by David Weber
But whether they adopted in larger numbers or not, they were going to have to find their own niche in this new, radically different environment. From what she knew of 'cats, she was confident they could, and would. And, she thought, do it in a way which made them valued citizens. In the meantime, she had the legal authority to start their colony out in Harrington, and given her steaders' fascination with and pride in "their" treecat Nimitz, she expected the initial stages to go quite well.
In fact, she thought with a lurking smile, the biggest problem was likely to be that there were too few 'cats to go around!
The pinnace touched down with delicate precision.
The waiting greeters stood patiently outside the yellow warning line as the pilot brought up his belly tractors, killed his counter-grav, and powered down his other systems, and then the hatch slid open. This was the point, under other circumstances, at which the band would have broken into the Steadholder's March, but Lady Harrington had issued stern orders to leave the band home... and accompanied them with remarkably grisly threats about what would happen if it wasn't. Instead, Howard Clinkscales and Katherine Mayhew, as the two senior members of the greeting party, headed for the foot of the ramp as soon as the green safety light flashed. White Haven, as the senior Manticoran representative, and Honor's personal maid Miranda LaFollet, as the next most senior member of Honors Grayson household, followed on their heels.
Lady Harrington's treecat rode her shoulder, but that was to be expected. What White Haven hadn't expected was that she would wear RMN uniform, not that of the Grayson Navy, and his eyes narrowed in approval. The last time he'd seen her in Manticoran uniform, her collar had carried a single gold planet and her cuffs had borne the four narrow stripes of a senior-grade captain. Today, there were paired planets on her collar, and her fourth cuff stripe was the broad one of a commodore. No one had told him her promotion had come through, but he was delighted to see it. It still fell far short of the rank she deserved, yet it was certainly a step in the right direction... and an indication that the Opposition's political vendetta against her had weakened even further.
She also, he noted, had acquired the Saganami Cross to go with her Star of Grayson, Manticore Cross, Order of Gallantry, Sidemore Presidential Medal, and CGM with cluster. She was assembling quite a crop of medals, he reflected, and his eyes darkened at the thought. He knew better than most how hard earned each of those bits of metal and ribbon had been, and he had nightmares enough of his own, on the bad nights, to guess how much she still paid for them from time to time.
Then his mood lightened, and he hid a potentially impolitic smile as Katherine Mayhew hurried forward. Virtually all Graysons were short by Manticoran standards, but Katherine was small even for a Grayson woman. Protector Benjamin’s senior wife, effectively the Queen Consort of Grayson, was almost fifty centimeters shorter than Lady Harrington, and her gorgeous gown and vest were jewel-bright beside Lady Harrington's black and gold. But silly as they could have looked next to one another, there was no sense of awkwardness between them, and their obvious friendship went well beyond the official cordiality to be expected between a head of state's wife and one of his most powerful vassals.
Then Harrington turned from Madam Mayhew to Howard Clinkscales, and White Haven's eyebrows rose as she hugged the old dinosaur. Such public physical familiarity between the sexes was virtually unheard of on Grayson, and Harrington had never struck the earl as the sort given to casual gestures of affection. But then he saw Clinkscales' expression and realized there was nothing casual about it.
He was still filing that bit of information away when another treecat flowed through the pinnace hatch. For a moment, White Haven assumed the newcomer must be the mate of Harrington's... Nimitz. That was the name. But that assumption vanished as a second, and then a third, a fourth, and a fifth 'cat followed. A veritable procession of treecats, four of them carrying the tiny, wigglesome shapes of treekittens, trooped down the ramp, and no one had mentioned anything about this to him. From the reactions of the people around him, no one had mentioned it to anyone else, either, and White Haven felt a sudden, almost uncontrollable urge to laugh at Honor Harrington's unending ability to stand the status quo on its head.
