Mistworld

by Nina M. Osier

  “I see,” Romanova said, and squeezed her father's arm. “So you really are prepared to invade a sovereign world, a voluntary Commonwealth member? And your orders really do authorize you to take that step?"

  “Admiral Benedon, I'll answer that if you like.” A civilian, a very young civilian, stepped out of the background on the Aragon's bridge. Which, of course, was a place where no civilian had any right to be. The young man looked out of the screen with eyes as brown as Katy's own, from a face crowned by hair the same coppery color that hers had been at his age. Cabanne Romanova's hair had been that shade in her youth, also; and so had Johnnie Romanov's.

  “Farren?” Katy asked, doubtful only because she could hardly make herself believe what her eyes insisted on telling her. “Is that you?” She still had her hand on her father's arm, which felt like a rock right now.

  “It's Farren, all right,” the old man said, before the far younger one could reply. “What are you doing on a military starship, boy? You're supposed to be on New Orient, studying."

  “Admiral Benedon was kind enough to give me a lift home.” The only child of Tena Romanova, daughter (and only child in her turn) of Ivan and Lorena, smiled at his elders in calm satisfaction. Farren Kourdakov, heir to the Romanov Farmstead and (since his cousin Katy could inherit politically from only one of her parents) to Cabanne Romanova's seat on the Narsai Council, looked directly at the Council's current leader. “Hello, Uncle Trabe. Cousin Katy. I'm sorry I couldn't let you or my parents and grandparents know I was coming, but there was this little problem of a missing long range comm booster. Maybe you heard about it? That kept me from being able to call home."

  * * * *

  You'll have to kill him, Katy. Linc's words formed in her mind with a singular lack of emotional coloring. And I'm not telling you a thing you don't already know. Am I?

  Of course you aren't, she sent back, from the depths of the shock she still felt. But love, I'm not sure I can!

  In that case, we'll be lucky if we manage to get our family aboard Ewan's ship and safely off to Mistworld. And we'll be leaving behind a Narsai that's no longer under the present Council's control. It'll be under this young twerp's, instead. Linc stated the situation baldly, but he was—sadly—correct in his assessment of it. Entirely so. Still not sure you can kill him?

  How could she explain this, even to the one person in all the universe who understood her best? Even doing so via their intimate, mind-to-mind connection? She couldn't. Yet when she turned her eyes to her father's, she knew that she didn't need to explain her reasoning (or more accurately, her intuitive certainty) to him. Trabe Kourdakov wasn't just a fellow Narsatian. He was the holder of the Council's senior chair, and patriarch of their family despite not being the Farmstead's proprietor. No, she couldn't remove the problem that Farren Kourdakov posed by removing the young man himself from the universe. Doing that would be the equivalent of killing her own child, her own heir. It would be just like killing Maddy.

  This her part-Morthan, Sestus 3-reared husband simply could not understand, and she wasted no more time trying to figure out how she might explain it to him. Instead she told him firmly, no matter how much desperate sadness mingled itself with her determination, Now I'm absolutely sure that I can't, Linc. Farren has to go on living. Because he's Narsai's future.

  That made no sense at all to Lincoln Casey, of course. But it made perfect sense to Catherine Romanova, to Trabe Kourdakov, and to Farren himself. And although Admiral Lita Benedon couldn't possibly comprehend it—nor could the superiors who'd somehow discovered this living weapon, and realized they could use him against both his family and his home-world—she was counting on it just the same. Relying on it to give her the moral high ground that she needed, in order to take a world as fiercely independent as Narsai without a fight. She could see already that the plan hatched (surely, Romanova thought in helpless anger and bitterly aching betrayal!) by Willard Tanaka and Sheba Fothingill—Catherine Romanova's old friends, and formerly staunch allies—was working like the proverbial charm.

  * * * *

  “I hate this, Reen. I really, really hate this!” Ivan Romanov spoke softly to his wife, as they held hands (something that they still did often, after 40 years of marriage) and watched the viewscreen together. The prefabricated cottage on the former site of the Romanov Farmstead's dwelling-house was warm inside, but he felt chilled just the same. And Lorena's hand in his felt positively icy.

