* * * *
Linc's thoughts were closed to her. But as long as she could still perceive his presence, with her mind as well as with her physical senses, that didn't bother Katy. She watched the delta below them giving way to open water, and she shuddered because Narsai's seas were small ones. She'd never liked flying over an honest-to-goodness ocean, and had found Kesra's endless waters (calm though they usually were) perpetually unsettling.
“I'm glad I'm finally getting a chance to show you the world you saved for us, Matushka.” Nadja Nah Trang was speaking, and addressing her. “I'd like to call you that, if I may? I heard your son and his wife saying it, and it sounded much better than ‘Admiral.’”
“You could just say ‘Katy.’ There's no reason to be formal now, is there?” Was she still an admiral? She'd come out of retirement (under duress, but she'd done it just the same), so her old rank—fleet admiral—no longer applied. She'd been sent into de facto exile by the Star Service's representative, the execrable Lita Benedon, in lieu of court martial ... months after she'd filed a formal request to have her retirement status restored. So her rank seemed very much moot right now, and likely to remain so.
“All right. Katy, then.” Nah Trang nodded. “I've been holding a message for you, waiting for you to get here. I understand Narsai's interplanetary transmitter has been out of commission for some time?"
“Yes. Does Mistworld have one now?” The smaller and newer Outworlds generally did not, because such transmissions sucked up power at incredible rates. The fringe settlements, one of which Mistworld had been fourteen years earlier (and maybe still was?), never had them. So this was a definite surprise.
“Not exactly.” The other woman's mouth curved into an enigmatic smile. “But we have our own ways of keeping up with what's going on in the rest of the galaxy.” She didn't say “in the rest of the Commonwealth,” and to Katy's ears the distinction jarred. “Do you know anyone called Tanaka? First name Bill?"
* * *
Chapter 12
It should have felt comforting to be back in her old room. Her own room, in the house where she'd lived with Mum and Linc, Dan, and Rachel, and (more recently) the three ever-squalling babies. But Maddy couldn't for the life of her feel as if she'd truly come home, because without those others the little house and its garden (such a great luxury on land-worshipping Narsai!) was just that. A house with a garden, and nothing more.
She missed her stepfather most of all. Not because she loved him more than she loved her mother, but because for six months she'd enjoyed the rare and wonderful knowledge that someone who loved her was literally never farther away than a thought. Someone she'd known forever, since the days she'd spent growing inside her mother's womb.
Now, the little house held just the three of them—Maddy and her grandparents. Who gratefully moved into their daughter's home, after the apartment where they'd lived for the past 70 and more years became one of the occupation's first “examples” to potential resisters.
Not that the destroyed apartment building itself mattered, of course. Not compared to all the lives that were lost, when one of Rear Admiral Benedon's orbiting starships targeted the structure and brought it down with a single, tightly focussed blast from weapons capable of taking out a dreadnought.
Only the Kourdakov/Romanova family escaped, since all of the other residents—commanded to keep the curfew, and frightened by the flash (the deliberately dramatic flash!) heralding the deaths of the curfew-defying Harbormaster and Chief Constable—stayed put after seeing that display. Escaped because they'd been warned (of course) by the Commonwealth's Provisional Governor, who was Madeleine Romanova's betrothed husband.
“I guess it's a good thing the Lycée is closed!” Maddy said to her grandmother with a sigh, as the two of them sat on the terrace behind the house and soaked up the unusually warm spring day's sunshine. The walled garden was coming to back life, in a process that the old woman found utterly familiar but the girl had never seen before. On most of Kesra, vast expanses of water moderated the climate; and that planet had so little arable land that its residents seldom saw non-aquatic plant life. So for Maddy, this was her first-ever spring; and it held one miracle after another. “I think I'd be even less popular there now than I was before."
“At least you'd have a husband, though. Like the other girls?” They had just finished lunch—not as generous a meal as both were used to eating, because supplies must be gathered up for shipment to Terra. All the foodstuffs that Narsai had shipped elsewhere during the past six months, to Mistworld and Farthinghome and Claymore—and other, even poorer “Outworlds"—must now be replaced. If that put all Narsatian residents (except those who lived at the Terran Embassy, of course) on lean rations for awhile, so be it; per their Provisional Governor's decree.
