Efthis frowned. “Another of your philosophers’ insights?”
Althea’s will wavered. Her guilt over the torment she had caused Vellis rose to shake her certitude. She called upon her psi, found it fully energized and responsive, and her resolve returned.
“Something like that, but not quite so exalted. I came up with this one myself.”
“Very well.” Efthis stood rigidly erect. “I accept it.”
Althea closed her eyes.
* * *
Deep in Althea’s subconscious lay an unplumbed node that radiated immense power and sensitivity. For most of her life it had been shrouded against her conscious understanding. Yet it had often intruded on her at moments of import, surging forward to displace her most soberly considered decisions with impulses she fought to resist and afterward struggled to understand. Though acquainted with it since her childhood, she had grasped the source of its power only very recently.
She probed at that domain with the finest filaments of her will, testing to see whether what her grandfather had called his greatest gift to her was truly hers to command. For a few instants there was no response. She wondered whether he had stretched a pretty metaphor further than it should properly go.
All at once, the nexus of power blossomed in her mind’s eye, illuminating her being like a newly kindled sun. It shone a soft, benevolent light upon the peaks of her values, the abyss of her fears, and the crags of her conscience. For the first time, it put its services at her conscious command.
He was serious.
Thank you, Grandpere.
Thank you, God.
She hesitated. Her emotional control was still uncertain. The reverberations from Vellis’s torment at her hands still echoed through her psyche. If her gift was to be what she’d intended, it would take her fullest concentration, and all the power she could bring to bear, to keep it pure.
There would be only one chance.
I can do this.
She began to compose her gift.
It partook of many threads. Shadowy memories of infancy and the nurturance of her parents. Her childhood in the bosom of her unique clan, protected and reared by adults who treated children as pearls beyond price. Her teenage years, when her emergent gifts first hinted that she was destined to reshape her world. The moment when Grandmere Teresza conferred her life’s mission upon her, like a monarch knighting a squire who’d proved himself worthy of his sword, and she knew it to be what she had been born, raised, and shaped to do.
Her embrace of Martin.
Her embrace of Claire.
Her embrace of Barton.
Her embrace of her own soul.
She relived the joys of her existence one by one as she fed them into the nexus. The threads came together smoothly, the colors melding without distortion or dissonance, as she wove them into a garment of life and love to be worn by another. As she worked with them, they worked upon her, closing the wound in her soul. Her self-loathing dissolved and her vitality returned. She had regained that which allows one to live with oneself, despite all tribulations and the guilt over what must be done to overcome them: self-acceptance.
The foretaste of hell from her act of psionic surgery faded and was gone. Yet a scar remained.
She cherished that scar. She would not permit it, or the memory of sorrow it bore, to be taken from her for any reason.
Grandpere was right. It all counts. At every moment of your life, it’s all there to call upon, and it all counts.
I will remember.
She cast off the final threads and tied them lovingly.
It was good.
She lifted her creation free of that blessed loom, pared away all residua of anger, resentment, and lust for vengeance, turned it in her mind’s eye one final time, and with infinite gentleness fastened it around the soul of Efthis the Loioc.
* * *
Shock bloomed on Efthis’s delicate features. “What...” she whispered. She ran her hands over her own body as if mystified to find it there. “What is this? What have you done to me?”
Althea waited.
“I feel...what do I feel? I can’t...where are my boundaries? Where do I end?” Efthis’s arms rose, seemingly of their own accord, to beckon Althea into their embrace. “Why do I want you to...to let me...Althea!” She fell to her knees, moaning piteously. “Is this a gift or a curse?”
“As I said a moment ago,” Althea murmured, “it’s a thing of great power.” An unusual gravity descended upon her. She stepped forward, took the Loioc by the shoulders and pulled her upright, and looked directly into her eyes. “I could tell you the name we of Hope use for it, but it would only confuse you. The Loioc have brutalized the word away from the meaning we attach to it. In time you’ll give it a name of your choosing, and that will suffice.”
“But why?” Efthis moaned.
“Because you need it, Efthis,” Althea said. “Your whole race needs it. For a time it will weigh upon you, a burden you would shed if you could. In time you will embrace it and offer it to others. My hope is that you will find a way to share it with all your people, both your sisters and your brothers to be. Now return to your people and do with it what you will.”
* * *
The Loioc shuttle’s exhaust flare dwindled and vanished as the craft crossed the planet’s limb.
“Did you think she might accept?” Claire said.
Althea shrugged and seated herself in the command chair. “There was a chance. I had to make the offer. What’s likely to happen to her once she’s back groundside is pretty nasty. Her sisters will want someone to blame.”
Maybe my gift will help her to cope with that...or avert it.