  “So do I, Johnnie. Going behind Katy's back is bad enough! But going behind Uncle Trabe's ... this isn't how we've always done business. I know it's necessary, but I'm going to be a long time forgiving myself just the same.” Lorena “Reen” Romanova couldn't take her eyes from the clandestine feed that the starship Aragon was sending to the Farmstead.

  “We can't let it happen again. The Council and the Commissioners made some good changes, some necessary changes, when they returned us to the old ways of reckoning Narsatian residence and Narsatian citizenship. I'm glad Katy's husband has our protection now, and I'm glad Dan and his family have it, too. But if we don't do this, Reen, our grandson's going to have to marry an outsider! And we can't allow it.” Johnnie spoke even more softly, and didn't take his eyes from his grandson's image. “Farren's got to take a Romanov bride. When Katy ran away to Terra and broke off her betrothal to me, you were waiting in the wings—another Romanov woman, of marrying age and willing. But if Katy refuses to give her daughter to Farren, the Farmstead's going to fall into half-blooded hands with the next generation. So this has to be, Reen. There's no other way."

  “Are we absolutely sure Katy wouldn't listen to reason, if we spoke to her about this?” Lorena still sounded troubled. “Or that Madeleine herself wouldn't be willing, if we asked her directly? She's a minor, but she's also of betrothal age. And from what I've seen of her, she's a sensible girl as well as a brave one."

  Her husband sighed. “Katy let that girl be brought up away from Narsai,” he said, now with exaggerated patience in his tone. “She lets Madeleine call herself ‘Fralick,’ even on official documents like the Lycée's register. I didn't have the slightest hope, before the kid's father brought her here and I got a chance to meet her and find out just how suitable for Farren she was, that we could keep the line of inheritance pure when our grandson married. But it's working out that way after all, Reen! We can't stop that Commonwealth fleet from carrying out its orders to bring Narsai back into line. But we can take control of how they go about it, and turn the entire situation to our own advantage, if we play our cards right. And that's got to start by getting Uncle Trabe out of the Council's senior chair, no matter how much we love and respect him, because his time to lead is over. It's Farren's turn now. Coming a lot earlier than it ought to, I'll admit, but that's where you and I and his parents come in. To help him and guide him, and make sure he runs the Council for Narsai's benefit. Not as a Commonwealth puppet, even though that's exactly what we want that dreadful woman,” his nod indicated the transmitted image of Lita Benedon, “to believe."

  Lorena shivered. “I know you're right, Johnnie,” she admitted, as she crept closer to his side in the small, snug kitchen that gave her claustrophobia after decades of presiding over the Farmstead's vaulted and ancient chambers. “But I also know that Farren's not ready for this. He's barely of age, for heaven's sake! Eighteen years old, Johnnie. He's exactly what Uncle Trabe just called him—a boy! And this is a job that even a man or woman who'd spent years preparing for it might think twice about tackling. It's, well,” she searched for the right word, “daunting! Scary, my love. I think Katy would say that it's ‘as scary as hell.’”

  “I think Katy would be right.” Romanov put his arm, still massively powerful because on modern Narsai a man in his seventies (especially a hard-working farmer) was still in vigorous middle age, around his wife's shoulders. “But maybe it's a good thing Farren's as young as he is, Reen. Too young to be, what did you call it? Daunted, by the job he's taking on. Too young to realize the conseque
nces of every decision he makes, from now on ... and if he did realize it, I'm afraid it might paralyze him.” The Farmstead's resident proprietor paused, and then added with the brutal honesty that normally characterized his every word, “I know it would do that to me, if I were standing in his boots right now!"

  * * *

  Chapter 5

  “Are you sure this is going to be safe for them, Katy?” Rachel Kane hadn't adopted her husband's way of addressing Catherine Romanova. The former Star Service commander (or rather, legally speaking, deserter) held one of her little sons in each strong arm, while Romanova held small Paula. “I've been using teleporters all my life, but these Mistworld ones give me the creeps!"

