I licked my lips, trying to organize my thoughts, the taste of black irony in my mouth. Aikman's final, pitiful gesture of hatred... and it was beginning to look like it might do far more damage than either he or I had believed.

A minute later the monitor's face vanished from the screen, and I was again looking at Lord Kelsey-Ramos. "Yes, Gilead, what is it?"

"I have to get out of here," I told him, voice trembling slightly with emotion despite my efforts to control it. "Right away. It's urgent."

He frowned. "I just finished telling you it'll take some time," he reminded me.

I bit the back of my lip, suddenly mindful of how easy it would be for one of the guards to eavesdrop on the line... and that my idea could very likely be construed as treason. "I know, sir," I said, wracking my brain desperately to find some kind of private cue to feed him. Something the guards wouldn't be able to interpret... and for the second time in as many minutes, inspiration struck. "It's just that this room is so small—so small and so plain. I thought I could handle things being this dull, but I can't."

His eyebrows lifted in surprise; and abruptly there were tension lines in his face. "I see," he said carefully. His eyes flicked to the side, where a guard was presumably standing. "Yes, I understand how that would be hard for you to take—you're used to so much more luxury back at Carillon. More privacy, too, naturally."

"Exactly, sir," I nodded, feeling a small surge of hope. He was with me, now, correctly hearing both what I was saying and what I wasn't saying. In eight years with Carillon I'd learned a great deal about the man; now, for the first time, I realized how much he'd learned about me in the process. "Besides, I hate the thought of wasting time here," I added. "There's always so much work to be done."

His eyes were locked with mine. "I know the feeling," he said. "I'll talk to Commodore Freitag and Admiral Yoshida right away, see if you might at least be... reassigned, perhaps, to somewhere closer to home?"

Closer to home. Here, on Solitaire, that could only mean the Bellwether. "I'd very much appreciate that, sir," I said, speaking the words clearly. "You might speak to Governor Rybakov, too—I believe she still owes us a favor."

"I'll do that," he agreed. "Let me get started, and I'll see what I can do." He paused, and his gaze seemed to intensify. "Are you certain this will do it?" he asked, his voice deliberately casual.

I swallowed. Was I sure this would solve the problem of the alien ships. "I'm not certain, no," I had to admit. "But I believe it's worth a try."

He nodded. "All right. Sit tight, and I'll get back to you."

"Thank you, sir," I said.

His lip twitched in a tight smile. "I'll do what I can," he said... and in his tone I heard a promise that went beyond the immediate situation. That if my idea had any chance at all of success, he would stand behind me all the way.

"Thank you, sir," I said again, and watched his image blank from the screen. Taking a ragged breath, I once more went over to the window, trying to still the tension roiling within me. The aliens' lives were still hanging by a thread, but at least now I had a plan. A plan and, more importantly, an ally.

I could only hope he would be as enthusiastic when he found out what the idea was... and what carrying it out was going to cost.

Three weeks. Twenty-one days.

The number hovered before me like a personal specter, its presence a black poison in the background of every waking thought. An emotional expression of the solid walls and locked door of my tiny cell; a maddening reminder of my utter helplessness.

And every morning, the number taunted me by growing one smaller.

There were a great many scriptures that dealt with patience; a similarly impressive number dealing with faith and hope. I quoted every single one of those verses to myself during those long hours, grabbing through the hurricane of growing anger and frustration for something solid to grasp onto.

It didn't seem to help. I tried to tell myself that it was doing some good, that without their comfort I would have sunk into a mind-crippling despair. But lurking at the edge of my mind was another, more sobering possibility: that it didn't help because Shepherd Adams had been right, that I had indeed become too entangled with the rewards of the secular world to find strength in the spiritual realm. It was a frightening and debilitating thought, a dark nightmare shadow which seemed to begin and end each day.

And finally—when it seemed as if I couldn't take the fear and forced solitude a single day longer—finally, on the afternoon of the fourth day, my cell was opened and I was escorted under guard to the Rainbow's End starport. The starport, and the waiting Bellwether.

—

"It took every string I could find to pull," Lord Kelsey-Ramos commented, offering me a steaming mug as I sat down across from his desk. "Including that favor the governor owed us," he added, "though I can't say she was all that happy at having to pay it off."

"I appreciate it, sir," I said, carefully taking the mug with fingers that still trembled with vague reaction. The heat was soothing to my hands, the smell flooding my mind with memories of home and safety. It was exactly the medicine I needed, and even as I sipped at the drink I could feel the fears and doubts of the cell beginning to recede.

"I was glad to do it," Lord Kelsey-Ramos said, frowning slightly as he gazed into my face. "I'm just sorry it took so long—on Portslava I'd have had you out in half an hour."

"Four days was soon enough, sir," I assured him, trying to sound as if I meant it.

He wasn't fooled. "It looks to me like we just barely made it," he said pointedly.

I sighed, giving up the pretense. "It was harder than I'd expected," I admitted. "A lot harder. Just the thought of those ships heading toward their deaths—and me locked away where I couldn't do anything about it..." I shuddered, and took another sip of my drink.

"Um," he grunted. "Interesting. You know, I've always thought that too much of that empathy you religious types pride yourselves on might be a handicap at times." He pursed his lips. "On the other hand... I wonder if maybe not all of it was really you."

I frowned at the suspicion in his sense. "Are you suggesting," I asked slowly, "that the Pravilo might have drugged me?"

The flicker of surprise showed that hadn't been what he'd been suggesting at all. "I suppose that's not impossible," he nevertheless conceded. "I doubt that Admiral Yoshida would go that far to keep you out of his face for these last couple of weeks, but some eager subordinate might have thought it would make a nice early birthday present for him. I was thinking more of the thunderheads, actually."

A cold knot formed in my stomach as, abruptly, something like a hazy curtain seemed to vanish from in front of my memory. The overall sense of tension and struggle Calandra and I had noticed on Solitaire—of course; that was precisely what I'd just spent four days struggling against. Or rather, a highly magnified form of that sense. Magnified from scientific tool or side effect into a weapon... "Yes," I said, voice wavering slightly—with disgust, dread, or anger, I couldn't tell which. "Yes, it was them. It had to be. They were attacking me. Deliberately attacking me."

"Don't let it throw you," Lord Kelsey-Ramos growled, his voice rich with suppressed anger of his own. "After spending seventy years patiently leading us to this point by our collective nose, they're hardly going to look kindly on someone who's trying his best to upset their plans."