by David Weber
And that was part of the reason he felt uneasy at this particular public function, for his Steadholder should have been here for it, and his mental antennae insisted that the reasons she'd given him for departing again so quickly weren't her actual motives. Oh, all of them were true enough, he'd never known Honor Harrington to lie; in fact, he wasn't at all certain she knew how to, but they hadn't been the real cause for her decision, and that worried him. She was his Steadholder, and it was his job to know when something worried her and to deal with it. Besides, if the fanatics plotting against her under the late, unlamented Lord Burdette and Brother Marchant hadn't been enough to drive her off-planet, anything that could do the trick obviously needed seeing to.
But even that was only a partial explanation for his uneasiness, and he drew a deep breath and admitted the rest of it to himself as he watched the shuttle descend. He might have become more comfortable with the reforms around him, but at heart he was still an old-fashioned Grayson patriarch. He'd learned to admit that there were women in the galaxy, including quite a few homegrown Graysons, who were at least as capable as he was, but in the final analysis, that was an intellectual admission, not an emotional one. He had to have personal contact with a woman, actually see her demonstrate her abilities, before his emotions made the same connection. It was foolish of him, not to mention patronizing, and he knew it, yet it was nonetheless true. He did his best to overcome it, and much as it might affect his attitudes he managed to keep it from affecting his actions, but he'd come to the conclusion that it was too fundamental a part of his societal programming for him ever to be fully free of it. And that was a problem today, for the shuttle about to touch down contained a person his brain knew had to be one of the smartest, most capable individuals he was ever likely to meet... and she was a woman. The fact that she was also the mother of his Steadholder and thus, whether she knew it or not, one of the two or three hundred most important people on the entire planet, didn't help, and neither did where she had been born and raised.
Dr. Allison Chou Harrington was a native of Beowulf in the Sigma Draconis System, and Beowulf's society had a reputation for... liberal mores which would have curled a Manticorans hair, much less a Graysons. Clinkscales was fairly certain (or, at least, he thought he was) that that reputation had grown in the telling, but there was no denying that Beowulf was as famed for the many, and imaginative, marital and sexual arrangements of its citizens as it was for providing the human race's best medical researchers, and...
The shuttle touched down, and the opening hatch chopped off his thoughts. He watched the ramp extrude itself, then turned his head to smile wryly at Miranda LaFollet. She smiled back with a mixture of amusement and compassion, and the treecat sitting beside her bleeked a laugh of his own. Clinkscales was still getting to know Farragut, but he'd already concluded that his sense of humor was entirely too much like Nimitz's. Worse, Nimitz had spent forty years interacting with humans, which gave him a certain polish Farragut had yet to acquire, and the younger 'cat had quickly demonstrated a taste for practical jokes, usually of the low variety. But at least Miranda had spoken to him very firmly about the need to behave in public, and Clinkscales allowed himself to hope that her admonitions would have some effect.
He realized he'd allowed thoughts of Farragut to distract him when the band broke into the Harrington Anthem. Only a steadholder was greeted with the Steadholders' March, but any member of Lady Harrington’s family was properly saluted with her steading's anthem, and a shouted command brought the honor guard to attention. The perfectly turned out members of the Harrington Guard formed two ruler-straight rows of green-on-green uniforms, flanking the path from the foot of the shuttle pad to the terminal escalator, and a very small figure paused in midstride as the music surprised her.
Clinkscales blinked as he saw Allison Harrington for the first time. He'd known she was shorter than her daughter, but he'd been unprepared for a person this tiny. Why, she was actually shorter than the majority of Grayson women, and the thought that she had produced the Steadholder who towered over virtually all her steaders, including one Howard Clinkscales, was hard to accept.
It was obvious no one had warned her to expect a formal welcome, and Clinkscales swore silently at himself for not attending to that detail himself. Of course, it was likely that the Steadholder wouldn't have arranged for so much formality if she'd been here. She still had difficulty thinking of herself as a Steadholder, and she probably would have just hopped into an air car, flown over, and picked Dr. Harrington up without any of what she insisted upon calling "all this ridiculous hullabaloo." Clinkscales, unfortunately, couldn't do that without offering what might well have been construed as an insult, but he could have ensured that Dr. Harrington knew what was coming.
