Mistworld

by Nina M. Osier

  Trabe. How was he handling all this? The loss that Cabbie herself couldn't yet feel, compounded by what he might well regard (since she'd kept her part in Maddy's disappearance from him) as his wife's betrayal?

  “At least we still have you, Madeleine. And we wouldn't, if your grandmother had let you go away on that ship.” Trabe Kourdakov had been waiting for his wife to look at him. The second she did so, forcing herself to meet his eyes when it was the last thing in the universe she wanted to do, he not only spoke in her defense; he uttered the one truth that could (and must!) save the whole situation. “Which doesn't mean I want to catch the two of you,” he stared sternly at first his wife and fellow Councilor, and then at the Commissioner of Medicine, “pulling a stunt like that one again, ever! But I'm not inclined to do anything about it this time except say ‘thank you.’ And of course,” he turned his gaze toward the young couple at the table's head, “to Madeleine and to Farren, congratulations on their betrothal! Which I'm going to suggest shouldn't be consummated immediately. Everyone in this family has grieving to do, and I'm sure Farren understands,” his stare in the younger man's direction grew flinty, “that his wife-to-be especially needs time to mourn. Madeleine, it's safe enough now for you to go to your mother's house and get your things. You'll be living with your Granma and me from now on. If you're quick about it, I can take you myself. All right?"

  “They can't reconvene without you, anyway, Granfer. Can they?” Maddy's mouth twisted as if she'd tried to form it into a smile, and failed. With the crisis over, the reason for her to ally herself with her newly betrothed husband defused, and her just-disclosed loss (no, losses) no longer deflected from hitting her full force, her face crumpled. She dashed around the table, a dignified quasi-adult turned into a child again, and threw herself into her grandfather's waiting arms.

  * * * *

  The Mistworld starship (or SHIP, as it was properly called) dropped back into hyperspace from wherever it had just been, and Catherine Romanova felt herself starting to breathe again. Literally, because for a time she'd had no physical self to perform such functions.

  “Linc, do you have any idea at all what just happened? Or why we're still alive?” She'd been sitting at a weapons console, watching with familiar tension building in her body as the Star Service ship (a well-armed heavy cruiser, probably far more than this vessel's tactical match) bore down. She'd been thinking that this was a new experience, to see that insignia on an avowed enemy's hull, when everything on her console shut down. So did life support, lights, commlinks—every system that the SHIP possessed. Yet she heard no one screaming, in the unbelievable (to lubbers who'd before never experienced it, at least) terror that Humans naturally experienced when plunged into absolute darkness ... the kind of darkness they really couldn't encounter anywhere else, except sealed up inside an unlit hull. Such as that of a submarine, or a spacecraft.

  The systems were back on line now. All of them, as far as Katy's forty and more years of experience could tell her. The pursuing ship was nowhere to be seen when she tried to bring it up on her viewscreen. But the stars there looked different ... what the hell?

  “Linc!” Her weapons station partner, who also happened to be her life partner, lay on the small aft compartment's deck. She wondered for a moment why she hadn't realized, instantly, that his mind wasn't touching hers—and then remembered that for a time (How long? Would the SHIP's chrono be able to tell her?) she'd had no consciousness capable of doing anything.

  Should she call for aid? And if so, from whom should she seek it? How far had they traveled, mysteriously, while everything around them (not to mention the travelers themselves) temporarily ceased to exist?

  He'll be okay, Mum. Bryce and Marcus said the same thing at the same time, as they so often had while still alive in their own bodies. The bodies Katy had carried and given birth, that years afterward perished in the skies over Mistworld ... whenever one of her boys “spoke” to her like this, with his current host-form out of view, she saw him in her mind as he'd been while alive in his own form. He helped us. And you did, too, because he knew how to draw you in. But that's hard work, and he's not used to doing it.

  What's hard work? What just happened? Katy sent back, as she checked one more time—satisfied herself that they'd somehow traveled far beyond their attackers’ reach—and then left her chair to kneel on the deck, at her husband's side.

  Moving us. From where we were before, to where we are now.

