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"What Avtac Varz thinks doesn't matter." He stroked hi hair. "That you can
have my child at all is a miracle."
"Rashiva did."
Kelric stiffened. How did she know Rashiva's son wi his?
Savina curled her fingers around his hand. "She brought hi to Council. Few
people have ever seen you, so most don't reali;
the resemblance. And he has to stay on a special diet. Lil yours." She closed
her eyes. "Rashiva had trouble, but not li this."
-The Last Hawk 289
Keric thought of the primitive state of Coban medicine and the room seemed to
darken around him. "I want to get you a better doctor." "Behz is the best."
"For Coba, yes, Behz is good. There are better elsewhere." Her eyes snapped
open. "Go offworld?" She stiffened. "Your Rhon would take away my baby. They
would say I am not good enough to be the mother of their grandchild."
"Savina, no. My parents would love you." He lifted her into his arms. "Come
home with me."
She watched him with her large eyes. "If you left Coba you would no longer be
Sevtar." "I would love you no matter what my name." "I couldn't bear it if you
rejected your Oath." She touched the outline of his armbands under his shirt.
"The highest love is that of a Manager for her Akasi." "1 don't have to be
Calani to love you." Softly she said, "I'm not sure I can say the reverse." He
didn't want to believe it. "I could make you happy." "Your ISC would punish my
people for making you stay here. They would occupy Coba. Take away our
Restriction. Use our world. Disrupt the Quis."
After living on Coba for twelve years, Kelric had found much about its culture
he valued, just as he loved Savina and Quis. He no more wished to see Coba's
unique civilization disrupted by ISC occupation than did her own people. He
wasn't sure he wanted his old life back, with its vicious political intrigue
and harsh realities.
But these were extenuating circumstances. "I'm worried about the baby. And
you."
"I can't risk my world for the lives of two people." Tears glistened in her
eyes. "Not even for my own child and myself."
Rain drummed against Dahl Es.tate. The clock in Chankah's office chimed
Morning's Second Hour, but still she sat at her desk absorbed in work. When a
tap sounded at the door, she looked up with a start. She went to the door and
found the doctor Dabbiv waiting outside, his face flushed from running.
"What's wrong? Chankah asked.
290 Catherine Asaro       "              IM
"You've got to see " He tugged her arm. "Come see." U
He hurried her to his lab, where a solitary lamp burned one comer. An odd
device sat on a table there, a brass tuf clamped to a mount that let the tube
incline at an angle. Wh they reached the table, she saw a platform fastened
below tn tube, with a concave mirror under that. The setup reminded h of the
lens toys hobbyists used to magnify insects and leav The toys were notoriously
faulty, though, with lens aberratiod that gave blurred or false images
a
"What is it?" she asked. ||
"I'll show you." Dabbiv took a flask off the table. "This is i| sample of the
contaminated water you asked me to analyze."
"The plant engineers say it's not contaminated. The|| couldn't find anything
in it." ,|a
Dabbiv waved the flask at her. "Nothing they could see." H(|| dabbed water
from the flask onto a square Quis die made fron|| glass and set it front of
her. "I've been working with an opl cian, minimizing lens aberrations." He
handed her a magnifyll ing gass. "Try this one."
||
Chankah peered through the glass at the water. A pink spec|jj| darted across
her field of vision. "It moves too fast." 1|
Dabbiv took a vial of slow-syrup and let a drop fall into thd| water "Now try"
||
This time the speck drifted in a circle while a second one floated lazily into
view. "There's something. It's hard to see.|
"That's because a single lens doesn't magnify enough. Dabbiv tapped his brass
tube. "So I put several lenses together! like in the toys skywatchers use to
look at stars." He gestured with his hands. "You see, if you get the distances
betwee lenses just right, the image from one forms an object for the' next. It
gives much better magnification."
"But aren't the images terrible?" |
Dabbiv gave a wave of dismissal. "Lens toys make blurry| images because glass
bends the different colors in light by dif-| ferent amounts. But if your
'lens' is achromatic, that is, if it's3 really a series of lenses, you can
compensate for the bending. " It took me a long time to find the right shapes
and the right glass. But I think I have it now. I call it a microscope." He
set
_                     The Last Hawk 291
the Quis square on the platform below the tube and switched on a light in the
mount. "Just look at it, Chankah."
She squinted into the eyepiece. "I see a black cord."
"A cord?" Dabbiv looked like a windrider that had just smacked into a clif.
"There shouldn't be a cord." Leaning over, he peered into the eyepiece. "Ah.
So." He whisked a hair off the tube. "Now try."
Chankah squinted into the eyepiece and saw a clump of pink blobs. "It's
blurry."
He touched the screw on the mount. "Use the fine-focus."
She turned the screw and the blobs resolved into a cluster of translucent oval
bags with hairs waving about their edges. Little rods darted through the
cluster.
"Wel, I'll be a Quis cube." Chankah looked up at him. "What are they?"
Dabbiv grinned. "Some kind of animal. I think there's a whole universe of
small animals to see."
His success gratified Chankah. Once again he had proved wrong the many critics
who insisted his ideas would never work.
Kastora Kam was a tall woman with a wealth of mahogany hair she wore swept
into a roll on her head. Ixpar had known her since they were children in the
Cooperative. Although Kastora was older, in their childhood she had followed
Ixpar's lead in everything, from sports to boys to school. Ixpar valued her
loyalty, her hard work, her keen intellect, and her good sense. So when she
became Minister, she appointed Kastora as her Senior Aide.
Today they considered funding requests from Kam scholars. Kastora handed her a
file. "These are from the science labs."
Ixpar recognized most of the proposals. But at the back of the folder she
found a surprise. "Bahr Kam wants research funds? I thought she was a
professional gambler."
Kastora chuckled. "With Bahr you never know. A few years ago she wanted to
apply to the Calanya."
"I remember. To say it offended Jahit is an understatement." Ixpar scanned the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]