There was only one casualty of the tawtute war still in Kalinkey's care.

"I don't know why you haven't let that thing die," commented Änsit viciously. "It has no spirit."

The warrior was one of the few Na'vi that the healer really disliked. If he had been a human, there was no doubt that he would have been an orderly. He had no business here.

Kalinkey continued on her self-appointed task, calmly rearranging the limbs of the Avatar. "The uniltìranyu who wore this body fought bravely alongside the warriors of the Fifteen Clans," she said quietly. "When this body was wounded, the uniltìranyu went back into battle in his tawtute body, though he might have been slain by our own people as an enemy. He was not a warrior, skilled in the way of the knife and bow. Do you have courage like his?"

Änsit growled, "I still think you should kill it." He stalked away, taking his air of aggrievement with him.

A familiar voice commented, "I wonder how Änsit survived the battle, when so many more worthy Omaticaya fell. It seems there is little justice in the world."

"I have often wondered the same thing, ma'tsumuke," replied Kalinkey. The heavy ache that had been dwelling in her heart for days vanished, leaving her spirit joyful. "He is one of the few of this clan who I actively dislike." She stood up and turned to face Zha'nelle.

"It is just as well that he was not wounded in the battle," said Zha'nelle, with a twinkle in her eye. "He may not have enjoyed his treatment at your hands, only."

"I have missed you, my love," said Kalinkey, holding her hand out to Zha'nelle.

Five fingers wrapped around four, and Zha'nelle made a rueful face. "I am sorry," she said. "It is just..."

"I know," replied Kalinkey. "It is my fault. I have been too concerned with my own life, so that I lost sight of yours. It was unworthy of me."

"No!" snapped Zha'nelle hotly. It seemed that the humours in her blood were still whipsawing at her emotions. "I am the one who has been stupid." She took a deep breath, closing her eyes before continuing more calmly, "You have Tsawlontu to concern you. It must be difficult."

Kalinkey did not deny what Zha'nelle said – it had indeed been difficult dealing with her mate. "The Tsahik has talked to you," she said, thinking that a change of subject might avoid an unpleasant argument.

Zha'nelle agreed, "Yes. She told me...well, you know."

Kalinkey knew very well what Zha'nelle was saying. Mo'at could be very forceful in opening one's eyes to the truth.

"Is it true that you love...Na'dia?" asked Zha'nelle. By her words and tone, it was apparent the green-eyed beast named jealousy was still living inside her heart.

"I have always loved Na'dia," answered Kalinkey truthfully. She gave a rueful smile, adding, "As a friend, or perhaps like a sister of the blood, rather than one of the circle. Besides, it seems the heart of Na'dia has been claimed by Ninat. Why else would our clan singer go deep into the forest every day, and emerge after dusk with a happy smile?"

"Oh," murmured Zha'nelle, the tension releasing from her shoulders.

Kalinkey shrugged, "Na'dia is now a girl on the cusp of becoming an adult, whereas I am an old woman, with a mate and child, and my responsibilities to the clan as healer. I am afraid even if Na'dia had not been expelled from the clan, she would have little time for such as me now."

"You are not old," said Zha'nelle hotly.

"It is kind of you to say so," replied Kalinkey, leaning forward to kiss her sister on the lips. An indeterminate time later, Kalinkey found that she needed to breathe, so she reluctantly ended the kiss. Curiously enough, when she opened her eyes, she found that she was in a close embrace with Zha'nelle, her sister's golden eyes only inches away from her own.

Zha'nelle whispered with seeming amazement, "You still love me."

"I never stopped loving you," answered Kalinkey. There was a discreet cough from behind her, causing the embrace to dissolve. When Kalinkey turned about, she said, "Olo'eyktan, I am sorry. I did not see you approach."

Zhake'soolly looked vaguely annoyed. "I wish you would call me Zhake, as I have requested on many occasions, Kalinkey."

Kalinkey laughed at the leader of the Omaticaya. "I call you olo'eyktan so that you will one day grow to believe it, Zhake."

"I suppose I asked for that," answered Zhake, his expression somewhat mollified. He made the gesture of greeting to Zha'nelle before he pointed his chin at the recumbent figure on the sleeping mat. "Is the Avatar healed now?"

"Yes," she answered. "I am curious as to why you have never told your friend that his dreamwalker body was recovered alive."

"At first I did not want to give Norm false hope, when there was a chance the Avatar would die," answered Zhake seriously. "Then, when it appeared the wounds were healing well, I wanted to give him a surprise."

"I hope Toktor Spellman does not suffer from a weak heart," commented Zha'nelle. "The surprise of seeing his Avatar might kill him."

