it isn't in the spaceport. It's in the memorial ground on the hillside adjacent to the port, buried under the memorial to my children. We haven't covered burial customs. You couldn't walk through the gates without giving yourself away. I'll have to retrieve both the boxes."

Before Odirin could object, a great roaring filled the cabin, and obliterated all other sound.

Odirin's hand touched Yran's shoulder and gestured to the rear view mirror. Yran strained up to the taller human's angle. Coming in low and fast behind them was an offworld attack craft bristling armament. The rover shook and vibrated, then lurched.

Odirin opened the window on his side and poked his head out to look up, then pulled back and shouted, pointing, "Another above us. Step on it!"

Yran hit the throttle and the rover shot forward. "They couldn't have made us at the checkpoint! Not possible!"

"Go! Faster!"

They crested the middle of the bridge and started down the other side. Though he couldn't see it, Yran knew the water under them was deep and fast, a navigable river that cut across the valley, fed by snow melt from the high mountains and at this time of year, by the rains.

Ahead, the truck that had cleared the checkpoint before them raced for the shore. The craft stayed low overhead. Through the steering wheel, Yran felt the bridge vibrating to the wake of the two craft. The sound turned to pain.

They hit a crumbled section of road, repairs halted by the invasion, and Yran almost lost control. There was no other traffic, though. He swerved back into the center of the roadbed and kept the throttle wide open. Wind whipped at the rover, not the best vehicle for crosswinds or speed.

The truck ahead reached the causeway section, over land but still elevated above the flood plain. Beyond the causeway, warehouses and factories clustered - the district the truck must be headed for.

Odirin searched for something to use as a weapon. He kept yelling, "Faster!" at intervals. Yran didn't bother to protest. The offworlder had no sense of road speed or the limits of this vehicle.

While they were on the steepest part of the downslope, one of the craft overhead pulled forward into Yran's view through the front windshield. The backwash of its passage almost ripped the steering wheel from his grasp. The rover bucked. For one instant, the seat of his pants left the cushion. Then he landed hard.

At that very moment, the world ahead of them exploded to searing brilliance, then fountained with bits of roadbed.

Yran hit the brakes, pumping and feathering. Odirin unfastened Yran's restraints and then his own. "On my mark, jump!" he screamed over the noise of debris hitting the rover and the other craft roaring overhead.

Yran fought the rover, squinting through the rain of debris at the flattening causeway ahead. The hole was on the flat. But they were still headed down. They skidded and he regained traction only to skid again on the grit from the explosion. He wanted to haul over into a one-eighty, but the road shimmey told him the rover would roll unless he had flat road under him. The little city car they wanted to give us would have done it.

The lip of the crater loomed but they were still sliding. "We can't stop!" yelled Yran. "We're going over."

"On three!" shouted Odirin, holding his fist up in front of Yran with three fingers out, then balling it up. "One!" One finger up. "Two!" Yran reached over to the handle of the left hand door and flicked the lock open. "Three! Now!"

They dove out their respective doors.

Yran landed curled, taking the impact on the back of his shoulders. His sarone caught against the pavement and unbelievable pain shot through his whole body. Paralyzed by pain, stunned by the jolt of impact, he rolled out of control, expecting to catapult over the lip of the crater and into water far below.

He came up short of it, just in time to glimpse the rear of the rover sailing through the air. The front bumper struck the far lip of the crater. The vehicle bucked, then tilted and tumbled rear end first out of sight.

Silence settled. He heard the crash of landing.

Yran lay stunned, waiting for his senses to steady. He couldn't believe he was still alive. Abraded by sliding on grit, but unbroken and alive. Thanks to Lii's endless drills in falling.

Across the hole, near the edge of the road, Odirin pulled himself up against the guard rail, holding his head in his hands. Alive, too.

The attack craft were gone. The truck had disappeared off the other side of the bridge. There was nobody behind them yet.

Yran crawled to the edge of the hole and looked down.

The rover lay, wheels up, front cabin crushed, at the very edge of the water.

Odirin joined him to survey the situation. He smelled of human blood and acrid human fear underneath everything else. On hands and knees, he poked his head over the lip and looked down. "You were speeding," he said flatly, but there was a whiff of humor in it.