“Granma, I never told you they teased me about that. How did you know?” Maddy's conversations with her grandmother, during the week since they'd moved here, had concerned surface matters only. Which things they should use, of Mum's and Linc's possessions, and which they should pack away. Whether Maddy should start solitary lessons at home, with her school and all others for citizens the Commonwealth deemed old enough to be working instead of studying, closed indefinitely; or if she should participate in one of the clandestine instructional groups that were springing up in homes all over MinTar. (All over Narsai, actually.) Maddy had been more than happy to avoid more significant topics, and that hadn't proved difficult until now. Until this first real pause, this first breathing spell, after having their lives turned not just upside down, but inside out—and besides, Granfer had always been with them. Until today.
“Cab told me.” Granma, of course, didn't call Cabanne Barrett “Doctor Cab."
“But I never talked to her about that! I talked to her about other things that made it hard for me to fit in at school, but never about getting called a ‘peasant that no landed man would want.’ I never complained to her about being the only single kid in the whole place.” Until now the girl had saved up her anger. Put it aside and postponed it, until she had leisure in which to digest its cause—which was, of course, betrayal. Betrayal by her friend and physician, and by the old lady who sat at her side as the spring sunshine warmed them and the scents of Mum's carefully chosen and tenderly nurtured flowering shrubs filled their nostrils.
“She couldn't help hearing some of it, just from being around the campus as school physician. And she thought someone else should know, Maddy.” Granfer always said “Madeleine,” but Granma sometimes used her nickname. “She knew your mother was dead set against betrothing you, so Cab told me instead."
“You said at the Council meeting that you didn't want to force me to marry Farren. That you just wanted to keep me from leaving Narsai with Mum and Linc. Did you lie then, Granma?” Ambassador Fralick's daughter had grown up talking to adults as if she were their equal. So Maddy asked the question calmly, and looked at her grandmother while she spoke. Which plainly unsettled the old woman, because Granma had trouble meeting the girl's gaze.
“No. Cab and I talked about you often, after you started at the Lycée. We were both concerned, and we both thought your mother ought to be doing more to help you fit in there. But until I thought Katy was going to take you with her to Mistworld, it never occurred to me to do anything except talk with Cab and keep an eye on your progress. I knew Farren would be coming home sooner or later—after he finished his undergraduate degree, or after he took an advanced one, too. And I thought that because you're younger than he is, waiting until then would do neither of you any harm. Except for the teasing you were having to tolerate at school, of course.” Cabanne Romanova's words were coming more easily now. “Maddy, don't ask me to be sorry for keeping you here. I still believe, I still know, it was the right thing to do. The only thing to do!"
“I miss Mum. I miss Linc. I miss them so bad it hurts.” Maddy let the garden go quiet, except for the songs of a few birds and the buzzing of early insects, before she said the words
that she knew her grandmother must be anticipating. Words that she meant, of course. But afterward, she went on speaking; and the next thing she said surprised her more than it could possibly have surprised her listener. “But I'm glad I'm here with you and Granfer, and the rest of the family. Mum and Linc don't need me on Mistworld. And you do need me here on Narsai."
“Yes, we do.” Cabanne Romanova sat up straight in her chair, and stared at her granddaughter with brown eyes gone both approving and thoughtful. “You're far more astute than any of us realized, child! Maybe we should have asked you to stay. But I'm not used to giving thirteen-year-olds choices. At least not about anything as important as where to live, or whom to marry."
But I did have a choice. I offered myself to Farren. And if I hadn't, you couldn't have made me. Maddy's mind had formed the thought, but her mouth hadn't yet shaped its words, when the door behind them opened and someone else walked out onto the terrace. She turned her head, and then gasped, “Granfer!"
