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  Dushau

  ( The Dushau Trilogy - 1 )

  Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  JACQUELINE LICHTENBERG

  The Dushau Trilogy #1

  DUSHAU

  To Andre Norton, for writing Star Rangers, a.k.a. Last Planet, but not the sequel I felt it desperately needed, and for not being mad at me for threatening her, as she stood among the lovely flowers in her front yard, that I’d do it myself.

  To Jean Airey for hours spent on my back porch enthusing about Doctor Who until I lit up, too.

  To Judy Bemis and the many fans who’ve gone out of their way to show me tapes of Doctor Who. You may not see the derivation of Jindigar from The Doctor, or you may feel it’s spoiled by the admixture with Star Rangers, but to me, it seems Zacathans and Time Lords share the same Tailored Effects with Dushau.

  To Don, Elsie and Betsy—for the spark that lit the conflagration (and for a lovely breakfast at Chicon IV).

  To Marion Zimmer Bradley, for introducing me to Russ Galen.

  To Russ Galen, for temerity, perspicacity, and audacity, as well as finesse.

  To Nansey Neiman, for sheer nerve.

  Here must be mentioned those who contributed actively to the preparation of this book.

  Katie Filipowicz, editor of Zeor Forum, one of the fanzines devoted to my Sime~Gen universe, and creator of the Sime~Gen chronology published in the Playboy paperback edition of First Channel, made Stephen Kimmel’s world-building program work on my computer. She also acquired for me several Ravi Shankar records on which I’ve based my concept of Dushau music. All this in addition to customizing Wordstar so I could learn the darn thing! She’s one of those “without whom…”

  Jean Lorrah, my sometimes collaborator and now independent author in my Sime~Gen universe, suffered through the rough draft of Dushau despite her own crushing schedule to produce two books—her first independent Sime~Gen, Ambrov Keon, and her first professional star TREK, The Vulcan Academy Murders–from scratch within 8 months. She showed herself to be a true friend and a magnificent critic.

  Anne Pinzow, Executive Editor of Ambrov Zeor, the oldest of the Sime~Gen fanzines, and Roberta Mendelson, of many talents, Gail Lichtenberg and Susan DeGuardiola, all read and reacted to the rough draft.

  There is no way to thank such people except to pray the finished product justifies their investment of self.

  Further information about any or all of the above, or about forthcoming Dushau, Sime~Gen or Kren novels or ‘zines is available by sending a self-addressed stamped envelope with your request to:

  Ambrov Zeor

  Dept. D.

  P.O.B. 290

  Monsey, N.Y. 10952

  ONE

  Heraldry Rampant

  FOURTH OBSERVATION OF SHOSHUNRI

  “It is incumbent upon The Incarnate to discern the Policy behind the Laws of Nature so They can anticipate results of action/motivation during a Cyclical Hiatus when there is no evidence to reveal even the existence of such Policy.”

  FIFTH OBSERVATION OF SHOSHUNRI

  “Disregarding the Fourth Observation is a cap ital offense.”

  From : Purpose and Method

  By: Shoshunri, Observing Priest of Aliom

  THE KAMMINTH OLIAT HAS RETURNED, AND IS SCHEDULED TO RECEIVE COLONIZABLE PLANET DISCOVERY HONORS. IN THE NAME OF EMPEROR RANTAN, ALL SURVEY BASE PERSONNEL ARE COMMANDED TO ATTEND THE AFTERNOON AUDIENCE.

  The words crawled onto Krinata Zavaronne’s desk screen and refused to be banished: an imperial command.

  She swore. As a programming ecologist she was “Survey Base Personnel.” The new Emperor would not allow her to put duty above protocol, even though with the food riots and threats of whole species seceding from the Allegiancy Empire, her work was more critical than ever. The Emperor obviously hoped pomp and ceremony would whip up a sentimental loyalty to carry them over the crises. But Krinata knew this was the worst possible time for her department to delay putting new planets on the open market. When the throne was vacant, I got things done faster.

  In the privacy of her office, she squirmed into the formal red taffeta tunic. It fit tightly down the arms while blousing above her knees and made her feel silly.