Honor smiled wryly as Katherine Mayhew broke off in midsentence. She'd considered sending word ahead, but Tankersley was a fast ship. The Star Falcons were a civilian version of what had been a military/diplomatic courier vessel used to transport dispatches or relatively small groups of passengers when speed was of the essence. Tankersley would never make an efficient freight carrier, but her speed meant that even the fastest mail ship would only have provided the Graysons with a day or two of warning of the 'cat invasion. Given Honors own uncertainty over how they might react to the news and how quickly her arrival would have followed upon it, she'd decided it was better to wait until she could deliver it personally. She still thought that had been the right move, but she also felt undeniably nervous when the ripples of silence spread out as the 'cats followed her down the ramp and assembled in a neat line behind her. They sat up on their four rearmost limbs, most of those who weren't occupied restraining a kitten who urgently wanted down grooming their whiskers, and the Graysons stared back at them.
"Howard, Katherine," she said to Clinkscales and Madam Mayhew, "allow me to introduce the newest citizens of Harrington Steading. These are..." she turned to face them, pointing to each in turn "...Samantha, Nimitz’s mate, and her friends Hera, Nelson, Farragut, Artemis, Hipper, Togo, Hood, and Athena. The kittens are Jason, Cassandra, Achilles, and Andromeda. Going the other way," she informed the 'cats, "these are Howard Clinkscales, Katherine Mayhew, Miranda LaFollet, Earl Whi..."
She broke off in astonishment as Farragut's eyes met Miranda's. Only the 'cat's head moved, yet Honor felt the shock like a hammer blow, reverberating down her link to Nimitz. It sang and echoed through her, and then Farragut bounded forward in a cream-and-gray streak. He left the ground two meters from Miranda, in a prodigious spring, and Honor heard Andrew inhale sharply behind her. Her armsman was only too aware of what a treecat's claws could do, and he started to shout a warning to his sister. Only Miranda needed no warning. Her eyes, the same clear gray as her brother's, were wide and soft, as filled with surprise as wonder, but her arms reached out instinctively, and Farragut's leap deposited him within them so naturally that it seemed inevitable. They tightened instantly, cradling the 'cat against her, and his high, buzzing purr filled the afternoon air as he hugged her neck and rubbed his cheek ecstatically against hers.
"Well!" Honor said after a moment, letting the word out in an explosive gust. "I see at least one introduction just became superfluous." Miranda didn't even look up from Farragut, but Katherine Mayhew cleared her throat.
"Ah, is that what I think it is?" she asked, and Honor nodded.
"Indeed it is. You've just witnessed the first adoption of a Grayson by a Sphinx treecat... and Lord only knows where the lightning may strike next."
"Is it truly that random, My Lady?" Clinkscales asked, the edge of yearning in his voice controlled by the habits of a lifetime of discipline, and Honor shrugged.
"No, it's not random, Howard. Unfortunately, no one's ever been able to figure out what criteria the 'cats go by. From my own observation, I'd say each of them uses a completely unique set of value judgments, and I doubt most of them realize that they're likely to adopt before they meet the 'right' person."
"I see." Her regent gazed at Miranda and Farragut for another moment, then gave the remaining 'cats a glance and shook himself. "Well, in the meantime, My Lady, welcome home. I'm delighted to see you for several reasons, not least..." he smiled almost impishly "...the heap of paperwork which has accumulated in your absence."
"You're a sadist, Howard," Honor observed with a smile. "In this case, however, you're going to have to wait a bit before you can drag me off to the office." His eyes twinkled back at her, and she reached past him to extend a hand to Earl White Haven. "Hello, My Lord. It's goo
d to see you again."
"And to see you, Milady," White Haven responded. Technically, Commodore Harrington should have greeted Admiral White Haven with strict military formality. Steadholder Harrington, on the other hand, freshly returned to her own steading, was senior to anyone short of Protector Benjamin himself, and the instinctive grace with which she'd split the difference between her two personae impressed the earl. The last time he'd spoken to her, here on Grayson before her return to Manticoran service, he'd recognized how she'd grown and matured in her new role of great feudal lady. Clearly she'd gone right on maturing, and he wondered once again if she even began to grasp all the ways in which she'd changed.