“Trabe, what's the matter? What happened?” Granma got up rather more quickly than a woman of her years (even a healthy and vital one) would usually manage, and reached for her mate in undisguised alarm.
“Farren did as he promised, Cabbie. My new office is all set up and ready to use.” That was where Maddy's grandfather had gone, when he'd left the house this morning. With the University closed (really closed, not merely shut down as far as classes were concerned), he needed a pass from the Provisional Governor to enter his office there and gather up his things for transfer to new space—such as it was, little more than a custodial closet—in the deepest basement of one the city's few still-operating public institutions, its hospital. Maddy and her grandmother had wanted to go with him, both to be helpful and to get out somewhere with purpose, now that the girl had no school to attend and the woman no job to perform. But he'd insisted there might be risk, peril they needn't face although he certainly must; and so he'd gone alone. Narsai's senior chair councilor, moving around in his world's capital as calmly as if nothing had changed at all during the days just past.
“So you moved everything there from your old office, and now you can run the Council from MinTar Medical.” Cabbie wanted to shake him, she was so desperate to hear the rest of whatever it was he didn't want to tell her. “Admiral Benedon and Ambassador Paré both promised us that they wouldn't interfere with the Council. The Commies know they still need us. So whatever is the matter?"
“The Commonwealth may know that it needs the Council, but the Council's decided it doesn't need me anymore. I found more than a quorum's worth of notifications waiting for me when I picked up my ‘official capacity’ messages, Cabbie. Tonight there'll be a meeting in the hospital's main conference room. Its purpose is to choose a new senior chair. To cut my term short, because as one of our esteemed colleagues put it: ‘Councilor Kourdakov's recent survival while hundreds of others died, thanks to his relationship with our enemies’ toady, is prima facie evidence that we can't trust him to lead us any longer.’”
“Toady? I'd call Farren a lot of other things before I'd ever think of calling him that!” Cabanne Romanova shook her silver head, and smiled in spite of her outraged mind and aching heart. Then, as Maddy had seen her do before (and as the girl had also seen her mother do—only with a much more ample figure to make the gesture impressive), the old woman straightened her spine and braced her shoulders. “It's time to face it, my love. He's our flesh and blood, and he's my heir. But when we tied ourselves to him as soon as we saw him on board Admiral Benedon's ship, we made a mistake. What Katy would call one hell of a big mistake, I think!"
“And I made one when I offered to follow tradition with him,” Maddy heard herself adding, as she (on her feet now, too) felt the air growing chill around her as a breeze began rising, and threatening gray clouds slid between Narsai's surface and its sun. “Granfer, Granma, what are we going to do? How can we help anybody, if we've lost everyone else's trust?"
* * * *
Katy knew better than to imagine she could listen to Fleet Admiral Willard Tanaka's message as soon as they arrived, finally, in Nadja Nah Trang's settlement. To reach it, they had crossed (Nah Trang explained) the sea between two of Mistworld's dozen continents. The skimmer set down high on a grassy headland on that sea's far shore, above a place that had “fishing village” written all over it.
Damn. I hoped we'd be taken to one of the farming communities! the one-time heiress to the Romanov Farmstead muttered silently to her husband, as they climbed down from their seats and worked muscles and joints too long cramped by inactivity. She wouldn't say such a thing out loud, of course, in front of any of their hosts. Long ago she'd been the Mistworld colonists’ benefactor, and when the Rebel fleet showed up at Narsai far more recently she had helped these people again by supporting them in their quest to secure favored trade status with the Outworlds’ most productive food exporter. But now the proverbial tables were turned, and she and her family were the ones in need of succor. Refugees (temporarily, at least—she refused to think of her residence here as anything else!), seeking a haven from which they could someday return to Narsai.
Linc, who'd been following her thoughts, said nothing. But she felt his honest doubts, and they roused in her a hot tide of rebellion. You always believed we could win, no matter what the odds were, back in our Service days! she shot at him, in a furious reminder. So did I. And dammit all, that's why we're still alive now!
