* * *
“Well?” Martin said as he spooned up a large mouthful of what had come to be known as Althea’s Dessert Dinner, “what’s the verdict?”
Althea grinned. “Probe likes it. It particularly likes that I gave it a role in the attack.”
Claire, who alone of the three had denied herself a second helping, watched them dig into their oversized second portions with bewilderment. “Where do you two put all that...stuff?”
Martin grinned. “I have lots of space, love. Al’s the mystery. It’s never seemed to matter what she eats, or how much. It just...goes away.”
“A talent I developed when Charisse was our chief cook as well as our matriarch,” Althea said. “Any comments on the attack plan, Claire?”
The bioengineer rose from their little table at the edge of the air plant and ambled randomly around the perimeter of the chamber for a minute, head bowed and hands clasped loosely behind her.
She’s taking it seriously even though it’s not her métier.
Althea felt a surge of pride in her co-wife.
Presently Claire said “The only part that bothers me is the business about the metareal weapons. Did Probe have any idea what the nature of those weapons might be?”
Althea shook her head. “If I understood it correctly, preparing a defense against an assault by a meta-engineered weapon is next to impossible. The effects of such a weapon would be real, but by the nature of metaphysical manipulation, we wouldn’t be able to deduce the cause in time to counter it. The only defense is not to be where it was aimed.”
Claire snorted. “So we have to anticipate being targeted by weapons that will distort reality in ways we can’t predict, by exploiting principles we can’t prepare to nullify. Lovely.”
“At least Probe has put us on guard,” Martin said.
“Let’s hope that’ll be enough,” Althea said. She collected the dishes, toted them to the large double-basin sink in the kitchen that abutted the air plant, and soaped them one by one.
It’s going to be chancy, but there was never any doubt of that. I knew that from the look I got into the superluminal-travel suppressor. They’re way ahead of us metaphysically. Just not morally.
Martin’s hands descended on her shoulders as she washed up. She glanced back over her shoulder, smiled, and returned to her labors.
“You’re worried,” she said.
“Aren’t you?”
“I would be,” she said, “if I thought it would do any good. But if it’s as far beyond our control as Probe said—”
“Probe,” he said, “is not all-knowing. We might come up with something it never thought of.”
“And if we don’t?” she said.
“That’s a possibility,” he said. His hands tightened momentarily on her shoulders. “You’re the physicist. What do you think?”
“The same as you. That it’s a possibility.”
“In which case—”
“Martin,” she said, “from now until we launch, I intend to prepare for every contingency I can imagine.” She rinsed their dishes one by one and slipped them into the drying rack. “Something might occur to me over that interval, but I don’t expect I’ll be able to force it, so I’m not going to dwell on it. It’s also possible that nothing will occur to me, but dwelling on that would only sap the energies I could put to things I can accomplish.”
She closed the taps, plucked a dishtowel from the counter and dried her hands, and turned to face him.
“Suppose we were ready to launch right this instant,” she said. “Nanites produced and packaged, Liberty’s Torch fully provisioned and pre-flighted, and all three of us in tiptop shape. Knowing only what we know today, how long would you be willing to delay in the hope of conceiving of a defense against metareal weapons we can’t even imagine?”
He looked levelly at her, mouth twisted into a tight bow.
“I wouldn’t.”
Althea nodded. “My sentiments as well.” She glanced at the passage back to the air plant. “Where’d Claire go?”
Martin shrugged. “Back to work, no doubt.”
Althea snorted. “And you think I’m a greasy grind.”
“Only because you are.”
“Well, yeah, but that’s no reason to harp on it.”
“Hah!”
==
November 18, 1326 A.H.
The other councilors filed out of the conference room in an unusually somber silence. As the last of them departed, Barton dropped his head into his hands and vented a great sigh.
“I should have known,” he muttered. “They weren’t likely to forgive a breach that deep.”
“Do you want me to come with you?” Emma said.
Barton shook his head. “I don’t think it would be for the best.” He suppressed his desire to flee. “To her, you would represent everything that’s come and gone since she left us.” He rose, plucked his jacket from his seat back, started for the door, and paused. “There is one thing you could do, if you’re willing.”
“Anything, Uncle Bart.”
He looked at her levelly. “It’s something you’re unlikely to enjoy. Really, I should be the one to do it.”
Emma’s wry grin pardoned him unconditionally. “Lay it on me, most high and beloved patriarch.”
He nodded. “Talk to Chuck. Tell him everything.”
“Oh.” Her grin vanished. “Yeah, he deserves to hear the full story. Do you think he’ll want to talk to her before she leaves?”
“He won’t,” Barton said. “At least, I wouldn’t if I were in his place. She’s a lot of years in his past. He’s too smart to reopen a wound that’s long and well healed.”
“Smart, yeah,” Emma said, “but a lot of people put their smarts aside when it comes to stuff like this. May I offer him the option?”
Barton started to answer, halted himself, and smiled wanly.
Why is it so easy for me to forget how much wiser than her years she is? Is it her youth, her boundless enthusiasm for anything and everything, or that sweet innocent face?
“Sure, go ahead. It’s his life and his heart. Just be gentle.” He turned to leave.