  It’s a mistake, that’s all. She was Kamminth’s debriefing officer; she should have been asked before this useless ceremony was scheduled.

  She’d have said, “No. Absolutely not!” And that would have been the end of it. Exposing the seven members of an Oliat to a public ceremony before they’d been debriefed and dissolved the peculiar psychic bond among them was nothing short of public torture.

  She’d failed one of her Oliat teams by assuming everything would return to normal now that they had an Emperor again, so it was up to her to do something about it. As she draped the black sash around her waist, then up over her shoulder and fastened it to show the three linked circles of her family crest, she bent over her screen and punched up Finemar, the infirmary’s Sentient computer. The Emperor’s command remained overlaid on the screen.

  Finemar projected himself onto her screen as a Lehiroh male—the Emperor’s species—visually indistinguishable from human. He greeted her pleasantly, adding, “I’d have expected you to be on your way to the Audience, Krinata.”

  “Has Kamminth’s reported in to donate blood yet? Have you done their physicals?”

  “Kamminth’s Oliat lost a member on location and returned badly disoriented. I’m treating them for Dissolution shock. On order of Emperor Rantan, I have just released five of them, against my judgment, to attend their Honors—”

  “Which five?” demanded Krinata. “Is Jindigar…” Is he dead? A hollow panic seized her guts.

  “The Receptor Jindigar is attempting to become the team’s Outreach during the Dissolution.” Finemar named the surviving officers of Kamminth’s Oliat, adding that the Outreach had been killed, and he had the Inreach under heavy sedation, despite the Emperor’s demands. “Do you think I’ll get in trouble?” fretted the Sentient.

  “No,” reassured Krinata, hugging a sense of relief to herself. “But get Doctor Phips to countersign your order.”

  “Now, that’s a good idea!” Finemar signed off.

  Krinata grabbed her leptolizer, the jewel-encrusted symbol of her station, from the activation slot on her console, secured it to her sash, and headed for the throne room, arguing with herself. Rantan has no right to do this to an Oliat, no right! But he was so new to the throne, he probably didn’t realize. Even so, his advisors should have warned him. But obviously, they hadn’t.

  As Krinata crossed the open rotunda between Survey’s office building and the refurbished palace, Honor Guards saw her leptolizer and snapped salutes to her.

  She couldn’t get used to that. There had been no palace guards since she was a child. In the government hierarchy, she was the most minor and powerless functionary. Her hereditary rank in the third oldest family of Pesht, tenth Terran colony to join the Allegiancy Empire, had never meant anything to her. But she’d gladly use it to spare Jindigar. Or any Oliat! she told herself.

  Her costume got her past all the guards inside the palace along the route to her proper entry to the audience chamber. But when she turned aside, she had to stay in the midst of the crowd heading to the front of the chamber, where higher-ranking nobles sat. Finally, she turned into a deserted corridor, carpeted in dark red, lit by mock torches, hung with the banners of the Emperors.

  Before huge, carved seawood doors—bathed by a falling sheet of water—she was stopped by guards unawed by her.

  They were a pair of Holot: six-limbed, heavily furred, formidable. “Public viewing of the robing chamber,” said one, rolling his ‘r’s and gazing disdainfully over her head, “will recommence in the morning.”

 
; She fingered the jeweled wand and her belt. “I’m the Kamminth Oliat debriefing officer.”

  “Third rank enter the audience chamber from the blue doors, that way.” He’d seen her three-circle badge.

  “Thank you,” she said, turning away while taking the leptolizer from her belt, “but I have business within.” Before the Holot could block her move, she spun and flashed the beam of the leptolizer at the sensor plate on the doors. She wasn’t sure it had been keyed to that high a security clearance, and if it hadn’t she’d be in real trouble.

  But the doors opened. She darted between the hulking guards. Furry arms grabbed her about the waist and shoulders, and she hung suspended, gazing into the opulent backstage robing chamber.

  Three male Dushau huddled protectively around a single female seated in an all-form chair before an open fireplace where green flames danced welcomingly. On the spiral pattern of the rug before them, Jindigar sat playing delightedly with a piol pup, wholly absorbed in the baby animal’s discovery of the world. Sternly, he commanded it to sit up, and it lay down. The other Dushau laughed, but Jindigar shot them a quick glance, they quieted, and he repeated the command patiently. The pup sat, and Jindigar laughed, plucked it up and cuddled it.

