The last time Jin had traveled to Qasama, the ship had been running on a fuel-conserving course and had taken two weeks. She was therefore somewhat surprised when, barely five days into the trip, the Troft captain announced that they would be arriving at Qasama within the next twelve hours. Even granting three decades' worth of advances in starship efficiency and the fact that this was a modern Troft freighter instead of the older models the aliens typically foisted off on the Worlds, the captain clearly wasn't all that concerned about his transportation costs. Either he had an important schedule to keep, or else the crisis on Qasama was as critical as the mysterious note had made it sound.
Not that Jin was able to find out which. The captain and crew were polite enough, as befit the long trading history the Tlos'khin'fahi demesne had with the Worlds. But the veneer of hospitality had a steel wall behind it, and five days' worth of gentle probing and wheedling had gained Jin exactly nothing in the way of new information. Merrick, who had inherited his father's calmer and more diplomatic wheedling approach, came up equally dry.
Jin had also hoped the captain might have further information on the logistics of the operation, particularly some advice on how to sneak into Daulo Sammon's town of Milika without attracting unwelcome attention. But the captain assured her he'd been given nothing but the original note, a small collection of old-smelling Qasaman clothing, and an easterly approach vector that would
hopefully slip his passengers into the forest west of Milika without tripping whatever radar coverage the Qasamans had set up to guard the Great Arc region where most of their people lived.
Which meant that as far as actual penetration of the Qasaman populace was concerned, Jin and Merrick were on their own.
They made a final check of their gear, including the Qasaman clothing , and loaded it aboard the freighter's shuttle. Designed as it was for cargo transport, the shuttle had no actual passenger seating. But the cockpit was designed for a crew of four, and the captain assured them that the engineering and supercargo stations could be left open for a trip this short.
They dropped over the nighttime side of the planet, the freighter pulling up and away as the Troft pilot sent the shuttle skittering toward the dark mass below. Five minutes into the flight they hit the first noticeable wisps of upper atmosphere, and the shuttle began to shiver, then tremble, then shake as the air around them grew steadily more dense.
Jin spent the trip staring at the mass rushing up toward them and consciously forcing herself not to dig her fingers into her seat's upholstery. Occasionally, she sent a furtive glance at Merrick, noting with a small nugget of wry resentment that her son showed no hint of the tension Jin herself was feeling. The buffeting hit a teeth-chattering peak, then began to subside again as the shuttle slowed to subsonic speeds. The ground below remained a mostly featureless inky black, but as they headed eastward toward the western arm of the Great Arc Jin began spotting little clusters of lights nestled among the forests that dominated the western part of the planet's inhabited regions. She watched the lights as they went slowly past, her muscles taut as she waited for a repeat of the attack that had killed her first team.
But no attack came. An hour after leaving the freighter, they touched down in a small clearing at the edge of their planned landing zone.
Jin and Merrick and their gear were at the edge of the clearing in ninety seconds flat. Thirty seconds after that, the shuttle was back in the air, clawing for altitude. Ten seconds more and the red glow from its gravity lifts had vanished over the treetops.
Hopefully, the captain's information about this area being outside any likely radar coverage had been correct. If not, Jin and Merrick would be getting some company very soon.
But for now, at least, they were alone, and Jin took a moment to stand beneath the tree canopy, the sounds and scents of Qasama whispering through her senses and echoing back from her memory. Suddenly, the last thirty-two years of her life seemed to vanish. She was once again the young Cobra all alone on a distant and hostile world . . .
"Spine leopard at three o'clock," Merrick murmured from beside her.
As quickly as they'd gone, the lost years came crashing back onto Jin's shoulders. Activating her optical enhancers' light-amplifiers, she looked to her right.
The spine leopard was standing motionless in the shadows, its eyes staring at the two rash humans who had intruded on its territory. The quills on its forelegs were quivering as the creature apparently mulled over whether or not this would be a good time for lunch.
"So that's a mojo," Merrick murmured.
Jin shifted her gaze from the spine leopard's forelegs to the silver-blue hawk-like bird perched on the spine leopard's back behind its head. The mojo, too, was watching the humans, gazing at them with a disconcerting alertness and perception that Jin had never quite gotten used to. "That it is," she confirmed. "The question is, has he figured out that we're not someone he and his companion want to mess with?"
"Maybe we can help him out a little," Merrick suggested. "Watch your eyes."
Jin switched from light-amp to infrared, watching as the images of the spine leopard and mojo shifted from pale green to flowing shades of red and orange. "Go."
Lifting his right hand, Merrick fired a brief low-level burst from his fingertip laser into the tree trunk beside him.
