"We want assurances that you will call off your war," Sagan said.

"You want a treaty?" the hierarch asked.

"No," Sagan said. "We want a new consort. One of our choosing."

This generated the loudest clack of all from the court.

"You murder my consort, and then you demand to pick the next one?" the hierarch said.

"Yes," Sagan said.

"To what end?" the hierarch implored. "My Vyut has been consecrated! She is the legal heir. If I meet your demands and you let my daughter go, she is still of the Hio clan and by our traditions they will still have political influence. You would have to kill my daughter to break their influence"—the hierarch paused brokenly, then continued—"and if you do that, why would I fulfill any of your demands?"

"Hierarch," Sagan said, "your daughter is sterile."

Silence.

"You didn't," the hierarch said, pleading.

"We did," Sagan said.

The hierarch rubbed her mouthpieces together, creating an unworldly keening noise. She was crying. She got up from her seat, out of frame, keening, and then suddenly reappeared, too close to the camera. "You are monsters!" the hierarch screamed. Sagan said nothing.

The Consecration of the Heir cannot be undone. A sterile heir means the death of a hierarchical line. The death of a hierarchical line means years of unyielding and bloody civil war as tribes compete to found a new line. If the tribes knew an heir was sterile, they would not wait for the natural span of the heir's life to begin their internecine warfare. First the sitting hierarch would be assassinated, to bring the sterile heir to power. Then she would be a constant assassination target as well. When power is within reach, few will wait patiently for it.

By making Vyut Ser sterile, the Colonial Union had sentenced the Ser hierarchical line to oblivion and the Enesha to anarchy. Unless the hierarch gave in to their demands and consented to something unspeakable. And the hierarch knew it.

She fought it anyway. "I will not allow you to choose my consort," the hierarch said.

"We will inform the matriarchs your daughter is sterile," Sagan said.

"I will destroy your transport where it sits, and my daughter with you," the hierarch screamed.

"Do it," Sagan said. "And all the matriarchs will know that your incompetence as hierarch led us to attack you and caused the death of your consort and your heir. And then you may find that while you may choose a tribe to provide you with a consort, the tribe itself may not agree to provide one. No consort, no heir. No heir, no peace. We know Eneshan history, Hierarch. We know the tribes have withheld consorts for less, and that those boycotted hierarchs didn't last long after that."

"It won't happen," the hierarch said.

Sagan shrugged. "Kill us, then," she said. "Or refuse our demands, and we'll give you back your sterile daughter. Or do it our way and have our cooperation in extending your hierarchical line and keeping your nation from civil war. These are your choices. And your time is almost up."

Jared watched emotions play the hierarch's face and body, strange because of their alien nature but no less powerful for that. It was a quiet and heartrending struggle. Jared was reminded that at the briefing for the mission Sagan said that humans couldn't break the Eneshans militarily; they had to break them psychologically. Jared watched as the hierarch bent and bent and bent and then broke.

"Tell me who I am to seize upon," the hierarch said.

"Hu Geln," Sagan said.

The hierarch turned to look at Hu Glen, standing quietly in the background, and gave the Eneshan equivalent of a bitter laugh. "I am not surprised," she said.

"He is a good man," Sagan said. "And he will counsel you well."

"Try to console me again, human," the hierarch said, "and I will send us all into war."

"My apologies, Hierarch," Sagan said. "Do we have agreement?"

"Yes," the hierarch said, and began her keening again. "Oh, God," she cried. "Oh, Vyut. Oh, God."

"You know what you have to do," Sagan said.

"I can't. I can't," the hierarch cried. At the sound of the cries, Vyut Ser, who had been silent, stirred and cried for her mother. The hierarch broke anew.

"You have to," Sagan said.

"Please," the most powerful creature on the planet begged. "I can't. Please. Please, human. Please help me."

::Dirac,:: Sagan said. ::Do it.::

Jared unsheathed his combat knife and approached the thing that Sarah Pauling had died for. She was strapped to a gurney and she wriggled and cried for her mother, and she would die alone and frightened, and far away from anyone that ever loved her.

Jared broke too. He did not know why.

Jane Sagan walked over to Jared and took his knife and raised it. Jared turned away.

The crying stopped.

It was the black jellybeans that did it.

Jared saw them as he was browsing at a Phoenix Station commissary candy stand, and passed them over, more interested in the chocolates. But his eye kept going back to them, a small container segregated out from the rest of the jellybeans, which were in a mixed assortment. "Why do you do that?" Jared asked the vendor, after his eyes tracked back to the black jellybeans for the fifth time. "What makes the black jellybeans so special?"

"People either love 'em or hate 'em," the vendor said. "The people who hate 'em—that's most people—don't like having to pick them out of the rest of the jellybeans. The people who love 'em like to have their own little bag of 'em. So I keep some on hand but in their own space."

"Which sort are you?" Jared asked.

"I can't stand them," the vendor said. "But my husband can't get enough. And he'll breathe on me while he's eating them, just to annoy me. I kicked him right off the bed, once, for doing that. You've never had a black jellybean?"

"No," Jared said. His mouth was watering slightly. "But I think I'll try some."

"Brave man," the vendor said, and filled a small clear plastic bag with the candies to hand to Jared. Jared took it and fished out two jellybeans while the vendor rang up the order; being in the CDF, Jared didn't pay for the jellybeans (they, like everything else, were gratis on what CDF soldiers lovingly referred to as their all-inclusive package tour of hell), but vendors kept track of what they sold to soldiers and billed the CDF accordingly. Capitalism had made it to space and was doing reasonably well.

Jared took the pair of jellybeans and popped them into his mouth, crushed them with his molars and then held them there as his saliva suffused the licorice flavor over his tongue, vapors of its scent moving beyond his palate and expanding in his sinus cavity. His eyes closed, and he realized that they were just as he remembered. He took a handful and crammed them into his mouth.

"How are they?" the vendor said, watching the enthusiastic consumption.

"They're good," Jared said, between jellybeans. "Really good."

"I'll tell my husband there's another on his team," the vendor said.

Jared nodded. "Two," he said. "My little girl loves them too."

"Even better," the vendor said, but by this time Jared had I stepped away, lost in thought, heading back toward his office. Jared took ten steps, completely swallowed the mass of jellybeans in his mouth, reached to get more and stopped.

My little girl, he thought, and was hit with a thick knot of grief and memory that made him convulse, gag and vomit his jellybeans on the level walkway. As he coughed the last fragment of the candies from his throat, a name formed in his head.

Zoe, Jared thought. My daughter. My daughter who is dead.