  “It's better than letting HR Solutions have them, hon,” Dan Archer said, his gentle tone belying his blunt words. “Isn't it?"

  “I risked putting myself into cold sleep while I was carrying them, and they survived that okay. I suppose they'll survive this, too!” Rachel nodded, and managed a crooked smile. “I know we can't be still on Narsai when that fleet gets here. And you can't, either. Can you, Katy?"

  “No. I'm afraid I can't. I don't have HR Solutions claiming to own me and my offspring, but I do have treason charges hanging over my head!” Which was definitely not as bad, Romanova thought as she looked down into the face of the little girl in her arms. If she ever did have to answer those charges on Luna, at Star Service Headquarters, she would be entitled to all the normal elements of due process. She would have counsel, qualified counsel, to represent her; and although she would face execution if the court martial convicted her, that sentence would be carried out humanely.

  Neither Rachel Kane, nor any of her three little ones, would get such decencies if the gengineering company that owned them got them back in its clutches. She, a gen who'd gone rogue, would be scrutinized—physically and psychologically—in every way the firm's medics and researchers and trainers could imagine. And after that, of course, they would complete their examination by dissecting her.

  As for the babies, they'd be allowed to live. Probably, unless the company concluded that their parentage made them impossibly poor risks for life as gens. They would be given conventional ownership emblems, not (like their mother, to help her fit in at the Star Service Academy) invisible marks that only a personnel scanner could detect. They'd be placed in a crèche, reared there among other gens—and there wasn't a chance in the universe that HR Solutions would risk allowing them stimulating lives like the one Rachel had known. They would train for conventional “gen jobs,” perform those jobs for as many years as they were able, and then be put down.

  Assuming that the company didn't put them down in the first place, for fear that their combination of rogue mother and wildling father simply wasn't worth chancing the huge investment that would be required to bring the three young gens to working age. So any risk the Mistworld-style teleporter might pose to Rachel and her little ones looked small, compared to their certain fate if they wound up on board a Star Service ship that was sure to deliver them into the hands of their “owners."

  Romanova handed the baby girl to Dan Archer. She glanced around the conference room where her family had waited out the Commonwealth fleet's approach, and she frowned at her own daughter's absence. “You two get up there now!” she said, and then corrected herself with a distracted smile. “You five, I mean. Linc and I will be along as soon I round up Maddy. Do you know where she went?"

  “No,” Rachel said, as Ewan Archer started to whimper and his brother Lincoln promptly joined in. Not with an answering whimper, but with a fretful wail.

  “Cab took her someplace, Matushka.” Dan's armful, Paula, escalated the concert's volume (although not its pitch) by starting to scream instead of fuss. Which was the triplets’ pattern for vocalizing; the only way it varied was in which baby started the progression, from one time to the next. “See you in space!” He grinned, then closed his eyes for a moment as his face went slack. As he opened his thoughts to someone aboard the Mistworld vessel, back in orbit for just long enough to take on these few additional passengers. He was “talking” with Kerle Marin, most likely, since the Morthan doctor had been the Archangel's chief medical officer while Dan was its chief engineer. Which meant that Marin knew Archer's thoughts, and could find them easily.

  “See you in space, Dan. Yes.” Romanova murmured the words as she watched her foster son and his family vanish, leaving her alone in the room. A room that looked as if it had had three babies in residence for the past several hours—but she didn't have time to do anything about that. Even if she'd been feeling domestic, which she wasn't. She reached out for her husband, who'd assumed the task of transferring up the few belongings they were taking with them into exile, and walked out into the corridor as she did so. Linc? Is Maddy with you?

  No, Katy. But I'll find out where she is. Just a second! How reassuring it was, to know that Linc could do this instantly. He could find Maddy just as easily as he could find Maddy's mother, with no more effort than it took to—well—think.

  Or at least, he always had before. From the first time he and his stepdaughter met, when George Fralick dropped the girl off to stay with Catherine Romanova while Ambassador Fralick traveled from Kesra to Terra in hopes of heading off interstellar war, the bond Casey had unwittingly formed with Maddy while she grew in Katy's womb asserted itself and gave him that power. But it was failing him now ... Linc's next thought sounded puzzled. I can't feel her anywhere, Katy. What in the universe is wrong?

