STARDANCER (chapters 1-3)

This voyage was all that Tariana could talk or think about, so naturally she was completely and utterly astounded when, one night at dinner, Margeth announced that she wasn't going.

No one at first took Margeth's blunt announcement seriously. After all, it was Margeth's usual strategy whenever she felt that her older sister was getting out of hand: she would quickly announce her opposition to whatever it was that Tariana had set her heart upon. But in this case, as the day drew nearer, Margeth showed no sign whatsoever of changing her mind, and since it would be gravely humiliating for any royal family to pay tribute to the Imperator without all family members present, the voyage was in serious jeopardy of not happening at all.

"How can she do this to us!" Tariana cried as Professator Jarel thumbed through the pages of the dusty book they were currently studying with one hand, navigated the screen of a comp-pad with another, and scratched his metal head with his third. "We've dreamed of this our entire lives!" Tariana flung herself down into her study chair, having just come from her latest argument with her dear sister. "We have a chance to go to the most important system in the entire Galaxy, to meet the Imperator, and see Father –– and now Margeth won't go!"

"It does seem unreasonable," Jarel intoned in that exaggerated, consoling tone he took in times like this. It was part of his programming. He set aside the book and took up another, even though he seemed to pay it no mind at all. When in his active state, Jarel was never able to remain still. There was some debate as to whether that was a bug in his programming or an intended attribute.

"Of course it's unreasonable!" Tariana snapped. "It's what she always does when it's something that's important to me."

The Professator nodded in a sagelike programmed gesture. "Yes, I have detected just such a pattern in your sister's decision-making. She does seem to enjoy vexing you at times." Then he set aside the book he'd just picked up and looked Tariana in the eye with one of his four. His voice became softer, his manner more gentle. "However, she has not been acting as though she is motivated by pique. She seems, to my eye, motivated by something else. Perhaps this isn't her trying to 'get back at you', as you call it."

"So why is she doing this, then?"

Professator Jarel shook his head, as Tariana had expected he would; Jarel's wisdom was always surprising when it came bubbling out –– either because of his programming or in spite of it –– but when it came it always did so all at once and disappeared almost as quickly. "I cannot say," he said. "But the wise course here might be to ask her."

Tariana nodded. The Professator's advice programming always tended toward the conciliatory.

"Now on with our lesson! We were discussing the rebel movement on the Salengarde moons, and...."

Tariana settled back to listen to her teacher, but she couldn't begin to follow the lesson now. As Jarel droned on, Tariana's thoughts turned again to the voyage to come. She wondered what the leap into hyperspace felt like, what it would be like to see a new sun in the sky and new stars, and to smell the air of a new world.

And she thought about Margeth, jeopardizing it all.

"Yes, very well, pack them all!" Queen Ryann Osono snapped at her servant, probably more angrily than intended. Even after hours of briefings as to the current fashions on Salengarde Prime, she had not decided which evening gowns to take. More pressingly, she had just finished talking to her younger daughter in her latest attempt to sway her toward going to Salengarde. Finished, without result.

"You're still packing?" Tariana asked as she entered her mother's chamber.

"Of course I'm still packing," the Queen said. "And that you're asking the question in that way makes me wonder whyever it might be that you are not. We leave in five days, you know."