(Close your eyes, and a gentle’s voice sounds pretty much like a human woman’s. Her hand feels the same too. And so soft.)

Looking at Counselor, feeling her hand on my cheek, I found myself remembering that kiss aboard Willow — the woman pulling me in tight, the perfume in her hair… a woman who was exactly like Admiral Ramos except she wasn’t… and Festina herself, lying beside me in the dark forest, looking up at the stars…

Crazy, I thought to myself. My brain must still be jumbled, going all swimmy with what-ifs. Festina was pretty and kind, but she was an admiral; as for Counselor, she was just in my bed because I’d been sick. Why was I so eager to get dumb ideas about every female around me: an admiral and an alien for heaven’s sake… and I was even having thoughts about Kaisho, with her skintight clothes and her dangerous glowing thighs…

"Teelu," Counselor whispered. "Are you troubled?"

I reached up and took her hand, pulling it gingerly away from my face. "Maybe you shouldn’t call me Teelu, okay? It’s kind of…" I wanted to say "sacrilegious," but that would upset her. "You shouldn’t overuse the word," I mumbled.

"Very well," she said. "Is there anything else I should or shouldn’t do?" She asked it in a soft sweet whisper, still holding my hand — all innocently intimate, not knowing how complicated things can get inside a human’s head. When you’re tired and lonely, you can catch yourself thinking, maybe, maybe, she really meant…

No. She didn’t.

But I couldn’t get my thoughts aimed any other direction. I told myself, Don’t be stupid, she’s a big brown lobster. It didn’t help. I’d had more kindness in my life from Mandasars than I ever got from humans. Lying beside one again brought back the golden days when the war hadn’t started and Sam was alive and we were all twenty years younger…

I slipped my hand out of Counselor’s grasp and eased down on my pallet: rolling away from her, flat on my back, feeling lumpish and rude. "Where’s Admiral Ramos?" I asked.

"She left with the other human — the one with frightening legs."

"Are they coming back?"

"In the morning. But the admiral had to arrange a journey. To Troyen."

Counselor leaned in close to my face, her whiskers trembling. Her snout brushed lightly against my cheek, delicate and cool. Gentles have no nose-spike; just soft skin that smells faintly of ginger. "Are you really going to the home-world?" "Admiral Ramos wants me to. She thinks I know the lay of the land."

"You do," Counselor said. "You were the high queen’s consort."

"That was twenty years ago. Before the war." I closed my eyes. "All the time I stayed at the moonbase, I did my best not to hear what was happening on the planet. The observers couldn’t tell much anyway — with all the rogue nano on Troyen, nobody can use radios or computers or anything, so there’s nothing to listen in on. Our satellites kept track of troop movements, but when you don’t know who’s in charge of which army… half the time, the observers just made stuff up so their reports wouldn’t look too skimpy. Nobody really knows what’s happening."

Counselor lay silent for a few seconds. I wanted to see the expression on her face, but decided eye contact would be a mistake: she’d take my hand again or go back to stroking my cheek. "Admiral Ramos has been investigating the recruiters," Counselor murmured at last. "The woman with the red legs said the admiral tries to prevent regrettable things. Admiral Ramos is what you call a watchdog and a troubleshooter."

I didn’t know the navy had such things, but I was glad they put someone like Festina in the position. "She thinks another admiral is helping the recruiters," I said. "It makes her mad, and she’s trying to set things right."

"Then Admiral Ramos is a good hume," Counselor murmured. "Even if she wants to take you away from us."

"Um."

When I looked at Counselor, her face was sad — the terrible kind of sad where someone is trying hard not to show it, and it spills through anyway.

"Do you want to — go away?" Counselor asked.

"No," I told her. "But Admiral Ramos thinks people on Troyen might know who’s behind the recruiters. She said it could solve your problems."

"She told me the same," Counselor said. "But it’s painful to gain you and lose you in the same day."

Suddenly, she bent in and pressed the soft end of her snout against my lips. A kiss. I’d never seen a gentle do that on Troyen. It must have been something she’d learned on Celestia, a gesture picked up from the humans who took care of her in childhood. So awkward and clumsy, like a little girl imitating adult things — she wrapped one arm around my neck and kept her nose against me… not moving her mouth, just holding it tight to my face as if she didn’t know a kiss could be anything else.

I pulled back away from her, feeling awkward and clumsy myself. "It’s all right," I whispered. "Really. It’ll be all right."

She lowered her chin so she could look me in the eye. Her eyes were solid black, blinking slightly — Mandasars don’t cry when they’re sad, but their faces can still be heartbreaking. "Troyen is at war. You could be killed… and then where would we be?"

What could I say? That I wasn’t the savior she thought? I didn’t want to go back to Troyen, but I wasn’t worth much on Celestia. People would soon see I didn’t have a head for organization, or strategy, or rousing speeches, or anything that could help anyone. I said, "If Admiral Ramos thinks I’d be useful on Troyen—"

"This Admiral Ramos," Counselor interrupted. "Is she your lover?"

I winced. Zeeleepull must have blabbed how he’d found Festina and me in the forest. "No," I said. "She’s not my lover."

"Do you intend to make her your lover?"

"No. She’s an admiral. Anyway, I can’t make anyone my lover — people don’t work that way."

"Teelu" Counselor whispered, "Teelu, Teelu, Teelu, don’t you know you can make anyone into anything you want?" She cupped my chin in her weak upper hands, holding me so she could stare straight into my eyes. "Don’t you know," she whispered, "you can stir any heart and make it yours?"

If she’d been human, her words would have been an invitation. Maybe even a plea. Over the years, other women had come to me with that kind of offer… because they liked the way I looked, because they were bored, or because they’d been hurt by someone else and thought, Oh, Edward, at least he won’t be cruel. They told me that to my face — I was "pretty" and "safe" and "decent."

And plenty of times, I’d said yes. In my twenty years on the moonbase, new personnel would arrive and even though I knew they’d just leave again after six months, sometimes you tell yourself six months is six months. (Forgetting how lonely it is when they go away… the awful point where they start pulling back from you, even before they ship out… how sometimes they’re never there with you at all, just treating you like medicine that’ll keep them from getting cranky.)

So yes, there’d been human women; but not Mandasars. Gentles didn’t make come-ons, ever. Not to their own species and certainly not to humans. Even in egg-heat, gentles didn’t act amorous — it was all pheromone signals, not direct attempts at seduction. "I’m available," not "Now, now, now!" Whatever Counselor wanted to tell me, it was just my one-track human mind misinterpreting it as… the sort of proposition you yearn for when things are going all lonesome.

"Counselor." I wrapped my arms around her shoulders, feeling her thin carapace yield: fragile as eggshell compared to a warrior’s armor. She put her arms around my shoulders and my waist, then pressed her snout against my neck… maybe another kiss, maybe just where her nose ended up. "I’m not as special as you think," I told her. "Verity married me for politics, not because I was some hero. And the way you kids react to me — it’s just the smell of venom, that’s all. Sooner or later, you’ll get mad at me for not being what you hope."