* * * * *
"I would have a word," Tallis said, shattering MacMaine's carefully
neutral train of thought. It was a standard opening for breaking the
pause of adjustment, but it presaged good news rather than bad.
"I await your word," MacMaine said. Even after all this time, he still
felt vaguely proud of his ability to handle the subtle idioms of
Kerothic.
"I think," Tallis said carefully, "that you may be offered a commission
in the Kerothi Space Forces."
Sebastian MacMaine let out his breath slowly, and only then realized
that he had been holding it. "I am grateful, my sibling-by-choice," he
said.
General Tallis tapped his cigarette ash into a large blue ceramic
ashtray. MacMaine could smell the acrid smoke from the alien plant
matter that burned in the Kerothi cigarette--a chopped-up inner bark
from a Kerothi tree. MacMaine could no more smoke a Kerothi cigarette
than Tallis could smoke tobacco, but the two were remarkably similar in
their effects.
The "surprise" had been delivered. Now, as was proper, Tallis would
move adroitly all around the subject until he was ready to return to it
again.
"You have been with us ... how long, Sepastian?" he asked.
"Two and a third _Kronet_."