Yran played to it. "I almost killed us."

"Almost being the operative word. Keep it up, Boxmaster and I'll recommend you for a commendation."

Shaken, the human had not spoken in Oaurdin. Now he backed away from the crumbling hole and gathered his feet under him to rise. "There better be a way to get down there. Without those packs, my disguise won't survive, and we need the monitors."

"There should be a ladder somewhere, but my legs are shaking too much to try it right this minute." Yran sat down to rub the sudden cramps from his muscles and pick the grit out of his skin.

#

Odirin was very glad he hadn't been driving.

He stood panting, ankle deep in frigid river water, wishing for his thanahyde uniform, miracle fabric comfortable on any planet in any season.

"Get set! Heave!" he called to Yran who was at the front of the wreck.

They had extracted everything of use they could carry, including the monitor boxes. Now they had to move the wreck into the water so it would seem certain they had died inside it. If it looked good enough, there was a chance the invaders wouldn't spare the time to investigate - that was, unless they had spotted his disguise for certain.

They didn't make us. I'm sure of it. But he wasn't sure enough to risk the mission. They had to move fast now. Tomorrow to collect the boxes, then by noon, out of the city - on foot if necessary. He had no idea how to hitchhike on this world. He hoped Yran did, though Odirin had begun to suspect he came from a stratum of society that just wouldn't do that. He'd never suspected that before.

The wreck moved a foot or so. Yran shouted, "Again!"

Odirin put his back into it. Every muscle protested. Every cut and abrasion stung, except the ones over the artificial padding. The abraded skin over the padding tingled and itched strangely, instead.

He pursued the sliding wreck another step forward. The dardchen bite on his calf got soaked with river water. Yran stood thigh deep in the water. It couldn't be dangerous.

Two more supreme efforts, and the front end of the rover was submerged. Odirin waded forward, hanging onto the rear door handle and stretched toward Yran who was staggering in the faster current, nearly shoulder deep on him.

Grabbing his belt, Odirin hauled the Kethsem onto firmer footing, then they helped each other stagger back up the bank to the pile of their possessions.

With the waning afternoon, the storm had redoubled. Now whipping winds drove solid sheets of water interspersed with hailstones an inch across. The causeway above sheltered them from the worst of it.

"We can't camp here," said Odirin over the noise of the storm. "We have to find shelter."

"I have to be at the Capitol rotunda at noon tomorrow, if we can't get out of the city before then. So we'd better head in that direction."

Their map had been a casualty of the river. From memory, Odirin said, "That way, then." And pointed.

"From what the Breeze said, the maximum devastation is around the Enclave. If we shelter in the rubble, I could walk to the port and the Capitol from there."

They had the funds to stay at a legitimate hotel, but Yran had told him about the one that had been bombed while the Breeze singers had been staying there. Neither of them even considered trying to break into one of the nearby warehouses. That was the first place any pursuit would search for them.

Odirin thought it over, aware that Yran was waiting for him to decide. This was the first time in years they had been in the field together, and Odirin had been impressed by how the Kethsem had grown in maturity and self-confidence.

"Your call, Yran. You're the boss on the ground."

"Without the rover, I don't think we can make it out of the city before noon. But at noon, a neral wandering around the Capitol grounds isn't going to attract attention. But how to get out of the city again after that - I don't know."

Seldom had Odirin felt at such a loss on a retrieval. Normally, he commanded any help he needed from the local authorities. Even the Kethsem cooperated with him when they wanted a box reading on the fault line that ran under the Capitol or on some security breach during an interstellar negotiation staged at the Capitol building.

"Let's get moving before anyone comes to investigate the damage," said Odirin.

As they had climbed down, one truck had come close enough to see the hole in the bridge and then see-sawed around and retreated, probably warning off the others behind it. There were other routes into the city proper. The planes hadn't come back, and so far nobody had come to investigate. It was a good sign.

"Let's head for the Enclave, then," decided Yran. "We can get there by midnight if we hurry. But after dark they could be patrolling and killing anything that moves."

It was after midnight when they saw the crumbled white walls of the Offworld Enclave - the only place on the planet where offworlders had been allowed to live. They had been forced to dodge armed Sxome patrols. And they had run into sections of streets blocked by rubble.

