The Designate squeezed the girl's shoulder again, and she winced. He realized he had been too rough. "You are so young, Osira'h. I wish I didn't have to rush you."

"Don't worry about me." She looked up at him with an endearing expression of absolute faith-in her mission, in his benevolence, and in her loyalty to the Mage-Imperator. "I will do my job. It was bred into me. For the glory of the Ildiran civilization."

"Ah, how could the hydrogues resist you?" The girl beamed up at him. A gift of fate, she would be the strongest telepath ever to walk the worlds of the Ildiran Empire. "You will save us all, child."

The Designate hugged her, and the little girl nodded solemnly. "Yes, I will."

30

RLINDA KETT

At theVoracious Curiosity 's approach, the Crenna farmers converged from the outer acreage. Rlinda Kett's unexpected arrival caused a stir that superseded their daily work.

Still shaken from her close brush with prowling hydrogue warglobes at the edge of the system, she climbed out of her ship, ready to accept the cheers and accolades with embarrassed good grace.

"The Hansa heard about your plague, and I brought you medicines!" she called. She'd expected to see the town at a standstill, the fields untilled, and the herd animals fending for themselves during the Orange Spot epidemic. "But it doesn't look like too many of your people are out sick."

The nearest farmer nodded. "Damn fine of King Peter to be thinking of us, ma'am, but we've already got the medicines, you see. One of our colonists has his own ship, though he was flying on ekti fumes by the time he got back here. We owe our lives to Branson Roberts."

Her heart swelled to hear his name, but she kept up pretenses. "Well, he's got a lot of nerve making my humanitarian gestures obsolete." She scanned the crowd and spotted BeBob. His frizzy gray hair had grown longer, giving him a disreputable look, and he had dirt all over his clothes as if he'd been working in the fields-she had to laugh at the thought!

Rlinda saw his eyes fill with a wash of tears, and then he was running toward her, ignoring the farmers. She swept open her arms and bounded in his direction. She knew they must look ridiculous, coming together like two starstruck lovers in a cheap romance vidloop.

"So... I take it you two, uh, know each other?" one of the colonists said.

Rlinda and BeBob held each other in a long, crushing embrace; then both said in perfect comic unison, "A bit."

"If I'd known you were coming," BeBob said, "I wouldn't have wasted my fuel. Instead of fetching medicine, I could have rounded up some conveniences, tools, interesting cropseeds-and made a bigger profit."

Rlinda rubbed her fingertips on his frizzy hair, then hugged him again. "You've got a soft heart, not a soft head, BeBob." She lowered her voice conspiratorially. "I'll let you spend plenty of time tonight convincing me that I didn't waste a trip. Your place or mine?" Then she chuckled even more. "Oh, you're so cute when I embarrass you. You look absolutely scandalized."