“Uncle Bart?”
“Hm?”
“You try to be gentle too.”
He chuckled humorlessly. “I will.”
* * *
The few hundred yards to the lesser barracks seemed infinite in the unseasonable cold. Not that Barton minded. He embraced the delay as time to organize his thoughts and select his words, and the cold as penance for having brought the task upon him.
The whole mess started with my adoption into the clan. Everything else followed from that.
It’s time to start thinking about what we could do to mitigate the animosity toward us. Charisse wasn’t personally required. We got too big and too rich. If only we’d managed to spin off some of our good fortune to other clans, we wouldn’t have become a target.
It doesn’t really matter now. I have to cope. We all do.
With the final harvest of the year complete, the primary barracks had emptied out weeks before. The Morelon fields were still and silent. The machines that served them had been inspected, had received their end-of-year maintenance, and sat at leisure in their winter homes. The same could be said for many of the residents of Morelon House.
And we continue to earn. The accounts swell as the silos empty, until next Triember when it all begins again.
It’s the overarching pattern of history. Some prosper more rapidly than others, inequalities of wealth and status develop, and presently the others grow envious and seek to pull them down. After that it hardly matters who prevails. Freedom is on life support from that point forward.
Mankind needs self-knowledge it doesn’t have.
The lesser barracks was as silent as the fields beyond it.
He stopped at the lone closed door. Darren Berglund was playing his koto again. Barton allowed himself a brief immersion in the strangely soothing sounds.
I could wish he
were one of us.
He rapped thrice upon the door. It opened to reveal Darren, koto in hand. Charisse lay on the bed, apparently asleep. The young man took in his visitor’s expression, and his own face tightened. He moved back a pace and gestured Barton inside.
“Should I wake her?” he said.
Barton started to answer, checked himself.
“Maybe later.”
“The answer is no, isn’t it?”
Barton nodded.
* * *
“Uncle Chuck?” Emma peered hesitantly around the doorjamb of Etienne Feigner’s workroom. The genesmith looked up from the gene plot on his light table and smiled.
“Got a minute for me?”
“Come on in, Em,” he said. “I was just about finished with this anyway.” She perched herself against the edge of the utility shelf that lined the workroom walls and folded her arms over her breasts.
Feigner pushed himself to the edge of his seat. “Something serious on your mind, dear?”
She nodded, eyes downcast.
“Well?”
“You haven’t been out to the fields these past couple of weeks, have you?” she said.
He frowned and shook his head. “No need. I already have all the samples I need from the Octember harvest. Why?”
“Because...” Emma hissed in discomfort. “Death and taxes. Uncle Bart told me I wasn’t going to enjoy this.”
Feigner’s eyes sharpened. He rose from his seat at the light table, circled it, and squatted before her, watching her with an unnerving steadiness.
“We’ve had a guest,” she got out at last. “Charisse.”
It rocked him backward. “Where—”
“The overflow barracks. She’s been staying there with...a friend.”
“Past tense?” he said. “Or is she—are they still there?”
“Still there, I guess,” she said. “But probably not for much longer.”
He nodded, eyes commanding her to continue.
“She came with news of a new plot against the clan,” she said after a moment. “The Dunbarton tried to force her to infect Uncle Bart with a killer nanite. Her friend prevented it and convinced her to come and tell us....Uncle Chuck, would you please get up from there? This is giving me neck strain. Anyway, I’d rather look up at you than down.”
He grimaced and rose from his squat.
“So my...former wife has resided on Morelon lands for...how long now?” he said.
“About three weeks.”
“And I’m only finding out about it now? Why, Em?”
“Because she wasn’t here just to warn us,” she said. “She also pleaded for readmission to the clan. And Uncle Bart didn’t want to tell you until the council made its decision.”
All the life seemed to leak out of Etienne Feigner in that instant. The deflation made Emma fear for his well-being.
“Because,” he said after a moment, “no matter which way the decision went, Bart feared it would upset me badly.”
She nodded.
“He was right about that, but not for the reason he probably thought.” Feigner’s face clouded. “Why wasn’t I consulted, Em? Why didn’t Charisse’s spouse get to have his say before the council made up its mind?”
“I wasn’t consulted either,” she said. “Uncle Bart took the matter into his own hands from day one. He only told the council about her request just this morning. They don’t know that she’s here, either.”
The cords of Feigner’s neck grew rigid. He looked down at her in renewed desolation as she groped vainly for a gentle way to tell him what their clan patriarch had told her.
“He was afraid,” he said at last. “He couldn’t predict whether I’d fly into a rage at her return, or go spineless with joy and demand that the council welcome the prodigal back. That’s it, isn’t it?”
She nodded.
He sighed faintly. “Well, he was right to do so. Because standing here hearing about it for the first time, I can’t decide which way to feel. Wait, you said he took it to the council just this morning?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, what did they decide?”
“They said no.”
He closed his eyes and bowed his head.
“The friend is a man, isn’t it—he?”
“Yeah.”
“Did that have anything to do with the council’s decision?”