Closer to the Enclave, the destruction was indeed worse. Yran reminded him to refer to it as the Enclave, not as Bridgehead City. As they neared, they saw that the invaders had set up banks of their cruel lights around the Enclave to illuminate the perimeter, leaving the center of the area dark. The light was dazzling, painful even from a distance. "It could be dangerous to our eyesight," warned Odirin.

"Yes. If they need such light, why do they want Kethsem?"

"Maybe they don't need it. Maybe they just don't mind it."

"That would mean they're using it just to torture us."

"Or maybe just as a convenience."

"Over there - see? One of the lamps is broken. We can get through there," said Yran.

At the darkened spot, they scrambled over the rubble that had been the wall and sat panting on a big chunk of wall in a shaded patch. Odirin couldn't see beyond arm's length in the dark, and against the searing lights, couldn't see at all.

Yran sketched in the dust at the edge of the defined area they occupied and spoke over the constant background rumble of ships landing and taking off at the nearby port. "We're here. The buildings over here have underground levels dug into solid rock. We might find an accessible basement."

Weary beyond reckoning, Odirin said, "Lead the way." After all, the Kethsem had lived here for years while he had only visited some of the offices and an apartment or two.

Yran heaved himself to his feet, backpack staggering him. Odirin jumped up and steadied him. Then they crept through the shadows by feel until they were clear of the lighting. In the darkness, Yran led the way with more confidence, warning of bad footing.

But even the Kethsem could barely make out shadows outlined in dim infrared colors. The storm had washed all the heat out of the stone. The first refuge they came to was occupied. Yran smelled it first and pulled Odirin away. "A ral and two ansha, maybe others," he whispered. "Sleeping."

The third place they tried was empty, except for a human corpse, moldering. They left the tomb undisturbed.

Reeling with exhaustion, they finally found an empty cellar, crawled in through a hole in a foundation and slid down a ramp of loose rubble. At the bottom, Yran found some empty shipping containers and made a closure for the entry.

By the light of Odirin's torch, the place turned out to be a corner of basement under what had been a large office building. The remains of a huge air conditioning plant hulked in one corner. Blackened power generators were half buried in a heap of rubble defining the far wall of the space. Odirin found clean water in the water heater.

They set up camp, neither one mentioning the luxurious comforts lost with the rover. They pep-talked each other into stripping, cleaning their wounds, and donning dry clothes, carefully shifting their gender patches to the new clothes before squirming into their bedrolls. Odirin fell asleep lulled by the constant port noise, so many ships moving at once that their sounds blended together.

Yran was gone when he woke. And the noise from the port hadn't changed.

Yran's makeshift curtain over their door glowed with bright sunlight. Bright? With one quick peek he ascertained it was more than sunlight. The aliens had left their lights on to discourage squatters. Yet there were many desperate folks ensconced in the ruins. Odirin heard and smelled them.

He found where Yran had extracted a bit of breakfast before he left. And he'd taken his box's monitor. The fragment would lead him right to his box. Yran had also taken the shard-carrier, a thick, sturdy pouch of insulating material that could be used to carry the naked shard if he couldn't conceal the foot square black cube of box.

Odirin tended his wounds, ate rations, took a better inventory than they'd been able to by the river, and repacked. Yran had also taken the ground cloth from his bedroll. It was their spare, the one with winter insulation, the other having been soaked in the infested stream. They had rescued the blanket with soap and sunshine, though Yran had approached it gingerly that first night.

By mid-morning Odirin was packed and ready to leave the moment Yran returned. Yran's neral age-group was supposed to report to the Capitol at noon and the roads would close at noon. Yran had probably left before dawn thinking he could get back in time for them to get to the Capitol and then out of the city before the roads closed. It wasn't that far to the cemetery. What was taking so long? If he'd known Yran would be gone so long, he'd have been to the Capitol and back by now. As time passed, annoyance turned to anxiety.

Worried, he crawled up the slope of rubble to their door and wedged open a crack to peer out. Outside, rough yard was defined by shapeless walls of debris. Someone had cleaned the space by piling crumbled masonry to form a protected area. In front of their door, a very young child sat before a puddle of rainwater, playing with his reflection and babbling proto-language.