Yet it was too late for that, and her brief hesitation was over before it became obvious. She squared her shoulders and moved more sedately down the pad stairs, and Clinkscales and Miranda went to meet her. Miranda lacked the strength which allowed Lady Harrington to carry Nimitz on her shoulder, but Farragut seemed content enough to walk at her side, and he flirted his tail right regally while he padded along between her and Clinkscales as if the music and the honor guard were no more than his just due.
The welcoming party timed things almost perfectly, arriving at the foot of the stairs no more than a stride or two before Dr. Harrington stepped off the bottom tread. She looked up at her greeters, and almond eyes uncannily like her daughters sparkled with impish delight.
"You must be Lord Clinkscales," she said, extending her hand to him, and dimpled as he bent to kiss it formally rather than shaking it.
"At your service, My Lady," he told her, and her dimples grew.
"'My Lady'?" she repeated. "Goodness, I see Honor was right. I am going to like it here!" Clinkscales' eyebrows arched, but she turned to Miranda before he could speak again. "And you're Miranda, I'm sure," she said, reaching out to shake the younger woman's hand. "And unless I'm mistaken," she went on, bending to hold her hand out to the treecat, "this is Farragut." The 'cat shook her hand in brisk, Nimitz-like fashion, and she laughed. "It is Farragut. Am I to assume that one of you two has had the sometimes questionable good fortune to be adopted?"
"I have, My Lady," Miranda admitted. She smiled as she spoke, but Dr. Harrington heard the softness, the persistent echo of wonder, in her voice and straightened. She reached out and rested a hand on Miranda's shoulder, squeezing gently.
"Then I'm very happy for you," she said.
"Thank you, My Lady."
Clinkscales listened to the exchange. Under the old-fashioned rules of his youth, it would have been most improper for Miranda, a mere female, to take the lead in greeting an important visitor. Of course, under the old rules, the visitor in question would almost certainly have been a man, not a woman, and the old rules didn't apply anymore, anyway. And just at the moment, he was happy that was the case, for it gave him an opportunity to stand back and size up Harrington’s guest.
A single glance would have been enough to identify her as the Steadholder's mother. It was the eyes, especially, he thought, those huge, dark, almond eyes, yet there was more to it. Dr. Harrington's face had a delicate loveliness, a perfection of feature and proportion which was just sufficiently imperfect to prove it was natural, not the product of biosculpt. Lady Harrington shared the same features on an almost point-by-point basis, but what was delicate in Doctor Harrington was too bold, too strongly carved, for classical beauty in Lady Harrington. It was as if someone had taken all the undeniable strength in her mothers features and distilled it down, planing away the delicacy, the "softness", to bare the falcon hiding beneath, yet the kinship was there for anyone to see.
But there were differences, as well. For one thing, Dr. Harrington was actually two years older than Clinkscales, and even now that was hard for his emotions to accept. He'd gotten used to the Steadholder's age, but at least she was still younger than he was. Her mother wasn't, despite her long dark hair, untouched
by a single streak of white, and youthful, unlined complexion, and he suspected that this was one mental adjustment he was going to find it difficult to make. At least she did look older than her daughter, but the prolong process had originated on Beowulf, and Allison Harrington was one of the very first second-generation recipients. That meant she looked several years younger than Miranda, and the roguish sparkle in her eyes made Clinkscales acutely nervous.
He was being silly, he told himself firmly. Whatever she might look like, this woman was almost ninety T-years old! She was also an enormously respected doctor, one of the top two or three geneticists of the Star Kingdom of Manticore, and the mother of a steadholder. The last thing she was going to do was contemplate any action which might arouse the merest wisp of a potential scandal. Yet firmly as he lectured himself, he couldn't quite ignore those wickedly gleaming eyes... or the way she was dressed.