The following day, a chopper came to take Zhake and Ney'tiri to Hell's Gate. It was difficult to fit Norm Spellman's Avatar in as well, particularly when Zha'nelle insisted on going with them.

Kalinkey had been curious as to why Zha'nelle had chosen to travel in the chopper. After all, Zha'nelle had bonded with an ikran, and could have easily flown there – despite her growing pregnancy. It was only after she returned that afternoon with a large plastic box that the penny dropped.

"Is that what I think it is?" asked Kalinkey. They were in the place that Kalinkey had taken for treating the sick and injured, although now all the wounded from the battle had gone, it seemed almost empty.

Zha'nelle nodded and pressed an almost imperceptible button. The box sprang open to display a prosthetic hand, several power packs and a solar power generator. The hand looked very like one of the hands of the tawtute walking machines, not like the limb of a Na'vi at all.

"I will talk to Tsawlontu today," said Zha'nelle. "I am eager to start work on teaching him how to use this hand, so that he may embrace you properly once more."

Kalinkey made a face. "I wish you luck. Tsawlontu can be very stubborn."

"Not as stubborn as a former tawtute uniltìranyu," replied Zha'nelle.

Kalinkey chuckled. "When you put it like that, Tsawlontu has no hope at all of resistance."

Zha'nelle looked at Kalinkey curiously. "You seem different," she said. "Are you well?"

"I am very well," replied Kalinkey. She let her hand fall to her flat belly, and smiled. "Perhaps I should say instead, we are very well."

Zha'nelle squealed and grabbed Kalinkey in a tight embrace. "Is it true?" she demanded, almost jumping up and down in glee.

"Srane," answered Kalinkey calmly. "I am with child."

"I am so happy for you," exclaimed Zha'nelle. "Have you told Tsawlontu yet?"

Kalinkey looked a little shame-faced. She replied, "I am not going to tell him, not until it begins to show." When Zha'nelle went to open her mouth to demand why not, she added, "I am enjoying his nightly attentions. If Tsawlontu realises he has fulfilled his promise to me, to give me another child, his ardour might...slacken."

Zha'nelle began to laugh, and laugh, and laugh. "You have become just like all other women," she said eventually. "Devious and tricky."

It then struck Kalinkey that she had been feeling different for some time. No, not different, that wasn't the right word. It wasn't that she had lost her numbers, or that she thought differently to how she had always thought.

It was something quite other than that.

Na'dia leaned hard into the embrace of Ninat. It could have all gone very wrong. She felt the rumble of agreement from her sensei, the palulukan.

Hunters from the Omaticaya had slaughtered an entire herd of talioang, against the strictures of the palulukan that had been set thousands of years ago. Such an offence demanded nothing but blood.

She had had no choice other than to challenge the Omaticaya for this transgression. If not for the courage of one hunter speaking up, and explaining why, she would have been forced to extract the price from the clan – the clan of Ninat, and of Txep'ean. Na'dia could not have borne this burden.

"It is a long way from the forest under the dome," said a voice.

Na'dia almost jumped in surprise, breaking the embrace of Ninat. The Na'vi woman who had spoken was tall and proud, in the full strength of her maturity. She did not seem afraid of the palulukan at all. Na'dia gave her lover a glance, hoping that she would translate, and signed, "Sara?"

"My name is Kalinkey now," replied the woman, before Ninat could start translating. She grinned, adding, "When I learnt that you had lost the power of speech, I taught myself sign language from a data tablet. Sign is a very logical language, well structured and the rules were simple to learn. It did not take long."

Laughing, Na'dia signed back, "Only you would say that." She moved forward to embrace her long-lost friend.

"I missed you," said Kalinkey, when they eventually parted. She smiled, and brushed a tear from her cheek. "It has been too long."

Ninat looked in confusion between the two women, clearly wanting to ask questions but unsure exactly what questions to voice. As far as she knew, her lover and the clan healer had never met.

Kalinkey explained, "It was I who gave Eywa's message to Na'dia on 'Rrta, that she should come to this world as a dreamwalker."

"It is true," signed Na'dia. "I knew Sara – I mean Kalinkey – before I ever came to Pandora."

The clan healer took a sly sideways glance at Ninat. "I thought you could not choose between male and female," said Kalinkey. "Ninat has all the appearance of a woman that has been Chosen."

The faces of both Ninat and Na'dia darkened, as though from embarrassment. Na'dia signed, "I have made tsahaylu with both Ninat and her brother Txep'ean."

"It seems some things never change," smiled Kalinkey.