Completely absorbed, the child didn't noticed Odirin. But the human learned a lot from the child's ragged patchwork of painfully clean clothing, the cut-down adult-sized brimmed cap tied over the child's sarone to protect the eyes from the harsh lights beyond, and the gaunt look of face and body.

As Odirin observed, a ral came calling for the child. The child ignored the voice, no doubt preferring its fantasy world to reality. The ral came into view. He was large, heavy set, old and careworn. He had a younger child clad in clean rags, held against one hip, sound asleep.

As he came across the courtyard, a stirring of wind brought Odirin a whiff of ral pungency he couldn't interpret. This was the first ral he'd smelled close up since his alterations. He didn't need smell, though. The silent pause as the ral spotted his child playing told Odirin of deep love and sad tenderness. The ral would have given his child something a lot better than a puddle to play with - if he had anything at all to give.

Suddenly, everything human in Odirin wanted to kick ass.

Nobody has a right to destroy families like this!

Apparently, the wind had shifted. The ral started as if stung, and whirled in place. Another preternaturally still pause, like a frightened animal, and the ral snatched up the playing child.

"Who are you!" snapped the ral, a child in each arm.

The swirling wind delivered only a thread of potent odor to the human. It roused no automatic emotions, but his enhanced olfactory sense recognized fear. Almost pure fear.

Odirin parted his patchwork shield and edged into view. "Another rain soaked refugee from destruction."

"What are you doing in my yard!"

Well, his appearance hadn't beguiled this ral. So much for Yran's judgement of that. "Didn't know it belonged to anyone. We won't be here long."

"We!" accused the ral.

Odirin had never seen such Kethsem hostility before and though his nose informed him of violent shifts in the ral's emotions, he couldn't interpret the melange. "I'm here with a neral sotain. We're leaving soon."

"Neral? Leaving to go where?"

Another sudden shift in the ral's demeanor, a sharp, avid interest that erased all other concerns. He took two steps closer to Odirin's hole, peering into the shadows.

Odirin didn't know how to say none of your business politely in ral symbolism.

"What's going on here!" demanded another, lighter voice.

Yran!

Out of the glare beyond the rubble, the neral emerged, swinging a makeshift pack off his shoulder. The pack was the ground cloth tied around a lumpy assortment of items and slung onto a stick to carry. Nice way to conceal a makeshift weapon. Yran was absolute master of the quarterstaff.

Nondescript rags protruded from the bundle. Distracted by the ral, Odirin hadn't noticed the approach of shardsong, the unmistakable, inaudible hum of shard - not his own, but familiar shard. Yran had retrieved his box.

Yran himself was dressed in a baggy dun colored coverall with muddy knees and frayed cuffs, cinched at the waist with worn out rope. His gender patch was slapped askew on the wrong shoulder, and his medallion hung snagged over the patch. The sleeves of the garment were rolled up and knotted to hold them at his elbows. It was an artistically perfect image of harmlessness.

The ral tore his gaze from Odirin, and snapped around to take in the sight of the neral. Instantly, all the hostility vanished. The fear evaporated. He took several steps toward Yran saying, "Are you sotain to this ansha?"

Yran replied, "Yes." His gaze shifted to the two young ones, then back to the ral's eyes. Very deliberately, he straightened Lii's medallion. "We're on our way home."

Odirin studied the body language, gleaning only vague clues from the riot of scents suddenly filling the yard, a silent conversation. He edged out of his hole and pulled his feet under him.

"So you two are not - alone."

"No. I have been to a funeral this morning." He pulled some of the material from the top of his bundle. "Perhaps you can find some use for these things. Shelter from last night's rain was very welcome."

"The rain is gone."

"And so are we."

"Must you go?"

"Yes. We are anxiously awaited."

"I know that anxiety, and how it hurts when there can be no relief."

The ral glanced at Ayyl. Odirin noted the ral's forlorn yearning as he assessed the ansha figure he saw. Hastily, the human revised his estimate of "Ayyl's" beguiling ability, and Yran's judgement. So now I just have to figure out how to mute this effect. As a human, he'd had trouble with women until he'd learned to control his attraction. Why did they do this to me?

After another long, silent exchange, Yran choked, "We can't help you. We can't."