The spine leopard dropped into a crouch, its quills flaring outward. But the mojo showed no such agitation, merely fluttering its wings as it got a fresh grip on the predator's back. For perhaps half a second both of them continued to gaze at the humans. Then, with a shake of its head, the spine leopard straightened out of its crouch, its quills resettling themselves along his forelegs. It turned away, and without a backward glance strode back into the forest.
"Smart bird," Merrick commented.
"Luckily for us," Jin agreed, the warm scent of burned wood from her son's laser shot drifting across her nose. And luckily for the animals, too, she added silently. The spine leopard and mojo made up a symbiotic pair, with the bird functioning as the primary decision-maker of the team. On its own, the spine leopard would probably have leaped blindly to the attack and been dead by now.
Once, the mojos had served a similar purpose for the humans of Qasama, calming natural aggression with guidance so subtle that the inhabitants had never recognized it for what it was. Jin's own father, grandfather, and uncles had helped create the scheme for seeding Qasama with spine leopards, hoping that the mojos would be lured away from their human hosts and onto the more useful—from the mojos' point of view—predators.
Unfortunately, the Qasamans hadn't seen it that way. The introduction of new and deadly predators onto their world had driven much of the hatred they felt toward the Cobra Worlds.
Distantly, Jin wondered if the people here would ever truly understand that the plan had been for their ultimate good. Or whether such understanding would make any difference.
"It's about thirty kilometers east, right?" Merrick asked.
"East by north," Jin said, shaking the thoughts away. Standing in the middle of the Qasaman forest at night was hardly the time and place for deep philosophical contemplations. Shifting back to light-amp, she checked her compass. "That way," she added, pointing.
"Assuming, of course, Daulo Sammon is still living in Milika," Merrick warned as he adjusted his pack across his shoulders.
"He will be," Jin assured him. "Qasaman families stick very close to their hereditary land."
"Let's get to it, then," Merrick said.
Jin frowned at him. His expression had the same oddness she'd just heard in his voice. "Something wrong?" she asked.
"No, nothing." Merrick nodded in the direction the spine leopard and mojo had gone. "I was just thinking that Qasaman birds seem to understand the concept of deterrence better than some of our own politicians."
"No argument there," Jin agreed sourly. "But then, mojos don't have political agendas muddying their thinking. All they care about is survival." She took a deep breath. "Which is something you and I should also keep in mind. Quietly, now. And from this point on, we speak only Qasaman."
The trip wasn't nearly as difficult as Jin had expected. There were plenty of natural hazards along the way, with the complete range of tripping vines, thorn bushes, and leaf-covered roots that a healthy forest had to offer. But their optical enhancers gave them fair warning of most of the pitfalls, and even when the forest did manage to trip one of them their bone laminae and strengthened ligaments protected them from sprained ankles or worse.
More interesting to Jin was the fact that the only animals that gave them any trouble along the way were the six-limbed monkey-like baelcra, the gliding-lizard monota, and a few varieties of annoying insects. They saw a handful of spine leopards and a couple of the native krisjaws, but those larger, more deadly predators merely watched the two humans go past without interfering with them.
But then, none of the baelcra had mojos watching over their best interests. All of the spine leopards and krisjaws did.
Jin and the Troft captain had worked out the landing place and time to give them about six hours of darkness in which to cover the thirty kilometers to Daulo's village. With the lack of serious predator problems, they made it in just over five, emerging beside the main road leading to the village's high wall and closed gate. The gate itself wasn't visible from their exit point, but a bit of the wall could be seen about half a kilometer away through the trees around the next curve in the road.
It would have been convenient if they could simply march up to the gates and knock. But that was out of the question. The last time Jin had been here few people traveled the Qasaman forest at night, and none of them outside of sturdy vehicles. That might have changed in the past three decades, but it wasn't a risk she wanted to take.
Instead, she and Merrick retreated fifty meters back into the forest and settled in to grab a few hours' rest, each taking a turn on watch.
It was midmorning when Jin decided it was time. Her enhanced hearing could pick up the faint sounds of activity from Milika's direction, and it took no enhancement at all to hear the vehicles passing along the nearby road. She and Merrick cleaned themselves up as best they could, then changed into their Qasaman clothing. Their half-empty packs went into a shallow hole that Merrick had spent an hour of his time on watch digging, which they then covered with a generous helping of dirt and dead leaves.
And with that, the final stage of their journey was before them. "Remember that men are very much the dominant gender here," Jin reminded her son as she gave his outfit a final check. "Naturally, you'll show respect to me as your mother, but you're the one who'll approach other citizens, who'll ask all the questions, and who'll make all the decisions. And don't forget the sign of respect."
