Mistworld

by Nina M. Osier

  Sometimes I hate it when you're right! She hoped that the thought she sent back to him wouldn't add to his distress, but for the life of her she couldn't purge it of anguish. Or of terror, either. What could possibly have happened to her daughter, that could not only conceal her physical whereabouts—but hide her thoughts from Linc, too?

  She isn't dead, Katy. I'd know it if she was. Even from the other side of the galaxy. That much reassurance Lincoln Casey could offer his wife, and he gave it swiftly. With every bit of confidence that he could project.

  “Trust us to take care of her.” Trabe Kourdakov used Katy's own command voice, but gentled its steel just as she sometimes had. Needing to enforce obedience, but realizing that the person hearing the order was so hurt that barking the command could actually make it harder to get its meaning understood ... Admiral Romanova shook herself. Hard.

  “I will,” she said simply, looking first at her father and then at her mother. “Good-bye, Dad. Good-bye, Mum. For now! I'm coming back, you know. I'm not leaving Narsai forever."

  “Of course you aren't!” Kourdakov agreed, as he enveloped his gray-haired child in strong old arms. And then, freeing one, pulled his wife into the embrace instead of handing Catherine off to her.

  Romanova stood back from her parents at last, and Casey moved to her side. He was already attuned to someone operating a Mistworld teleporter, on the interstellar ship far above; because Narsai Control vanished from around them before Catherine had time to frame another thought.

  Or rather she and Linc vanished, and Narsai Control stayed where it was. Of course. But the two travelers perceived it as one set of surroundings disappearing and another taking its place; and the next sound Katy's ears heard was the voice of Ishi Sanibello, whose body still played host to her firstborn son, Ewan, speaking over a public address system that she'd hardly expected to find on board a vessel built and crewed by telepaths.

  “We've got them? Good. Let's get out of here, then. Now! That fleet is dropping to sub-light right this minute. Gods, we're cutting it fine!"

  * * * *

  It was that, all right, Lincoln Casey thought as he took his first look around on board an alien-built starship. He could feel his wife's terror for her missing daughter giving way, just a little, as she, too, started feeling the wonder of that ... good. He needed her distracted right now.

  Never in, all the years since he'd reached out to hold her through her life's worst moment off Mistworld—not with his arms, but with all the strength of both their long friendship and his newly blossoming (although still forbidden) romantic love—had he held back from their mind-to-mind bond something that he knew, and she wanted to know. She had done that to him once, so he knew exactly how finding out about it afterward (years afterward, in that case!) was bound to hurt. But he could admit to himself now, as much he didn't want to, that she'd been right when she kept from him just how brutally George Fralick treated her during the final night of that marriage; and he knew he was right in keeping to himself what he'd just learned. During the last few seconds while the ship carrying them toward Mistworld remained within telepathic communications range of Narsai....

  Linc? Mum? Where are you? How long have I been asleep?

  If he told Katy that he'd heard her daughter's drowsy thoughts, and that the last things Maddy communicated to him were both her current location and how she believed she'd arrived there, he knew beyond question that she would insist Ewan/Ishi turn the ship around. He also knew that if the young man obeyed, it could make no positive difference to Maddy. Whatever was happening to the girl at the Romanov Farmstead would go right on happening, whether or not her mother, stepfather, and brothers returned; because captured or dead, none of them would be able to help Madeleine. She would only have the additional burden of their fate to bear, as she faced the months—or more likely the years—ahead. From now, until Casey and Romanova could hope to return home.

  He wondered what it would do to Ewan, and to Katy's relationship with her eldest son, if he told his wife what he'd learned and Ewan refused to come about. What it would do to Katy herself, if she surprised him (not for the first time) and accepted the news without demanding that they go back for Maddy despite the risk. He reaffirmed his decision's rightness, revisiting it this one time only; and then he put it out of his thoughts.

  But not before he'd wondered about one thing more. What Katy would feel about him, and for him—the husband she'd deceived once, for the sake of both kindness and self-preservation—someday when, if, she learned how and why he had done the same ultimately cruel thing to her.

  He hoped it might never happen. And then, he let it go.