Howard Clinkscales had never seen the Steadholder in civilian Manticoran clothing. When not in uniform, she'd always dressed in Grayson styles here on Grayson, but her mother was another matter entirely. She wore a short-waisted, bolero-style jacket of a deep royal blue over a tailored blouse of cream-colored Old Earth silk which must have cost several hundred Manticoran dollars... and, for all its opacity, was deplorably thin. Her jewelry was simple but exquisite, its worked silver contrasting with her sandalwood complexion, and her elegantly styled slacks matched her jacket.
No Pre-Alliance Grayson woman would ever have been seen in public in garments which revealed her figure with such uncompromising frankness, and Clinkscales couldn't even console himself with the thought that it was a uniform. No one could have complained about Lady Harrington's RMN uniform (well, not legitimately... which hadn't prevented some of the real reactionaries from doing so anyway) when she wasn't responsible for its styling. But Doctor Harrington didn't have that excuse, and...
Now just one damned minute, Howard! he told himself sternly. This woman doesn't need an "excuse"... and she wouldn't need one even if she weren't Lady Harrington's mother! There is absolutely nothing "indecent" about her appearance, except, perhaps, in your own fool mind, and even if there were, she has every possible right to dress according to Manticoran standards. If we're such a parochial, backward planet that we can't accept that, then the problem is ours, not hers!
He inhaled deeply, feeling an odd sort of relaxation flow through him with the oxygen as he took himself to task. In a way, he was almost relieved that he'd let his spinal-reflex social programming get out of hand, because calling it to heel had helped settle his mind. Yet for all that, he couldn't quite stamp out the last, flickering glimmers of uneasiness.
It was her eyes, he thought again. It was the sparkle in those eyes so like and yet so unlike his Steadholder's. Grayson was a planet where female births outnumbered male by three to one, and where the only respectable female career for close to a thousand years had been that of wife and mother. That meant competition for mates had always been fierce, even with the Grayson practice of polygamy, and for all their decorous behavior, women had waged the battle between the sexes (and against their competitors) with a will. That was what worried Howard Clinkscales, for he'd seen exactly that same sparkle in countless female eyes over the years. Usually those eyes had been very young, looking forward to the glories of conquest with all the energy and passion of youth. But even though Allison Harrington's eyes were very young looking, they also held the confident assurance of long experience and a dangerously wicked sense of amusement.
Howard Clinkscales had no doubt that he would soon discover that Dr. Harrington was just as capable in her field as her daughter was in hers, but it was already obvious that she was very different from Lady Harrington in other ways. He was surprised to admit it, but a part of him was actually looking forward to watching her confront the conservatives. The rest of him cringed at the very thought, but that tiny inner part liked the twinkle in her eye, her obvious gusto for living, and her refusal to be pinned down and squeezed into anyone else’s box.
It might turn out to be a rough ride, but he suddenly realized that he had no doubts at all about the outcome. There were two of them, after all, and between them, Doctor Harrington and the Steadholder clearly had the rest of the planet outnumbered.
"...and this is your office, My Lady," Miranda said, leading the way into the large, palatially furnished room.
Allison Harrington followed her and stopped, looking around and raising both eyebrows at the sheer luxury of its appointment. And not just in terms of comfort, either, she thought. The desk's built-in computer and communication interfaces were better even than those she had at home on Sphinx, but that wasn't really a surprise. Honor had promised her the best equipment, and she'd kept her word. The Doctor Jennifer Chou Genetic Clinic, Honor had chosen the name to honor her maternal grandmother, had the finest facilities Allison had ever seen. Her daughter had spared no expense, and Allison felt a quiet glow of pride in her. She knew Honors personal fortune had grown to a point which made all of this easily affordable, but she wondered how many other people it would have occurred to to make the investment in the first place. It wasn't as if Honor were going to see any return on it, after all... except, of course, for the thousands of children who would grow up strong and healthy as a direct result of it.
"I hope you like it, My Lady," Miranda said, and Allison blinked, then gave her head a tiny shake as she realized she'd been standing there gathering wool. Miranda looked a little anxious, and Allison smiled.