"I won't," Merrick said, and Jin winced a little at the slightly strained patience in his voice. They'd only been over this a million times on the transport, but he was far too polite to remind her of that. "I make the sign first to superiors, and inferiors make it first to me." He touched his bunched fingertips to his forehead in demonstration.
"And you can assume that most of the people in there will be our superiors," Jin said. She paused, searching for anything she might have missed. But nothing came to mind, at least nothing she hadn't already told him another million times already. "Okay," she said, making sure the pouch of wild charko leaves she'd picked during an hour of her watch was securely tied to her sash. "We left early this morning to get charko leaves for a stew I'm making, we had a little trouble finding a good patch, and we're only just now getting back to town. Got it?"
"Yes, Mother," Merrick said, as calm and patient as ever.
"Right." Jin took a deep breath. "Okay. Let's do it."
With the aid of their optical enhancers, the trip through the predawn had been relatively easy. In broad daylight, it was even easier. Still, Jin approached the edge of the tree line cautiously, waiting for a momentary lull in the road's vehicular traffic before she and Merrick stepped out of the woods and headed at a brisk walk toward Milika.
The last time Jin had been here, Milika's gates had stood open throughout the daylight hours, with a pair of armed guards on duty in case some krisjaw or spine leopard was foolish enough to try to attack that many people at once. That part of village life, at least, hadn't changed, she saw as she and Merrick rounded the last curve in the road and came within sight of the gates.
Still, the guards did look more relaxed than they had in days gone by. Apparently, rogue predators weren't nearly the problem they'd once been.
There was more traffic on the road now than there had been thirty years ago, too. A large number of vehicles were on the move, some of them heading down the road she and Merrick were using, with a somewhat larger number making a hard right turn just outside the wall onto a road that hadn't been there before.
As for pedestrians, the village beyond the wall was teeming with them, striding along about their business, browsing the small shop stands near the gate, or engaged in animated conversations with their fellow citizens. Clearly, Milika was prospering.
Jin keyed in her optical enhancers' telescopic capability as they approached, paying particular attention to the pedestrians' clothing. To her relief, it all seemed reasonably similar in style to the outfits she and Merrick were wearing. That had been one of her major concerns, that the Trofts might have brought them clothing that was so out-of-date it would instantly finger them as foreigners.
Keying off her opticals, she picked up her pace a little. All was as well as could be expected, certainly as well as she could make it. The goal now was to get to Daulo's house and out of the public eye before she or Merrick made some dangerous social blunder.
She had keyed her audio enhancers on low-power, listening to the nearest conversations to remind herself of the region's accent, when she heard a sudden catch in Merrick's breath. "Mom—one o'clock," he murmured. "Those two men in gray and blue."
Jin shifted her gaze and audio enhancers in the indicated direction. The two men seemed to have just started an animated conversation about animal pelts. "What about them?" she asked.
"Just watch," Merrick said, his voice dark. "There—that other one coming toward them. Watch him." The newcomer stepped up to the other two, smiled, and lifted his right hand to make the sign of respect.
Only it wasn't the same sign Jin had learned thirty years ago, the one she'd just coached Merrick on. Instead of touching bunched fingertips to forehead, the newcomer touched only his first two fingertips to his forehead and then touched his lips.
And the two other men answered, not with two fingers, but with three fingers to foreheads and lips.
The Qasamans had changed their mark of respect.
Jin shot another look around the people beyond the wall, a jolt of sudden panic running through her. She'd expected clothing styles to have changed over the years, and had been relieved that she and Merrick had the right versions. It had never even occurred to her that something so basic as the mark of respect might similarly have been modified.
And if the mark of respect had changed so drastically, what else might have changed along with it?
She didn't know. What she did know was that she and Merrick were in big trouble. There were new rules to Qasaman social interaction, and neither of them had the faintest idea what those rules were.
Merrick had obviously tracked the same logic. "Not good," he murmured.
"Extremely not good," Jin agreed tightly, focusing her attention back on the gate area. A few steps behind the two armed guards she'd already noted were four more men, two on either side, who she'd originally dismissed as common loiterers.
But now that she was concentrating on them, she realized their faces were too alert for that, their eyes lingering just a little too long on each passing vehicle as it entered the village.
Milika wasn't the haven she'd expected it to be. Milika was a trap.
And she and Merrick were walking right into it.
"We have a plan?" Merrick asked.
"Working on it," Jin gritted out, forcing herself to keep walking. One of the four non-obvious guards had spotted the two incoming pedestrians and was watching them closely. The last thing she and Merrick could afford was a guilty-looking break in their stride. "You want to try running?" she asked her son.