He smiled at her, ruefully. Then he turned back toward the skimmer, and reached out for one of the triplets. While Katy remained unencumbered, to fall in beside Nadja Nah Trang for the walk from their landing spot to wherever in the sprawling village they would be spending the night. Which wasn't far off. The sun's light was taking on the slant and glow of late afternoon, even on this verdant bluff; and below, among the hills and along the shore of an excellent harbor, the houses were already in twilight.
Small houses. Like the one Katy loved so dearly back on Narsai. In size, at least; although these appeared to be constructed from local stone, while whoever built hers had used more sophisticated materials. She asked, “Where's the power receptor, Ms. Nah Trang? I don't see it."
“We've never been able to afford an orbiting solar collector. So each house has its own—surface collectors are easy enough to build and replace—and we use storage to keep us going when there's no direct sunlight. We save what fossil fuels we've discovered and learned how to refine for the vehicles.” The other woman moved along easily, as if she'd developed not a single kink during the flight. “You and your husband will stay with me, until you're ready to make other and more permanent arrangements. We've got another temporary home, one with a couple whose last child left recently, for your son and his family. Do you think the Morthan doctor will mind being placed with them? I really don't want to quarter him by himself, since this village hasn't a single new immigrant in it. I'm the only one here who was born on another planet."
“I think Dr. Marin makes an excellent buffer,” Katy answered truthfully. “And anybody who's about to be invaded by three kids that small is going to need one!"
“Excellent. And by the way, I should have told you before that no one calls me ‘Ms. Nah Trang.’ Even to the toddlers around here, I'm Nadja. I only let you do that fourteen years ago because I knew there'd be Terran-trained diplomats coming in behind you, and I figured I ought to get in practice.” The Mistworld leader (for she still was that, obviously, whether or not she still had authority to speak for every other Human on its surface) held up a hand, signaling those walking in queue behind them to halt. “We make our first guest delivery here!” she said, indicating a stone cottage whose pathway broke off from the dusty road they'd been following. “Don't worry. That message has been waiting for you for two days now. It'll keep for a few more minutes."
“How can you send and receive messages from that far away without having an interplanetary link, with boosters in orbit?” Mistworld was much farther out from Terra (where Katy a
ssumed Fleet Admiral Willard Tanaka, her old friend and her successor as the Star Service's commanding officer, must still be) than Narsai. It was so far beyond even Mortha, in fact, that it was the last Class M world before a vast interstellar desert's edge. Before a region of space that held stars, in plenty; but not one planet suited, even marginally, for supporting Human life.
“You'll find out,” Nah Trang assured her guest, just before she walked back down the line and selected from it those who would enter the stone cottage instead of continuing deeper into the village. “Matushka, I wouldn't dream of trying to explain it to you! You'll simply have to wait until you can see it for yourself."
* * *
Chapter 13
Finally, they reached the end of the graveled roadway that led from the bluff down to the end of the low promontory enclosing the harbor from the opposite side. The last cottage on the road belonged to Nadja Nah Trang, and would therefore be their temporary home.
They went inside, entering the cottage's main room, and Romanova got her first significant surprise since the spectacular (and, she sincerely hoped, impossible to top!) teleporting of the SHIP nearly all the way from Narsai to Mistworld. A golden-eyed, silver-haired man looked up from preparing food, put out a hand toward Nah Trang, and pulled the administrator to his side. After which he kissed her in greeting. “Hello, darling. So these are our guests?"
Linc, of course, had stopped in the doorway. His golden eyes were locked on those of his fellow Morthan. He said nothing, though; and for once in their shared life, Katy couldn't hope to follow his thoughts. He'd drawn the curtain, using skills that Kerle Marin had taught him, and all she could tell for certain was that he was just as surprised as she was. Or, perhaps, more so.
“Yes. Catherine Romanova, Lincoln Casey—this is my husband. Astin Fort. Formerly of the Star Service, and the first fully trained physician our community ever had.” Nah Trang sounded both amused, and proud. Touchingly proud, as if she considered a Morthan hybrid the most desirable mate a mature Human woman could hope to attract.
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