  Jindigar, like the other Dushau, was dressed in the shapeless white shirt and pants of the infirmary while against one wall stood a rack of archaic Dushau formal wear.

  The guards started to creep backward and close the doors on the scene. Krinata squirmed. “Put me down!”

  As the piol licked his face, Jindigar turned to the doors. He rose smoothly, striding forward. In unmistakable welcome, he called, “Krinata!” His eyes, set wide and high on his head without protecting ridges, lit with hope.

  The guards paused. One of them muttered, “That’s the first he’s spoken to anyone.”’

  The other answered, “Our hides if we abort him!”

  They hastily set Krinata down, and she offered her hands to Jindigar, in formal ritual. But he scooped her up with one arm, the other protecting the rooting and snuffling baby piol, and buried his face in her hair, holding her as if from desperate physical need.

  He was shaking, and the dense indigo nap that formed his skin was cold and damp, not warm and dry as usual. She’d never been on such terms with a Dushau; never expected to be. But after her initial startlement, she felt his bone-deep fear and hugged him in reassurance, trying to imagine what Kamminth’s had been through to bring the always self-possessed Dushau to such straits.

  And an odd thing happened. Behind her closed eyelids, she saw the chamber as it had once been: newly gilded fretwork, plush new upholstery, too-bright colors. It was as if she were looking into an infinite stack of transparencies of the room, each one only slightly different from the one adjacent to it. But as she watched, the top one of the stack slid aside, and the others followed, fanning out like a deck of cards. Then images scattered chaotically in every direction. Her head swam, her stomach rebelled, and raw terror blossomed as an infinite chasm opened within her.

  She gasped, forced her eyes open, and focused on an odd stain on the wall beside a chipped bent grille. I’m here; U is now. She clung to that thought desperately, and her heart slowed.

  Within seconds, Jindigar’s fit abated and he withdrew, offering his hand formally. “I’m sorry. I’ll explain.” He glanced at the Holot, and his indigo features changed.

  Turning she said to the guards, “That will be all. Thank you.” She was amazed her voice didn’t tremble.

  They hesitated, then retreated and closed the door.

  But Jindigar didn’t offer his explanations. Instead, with that distant—frightened—look on his face, he pleaded, “Krinata, what has happened here?”

  She gazed at the instrument in her hand, at her scarlet tunic, bloused black pants, black boots. Oh, yes, things had changed since Kamminth’s had departed for the unknown,

  “Just after you left, food riots devastated the Vincent and the Shashi Route Interchange Stations which made the Tri-Species Combine threaten to secede from the Allegiancy. Rantan Lord Zinzik took charge with all the legendary dazzle and charm of his several-times-great-uncle, Emperor Turminor, and put down the riots, provided food supplies from nowhere, and convinced the Tri-Species Combine not to secede.”

  Krinata met his eyes, trying not to inject her personal bias into the news. “People compared him to Turminor. Since Turminor was the last Emperor before the throne was vacated, they said Rantan was his obvious successor. After all, Rantan was doing as miraculous a job as Turminor had—and Turminor brought eight decades of prosperity.

  “After three hundred years of doing without an Emperor, people were saying the Allegiancy needed a new Emperor. Suddenly, Rantan was crowned. He reinstated aristocratic privilege, and even I got promoted without earning it first. Nobody seemed to understand.”

  As she spoke, Jindigar’s expression lightened to comprehension and the underglow of fear dissipated. “Of course! It’s so obvious!” He set the piol on top of Ms head where it perched, happily grooming itself. Then he said something Dushauni to the others of his Oliat who relaxed along with him. To Krinata, he added, “I’d have grasped it sooner but for Dissolution and having to…”

  To spare him, she offered, “Finemar told me why you had to go back to being Outreach.” Jindigar had been the first Oliat Outreach she’d ever debriefed. It was only after her third debriefing of him that he’d shifted to being Receptor of his Oliat, and she’d thought she’d never speak to him again. Only the Outreach of the team could bear the stress of talking to outsiders. Right now, the other three survivors of Kamminth’s were withdrawn around Kamminth herself, their Center. And Jindigar had maneuvered Krinata so her back was to them. In essence, she and Jindigar were alone.