"I'm sorry about all the hoopla," she went on easily, "and Their Lordships sent both my own orders and dispatches for you along with me." Her eyes went past him, to the other local dignitaries, military personnel, and armsmen waiting to greet her, and she smiled another of the crooked smiles the artificial nerves in the left side of her face imposed. "I suspect I’ll be rather occupied saying hello for the next half-hour or so, My Lord," she continued, "and then I have to get Sam, the kids, and the rest of the 'cats settled in Harrington House. May I impose upon you and ask you to wait for your dispatches while I finish putting out all my various fires?"
"Of course you may, Milady," the earl replied with a chuckle, and released her hand with a final squeeze.
"Thank you, My Lord. Thank you very much," Honor said with true feeling, and turned to greet the wave of people crowding forward to welcome her home.
Chapter Two
Hamish Alexander stepped into Harrington House's library with what an unbiased observer almost certainly would have called a furtive air, looked around carefully, then relaxed. The enormous room was empty, and he loosened the collar of his mess dress tunic with heartfelt relief as he crossed the huge Harrington coat of arms inlaid into the parquet floor. The sound of music followed him through the open door, but distance had swallowed the background murmur of voices, and the click of his heels on polished wood carried clearly.
He unclipped the archaic sword which was mandatory with mess dress and laid it atop one of the book-lined room's terminals, then lowered himself into the comfortable chair at the data station and stretched hugely. The library had become one of his favorite places in Harrington House. If its contents had been chosen to reflect Honor Harrington’s tastes, then the two of them had more common interests than he'd realized, but the big room's tasteful, comfortable furnishings and quiet, especially quiet, he thought with a grin, were also factors in his feelings.
His grin grew as he finished stretching and tipped the chair back. His birth had exposed him to the most formal parties of the Star Kingdom's social elite at a very early age, but that didn't mean he'd ever learned to enjoy such evenings. His parents had seen to it that he learned to pretend he did, and there were occasions when pretense merged, temporarily, at least, with reality. But by and large, he would have preferred an old-fashioned, pre-space root canal to at least half the parties he'd attended, and tonight’s formal ball had pushed him into active flight.
It wasn't that he didn't like his hosts, for he found Graysons admirable in many ways, from their refusal to admit any task might be beyond their capabilities to their courage, basic decency, and inventiveness. He was perfectly comfortable in professional conferences with their officers and enlisted personnel, and he seldom had any problem connecting with even their civilians on a pragmatic level. But their notion of classical music was enough to set his teeth on edge, and they insisted on playing it at affairs like tonight’s. Worse, Graysons entire society was in a state of flux which only made his fundamental dislike for formal social gatherings even stronger here than it was back home, yet there was no graceful way for him to avoid them.
At least a third of his mission to Yeltsin’s Star was as much diplomatic as military. He was the older brother of the Cromarty Governments second ranking minister, and he'd served as Third Space Lord, an appointment with almost as many political as military implications, for three T-years during the Duke of Cromarty’s immediately previous stint as Prime Minister. As such, he found himself required to interact with Grayson political circles at the highest level, and since so much of politics was conducted under the guise of social activities, that meant he had to spend most of his theoretically "free" evenings at some party or another. Musical tastes aside, the rapidly changing mores of Grayson society could make that particularly wearing for someone from the Star Kingdom, where the notion that anyone could possibly consider men and women as anything but equals was as bizarre as the idea of treating a fever by bleeding, and tonight that persistent background sense of tension was only exacerbated by the professional concerns the latest dispatches from home had awakened in his mind.
Things would have been simpler, he mused, tipping even further back and resting his heels on the counter beside his dress sword, if Grayson society had simply stayed frozen where it had been before the planet joined the Alliance. In that case, he could have written its people off as a batch of backward barbarians, admirable in many ways, but still barbarians, and fitted himself into the proper role for interacting with them like an actor in a historical holo-drama. It wouldn't have been necessary to actually understand them; all he would have required was the right set of social cues to pretend he did.