"To where?"
"Exactly," Jin agreed. "Fighting is out, too—way too many people around."
Merrick huffed a thoughtful breath. "So we bluff?"
"We bluff," Jin confirmed reluctantly. "Okay. Best guess, and it's only a guess, is that the number of fingers used indicates rank. I just wish I knew whether two fingers is the minimum or whether it goes all the way down to one."
"Or if women use different signs entirely," Merrick added.
Jin winced. Unfortunately, that was a distinct possibility. "Could be," she conceded. "Haven't got a clue what it would be, though."
"Well, all we can do is try," Merrick said calmly. "Let's both stick with the two-finger version. If they call us on it, maybe we can convince them we're social idiots who grew up in a barn."
Not likely, Jin thought grimly. But at the moment she didn't have anything better to offer. "Okay," she said. "But if it blows up—if they want to search us or even toss us into holding—just go along with them. Whatever happens, do not do anything to show who you really are."
"Understood," Merrick said. "And don't you forget to be a nice, quiet, submissive little woman."
Jin grimaced. Sticking with that role had been one of the toughest parts of her previous visit here. This time, with her pride and ego presumably tempered by age and maturity, maybe it would be easier.
"Hey!" a gruff male voice called from behind them.
Jin turned, forcing herself not to lift her hands into combat positions. A boxy brown car was coming up along the road toward them, its driver steering with one hand as he gestured out the window with the other. "Hey, cousin!" he called again.
Jin keyed in her enhancers, trying to cut through the midmorning glare off the windshield. The driver was a young man, Merrick's age or a bit younger, with black hair and a short, neatly trimmed beard. His eyes were locked on her and Merrick, his expression hard. "Mom?" Merrick asked quietly.
"Better answer him," Jin told said as the car came to a stop beside them.
Merrick nodded microscopically and touched two fingers to his forehead. "Good day—" he started.
"Did you run out of fuel again?" the man in the car interrupted. He was clearly trying for a wry tone, but the darkness in his face effectively negated any humor that might have been in his voice. "That was your car I saw two kilometers back, wasn't it?"
Out of the corner of her eye, Jin saw that the gate guards were watching the conversation. "Mm-mm," she grunted softly, hoping Merrick would pick up on the cue.
He did. "I'm afraid so," he told the driver. "We decided to walk instead of—"
"You have to stop doing that," the other young man said. "Get in—I'll take you in. You can send someone back for the car later."
Merrick started to look questioningly at Jin, remembered in time that he was supposed to be the one making these decisions, and nodded. "That would be most kind," he said, stepping behind Jin to the car's rear door.
For a second his fingers fumbled as he tried to figure out the mechanism. Then, he got it, pulled the door open, and ushered Jin inside. Motioning her to move over, he started to get in beside her.
"You come up here," the driver said softly.
Obediently, Merrick closed the door and started around the front of the car. Jin tensed, wondering if the driver was planning to suddenly gun his engine and try to run him down. Maybe this was some elaborate trap designed to reveal Cobra reflexes.
But the car didn't move as Merrick finished his circle and climbed into the front passenger seat. "We thank you for your hospitality," he said as he closed the door behind him.
"Save your gratitude," the driver growled. Now that the gate guards couldn't hear, he'd abandoned even his half-hearted attempt at levity. He looked Merrick up and down, shaking his head in disgust, and started the car rolling again. "I just hope that no one with actual eyes saw you in those outfits."
Jin watched the guards closely as the driver maneuvered them through the gate. The two armed men merely glanced at the driver, but sent hard gazes at her and Merrick. The four non-obvious guards, in contrast, seemed to divide their time equally between all three occupants. Still, none of the six seemed to show any more suspicion than they had with any of the other cars that had passed their positions.
And then the car was past the gate and into Milika. Jin thought about checking behind them, decided that would look suspicious if the guards were still watching, and forced herself to continue facing forward. "Where are we going?" she asked.
The driver scowled at her in the mirror. "If you can't figure even that much out, you must not be much of a spy."
"You're welcome to believe that," Merrick murmured.
The driver shot him a look, and then fell silent.
Milika didn't seem to have changed much in thirty years, Jin decided as they crossed the Great Ring Road and continued inward toward the center of town. Several buildings were clearly new, but the shops and the people seemed much as they had back then.
Of course, she reminded herself, she hadn't had that much time to really observe the village. There were probably a lot of smaller changes she was simply missing.
They reached the center of town and turned left onto the Small Ring Road, circling the large park area known as the Inner Green. Jin leaned forward, her heartbeat picking up as she watched for her first glimpse of the Sammon house.
