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University of Addis Ababa, where she'd been studying the history of her own people, the people of Ethiopia. Her father had been an eminent professor at the university,
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    and he'd insisted upon having a scholar heir.
    "Now, Etsane, I know you're tempted to go to Star- Bridge Academy and study xeno-archaeology," her father, Mefume, had said to her while she was still in high school. His dark brown eyes had flashed as he stood there with his hands clasped together, dressed in Amhara tribal dress. Her father was an old-fashioned man. "But, daughter, I want you to concentrate on studying the history of our people. We need young people to remember our glorious past."
    "But, father!" Etsane had objected, arms crossed over her chest resentfully,
    "the history of the Amharas and ancient Aksum is known. If I become an historian, as you wish, I'll just be re-covering well-known ground! If I become a xeno-archaeologist, I'll get to study the ancient days of people totally different from us--people whose wonders are still waiting to be discovered!"
    He'd blinked then, almost as if he were going to weep. He never did, never had in all the years when he'd raised her single-handedly, after her mother's death from the Hacking Cough. Instead, he'd just stood there in his book-lined study, surrounded by three-hundred-year-old carvings, paintings, and wooden busts that depicted her proud, hawk- nosed people, and waited for her to give in. She had, as she'd known she must. There was nothing she would not do for her beloved father.
    "Oh, all right!" She'd even stamped her foot on the stone floor of the family farm, high up on the slopes of Mount Ras Deshen, in the highlands north of ancient Gonder. He'd smiled then.
    "That's my girl!" Warm love had shone in his black face, a face still marked by the ritual scars he'd picked up during years spent among the Sidamo people of southern Ethiopia. "Now, about the specifics of your study, I'd like to suggest that you ..."
    Etsane blinked, coming back to the present, to a cold day in a cold stone hallway, standing before a painted wall that spoke to her as to few other Iconographers. Yes, she'd done as her father had wanted... studied the history of her people during her undergraduate years. But then, when she 31
    entered graduate school, she revolted, turning her back on Earth and the history of Ethiopia to do what she really wanted to do--study xeno-archaeology.
    Her father had been very disappointed in her, and had told her so. For a few moments, she'd wavered, tempted to give in once again. Then she'd made herself stand firm. "I'm sorry, Dad," she'd said steadily. "I have to do what is right for me. This is right. Staying on Earth is wrong." Her father had died during her first off-world assignment, when she'd interned with Professor Grey shine on a Mizari dig three years ago. Etsane had always wondered if he'd died of a broken heart, though she tried to tell herself that was silly.
    As much as she loved her work, it was hard to shake off the disapproving shadow that was always with her. She was now twenty-three, and still the memory of her father's disappointed expression was enough to dull her enjoyment of even the most marvelous alien "find."
    Now she stood before the wall, and whispered softly, "Father, I still remember. I haven't forgotten. I know what our people accomplished."
    Hers were the Amhara people of Ethiopia, who traced their descent from Aksum's King Ezana, conqueror of ancient Meroe, to Yekuno Amlak, who restored the Solomonic kingship line to Christian Ethiopia, to Emperor Menelik the Second who defeated the Italians at Aduwa in 1896. Her father's family was of a Gonder noble house, while her mother came from a noble clan of the Tigrayan people, who shared with the Amharas their royal link to Roman-era Aksum. The book Kibre Nigest even said Ethiopia's kings descended from a son born to King Solomon and Sheba, Queen of South Arabia. Maybe so. Maybe not.
    But she knew for a fact that