A searing potency set the air to boiling - the effect was almost visible, like a heat-shimmer. Yran's sarone twitched. He stepped closer to the ral and said more clearly, "We can't. But someone will. There are so many. Someone will."

Then he slid past the ral, and a moment later, he pinched Odirin's sleeve and yanked at it as he dove into the cellar. Odirin followed helping with the bundle.

Yran shored up their entry barricade, then whirled, tight lipped, to hiss, "What did you think you were doing?"

Odirin retreated, stunned. In the confined area, he detected more powerful waves of scents from Yran, but still had no clue what it all meant.

Yran took a deep breath and let it out in a long, trembling sigh. He scrubbed at his face, then turned to his bundle. "Hurry. Let's pack this away, and get out of here. I can't leave you here alone, not with them. You'll have to come with me to the Capitol." He extracted his box and continued in a barely audible whisper, mindful of their neighbors, "We're late. And you're going to be awfully conspicuous in that crowd."

Odirin bent to rearrange one of the backpacks to disguise the lump of the box. Carrying it to the Capitol was sheer folly. If it was found on a search, it would identify them instantly. And there would be street searches - it was standard procedure when securing a city, after all. "We'll find a place to stash me and the packs. We'll have to play it by ear."

Preparing to help Odirin on with his pack, Yran paused, "I shouldn't have been angry with you, not like that. You're not really ansha. It's just that - it's a lot worse out there than I imagined - what they're doing, I mean." He wiped his face in the crook of one elbow. "What I said to that ral is true. There are a lot of others. A lot."

Odirin slid his arms through the straps, then held Yran's pack for him. They hitched and settled the loads, tied down so they could run if they had to, or ditch the loads if necessary.

As they squirmed back up the slope to the door, Yran said, "Walk the way Tsjaim does, and act as if you're protecting me. That ral was frightened of you until I turned up. He must have good reason."

"Right. Go."

Yran led the way. The ral didn't stir, but Odirin had no doubt he watched.

They had no breath for talking as they crossed the Enclave and scrambled over the large heap of rubble that had been the outer wall, nearly blinded by the dazzling perimeter lights. Eyes slitted, they staggered into the city street. There were only a few puddles left. Yran prevented Odirin from stepping in the water. "There's blood. Smell it?"

"Is that what that is?"

"Yes. And it isn't animal blood. Don't get it on you."

Yran strode off and Odirin followed. The street was deserted. On an adjacent avenue, Odirin spotted a figure headed toward the Capitol. "Yran, was that ral alone with those children?"

"Yes," snapped Yran.

"What did he want from us?"

"Marriage. Protection."

"He propositioned you on sight?"

"Yes. Can you imagine what would make him do that?"

"No."

"I don't even want to think about it."

Odirin paced the neral and took a long look at him by the light of day. He didn't have that robust glow he always wore after a session with Lii, but he was markedly changed from yesterday. "You told the ral you went to a funeral. What did you really do?"

"I went to a funeral. I'm not stupid enough to lie to a ral."

"No insult intended."

"I'm not insulted by your social awkwardness. I'm instructing you in the proprieties."

"Good. I can use all I can get. So what did you do?"

"I couldn't sleep. The ral misery level in there was just too high. Right before dawn, I heard a funeral procession chanting. I took off. Outside the Enclave, I saw this coverall in a trash pile and took it along with some stuffing to make a pack. I was just in time to join the tail end of the procession, and a good thing, too. Turned out there were invaders guarding the memorial gates searching individuals but not the funeral groups. I went in with the procession, and collected my box. But I had to wait to leave with the group, too, or the guards would have searched me."

"Unbelievable good luck. Dare we hope this next one will be so easy?"

"Haven't you ever heard of neral optimism?"

"No." But come to think of it, Yran usually thought with a positive outlook. "Maybe Lii's used the phrase once or twice."

Odirin paced his shorter legged companion, remembering how this street had looked the first time he'd seen it. It had teamed with trolly buses, hoards of children, the younger ones supervised by ral, and with carriages pulled by druchdrun.

At that time, Odirin had come to Kethsem to enlist the aid of the planetary government to help in a search for Yran, a Kethsem citizen who had been kidnapped. In the Enclave, an old friend of Yran's, a human who had helped get him into the Academy, had informed Odirin that Kethsem had no 'planetary government' and that he'd have to deal through the clans.

