Exile by Al Sarrantonio

over Tarn nodded. "Then if we were to decide that Wrath-Pei were . . . let us say, deemed unworthy of our company, he could be prevented."
    "Anyone could be prevented, my queen. You are thinking perhaps of the troubles on Mars and Earth at the moment?"
    "Beyond that, Tarn. Much beyond that." She had been looking inwardly, but now she turned her gaze on Tarn again.
    "And our ground defenses?"
    "The best and toughest of all Four Worlds!" Tarn said proudly.
    "I hope so. Even so, I would like you to order a state of heightened alert. In the event . . ."
    "Yes, my queen?"
    "Never mind, Tarn."
    Again her gaze sharpened and became more interested in Tarn.
    "Stand again, Commander."
    Tarn drew a breath, but did as he was told. "Turn for me, arms akimbo."
    Tarn turned.
    There was an approving sound, which made Tarn's blood freeze—but it was followed by a resigned sigh.
    "I was right in my first estimation. You may sit again."
    "Thank you, my queen," Tarn said, not able to hide his relief.
    "Though I may be back for you," Kamath Clan said, without a trace of humor.
    She departed, leaving the door open, and leaving to Tarn's clerk the remarkable sight of the commander himself, wan and trembling, fumbling for his communication console to warn those who should be warned.
    There was one other stop for Kamath Clan to make. Up through the bright glare of Titan's day lights, the late afternoon Sun shone like a distant warm coin. Kamath thought briefly of her birthplace, so much nearer to that Sun, and so much warmer. Not in temperature, for the same omnipresent lights that flooded the streets and valleys and even the hills of Titan with light also fed its plants and, along with the core reactor deep in its bosom, gave it warmth. But it was in many ways a bland, clinical warmth, unlike that of So!.
    On Earth, Kamath had played once, at the age of three, in a meadow under a bird-blue sky with the warmth of So!, hanging like a ball in the air, on her skin. The toasty feel of that warmth was like nothing else she had felt since, and its loss was the great loss of her life. When her parents fled the consolidation of Sarat Shar's power, they tore their daughter not only from her birth home, which became the
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    eastern governorship of Shar's empire, but from the rest of her life as well.
    The warmth of Sun on skin
    In dreamy rumination within her hard shell, Ka-math Clan found that her feet had taken her unheedful to her destination. There were no pedestrians to move out of her way here, for this, the most backward and dangerous of the city's streets, was deserted at any time of day or night. And anyone wondering at her visit here would keep such thoughts to themselves.
    A day of doors. She stood before another door, opened and closed it behind her. It always felt damp to her touch, so out of harmony with the thing that brought her here. Inside, it was dark as any midnight.
    "You have come again, my queen?" his voice, a little frailer than the last time; as it had been frailer last time and the time before that. "You have come to see old Quog again?"
    "I have come," Kamath Clan said.
    "And is it the same you seek as before?"
    "As always," Kamath said.
    "Very well."
    He emerged from the darker shadows of the room into mere shadow. He was indeed a man, of sorts. He had told Kamath that first time, the one time when he felt obligated to explain himself, that he had once been a handsome specimen.
    "But the Puppet Death," he had said, "changed all that. It twisted and turned me and pulled me every which way. It danced on me, all right! Oh, I was dashing before the disease, my queen. I was straight-backed and black-haired and had good hands and feet; I could dance, and could make things with my delicate fingers. But afterward, my wife left me and my daughter shunned me. But I took a bit of what I was and came here."
    It was then that he had shown Kamath Clan what she had come to see. And