  You teleported a whole starship? Her sons, still speaking as one (and now she realized they weren't doing it by accident, as they had in life, but rather by design), couldn't mean what she thought they meant. It simply wasn't possible.

  It's not possible that we're alive without our bodies, either, Mum. But we are. Bryce and Marcus both chuckled.

  Linc's vital signs failed to alarm Katy. His body read “exhausted,” but not “damaged.” As she reached for him deliberately now, not in panic, she started finding him. Gone deep ... not just sleeping, but so far down in unconsciousness that every part of him could rest for a time. Including those parts that no full Human was born possessing, the elements of his mind and spirit that he'd inherited strictly from his Morthan hybrid mother, Kalitha Marin.

  Katy wished that she knew how to find the thoughts of the starship Archangel's rescued Morthan healer, Linc's clanstribe “cousin” Kerle Marin, who was elsewhere on board the SHIP. Or had he, too, “helped” to move all of them—along with SHIP itself—out of harm's way, just now? Meaning that he lay just as drained as Linc did, still waiting for his strength to return?

  It won't take him as long, Mum, because he's a first-wave Morthan. Not a second-wave one like Linc. But no, he can't help anybody right now. He's laid out on the deck, too.

  In a way Marcus/Bryce's words reassured Catherine tremendously. Her husband, reared far away from Mortha and encouraged by his Human father to pretend that his alien characteristics didn't exist, still could touch only her mind and Maddy's mind unless someone else assisted him. He'd spent his first sixty or so years of life thinking of himself as a freak, a sort of psychic cripple, because he could not do what every other Morthan could—but then they'd learned about the others who were like him. Whose telepathic and empathic gifts had limits, and who (unlike traditionally “abled” Morthans such as Kalitha and Kerle Marin) had the same aggressive capabilities as any other being of Human ancestry. “Second-wave” Morthans, as the Mistworlders (including those who'd once been Human Star Service officers and crew) called them.

  Yes, Mum. All the other second-wave Morthans we've got on board are laid out just the way Linc is. But they're all going to be okay, eventually. And if we hadn't been able to ‘port the whole SHIP, far enough to take us off that damn Commie's scanners entirely.... Marcus/Bryce left that thought hanging. We're still learning how to do it, but we're getting better every time we try.

  I can't get used to hearing you call a Star Service vessel a “damn Commie." Katy knew her mental tone was downright prim, but she couldn't help using it. Even one that did just try its best to kill us!

  Sorry. The twins’ mental tone reminded her of when they'd been not just flesh, but children. Small boys who, when reprimanded for naughtiness, apologized with a notable lack of sincerity—and, more often than not, with eyes a-twinkle. Mum, we've got to get busy. If you check our position, you'll find that we're within a couple of hours’ more travel time of Mistworld. Linc should be waking up by then. Damn, we'll be glad to get out of these bodies! And Chad and Dram'll be just as glad as we will, even though they've been—well—gracious hosts. “See” you sometime after you get dirtside!

  They'd just jumped across what should have been, at even the fastest Commonwealth starship's maximum safe cruising speed, a journey requiring several weeks of real time? Katy's mind reeled at that news, which she nevertheless didn't doubt. She did as her sons suggested, and used instruments to verify it, only because she needed to bring her Human senses back into sync with the universe tha
t once again surrounded them. Not because she had difficulty accepting that which was beyond belief ... Mistworld had been throwing such anomalies at her ever since the day she'd first laid eyes on it. Fourteen and more years earlier, as a battle group captain standing on her flagship's bridge; with three adult sons aboard vessels under her command, a Lincoln Casey who was “only” her first officer and dear friend at her side, and a longed-for unborn daughter moving restlessly inside her womb.

  Yes. Of course they were right where Marcus/Bryce had said they would be. 105 standard minutes from the Mistworld system, and 123 standard minutes from entering that mysterious planet's orbit.