He'd walked up this very street totally unprepared to have doors politely slammed in his face because Yran was an outcast who had committed the worst of all possible Kethsem crimes - he'd divorced some unsuitable spouses who had been chosen for him. He'd compounded his offense by remarrying others whose clans didn't approve of Yran. When these spouses had been killed in an explosion, he had sunk to the depths of true iniquity and chosen to leave the planet to become a boxmaster.

Odirin, who had spent his teens among nonhumans who held a variety of value systems had nevertheless been shocked by such an attitude toward a youth whom Odirin knew to be bright, enthusiastic, capable and very responsible.

Still, through Yran's human friend, he'd gained a new perspective which had helped him rescue his journeyman from torture and certain death. Now, Odirin picked his way through the clutter of fallen masonry, pacing beside Yran among a gathering flow of neral walking toward the Capitol at the end of the wide street. If these people knew who Yran really is, they'd shrink from him.

Yran muttered something using an odor word, a slang expression. Then he commanded, "Think of something else!"

Odirin noted people downwind of him turning to stare. He toed a bit of fallen fresco out of his path and considered that the artisan might be long dead, the art irreplaceable.

"That's better," said Yran, returning his gaze up the avenue ahead of them.

"I have an idea," said Odirin when the crowd around them thinned. "See that building - the dark red one?"

Yran searched curiously. "The brown one?"

Odirin didn't see any brown buildings. "With the - I don't know what to call them." He didn't dare point. "They look like crenelated parapets around the roof." Facing Yran, he whispered the alien words softly.

"The what?"

Odirin stretched his vocabulary. "The jagged railing on the roof? It's the extra tall building that's around the bend in the street but on the other side from us. As I recall, it's about ten buildings down from the Capitol. See, one of the top corner windows is broken and boarded over."

"Oh. That's Castle Entremorpelicin."

"Ah. Well. Suppose I take the packs and watch from up there on the roof. It has a view of the whole Capitol rotunda. Only an air patrol could spot me up there, and there haven't been any all morning."

The port noise roared constantly in the background, but nothing else moved except the Kethsem on foot obeying the summons to be identified. Odirin added, "There are, as I recall, a number of small storage sheds on that roof." His box emplacement at the Capitol had incidentally covered that building, too. The building, though it towered over everything around it, was only eight storeys high.

"That wouldn't be a good idea. They're allied to Vintsil, and you destroyed their lake."

"No doubt the ral will be upset about that," joked Odirin deadpan.

"You're beginning to understand," said Yran, relieved.

Odirin wasn't about to explain the joke. He scanned the gathering crowd of neral feeling as out of place as he would in the female's rest room. "Is there a better vantage?"

"Actually . . . no. And you wouldn't be conspicuous hauling packs into the Castle. You look the part."

Odirin had no idea what part but made an assenting gesture. He was wearing the costume provided for their cover while Yran kept his dun coverall over his costume.

They approached the slight bend in the avenue where the street widened into a formal approach to the Capitol. The torrential rain had left behind a chill, crisp air that had the promise of winter in it. Any other time, it would have set Odirin bouncing on the balls of his feet and smiling.

They rounded the bend and the low, sprawling rotunda that looked more like a monument garden than a Capitol, came into full view. The artistic composition of the view from this angle would have brought tourists pouring from all parts of the Union, had the Kethsem permitted it. Odirin had often visualized this broad avenue filled with struggling artists selling their original renditions of the view and hoards of Kethsem entrepreneurs hawking souvenirs of the most unusual planetary Capitol in the Union.

The Kethsem had built a four storey office building tucked away at the back of their Capitol, surrounded by so much shrubbery it was almost invisible. That was for offworld ambassadors and other interstellar business.

The open rotunda and the surrounding colonnaded walkways and gardens were used by the great clans for negotiating agreements. Odirin thought of it in terms of ancient Earth history, a prototype of a United Nations. But here the nations weren't geographic but genetic.

Now he caught an angle of view showing the rotunda with the red-brown building Yran called a Castle in front of it, and for the first time wondered how a species without warfare had developed even this symbolic siege-architecture.

He turned to ask Yran and discovered he'd lost him.

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