Na'dia hesitated before signing her reply. This woman felt like the autistic girl that she had known in the forest under the dome, and yet unlike her as well. Kalinkey seemed strong and confident, not wracked by fear and uncertainty any longer. Slowly she signed, "And some things do. It seems you have changed much down the years since we were parted."

"Yes," agreed Kalinkey, who had once been known as Sara. "I am real now."

Out here, in the heights of the Chilean Atacama Desert, it never rained. It was one of the few places on Earth where there were still no people. And that meant there was no light, no light to smear the night sky and rob it of the glorious swath of the Milky Way.

Nor was there life here of any kind, except the life that Zhong had brought with him. This place was sterile, as sterile as the surface of the Moon.

This desert mountain was so high, the air was so thin, that the only way he could do more than barely survive here was by wearing a high altitude exo-pack, one that pressurised the thin air and robbed it of the poisons polluting the atmosphere.

While Zhong was waiting to see the flare of the launch lasers striking the light sail of the ISV Dog Star – a purely sentimental indulgence on his part – he cast his mind back to an interview he had with one of the candidates for Renshaw's expedition.

"You have reviewed the projections of the mathematical model," he asked, or rather stated, addressing the attractive woman across his desk. She certainly was striking, her fine natural blonde hair contrasting with the features of an Imperial Han Princess. What tiny fragments of the illusion of her lineage remained were finally broken by the deep tan of her skin. No Imperial Princess would have allowed her skin to see the light of day, whereas this woman appeared to spend every moment she could under the open sky.

"Yes, sir," she answered in her flat, nasal voice.

Zhong almost winced. The stridency of this woman's Australian accent grated upon his ears. It was an offence against the English language – which, while not as beautiful as his native Mandarin, was a language that should be spoken with respect, honouring the many great men and women who had spoken it. Still, her service reports showed that she was an effective and honourable soldier – one that could be trusted. And it was hardly her fault where she had been raised. That sin could be laid squarely in the laps of her parents.

"The results were fucking obvious," she swore, and then immediately apologised. "Sorry, sir."

Zhong sighed in despair. This woman had the foul mouth of a gutter-snipe. "You cannot help where you were raised, Sharon," he said.

She shrugged. "I enjoyed my childhood. I just wished you had been there to share it with me, instead of swanning off to fucking Pandora to play with the bloody Na'vi."

"So do I, Sharon," replied her grandfather. "So do I. Unfortunately my daughter forbade me any contact. She always took her mother's part, after our divorce. I had to submit to her wishes."

"I bloody well wouldn't have,"commented his grandchild.

Zhong laughed – surprising Sharon. Her grandfather was noted across the RDA for the stoniness of his expression. "No, you wouldn't have," he agreed. That aspect of her personality was more than evident in her profile.

"Thank you for considering me for this mission, grandfather," said Sharon, finally managing to open her mouth without any expletives falling out.

"You are going to take the assignment?" he asked. It was hardly a question.

"I'd be fucking crazy if I didn't," she replied. "Even if it is a one-way trip. When I read the projections of the model, I almost shit myself." A cautious expression shifted over her face. "Has anyone else seen the results?"

"You are the only candidate for the mission to see them," he answered. "Nor will anyone else, not until the time is ripe."

"Not even Colonel Renshaw?"

"No," agreed Zhong. "He knows of the equation, and its application to the functioning of the global awareness the Na'vi call Eywa. He does not know of its use to predict the outcome of ecological systems. As far as he is aware, his objective is to establish peaceful coexistence with the Na'vi, and resume mining of unobtanium. The good colonel has been kept in ignorance of the true purpose of his expedition."

Sharon's eyes narrowed. "You want me to be some sort of secret agent, and give the colonel his real orders, instead of the fucking bullshit you have been feeding him."

"Yes," replied Zhong. He had not been wrong about his granddaughter. She indeed was a true scion of his family - both subtle and intelligent, despite her gweilo blood. "After good relations have been established with the Na'vi." He slid a single piece of paper across the desk for her to read. "The exact time I am leaving up to your discretion."

"Shit!" she exclaimed, after she had read the hand-written note. "You want him to rebel against the fucking RDA?"

Zhong replied, "The order authentication code is your service number – keyed with your voice, it will open a command file on Colonel Renshaw's tactical computer. I do not think you will forget it."

"Does anyone else know this?" demanded Sharon.

"No," answered Zhong. "We are two of the only three living humans who know that the Earth is headed for total ecological collapse. You have already met the third – Doctor Palmer conducted your preliminary interview." He sighed. "Regrettably, humanity passed the tipping point before I left to assume my post on Pandora, so there is little else to be done to save what can be saved." He picked up an old-fashioned cigarette lighter, snapping it on, watching the flame with fascination before closing it again.