  * * *

  Chapter 9

  Madeleine Romanova huddled in an unfamiliar bed, in a room that she knew had once—long ago—belonged to another girl with the same name. Her grandparents’ firstborn, who would have been their only child if she hadn't died before reaching puberty. After that, it belonged to her replacement: to Catherine, Maddy's mother. Cabanne Romanova and Trabe Kourdakov had lived in this apartment near MinTar University's main campus for decades, since their union's earliest years.

  Something about knowing that comforted their granddaughter, enough so she could make herself forget the creepiness of realizing there'd been another Madeleine here. The aunt for whom her mother named her, even though Katy of course hadn't known her sister. Narsatians, culturally observant ones, didn't have siblings; because couples like Romanova and Kourdakov conceived second children only if they lost their first.

  I'm my Mum's fourth child. How redundant does that make me, on a planet like this one? All of Maddy's determination to take Narsai's customs for her own, to wed her cousin Farren as everyone expected and wanted, seemed like a dream to her now. A dream she'd entertained during the evening and night that she spent at the Farmstead, with cousins Johnnie and Reen, and Doctor Cab who'd brought her there ... on Granma's orders.

  How did Granfer feel about that? No one who'd heard Granma admitting to it, this morning in Granfer's conference room, had shown anything worse than surprise. But Granfer had spent the time in the aircar, going to and from Mum's house (which would now stand vacant, as it had between visits during Mum's off-world military service) to collect her things, probing gently to find out how much Maddy knew about what her life as a Narsatian woman betrothed to a Narsatian man was likely to hold. He'd done it delicately, with obvious and curiously endearing embarrassment; a man attempting to do what he probably thought about as a woman's job, and reminding her with powerful resonance of her father. Her own Papa, who (no matter what else he might have been, or done) had reared her on his own, with help from the neutered Kesran house-couple K'lor and P'tara. One of whom was dead now, like Papa; and the other returned to his birth-house, on a world that no longer allowed Human feet to walk its surface.

  At least Granfer was thinking about Maddy herself, and that was more than she could say for Granma. Or Doctor Cab, Cousin Johnnie, or anyone else involved in her life right now. Granfer had had the decency to protect her from having to consummate her betrothal within the same day she contracted it—which also happened to be the day she learned that she'd been orphaned. Granfer made sure she got a chance to cry (gave her “permission,” in fact), and held her while she did so. And now, only a few meters away from her new bedroom's open doorway (open because Maddy's usual adolescent wish for privacy was giving way tonight to a scared, lonesome girl's need to know that she wasn't really alone in the universe, now that both Mum and Linc were gone from it!), Granfer was talking with Granma and others about her future. Hers, and that of every other young girl and boy on Narsai.

  “Trabe, if we let them ‘temporarily’ close our schools they may never let us open them again! I'm going to resume classes as usual at the University tomorrow, and I don't care what that pompous ‘rear admiral’ thinks about it.” Cabanne Romanova's husky voice reached her granddaughter's ears easily. “If anyone's too scared to attend, students or faculty, we'll deal with it later. For now, showing the Commies that we won't bow to them is what matters. Don't you think so, Harbie? Mara?"

  “Of course!” The Harbormaster's blustery tones followed. “We've got militia members all over the campus, Cabbie. The main one, and the satellite ones in other cities, too. All over Narsai. We're not strong enough now to throw the Commie forces off our world, but we've got a base to build on until we are someday! Your daughter and her husband gave us that, you know. And we're grateful."

  Maddy heard the silence that followed more loudly than she'd heard the man's words. Next came her grandfather's voice, mild and firm. Now he didn't remind her of Papa at all. “You'll excuse me, I hope, for saying that I'd much rather have Catherine than the basis for a resistance organization that I'm very much afraid is going to cause Narsai a great deal more harm than good. I hope you haven't recorded those militia members’ names anywhere, Harbie. And that if you have, you'll leave here right this minute and destroy the listing. Every single copy of it, backups certainly included."

  “It's all up here, Trabe!” The Aquaculture Commissioner laughed in his hearty way. Maddy didn't need to see him to know that he was tapping his skull. “Don't worry. We'll bide our time, and build our strength. And we'll wait for the other Outworlds to let us know they're ready, now that we've finally got a working interplanetary commlink again. I'd say we're looking at a year or two of occupation, at worst. Could be a lot less, if the Misties decide to come back and bring reinforcements with them."