  * * *

  Chapter 6

  “Doctor Cab? Did you make me go to sleep?” Maddy had never before experienced motion sickness, but coming out of deep slumber to find herself looking down on the vast fields of the Romanov Farmstead gave her a queasy feeling. The plowed and planted ground rushed by so quickly, not far below the aircar because Cabanne Barrett was flying at its minimum safe altitude. And that, Maddy realized, was smart. A battle group approaching the planet wasn't apt to take note of ordinary travelers moving about on its surface by such innocuous means as aircars; but the less such activity the better, until things got sorted out. “You made me miss leaving with Mum!"

  Did Doctor Cab realize Maddy didn't have to guess about that? Did she know about Maddy's ability to share thoughts with Linc, and—whenever her stepfather chose to touch both of their minds at once—with her mother?

  Anyway, Maddy knew that they were gone now. So far from Narsai that even Morthan telepathy couldn't operate across the interstellar distance. Getting farther and farther away, too, with every minute that passed ... how long a trip was it from here to Mistworld, exactly?

  Maddy promised herself to find out. She closed her eyes briefly, and quieted her breathing in a self-calming technique her father had taught her long ago. Papa, George Fralick. Whom she still loved, and always would.

  When she looked again, she could see the Farmstead's buildings in the distance. The equipment barn, looming huge and newly constructed. The new and repaired outbuildings; some ready to use, others still being put together. And, where the farmhouse used to be, a nondescript modern structure less than a quarter as large.

  “I'm afraid that's true, Maddy.” Doctor Barrett's voice sounded much too nonchalant. “You stopped yourself from hyperventilating, just now? Good for you! You're a bright young woman, and that should help you understand what's just happened. And what's going to happen next, as well."

  “So you did give me something that knocked me out.” In another minute they'd be setting down. Maddy considered attempting to gain control of the aircar, so she could turn it around and head it back toward MinTar. At least that would reunite her with Granma and Granfer—and Mum would want that, wouldn't she?

  “Yes. I couldn't let you leave with Katy and Linc. I knew if you were awake, he'd able to find you. And that would mean the Mistworld people could snatch you away no matter where you were on Narsai. So I really didn't have much choice, Maddy. I'd like to tell you I'm sorry, but I've never lied to you and I don't want to start now.” Dr. Barrett threw another in a series of glances in her passenger's direction. No longer evaluating the girl's condition, but—Maddy thought, now—gauging the chances she might try something. “Our family can't spare you. And neither, for that matter, can Narsai. Not now, when we're facing Commonwealth occupation—and not when we've just been through all sorts of changes already."

  “What are you talking about?” Maddy hoped she sounded as exasperated as she felt.

  Barrett set the aircar down outside the cottage's door, practically on its entrance steps. She said, “Get out. I'm trusting you to go inside, because I don't want to have to force you again. But if I have to do that, I will. Do you understand?"

  “Uh-huh.” Saying that she understood wasn't the same as promising she would do as she'd been told. But for the moment Maddy couldn't see any poin
t in refusing. Would Doctor Cab keep the aircar here, after they'd both left it for the house?

  Doctor Cab released the car, as soon as she could. It lifted, operating now on remotes, and homed toward the nearest public garage—which meant it wouldn't be going all the way back to MinTar. She stepped to Maddy's side, and pressed the announcer beside the cottage's door.

  Cousin Reen let them in. “Thank goodness!” she said, as she stood back from the doorway and motioned for the new arrivals to walk through into the kitchen. “I knew you'd get her, Cab, but seeing her here means I can draw my first easy breath since all this started!"

  It was getting dark already, here in a different time zone than MinTar. This early in spring, the northern plains still got cold at nightfall. Maddy found herself glad to enter the warm, bright room. She'd been here before, after this prefab went up—the last Farmstead structure to get a proper rebuilding would, of course, be the dwelling house. She knew Cousin Reen, she knew Cousin Johnnie; and whatever Reen had cooking in the prefabs oven smelled so good that it reminded Maddy of just how long it was since she'd had her lunch at school.