"Fifteen fucking years, and that's it. Everyone dies," said Sharon, shaking her head. She knew that despite Phred Palmer's fame as the man who cracked the Na'vi language, he was no mathematician. "What about the geek who discovered the formula?"

Zhong took back the single sheet of paper, and used the cigarette lighter to set it alight. He watched the flames slowly consume the incriminating note he held, not flinching when the flames burnt his fingers. "The geek, as you so charmingly put it, is alive and well on Pandora. Sara the Smurf, or as she prefers to be called now, Kalinkey te Pesuholpxaype Lissa'ite, can hardly be counted as human. On the other hand, the tame mathematician who verified her results is no longer with us."

"How?" asked Sharon involuntarily.

"A bullet in the brain solved that little problem," answered Zhong, his voice calm and even. "A shame. He was quite bright, but not very knowledgeable about people. I had to replace the carpet in this office after he said he was going to the authorities. Doctor Palmer was quite upset at the mess – after all, he is a scholar, not a soldier."

"Fucking hell," whispered Sharon. "You are a cold bastard, just like Mum said." Suddenly, she was still, the stillness of a predator before attacking her prey. "If I don't do as you say, are you going to kill me too?"

Zhong replied, "I studied your psychological profile very closely before I decided on this course of action. The question was never going to arise."

"I can see why the RDA Board made you the fucking CEO,"observed Sharon drily. "You are a bloody sly prick."

The man that every RDA Sec-Ops grunt knew as the Mandarin gave a wintery smile. "I didn't give them any choice but to appoint me."

A brilliant blue star sprang into existence, almost directly overhead.

"There it is," said Phred Palmer.

Zhong didn't reply immediately to the unnecessary observation. The ISV Dog Star was the brightest object in the heavens, illuminating this desert mountain peak with a ghostly blue light. "Thank you for suggesting we come here," he said eventually. "It truly is a spectacular sight."

They stood watching the starship move east, slowly pulling out of Earth orbit, until it was lost in the light of the coming dawn.

"Your granddaughter will fulfil her part of the mission?" queried Phred, as they walked down the mountain back to the chopper. The last superluminal message from Pandora told of the failure of the attempt to take and hold Hell's Gate by force.

"Yes. She gave me her word." Zhong reflected the last time he had seen her, just before she boarded the shuttle to orbit. Sharon certainly made a striking Na'vi woman - at least until she opened her mouth.

Phred observed, "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. She is very like you."

"It is kind of you to say so," said Zhong, remembering the slight nod she gave him in farewell. Sharon knew why he was not scheduled on the crew of this or any later mission to Pandora. She had no need to ask.

"What about Colonel Renshaw?" frowned Phred.

Zhong shook his head. "Renshaw is an honourable man, a man who follows the true path of the warrior. He is bound by his code to do the right thing."

Phred said wrily, "I wish I shared your confidence."

"I'm sure you do," answered Zhong, and shivered, despite the effectiveness of his thermal suit. The cold of this place would suck the life out of any animal. "There is a thermos of good coffee in the chopper with our names on it."

Phred shook his head in amazement. "Prepared for every circumstance, just like always."

"One tries, Doctor Palmer, one tries," replied Zhong. "I would prefer tea myself, but I am well aware that you would rather drink the Western beverage."

As they buckled into the cockpit of the chopper, the light of the rising sun brushed the very peak of the mountain. It seemed like an omen, somehow.

There was only one thing that disturbed the RDA CEO. Zhong knew himself to be a master manipulator, as good as any human in history. Why, then, did he feel that he had been manipulated by an expert?

Zhong knew the answer. He murmured a name under his breath as he spun up the engines, almost like a curse.

"Eywa."

THE END

Author's Note

For those who wish to read the full story of Na'diakhudoshin, I suggest you read my stories in the following order:

- New Steps
- En Pointe
- Oversway
- Last of the Uniltìranyu

The story of Zha'nelle te Manitowabi Eywa'ite can be found in 'Overload'.

There is also a short one-shot featuring Zha'nelle, Kalinkey, Mìnkxetse and Tsawlontu called 'Harmless' that is set a few months after the close of 'Overload' and 'By The Numbers'.

I'd also like to thank my loyal reviewers for their support and encouragement during Kalinkey's story in 'By The Numbers'.

Will there be more? As I have previously said, I am evil, and apologise not in the slightest for that fact. So you will just have to wait and see.

Cheers.

broadhands.