“I thought that, too.” Claire shuddered. “Are we done here, at long last?”
“Give me a couple of days to check and reinforce the external mountings, and we can head out,” Martin said. “Probe is holding us to our promise to bring him back to Hope.”
Althea nodded. “He thinks he can teach our automata a thing or two. He’s probably right.”
“Althea...” Claire faltered.
“Hm?”
“It’s been nine days.”
“Nine days since what?”
“Since we last made love.”
“Oh.” Althea grinned. “I knew it had been a while, but I wasn’t counting. These continuous watches can really mess up your time sense. Do you miss it?”
“Desperately.”
“I do too. Martin? Care to register a vote?”
“Just let me make certain those bleeding mountings are right so we won’t drop Probe or the mass driver in interstellar space, then we head for the cometary belt and top off the reaction mass tanks, then you get us back into superluminal state and headed homeward, and I doubt I’ll let either of you out of my arms until we’re back in the Relic.”
“Well,” Althea said, “I do have a couple of things to work on during the trip home—”
Martin’s brows knitted. “What sort of things? After all this, aren’t we finished?”
Althea waved it aside. “You’ll find out about them in due course. Anyway, I’ll need a few hours a day for that. But otherwise, my loves, I believe we have a consensus.”
==
September 11, 1330 A.H.
“Range to the Relic, thirty-six thousand miles,” Martin droned. “Closing at forty-four miles per second.” He turned from his control board to Althea’s command chair. “Home is less than fourteen minutes away.”
“A little longer than that, love,” Althea said. She strove not to look away from the image on the video monitor and toward the blue-green brilliance of Hope. “I’m not going to dock this thing at that speed. “Claire? Maneuvering systems check.”
“No failure or warning lights,” Claire replied. Her eyes roved over the gauges. “We’re at sixty-six percent of max reaction mass capacity. Way more than enough delta-vee for a straight-line docking.” She turned a curious look on Althea. “You weren’t really worried about
that, were you?”
Althea shrugged. “Space travel, love. It never hurts to be a little more paranoid than necessary.”
Besides, I wanted to keep you focused as long as possible.
“Claire, you have the conn. Compute a deceleration curve and punch it into the autopilot,” she said as she rose from her seat. “I’m headed to the hold. I’ll be back before it’s time to dock.”
Martin cocked an eyebrow. “What will you be doing back there, Captain Althea? Ma’am?”
She smirked. “You’ll know soon enough.”
* * *
Althea made her way forward to the command center as the proximity of the Relic triggered the inner alarm. She set her parcel down on the deck, slipped into the command chair, and reviewed the kinematics.
“Nice deceleration, Claire. Would you like to try docking the ship yourself?”
Claire cringed. “Spooner’s beard, Althea. It makes me nervous enough to program the autopilot. I don’t want to dent your boat.”
“If we’re going to make any more of these cruises, you’ll have to learn how eventually,” Althea said. “I’ve only done it twice myself.”
“I would profoundly hope,” Martin said, “that the next of these ‘cruises’ is both comfortably distant in time and does not involve an interstellar war.”
“That would be pleasant. I would like to see more of the galaxy myself, under less stressful circumstances.”
Althea chuckled. “Another county heard from. I’ll see what I can arrange, Probe. Okay, the captain has the conn. Going to manual and taking her in.”
She put her fingertips to the control runs and with the greatest of delicacy finished damping the starship’s speed as it closed on the planetoid. At slightly less than a thousand feet of separation, Liberty’s Torch was motionless relative to the Relic. On the monitor, the dock dedicated to the starship was plainly visible.
With gentle pulses of the port and starboard maneuveing jets, Althea nudged the starship ever closer to the Relic. When the lidar proximity monitor read seventy-five feet, she pressed the stud that armed the docking unit, sighted along its axis, and fired the clamps. They shot smoothly across the gap, found their gripping points immediately, and latched onto them without incident. The umbilicus extended at once and sealed itself to the outer docking collar. The clack that announced a successful pressurization resounded through the cabin.
Althea rose from the command chair, picked up her parcel, removed the covering and flung it aside. The box within caught Martin’s and Claire’s eyes at once.
“Before we debark,” she said, “let’s have a toast.”
“What have you got there, space babe?” Martin said.
“A little something Doug and Patrice provided while I had you two looking elsewhere,” Althea said. “Patrice told me that on Earth it was called champagne, but that was considered a rather exalted title suitable only for a variety that came from one tiny district.” She extracted a bottle and three stemmed glasses from the box. “Let’s not name it until we’ve tried it.”
She pulled the cork from the bottle with her fingers, poured the glasses full, and handed one to each of her spouses. They held them uncertainly, as if awaiting the elaboration of a protocol. She took her own by its stem and raised it high.