  * * * *

  Cabanne Barrett scanned the unconscious adolescent body in the aircar's passenger seat, and thanked her forebears’ wisdom that “citizen tracking” violated Narsai's constitution as well as its customs. So she needn't worry, as she'd have been obliged to on just about any other world possessing a transportation infrastructure, about the public car's guidance system making a record of who it carried and where they went.

  On Narsai such cars were a shared resource. Anyone (no license to operate required) could check one out, use it for one trip or several, and then return it to the garage nearest the traveler's final destination. Keeping a car out of circulation by parking it somewhere for greater convenience was frowned on, though. The system enforced that disapproval by charging a small rental for time aloft—and a noticeably larger one for time “on ground, but not in garage."

  Normally Dr. Barrett, lacking her cousin Katy's intense dislike for teleporters, would have ‘ported from MinTar to the hamlet nearest the Romanov Farmstead. But right now anyone who tried to use a public ‘porter was going to get noticed, with the whole planet in a state of emergency (a state of near hysteria was more like it!). As a practicing physician she could move about more easily than other citizens, at such a time; but not with a sedated adolescent in tow.

  Good. Maddy, who from now on would be called “Madeleine Romanova” whether she liked it or not, was tolerating the sedation well. Even though, professional ethics be damned, Cab Barrett had given her a high enough dose to suppress dream-state brain activity ... because doctors had to do things, in war time, that they wouldn't think about doing under normal circumstances. Or so Barrett told herself, as she smoothed her unwitting and presumably unwilling patient's sweaty hair, and wished with all her soul that she could get those “normal circumstances” back.

  That was, of course, like wishing for night to fall at daybreak. It wasn't going to happen, and there was nothing the commissioner representing Narsai's medical guild could do about it. Nothing except what she was doing already.

  * * * *

  “Katy, you have to leave now. There's no more time! What good can you do Maddy by getting yourself taken? Hauled off to Terra in disgrace, and then killed?” Cabanne Romanova sounded cross, in the way that Catherine's mother always did when she was more frightened than truly annoyed.

  “We'll find Madeleine, Katy-love. And then we'll take care of her. Leaving her behind is hard on you and Linc, but it won't put her in danger. Go, for heaven's sake! Go
now!” Trabe Kourdakov added his voice to his wife's, as the old couple stood with their daughter and her husband in the tracking room at the heart of Narsai Control.

  Hauled off to Luna, not Terra. Katy's precise mind corrected her mother's words, but she didn't bother to utter the revision. Star Service Headquarters is on Luna. I ought to know; I ran it for years, when I was Fleet Admiral. She stared at the viewscreen that took up an entire wall of the Control Center, ignoring the smaller screens that offered the men and women operating the place more detailed and varying views of their star system and of every vessel and structure that orbited their world; and she saw that her parents were right. The Mistworld ship carrying her sons, and now her foster son and his family, had better break its orbit within the next several minutes. Or it would still be within weapons range of the Commonwealth battle group, when Lita Benedon's command dropped out of hyperdrive and swept toward Narsai at sub-light velocity—and Romanova didn't doubt that Benedon would fire immediately, if such a tempting target greeted her at her long journey's end.

  Would it make any sense at all to stay here, with or without Linc? Try to conceal herself on Narsai, to locate Maddy and (hopefully) find a way to lend her leadership to the resistance movement she'd urged Harbie and Mara to form around their partly trained militia? Romanova allowed herself to consider that one last time, before she put the impossibly foolish idea away forever.

  Katy, I hate it, too. But it's what we have to do. Linc's thoughts touched hers, and his mind felt raw from pain and anxiety. He might not have kindled Maddy's life, but he'd started loving his wife's daughter long before the girl's birth; and the past six months of knowing her as she was now, a bright, sensitive, and promising adolescent, had strengthened that bond until nothing in the universe could hope to break it. Maddy was his child, too, now. And leaving their girl behind, without even knowing why, was going to hurt him almost as much as it was already hurting Katy herself.