Triple Detente by Piers Anthony

Author:Piers Anthony
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy Fiction, Peace, General, Fantasy, Human-Alien Encounters, Fiction
ISBN: 9780879971304
Publisher: DAW
Published: 1975-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

MIDWAY THROUGH HENRYS' ADJUSTMENT PERIOD he received a letter from Earth. He grasped it with fevered relief; anything to take his mind off this horror that was Uke language, Uke genocide, and the mysterious subversion he was supposed to ferret out.

It was from Serena.

Dear Richard,

I know it is not proper to say this so soon, but since I will not see you again, I am compelled. Fomina was Bitool's beloved, but when she thought him dead her attachment fastened on the one closest to him Page 60

in death. It is the way of Kazo, though we seldom speak of it. She killed herself for that reason; my presence was only the pretext. So I feel no personal guilt, though I regret the situation.

Henrys paused. This was hardly a conventional well-wishing. No preliminary remarks, no apologies; just a straight businesslike analysis of something that concerned him only remotely. Kazos were different from humans.

For me, the loss was of my parents, who were surplus. I came to Conqueror Henrys through Fomina's intercession, but it was he who raised me to maturity. I was about the age of his lost son, apart from the minor distinctions of planetary chronologies, and I think he felt a certain need to complete the job correctly. Yet there was much he did not understand. He was the instrument of human policy on planet Kazo, and so the closest to the demise of my parents; I had to orient on him. Like Fomina, I recognized in him elements I required, though he was alien. She had oriented on him as mate, and died of the essential conflict; I do not think he ever realized that, for he saw her only as Bitool's bereaved. I oriented on him as parent. That he could accept, so I succeeded in the adjustment; but it was a thing of a difficulty you may not be equipped to appreciate.

He had to break off the reading again. He tried to imagine adopting a Kazo father. Bitool... yes, he thought he was equipped to appreciate it. But still: why was Serena telling him all this now? Obviously she had come through it all right—in fact, very well, for now she was among the first of her sex to make the transfer between worlds.

When I came into contact with a human male of my own generation, suffering the same hurts I had suffered, yet bearing my benefactor's name and many of his characteristics, I began to comprehend the extent of Fomina's dilemma. My reservations about the Conqueror had almost entirely broken down, owing to the years of proximity to a human of fine qualities and the more recent shock of transfer into overlord status. What I did in that time of adjustment was not really the temptation of a candidate for transfer, but an expression of my own confused yearnings. A Kazo female does not make an offer such as I made to you in innocence, Richard. We do comprehend the meaning of sex.

Fortunately we are now apart, and other men of your species do not have the same effect upon me.

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