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Sandoval does, actually, leave the Embassy at night. Usually. He sleeps on the couch in his office, sometimes, with his tie loosened and his jacket over a chair. Lili knows this because for the past three weeks she's been here for the sunrise. Sandoval has noticed. He's jealous, in the same way that he's jealous of Boone. He's fallen out of favor, just not quite as smart or as loyal as the other humans. He won't tell the Synod, though, or even Zo'or. He wouldn't want Da'an to think him petty.
Lili really feels she knows entirely too much about Sandoval these days: Da'an was infatuated with him when the Taelons first arrived, she thinks. He pays a lot of attention to the humans that surround him. His observations are mostly things she already knew, but in more detail. Full replays of questions Sandoval has posed to Da'an. His actions following the commitment of his wife. Da'an's initial doubts about his loyalties. Interesting--but Lili shies away from that, moving from observation into feeling, into Da'an's own passions. It's not about sex, it's really not. But if she doesn't learn anything of consequence, she doesn't have to tell Jonathan.
*
She hates him for being making her weak, for the day when Tate pressed a button and her legs fell out from under her. She hates him for his actions in the Jaridian simulation, for being insane and self-righteous and for making her need a man to protect her. She hates him for not leveling with her, for not telling her where he was sending her or what his plan was, but mostly she hates him for gazing down at her baby with longing and letting Ariel grab at his finger and saying, "You have a beautiful daughter, Captain Marquette."
*
The Jaridians have adapted to their own unstable metabolisms. They don't monitor it, don't confine themselves to bed rest when they know the end is coming. They just burst into flame where they stand, in the middle of offices, in the middle of the street, and none of the others really even notice, it happens so often. According to their texts, the Jaridians used to revere the dead. It's just become to exhausting to bother.
The Jaridians are dead and dying, and Lili spends her time pouring over their books. She doesn't leave her rooms anymore. She can't take her daughter out there, where some cinder might get in her eye, where she might grab at a strangers sleeve and burn her hand.
Lili thought about going out alone, about leaving Ariel with Vorjak's brother-uncle or one of the scientists, just for a few hours. She would have, once, when she knew that Vorjak would be back at the end of the not-week or the not-month. He loved his daughter, or at least what his daughter represented, and he was powerful enough to be feared. But no one really thinks he'll be coming back.
It's been. She doesn't know, the Jaridian days are longer, but she doesn't know how much longer. It's been long enough for Ariel to start walking, long enough for her to catch and get over something akin to the chicken pox. Long enough to grow thin baby pigtails. But on Jaridia days are longer and lives are shorter and nothing really means anything anymore.
She doesn't recognize him at first, when he appears in front of her one day during the warmest season. They've both changed so much. He's matured. He's become a leader. She hadn't been nearly so old when she was captured; he hadn't been nearly so glowy.
*
She told Liam, she insisted that whatever Sandoval had done to her, with blue tank and the color of her blood, would make impossible for her to leave Jaridia and return to Earth. Liam brought her aboard the mothership anyway. And now here she is, sick, burning, her daughter wailing after only three days away from the planet.
Liam says he can fix it. He says he spent a year with the Kimera on another plane, that all the human has been burnt out of him, that he has access to the knowledge of the infinite. He raises his shaquarava to her head and puts his forehead to hers.
Lili spends a week coughing black blood, and another coughing red, so at least that's something. He figures out what he was doing wrong before he tries it on Ariel. Liam doesn't ask for permission these days.
*
This is how things are on the Mothership:
Liam warns Lili to stay away from Raj'el, because the last of the Taelons is apparently petty and obtuse and self-serving and while he doesn't contain Zo'or, he becomes more like the Synod Leader everyday. It takes Lili about twenty minutes with the combined Taelon conciousness to decide that Liam has a few old Kimeran grudges. Raj'el reminds her of Da'an.
Renee spends a lot of time avoiding Liam and pining for Earth, for reasons no one seems willing to discuss. Raj'el knows though, and it leaks through a little: something to do with succumbing to a biological imperative. Lili tries not to think about it.
They tried to go to Yulyn's planet, but it had been thousands of years. According to the Atavii, there have been six cultural revolutions while he's been gone. They think he's an interesting historical specimen. Yulyn doesn't want to stay there, they aren't his people anymore; he babysits Ariel instead. He's a master at patty-cake and peek-a-boo.
*
At first the school systems just assumed that people were forgetting to register for kindergarten, or maybe that they were opting to home school. The religious nuts gained a lot of fervor when the Taelons disappeared, and again when there was that rash of murders a few months later. The Church of the Companions has a suggested curriculum on their website.
Eventually they notice how few children there are and there on the tickertape headlines scrolling across Doors International, it says "Sharp decrease in birthrates linked to Taelon Occupation." Augur tells her it will just take a few years for people to realize that most children are hybrids now, but a man on the street corner mutters under his breath, "goddamn aliens," and Lili tightens her hand around her daughter's. She doesn't feel safe in this new, strictly terrestrial world.