Hunted (41 page)

Festina told Celestia it was very, very important for their government to come down on the right side of the issue. Take all those factories, for example—the ones that cheerfully used Mandasar workers kidnapped by recruiters. Real soon now, the people who owned those factories would find it colossally unpopular for them to have brainwashed Mandasars on the assembly line. They’d be facing boycotts, protests, and much worse, disquieted stockholders who found themselves unwelcome at the usual cocktail parties. Would these rich owners take the blame themselves? No. They’d point their fingers at the Celestian government, and say, “Hey, you told us those lobsters were
happy!
”

Also: how would it look if Celestia refused to allow the official ambassador from Troyen—namely, me—to land on the planet and try to set things right? That was a solid-gold
guarantee
that ten million Mandasars would whip themselves into crazed revolt. It was also a guarantee the irresponsible rich who usually vacationed on Celestia would give the planet a miss this year; they didn’t mind if Celestia was the home of sleazeball profiteers, but heaven forbid it should ever be considered unenlightened, or worse,
unfashionable.

So in the end, the Celestian government gave in: promised to close down recruitment operations, help rehabilitate brainwashed Mandasars by bringing them back into mixed-caste hives, and recognize me as a sort of a kind of a spokesman for all Mandasars on the planet. Not a king—they didn’t want that, and neither did I—but it was okay me being a guy who asked Mandasars what they thought, then passed die word to everybody else.

“Well,” Festina said, looking at the purple twilight rather than me, “if you’re all right here, I should head back to
Jacaranda.
The Celestian authorities are supposedly fixing the recruiter problem even as we speak, but someone has to keep an eye on them.”

“Shouldn’t I help you?” I asked.

“Nah,” she told me, “watchdogging planetary governments is my job. You just look after your own people.”

She’d said the same things up in die ship—couldn’t stay long, work to do, no need for me to help. Yet she’d still come to see me safely down on Celestia.

Maybe she just didn’t want to say good-bye with Prope watching. Festina longed to nail the captain with a few good punches for marooning us on Troyen; but since Prope had been following
my
orders, decking her wouldn’t be fair. Instead, Festina gave Prope the cold shoulder and spent all her time with me. That probably hurt Prope way more than a simple whack in the jaw—the captain was always staring at us venomously, as if it pierced her to the heart that I’d chosen Festina over her.

Prope obviously believed Festina and I were up to something steamy. But we weren’t: we just talked. About the responsibilities of power, and the ways of power, and the limitations of power. A crash course in galactic politics, and a whole lot of reminders not to see people as children who needed Daddy’s help.

I think hive-queens have a gene that makes them go all condescending about their subjects. Now I had that gene too…but Festina did her best to help me get over it.

Never once did we talk of judo mats. Never once, in all our trip back from Troyen, did we touch each other.

I’d been afraid my pheromones would start acting up and make her go all crazy against her will.

I don’t know what Festina was afraid of.

“Okay,” she murmured in the Celestian twilight. “Time to go.” She stepped toward me, and just for a moment, she looked straight up into my eyes. Then she rose on tiptoe and kissed me on the cheek.

I couldn’t help remembering that woman back on
Willow,
the one pretending to be Lieutenant Admiral Ramos. It made me kind of wistful that the real Festina wasn’t the one who kissed me on the lips.

But that was just me, being stupid.