She grimaced. “I don’t know, Uncle Chuck. They didn’t discuss it. Uncle Bart just laid it in front of them and called for a decision. The only question any of them asked was why he didn’t rule on it himself.”
“And he said?”
“That he was too close to it. He didn’t trust his own judgment on the matter, and besides, he wasn’t the only party injured in the attack. He wanted those who are supposed to represent the interests of the whole clan to rule on it.”
Feigner grinned wanly. “He would.” He put his fingertips to his temples and rubbed as if to ease a headache. “I used to hate him, you know?”
“Spooner’s beard, Uncle Chuck! Why?”
“I blamed him,” Feigner said, “for her departure.” Tears pooled in his eyes and dripped down his face. “She was strong. Not the best person on Hope, but strong. Dynamic. Willing to do what others couldn’t, or wouldn’t. I loved her. Seeing her leading that siege carved the heart out of me...and I blamed him for bringing it about, putting her there.”
“By deposing her?” she said.
Feigner nodded. He had begun to shake.
As young as she was, Emma Morelon had a sense for the depths of sorrow to which great loss can lower a man. Yet the sight of big, burly Etienne Feigner, a clan legend for his strength and resilience quite as much as for his intelligence, brought low in such a fashion defied her understanding.
She went to him, pulled him into her arms, and pressed him to her, adding her tears to his own. He clutched her tightly as he broke into an agonized howl.
Uncle Bart was wrong. He never healed. He just sucked it up and went on. He lost her more than a decade ago, but the gash in his soul is still wide open.
How do you salve this sort of sorrow?
She held him tightly as he vented his pain, stoically enduring his crushing grip and the weight of him against her much smaller frame.
He’s one of our best men. Much too good a man to leave hurting like this. How can I help to fix it?
When his cries had stilled and his tremors subsided, she released him gently, stepped back a pace, and took him by the hand. He followed, uncomprehending but compliant, as she led him down the hall and up the stairs to the bedroom that had once been his and Charisse’s.
* * *
Charisse kept her eyes firmly closed until Barton had departed and the door had closed behind him. She felt Darren settle himself gingerly on the edge of the bed, counted slowly to fifty, yawned, stretched theatrically, opened her eyes and smiled up at her lover.
“Something going on, love?” she said.
He smirked down at her. “You might have fooled him. You can’t fool me.” He laid his koto in his lap and played a plaintive sequence of microtones.
She nodded, sat up, and caressed his back and shoulders.
“What now, Darren? Now that you know all my tawdriest secrets.”
He hunched over his koto, affecting an attitude of concentration.
“Darren?”
“He didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know or suspect,” Darren said. “I understand his position, at least as well as possible given that I wasn’t here for the really big events.” He snorted gently. “I was ready for either answer.”
“And now?” She snaked her arms around his waist and pressed herself against him.
“Now,” he said, “we go back to Sun Tzu and pick up where we left off.” He set the koto down and turned in her embrace. “We go back to being Darren and Cherie. Two young people in love, with no attachments to anyone else, gradually homing in on their preferred paths through the world. We make a life
for ourselves.”
She chuckled. “One young person and one who—”
He raised a finger, and she fell silent.
“I meant exactly what I said, Cherie.” His expression was unusually solemn. “I fell in love with Cherie Dunwoodie. I never asked about her past. I never sought to plumb her antecedents or the quality of her family. I know about those things now, and more besides, and I’ve decided that they don’t matter.” She peered at him in confusion, and he grinned. “They didn’t happen to you. They happened to a woman named Charisse Morelon.”
Her mouth fell open. She grew lightheaded as her hopes began to swell.
“The woman I love,” he said, “is named Cherie Dunwoodie. She’s exciting and affectionate, and she seems to think well of me. I want to go on being her lover. I’d be crushed if I were to lose her. I certainly don’t want her to cease to exist. If this Charisse person steals her body and snatches her away from me, I’m going to be very cross.” He gently stroked the underside of her chin. “How likely is that to happen, love?”
“What would you have done,” she whispered, barely repressing the tremors that fought her for control of her body, “if Clan Morelon had accepted...Charisse back into their fold?”
His eyes compressed briefly with sadness. “Mourned.”
“Charisse had a husband,” she said.
“Cherie doesn’t,” he replied. “But she might soon...if she stays as affectionate and charming as she’s been up to now.”
“I think...” she faltered, caught her breath, and started again. “I think that can be arranged.”
He smiled. “I’m glad. Would you like to make love? You know, to seal the deal and lay Charisse to rest?”
The last of her fears dissolved as she pulled him over her and clutched him to her.
* * *
“Who directed you to us?” Alex Dunbarton said.
The young man seated before him shrugged delicately. “I just heard that you might have an opportunity for someone like me.” He smiled nastily. “And as I’m sure you’re aware, there aren’t many like me.”
True enough.
Dunbarton sat back and steepled his hands upon his chest.
“There’s an opportunity,” he said, “but not of an ongoing sort. I need someone to perform a specific, somewhat unusual task. A distasteful task that will inflict harm upon a highly placed person. Once that task is complete, I can’t say that I’ll have any further use for you.”
Freedom's Fury (Spooner Federation Saga Book 3) Page 28