  She'd wanted to go with Mum, with Linc, with Dan and Rachel, and her brothers. To Mistworld, where they would all be safe. But she'd missed her chance thanks to Doctor Cab, and now that she found herself in a familiar place—with people she had reason to trust—she surprised herself by feeling no great urge to break free and rush back to MinTar, after all. She loved Granma and Granfer, but she'd always (if the truth were known) felt more at ease with these relatives from her mother's generation. Besides which, she was hungry. Tired, too (the lingering effects of the medicine, perhaps?). And, most of all, she was curious. What could Doctor Cab have meant, by saying that neither the Romanov family nor Narsai itself could spare her? How could one girl, thirteen going on fourteen standard years old, be that important?

  If she ran now, back to MinTar and her grandparents, she might not get another chance to find out.

  * * * *

  Farren Kourdakov's heart picked up its tempo as he materialized inside the Terran Embassy on Narsai. His brown Romanov eyes took in the reception hall's ornate décor, and he wondered who its designers had thought to impress; because on this world, beauty and functionality always went hand in hand.

  “Mr. Kourdakov?” The Terran ambassador looked tired and harried, and old for her years. Which didn't surprise Farren, who knew that the Embassy's staff had been holed up on its own grounds—its little bit of sovereign soil, on an alien planet's surface—ever since that comm relay got destroyed six months earlier, in the battle between the Archangel and the Mistworld-led Rebel fleet. If the ambassador had managed to communicate with her superiors at all, she'd done it by the old-fashioned and cumbersome (and incredibly slow) method of sending recorded messages by outward bound merchant ships. “Welcome home, sir. I'm looking forward to working with you."

  “Thank you, Ms. Paré.” Farren stepped clear of the teleporter, so that someone else could either follow him down or ‘port up to the Aragon. Or to any of the other ships in the battle group that dreadnought led, under Admiral Benedon's able command. “Can you point me toward a commlink? I ought to call my family as soon as possible.” Talking to Uncle Trabe and Cousin Katy a few hours ago, from on board the Aragon, wouldn't excuse him from giving first his parents and then his grandparents a call.

  “Certainly. I have quarters ready for you here tonight, and you're welcome to stay inside our walls for as long as you want.” Paré's tone was guarded, and another glance around—this time taking in the faces of the other embassy staff members present, instead of concentrating on the hall itself—informed Farren that the ambassador didn't want to say too much right now. Which was fine, because with Cousin Katy and her mindfucker husband gone he had no reason to hurry about making his next move.

  * * * *

  “Good, isn't it?” Johnnie Romanov smiled across the dinner table at his young cousin. “Reen's been complaining about how that new oven doesn't cook the way her old one did, but I can't see a bit of difference in how the food tastes."

  “Humph! A lot you know about it,” his wife answered. But she looked pleased, Maddy thought. After which the girl wondered whether Johnnie ever cooked anything, or even knew how.

  In Papa's house on Kesra, the neutered house-pair took care of all such chores. In Mum's little home in MinTar, Linc did more cooking than anyone else—mostly, Maddy thought, because he liked doing it. But here, as always on the Farmstead, she noticed that Reen played one role and Johnnie played another. Some tasks they both performed, but others (like the kitchen work) definitely belonged to one partner only.

  And not because that partner had a particular fondness for it, either. Or at least, it certainly looked that way to Maddy.

  “Feeling better? You looked pretty groggy when Cab brought you in here.” Johnnie pushed his chair back, but didn't leave the table. “I'm sorry she couldn't think of a better way, but she couldn't let you leave Narsai with your mother. And none of us could imagine that if we asked Katy to let you stay, she'd agree."

  “Why? What do you want me here for?” At least Cousin Johnnie was going to level with her. Sooner rather than later, too! But he didn't have a reason to avoid or delay it now, did he? With Mum gone, and Maddy safely (well, from his viewpoint) under his control.

  “Johnnie, this call's for you.” Off the combined kitchen and dining room the little house had an office, because the Farmstead was first, last, and always a business. Cab Barrett had retreated to it without joining the family for supper, taking a plate filled by Reen along. The doctor came to the door now, and beckoned.

