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something I could say that would stop you. But there isn't, is there?"
He shook his head. She lay back down and they both stared at the ceiling
for a time. "You're just so damned cavalier with a life that's important to
me," she said at last, and he could hear the tears in her voice. "It hurts,
Rick."
He reached over to take her hand, but she moved it away. She wanted to
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lie there and see if she could think of some way that she could change things
so that she wouldn't be hurt ever again.
Jonathan Wolff returned to his quarters after twenty-one straight hours
of meetings, briefings, consultation, training, and planning sessions. He had
forgotten what a bed felt like.
But as he lay down, his eye caught something-a small locket lying on his
night table. That type of locket was popular among REF personnel; many carried
such a keepsake. He picked it up and activated it; the little heart-shaped
face opened like a triptych.
A tiny hologram of Minmei hung in the empty air. "I hope this makes you
feel near to me, Jonathan, because I feel very near to you, and I always will.
Come back to me safe and soon, darling. I'll be waiting for you, however long
it takes."
"It's very kind of you to act as our guide," Cabell said, as the
Karbarran skywain sailed through the afternoon sunlight.
"Oh, we love going out to the monument," Crysta gushed, and at the
controls, Lron nodded agreement. Off to one side, Rem and Dardo paused in the
pattycakelike game Lron's son was trying to teach. "And how old is the
monument?" Rem asked.
"Centuries, ages," Lron rumbled. "No one's exactly sure. History says it
was erected right after Haydon visited Karbarra, and that was long, long ago."
The skywain began its descent, alighting on the top of one of the higher
mountains overlooking the city. Rem asked again if Cabell would be warm
enough; the old sage reassured him.
Lron and Crysta led the way, up to an open pavilion carved from the
living rock of the mountaintop. There, in the middle of an acres-wide floor,
stood a statue that reared up and up-a colossus a thousand feet high.
It was of Haydon. It had been carved by Karbarrans, and time and weather
had eroded it, but the figure appeared to be a humanoid male, wearing flowing
robes and poised with an air of nobility and wisdom.
"It was Haydon who taught our ancestors the secrets of Sekiton," Crysta
said. "Just as he breathed life into the crystals of Spheris and created
Baldan's people, and decreed that the Praxians' should be an all-female
planet."
"And Haydon taught the Gerudans how to think," Dardo said, reciting his
school lessons. "And some people even say he gave the Flower of Life to the
Invid!"
Cabell already knew all that, of course, but he tried to look impressed
by Dardo's erudition-Crysta and Lron were so proud of the cub, after all.
Rem stood staring up at the stone face now worn to anonymity. Haydon,
certainly one of the galaxies' great enigmas, fascinated him just as Haydon
fascinated so many others. Where had the bringer-of-miracles come from? What
had prompted him to spend a Golden Age in this sector of space, traveling
among local worlds and working his magic?
Rem had always vowed that if he got to travel among the stars, he would
do his best to find out. And now that time had come. Rem stared up at the
smooth visage, wishing it could speak to him. He swore to himself at that
moment that before his travels were done, he would know what face belonged on
the monument.
"Red alert," whispered one Ghost Squadron yeoman to another. "Stay out
of the Old Man's way!"
The second yeoman nodded and did his best to look busy as Edwards
marched from his office with a murderous look on his face.
The Sentinels had won a smashing victory on Karbarra! Edwards tried to
suppress his fury, but wasn't having much luck. To make matters worse, when he
had called Minmei, she wasn't at the club. Nobody seemed to know where she
was.
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This, after he had been there at a ringside table every night to hear
her sing, had wined and dined her, had made sure the council listened to her
and that her service club was a success. Yet each time he was sure he was
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