  The apartment building's seldom-used public address system activated then. In every one of its rooms, including sanitary cubicles and bedchambers where kids like Maddy (and much younger) were either asleep or trying to rest, a voice whose familiarity shocked her upright in her bed began to speak. “Citizens of Narsai, MinTar Standard Time Zone. This is Farren Kourdakov, Provisional Governor under Commonwealth authority. I'm reminding you that after 2230 tonight, no civilians may be anywhere except inside their homes until 0630 tomorrow. In shared residence buildings, you're required to stay inside your own flat or other quarters. Hospitals, power generating facilities, and other essential services will be excepted only for as long as their employees create no problems. Anyone violating this curfew for the first time will be marked by the patroller who apprehends. Anyone who's apprehended a second time will stand a high chance of dying, because the patrollers will be using enforcement technology that automatically punishes previously marked violators. I hope that's understood, because I don't want to see any of you harmed. If you're not where you belong already, I suggest you correct that before 2230."

  The apartment went quiet after Farren stopped talking. Maddy sat in her bed, with the covers gathered to her chin, and strained her ears for the first sound of an adult voice. Harbie and Mara lived nearby, she knew. So they had time, if they left now, to get to their home before curfew. She remembered hearing about it, during one of today's dozen and more broadcasts to “the people of Narsai” (which started not long after Granfer and Granma came back from the resumed meeting of Council and Commissioners, after Granfer left Maddy here to get settled into her new room). But she'd forgotten, and hadn't believed, anyway, that the Commonwealth really meant to enforce it. The whole idea was so alien, on this world where one adult telling another adult what to do almost never prompted a gracious response.

  “You should go, Harbie. Mara.” Maddy's Granfer spoke up, finally. “No sense calling their attention to yourselves first thing. Especially not if you really do plan to accomplish anything with that ‘militia'!"

  Was there a reason why Granma and Doctor Cab hadn't let Granfer in on their plan to keep Maddy here on Narsai, besides fear that he might try to stop them? The girl wondered that, now, as she hugged her knees and waited for what she knew she was sure to hear next.

  “Are you telling us we're not welcome in your home any longer, Trabe?” The Commissioner of Aquaculture said exactly what Maddy expected he would say. Now the girl listened for his wife, Public Safety Commissioner Ling, to add he
r two micro-credits’ worth.

  “We've got plenty of time,” the woman said, just as predictably. “But Trabe's right, you know, Harbie. We don't need to get ourselves marked the first night the bastards start doing it."

  Commissioner Ling was making peace, as best she was able. Which, on Narsai, was the Public Safety boss's job. Until now, a remarkably low-key one by the standards of most other Human-inhabited worlds—and little though Maddy had traveled, she nevertheless knew how drastically that must soon change. She'd spent her childhood in company with her father the ambassador's endless stream of guests, most of them from elsewhere, and she'd heard tales of just about every culture the Commonwealth held.

  “Do you know what getting ‘marked’ really means, Harbie?” Maddy's Granma spoke next, in a hard-edged voice that the girl recognized from having heard her mother use it repeatedly six months earlier. It was Catherine Romanova's “Matushka” voice, the one the former fleet admiral used to impart unpleasant truths and issue orders. “It's what they do to gens, you realize. What no free citizen of Terra, or any other Commonwealth world—not even the Humans who live on Sestus 4, and work the mines there for the Sestian natives!—has ever put up with. Until now, when they've decided to introduce it on the freest Human world of all. On Narsai."

  “I didn't see any mark on that gen you two let Katy's adopted son marry.” Harbie was still blustering when he answered. “So what is it? Some kind of scannable chip, that they'll put under people's skin? A lot of good that'll do ‘em! None of our public buildings has got a scanner at its door, and no one who runs a business here is gonna install one. Ever. So what do I care if the bastards ‘mark’ me? It won't make a damn bit of difference, unless they've got time to waste roaming the streets to hunt down repeat curfew violators."