Free Imperial Stars 2-Republic and Empire by Jerry Pournelle Page B

she had been.
    She glanced to either side of the doorway, then across to Stattor, and then behind him at the shimmering hub of the galaxy.
    "Come in," he said, gesturing at one of the chairs. "Please."
    Tentatively, she moved into the room, placing her feet on the transparent floor, as though she might disturb the universe with her passage. She sat down very slowly, her black prison garb pulling tight at her bony joints. She allowed her gaze to meet his.
    Stattor smiled. "It's been a long time," he said. "How many years?"
    "Twenty, I guess," she said unsurely. Her voice was gravelly and low and the right side of her mouth drooped when she spoke. She folded her knobby hands on her lap. "A long time."
    Stattor lowered his mass into his chair. The pain in his ankles was replaced by a tight compressed feeling in his spine. "A long time," he repeated, "Twenty years, exactly, as of today."
    "I didn't know that," she said. "I didn't think I'd see you again."
    "Life is mysterious, isn't it? I've been feeling the need to tie up some loose ends," he said. He paused and nodded his head backward at the stars. "Up here, apart from any world, it's easy to forget one's past. By the way, do you remember Aros Blodian? I was thinking of him today."
    Her old face looked vaguely surprised. "Of course I remember him. Where is he? Is he here?"
    "I was thinking of a time when the three of us were at a lake, it was evening, and you were coming up from the shore. You were laughing. It's kind of a mental snapshot."
    She looked at him blankly. "I can't remember."
    Stattor shifted in his chair. His stomach burned a little on one side. His hands ached again too. "You probably wonder why I sent you to prison. You hadn't done anything disloyal to United Tarassis."
    She nodded. "I wondered," she said slowly, the one side of her mouth dead and unmoving, "but I always understood."
    "You understood?"
    "Sometimes things have to be done that seem unfair. The individual sometimes has to sacrifice himself in that way, for the benefit of others."
    "You never grew bitter? You never cursed me for your years in prison?"
    She glanced at the floor, seemed uncomfortable, and moved in her chair with a tired nervousness. "It's because of you that our race has advanced to its position. You led us in the exploration of alien cultures. If my imprisonment helped humankind—and it did, or you wouldn't have put me there—then I have lived my life just as I always wanted."
    With one finger, Stattor wiped the sweat out of the fold of skin beside his mouth. "I had forgotten how devoted you were. Tell me what life in prison was like."
    "In camp, we got news every week," she said, "so I know what you've accomplished in all these years." She cleared her throat and ran the back of one hand across her temple, as though she were pushing back her short bristly hair. "I was in a support camp on Perda, 37th Sector. It's a cold place." She held out her left hand for him to see the missing fingertips. "We had aliens working in the chromium mines nearby. In my camp, we sewed shirts and pants for them, and in the last six years, we made shoes once every two months. Since we got heaters in a year ago, I could cut out ninety-six pairs of soles a day." She reversed her folded hands. "I have friends there. . . . I haven't been lonely. But it is cold. The ground is frozen most of the year." Her face brightened momentarily. "There're birds there." She shook her head as though chastising herself. "They were insects, but they were so big we thought of them as birds. Two weeks a year, in the warm season, they migrate south, and they sing." She looked weakened, haggard and old, but she did not look unhappy. "In ways I don't understand, my imprisonment served the higher destiny of mankind. I'm not bitter."
    "You suffered," Stattor said.
    "Everyone suffers."
    "Have I suffered?" Stattor said, spreading his arms at the stars.
    "You guided us." Her voice was firm. "Without you, we would still be in our