"Oh, I like it all right!" she assured her guide. "Honor promised I would, and she's always been a truthful sort of girl." Her eyes danced at Miranda's expression as she referred to Honor as a "girl." Well, it wouldn't do these people a bit of harm to have someone take a little starch out of Honors reputation. Allison knew her daughter well enough to know that too much deference would be suffocating to her.
Besides, she told herself cheerfully, the girl's always taken life too seriously. It'll do her good if she gets back to find out I've made a spectacle of myself!
She smothered a giggle at the thought. Like Honor, she hated the way she sounded when she giggled. Both of them were convinced it made them sound like schoolgirls, and Allison’s small stature only made it worse. Not, she reflected complacently, that anyone who'd ever gotten a good look at her would mistake her for a child. That thought threatened another giggle attack, but she suppressed it firmly and waved a reassuring hand at Miranda as the Grayson regarded her anxiously.
Poor girl probably thinks I'm having some sort of attack! I wonder what she'd think if she knew I was planning an attack, instead?
Allison took several minutes to examine the office carefully, but only a part of her attention was on desks and coffee tables and credenzas. She was thinking about her sixty years in the Star Kingdom and rubbing gleeful mental hands together as she contemplated yet more worlds, literally, to conquer.
Allison Harrington knew perfectly well how the rest of the galaxy regarded those libertine Beowulfans. She sometimes wondered just how her home world had ended up as the uncontested holder of the Galaxy's Most Decadent Planet Title, given that Old Earth, for one, was every bit as sophisticated and "libertine" as Beowulf, but the universe worked in mysterious ways. Perhaps it was because of Sigma Draconis' unrivaled reputation in the life sciences. Beowulf’s invention of the prolong process was only the most spectacular of its contributions to the health and longevity of the human race, which meant Dr. Harrington’s home world had produced a direct impact on every human being anywhere, second only to that of Old Earth herself, so perhaps it was inevitable that natives of Beowulf should somehow acquire larger-than-life status in the eyes of out-worlders. Which still didn't explain why everyone had fastened on the planets sexual practices instead of, say, Sigma Draconis' systemwide passion for grav-ski polo!
But whatever the reasons, Allison had known she would be entering another world, figuratively, as well as literally, when she fell in love with a scholarship student at S
emmelweiss University named Alfred Harrington. Alfred had hardly been an untutored, gawking yokel, of course. The Star Kingdom had been one of the wealthiest, most technically advanced interstellar powers, certainly of those outside the Solarian League, for centuries, and its capital planet was probably as sophisticated as Beowulf itself. But Alfred wasn't from the planet of Manticore; he was from Sphinx, and Sphinx was undoubtedly the most straitlaced of the three habitable worlds of the Manticore Binary System. He'd been almost painfully earnest in explaining that to her, not because he wanted her to change to satisfy his home world's sometimes parochial standards, but because he was on a military scholarship that committed him to a minimum of fifteen years naval service. He would have no choice but to return to the Star Kingdom to fulfill that commitment, so if she accepted his proposal of marriage, she was going to find herself confronting the society from which he sprang.
If he'd been one bit less earnest, she would have smiled, patted him on the head, and assured him that she was all grown up. As it was, she'd been too touched by his concern to let her amusement show, and she'd assured him with admirable gravity that she appreciated his warning and that, yes, she believed she could survive in the boondocks if she truly had to.
And, of course, things hadn't proven nearly as onerous as one might have feared from his descriptions. The fact was that Beowulfans were no more "libertine" than anyone else; they simply declined to pass judgment or declare that any single lifestyle, regardless of who sanctioned it, was the one true way, and Allison would never have accepted Alfred’s proposal if she'd had any intention of pursuing a lifestyle which would distress him. Nor would she have accepted it if she'd believed he would expect her to squeeze herself into one which distressed her. That didn't prevent her from feeling that Sphinxians were much too sexually repressed, nor had it kept her from worrying, a lot, over Honors total lack of a sex life prior to Paul Tankersley, but she'd never felt any actual temptation to be anything but monogamous.