  “Do you understand Dissolution? You haven’t been a programming ecologist very long.”

  It wasn’t an insult. Her ten years seniority was but the blink of an eyelash to a Dushau who could expect to live ten thousand years and had already lived over six. “I suppose I do, as well as any non-Oliat.” She named the books she’d read on Oliat function, and courses she’d taken. She didn’t confess how, since girlhood, she’d lulled herself to sleep at night fantasizing that she was in an Oliat, exploring a new planet, the ends of her nerves humming with the living vibrations of a thousand life forms, instinctively understanding their interrelationships. Her current job was the closest a human could ever come to that.

  “An impressive list of credentials. I’d no idea…”

  “I told you I was serious about getting an appointment to a new colony. I want to work as an Oliat liaison.”

  “You have my vote,” he said cutting her off, “if you can learn to handle traumatic Dissolution in the field.”

  Her heart leaped. Vistas of hope for her career opened where there had been only a dead-end job. “I know I can.”

  He watched her intently, one hand straying to her cheek for a moment before he yanked it back. “I’m sorry,” he said again, then, “Krinata, I can talk to you. Do you understand what that means? Do you know why?”

  “Because you knew me when you were Kamminth’s Outreach?”

  He nodded. “Partly.” He turned away, taking the piol off his head and setting it on the floor, as he perched on the divan on the other side of the hearth and motioned her to join him,

  their backs to the others. As she sat beside him, he inched away from her and clenched his hands together. “It’s because you were familiar when suddenly everything had become strange—strangely familiar. Rantan even looks like Turminor! It’s as if we’re lost three hundred years in the past.” He glanced at her. “Dissolution distorts perceptions. I couldn’t–none of us could force ourselves to look up recent events.”

  At last she understood. Loss of sanity, loss of orientation amid the vast, echoing caverns of their millennia-long memories, that was the chief terror and very real danger of the Dushau, for it meant an inevitable and early death. Remembering what her overly v
ivid imagination had conjured for her moments ago, knowing it was the palest shadow of what he experienced, she said, “In your place, I couldn’t have either.”

  He studied her. “I may be Kamminth’s most experienced officer, but even I’ve never had to change Offices during a Dissolution. Until you walked in, I didn’t know…” His disobedient hand strayed again to her cheek, seeking contact with a slippery and wavering reality. “May I?”

  She suppressed the jab of terror, focused on a worn spot in the carpet, and put both her arms around his chest—they barely met behind him—and hugged him. He wrapped both his arms about her, bending his head until his napped cheek rested against hers, and surrendered to the trembling. It would be ever so much better for him if she were Oliat. But only Dushau, of all the hundreds of species of the Allegiancy, had the talent for joining into a team resonant to the ecology of a new world– able to evaluate its habitability for other known species, to determine if a planet harbored a sentient or presentient species. And very few Dushau had the Oliat talent.

  Krinata sensed the other four Dushau steadying as Jindigar did. When he finally raised his head, fixing her with his deep midnight eyes, he seemed to have become Outreach in truth. As he spoke again, his voice descended to its normal register, somewhere near the resonance of her bone marrow. “Kamminth’s thanks you.”

  She accepted that gracefully, then touched up a timecheck on her leptolizer. “How long until your Dissolution is completed?”

  “Forewarn, our Inreach, is still unconscious. We’ll be held in limbo like this until she recovers. But now, thanks to you, I can Outreach for her. In a few days, we’ll be able to give the debriefing your department is so anxious for.”

  She twisted on the seat, offended. “I didn’t come for the department!” Appalled at her inappropriate anger, she added, “I came because Zinzik is making a terrible mistake, and I wanted to find some way to stop it.”

  The piol was clawing its way up Jindigar’s white pants. Jindigar grinned at it, showing sharp blue teeth with darker blue grinders behind, and gathered the creature up, lovingly swinging it over his head and nuzzling it, laughing at its delighted squeals. He handed her the piol and got to his feet. “If you didn’t come simply to start the debriefing…”