Unfortunately, these days Grayson's social elite were as confused about what constituted proper behavior as any outsider. They were trying. White Haven had to give them that, and he rather admired how much they'd achieved in such a short period, but there was an underlying air of uncertainty. Some of society's grande dames resented the changes in the rules they'd learned as girls even more than the unreconstructed male conservatives resented their loss of privilege. Those groups formed a sort of natural alliance that clustered somewhere just beyond the reception line and radiated a prickly intensity as they clung grimly to the old rules and forms... which, of course, brought them into direct collision with their (mainly) younger counterparts who had embraced the notion of female equality with militant fervor.
Personally, White Haven found the more enthusiastic reformers more wearing than the reactionaries. He couldn't fault their motives, but the fact was that Benjamin IX had imposed a top-down revolution on his home world. He was remaking what had been, whatever its faults, a stable social order which had changed only slowly and incrementally over the last six or seven hundred years. With a very few exceptions, that social order's current members had only the vaguest notion of where they were headed, and many of the reformers seemed to believe stridency could substitute for direction. The earl was confident that most of them would get over it, they'd only been at it for a few years, and they were bound to figure some of it out with time, but at the moment, their main function at social gatherings seemed to be to make everyone else uncomfortable by aggressively demonstrating their rejection of the old order.
And, of course, the conflict between the old guard and the new put White Haven and other Manticorans squarely in a crossfire. The reactionaries regarded the foreigners as the sources of the infection which had attacked all they knew and held dear, while the reformers took it for granted that the Manticorans must agree with them... even though it was painfully obvious that all the reformers didn't agree with one another! Walking that sort of tightrope without giving offense, or, at least, further offense, to someone was almost as exhausting as it was irritating, and White Haven was heartily tired of it.
To be fair, the situation was better here. Harrington Steading had attracted the most open-minded citizens from Grayson’s other steadings from the outset, for only people like that had been willing to relocate themselves and their families in order to live under the personal rule of the first female steadholder in their planets history. More than that, the people at the party he'd just escaped had been given ample opportunity to see their Steadholder in action in political and social terms, as well as military ones. Whether she realized it or not, her status as thei
r liege lady made her the ultimate arbiter of custom in her steading, and her steaders had watched her carefully and adapted their etiquette to fit her reactions to it. All of that left White Haven feeling far more at ease in Harrington than in most of Grayson’s other steadings, and he'd actually enjoyed at least the early phases of tonight’s ball to welcome Lady Harrington home. His need to escape it was more a matter of cumulative fatigue than anything else.
Besides, he had a lot on his mind after scanning the orders and briefing documents Lady Harrington had brought with her. He'd been pleased to learn that she would be assigned to Eighth Fleet, but some of the Office of Naval Intelligence’s reports made for disquieting reading, and he was supposed to brief High Admiral Matthews and Command Central on them as soon as possible. That was one of the main reasons for sneaking away from the party early. He needed to think about the data and fit the pieces together. And, he confessed, he had to decide how he felt about other aspects of the total package, for grim as some of ONI's analyses of the Peeps' activities might be, the notes on the RMN’s own Weapons Development Boards recommendations actually worried him even more.
The notion of making far-reaching and fundamental changes in the Fleets weapons mix at a time when the Star Kingdom was fighting for its very life struck him as highly questionable. He'd waged a bitter, decades-long prewar battle against the efforts of the material strategists of the jeune ecole to introduce half-baked weapon systems before they were fully tested. At times the battle of ideas had spilled over into venomous personal exchanges, and he deeply regretted the vicious feuds which those had spawned between some within the RMN's senior ranks, but he'd never dared let that affect his resistance. The jeune ecole was so in love with the idea of developing decisive advantages out of new technological departures that they seemed to believe any new idea was good simply because it was new, regardless of its actual tactical virtues or vices. Nothing he'd seen lately convinced him that they'd learned a thing from the present war, which meant...