And then, there it was: a high privacy wall surrounding the courtyard, with the top of the house visible beyond it. Memories flooded back: the family's unhesitant hospitality when they thought her merely an injured stranger; their cautious but firm support when they learned who she really was; Daulo's willingness to risk his life for her. Not just his life, but also his family's honor.
A shiver ran up Jin's back as the driver maneuvered the car beneath the archway into the courtyard. The Sammon family had risked everything for her . . . and now her very presence on Qasama was once again putting them at horrible risk.
Whatever Daulo had summoned her here for, it must be something incredibly important.
"He's expecting you," the driver said as he pulled the car in front of the ornate door and rolled to a stop. "Do you need someone to show you the way?"
"No, I remember," Jin said. "Thank you."
The driver didn't answer.
The house struck Jin largely the same way the village itself had. It was basically the same as she remembered it, but there were enough differences in furnishings and décor to show the passage of years and the presence of a new owner. Feeling her heart once again speeding up, she climbed the stairs and went down the hallway to the room that had once been Kruin Sammon's office.
The door to the office stood open, with no guards in evidence. Jin keyed in her audio enhancers as she and Merrick approached, concentrating on the quiet sounds of breathing ahead of her. There was only one person in there, she decided. She started to step ahead of her son—
His hand brushed her arm. "I'll go first," he murmured. Before she could reply, he lengthened his stride and crossed in front of her through the doorway. Grimacing, Jin followed.
She rounded the door jamb to find Merrick standing a little to the right just inside the room. Seated at the desk across the room, his eyes steady on his visitors, was a heavyset man with a roundish face and white-flecked black hair. He wore an elaborate red-and silver robe, with a dual-patterned scarf tied casually around his throat.
Jin took a deep breath. "Hello, Daulo Sammon," she said, hearing the slight trembling in her voice. After all these years . . .
"I greet you, Jasmine Moreau," Daulo replied, his own voice dark and steady and without a single trace of genuine welcome that Jin could hear. His eyes shifted briefly to Merrick, measuring the younger man with a single glance. Then, laying down the stylus he'd been working with, he rose to his feet. "In the name of God," he demanded, "what are you doing here?"
Daulo lifted his eyes from the letter and shook his head. "No," he said. "I didn't write this. Nor did anyone in my household."
"Yet your driver quickly identified us and brought us in," Merrick pointed out. "Obviously, he was expecting us."
"First of all, the driver, as you refer to him, is in fact my son Fadil," Daulo said acidly. He ran his eyes up and down Merrick's clothing. "As to identifying you as strangers to Qasama, anyone who came within five meters of you would have known that instantly."
"What's wrong with our clothing?" Jin asked, glancing down her front. "It looks close enough to what I saw the villagers wearing."
"The design is close enough," Daulo agreed. "But the material is wrong. We stopped using it over two years ago."
"You're saying it hasn't been sold for two years?" Merrick asked, frowning.
"I'm saying we stopped using it," Daulo growled. "By order of the Shahni. All Qasaman clothing had to be remade in this new material, with older garments destroyed."
"But that's crazy," Merrick protested.
"Hardly," Jin said, wincing as she suddenly understood. "In fact, it worked exactly the way they intended."
"What—oh," Merrick broke off, his face changing as he got it. "Right."
"Indeed," Daulo said. "The real question is whether anyone else saw you."
"The gate guards were watching us," Jin said. "I don't know whether they could spot something as subtle as clothing material from a moving car, though."
"Well, we can't afford to take chances," Daulo said heavily, standing up and coming around the corner of his desk. "I'll take you to rooms and have fresh clothing brought to you."
"Thank you," Jin said. "I'm sorry, Daulo. I really did think the message was from you. The last thing I want is to bring more trouble down on your household."
"May God grant that we can avoid that," Daulo said. His voice was still grim, but Jin caught a hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth. "I'm no longer as young and reckless as I once was, after all. I'm a respectable member of the community, who would very much prefer to avoid scrutiny from the Shahni or their agents."
"That goes double for us," Jin assured him. "Don't worry—as soon as we have that new clothing, we'll be gone."
"Gone where?" Daulo asked as he gestured them toward the door. "You said you had no way to contact the alien ship."
"No, but it'll be back in two weeks to pick us up," Jin said. "We'll just find somewhere safe to hide until then."
Daulo was opening his mouth, undoubtedly to argue that there was no such place on Qasama, when the door was thrown open and Daulo's son Fadil hurried in. "Father, they're coming," he panted, his expression tight. "The Shahni agents. They're coming.
"They're coming here."