  She had kept that door closed, but Johnnie left it open. On purpose, Maddy thought; because he glanced in the girl's direction as he went in. And then said to Barrett, in as aggressive a tone as Maddy had ever heard him use, “We're through having things to hide, Cab! And I'm damned glad of it, too."

  Reen met the inquiring gaze the girl turned in her direction, but her eyes revealed only that right now she was feeling tremendous embarrassment. Clearly whatever this branch of the Romanov family had been up to lately was no more to her liking than it was to her husband's. She put a dish of dessert—stewed fruit with some sort of sweet, crunchy topping—in front of her guest, put a second dish at her own place, and started eating as if she must perform an unpleasant duty.

  Like Maddy, of course, Reen was straining her ears toward that open doorway. But Maddy turned in her chair and listened unabashedly, after she'd tried the first spoonful and then realized she wasn't going to be able to enjoy the treat properly if she followed her cousin's example.

  She still thought most of Narsai's fresh foods a treat, after spending her childhood on Kesra where anything edible that didn't come out of the sea (which covered so much of the planet that many Kesran dwellings had rafts instead of land beneath them) had surely been imported. But for now her hunger was sated, and she desperately wanted to hear whatever was going on in that office.

  * * * *

  “Tena, I don't understand why you and Kyle have such a problem with this.” Once he saw his daughter's face on the comm screen, Johnnie Romanov forgot all about the listeners—the one standing behind his chair, and the two outside the room. “If you want to take your places as the Proprietors here when your mother and I are gone, or no long able to carry out our duties, no one's going to stop you. Farren can wait his turn for that. But someone's got to deal with the Commonwealth who's a completely new element, for us as well as to them—and yet it's got to be someone who's entitled by heritage. Can you name anyone else who qualifies?"

  On the screen, Tena Romanova spoke to her father from Narsai's far hemisphere. From where she and Kyle had moved, soon after they'd withdrawn their son from the Lycée and shipped him off to complete his secondary education at a school on New Orient ... Johnnie still didn't understand that decision. Nor did he understand, or like, having his only child half a world away. But Tena had never wanted anything to do with farmi
ng, and her marriage—a proper one, joining her to a cousin on Uncle Trabe's side of their ancient family—had sealed her life's course. As a city-dweller, who would never come home to the Farmstead and live there as its Proprietor with her husband and consort.

  Which left Farren, her son, to take on that role someday; since neither the Romanov line, nor the Kourdakov one, had another heir waiting. Narsai's long battle against over-population, its ruthless limiting of births even to those families who traditionally provided its leaders, had brought them to that point at last.

  Tena's face on the screen went taut. “Dad, do you really want to do this in front of her?” she asked pointedly.

  Johnnie nearly asked, “In front of who?", before he realized that someone had joined Cab Barrett behind his chair. That a slim, girlish figure was leaning over his shoulder, making itself easily visible from Tena's end of the link.

  “Hi, Tena.” The second cousins recognized each other, because they'd met once during Maddy's six months on Narsai. Although they were from the same generation, more than enough years separated them for Tena to have been Madeleine's mother as well as Farren's. But Tena hadn't liked Katy, who was this girl's mother, years ago when they were kids together; and she didn't like Maddy now. Johnnie realized that all over again as he watched his daughter's face. But it didn't matter. For Narsai's sake, he couldn't afford to let it matter.

  “Hello, Madeleine.” Tena sighed loudly. “So. You're going to marry my son, are you?"

  “What?” The girl's face paled. She reached for the back of her cousin's chair, found herself gripping his shoulder instead, and held on anyway. “Why would I want to do that?"

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  The Narsai Council and Commissioners—respectively, the scions of its original settlers’ lines, and the current heads of its commercial, professional, and trade guilds—had never met jointly until six months ago. At the time it seemed necessary to Trabe Kourdakov, because he'd needed the planet's entire authority structure to support him (senior chair holder though he was) in reviving old customs for his daughter's protection. For that of her family, too; and to chart Narsai's new course in this altered part of the galaxy. But now he wondered if he'd done right by calling that first joint meeting, because now the Council never met separately.