“In gratitude to God, to my clan, and to the only comrades I ever want to go to war with,” Althea said. Tears pooled in the corners of her eyes. “Welcome home, my loves. May it and our love for one another be all we ever desire.”
They drank.
* * *
Their habitat inside the Relic was as they had left it.
Althea supervised the offloading of the medipod that confined their passenger, and guided it into a small unused chamber directly across from their bedchamber. Claire reviewed the settings, made certain that the audible alarm was set to sound before the lid should rise, and nodded.
“He’s fine,” she said to Althea. “I can’t say how much longer he’ll be in there, but his health is optimal. He’ll come out no worse than he went in.”
Martin chuckled. “That’s reassuring.”
“Well,” Claire said through her grin, “hopefully better than that. I’m not a miracle worker, you know.”
“Tell that to Bart,” Althea said.
“Anything else you want off the ship?” Martin said.
“I’ll fetch it myself.”
Althea returned to the starship dock, re-entered Liberty’s Torch, and returned with a pair of identical devices shrouded in flexosteel. She put one of them in the control chamber and tucked the other into a corner of the bedchamber.
He won’t like it. Neither of them will.
Grandpere will be furious.
None of that matters. This is the way it must be.
She made her way to the air plant, did a quick titer and saw that all was as it should be, and gathered some onions, carrots and broccoli. She sought and found her spouses in the kitchen space.
“Hungry?” she said.
Martin and Claire nodded in unison. “What have we got left in the freezer?” Claire said.
“Some marinated beef shreds,” Althea said. “I’ll put something together with that. Set up the table and get comfy. Dinner in thirty or less.”
Twenty-eight minutes later Althea toted a large stoneware tureen of sauteed beef and slivered vegetables out to the air plant. The aroma reached the table where Martin and Claire sat well before she did.
“That smells wonderful,” Claire said.
Althea smiled, set the tureen down at the center of the table, and spread her arms majestically. “Dig in!”
They fell to it.
Some time later the tureen was empty and the three of them were very full. Claire laid down her fork, put her napkin to her lips, and belched delicately. Martin smirked and released a blast of magnitude sufficient to be heard on Hope. The women laughed.
“So what now?” Martin said.
“Back to Hope, I’d imagine,” Claire said.
“After a good night’s sleep,” Martin added.
Althea shook her head, and the others froze.
“You two are re-entering,” she said. “I’ll be staying here.”
* * *
Their lovemaking that night was a thing of desperation. They clung to one another as if any separation might be their last. Whenever Althea’s eyes met one of the others, however briefly, the pain and confusion in them came near to setting her to tears once again. She bore down, refusing herself permission to react in any way, and grimly buried herself in physical sensation.
She waited in the darkness until their breathing spoke of sleep, rose as carefully as possible, and padded down the tunnel to the kitchen chamber. A tiny movement of one finger across the contact patch produced enough illumination for her to extract a bottle of chilled water from the large refrigerator. She took it to the air plant, sat upon the rim of the hydroponic garden, and sipped at it.
Hardly ten minutes had elapsed before Martin joined her.
He perched himself facing her and reached for the water bottle. She handed it to him. He took a long pull from it and handed it back.
Presently he said “Claire is crying.”
She nodded.
“Are you willing to discuss it now?”
She shrugged. “There isn’t much to discuss, really. I can’t re-enter.”
“Why not?”
“Because I might not be allowed to leave. Probably not, actually.”
“Come on, space babe. There’s nothing down there that could—”
“You don’t know the half of it, Martin.”
He peered at her.
“Remember what I told you about my grandfather?”
“The dead one?”
She nodded.
“What about him?”
“He wants me to take the rule of Hope. At least of Alta.”
His eyes flew wide.
“Believe it, love. I can’t afford to go back without riskin
g being turned into a king against my will.”
“He’s that powerful?” he whispered.
“You have no idea.”
Althea peered into the thicket of greenery that gave them air and sustenance.
We owe so much to people we have no way to thank. Our whole lives, really. But they’re beyond our reach now. All we can do is ask God to thank them for us. That will have to do.
I’ve just come back from a successful war. I should be happy. Happier, at least. But I can’t help dwelling on the fact that I’m about to be alone, and no telling for how long.
“I do need for you to re-enter, at least,” she said. “The two devices I was working on during the trip home are encryption units. One has to be attached to my AltaBourse terminal planetside. The other one stays up here.”
He regarded her assessingly. “So you can continue to play the market and keep us funded up here,” he said.
“Yeah. I can’t ask the clan to fund our orbital redoubt, or any other adventures we might decide to go on. Not that they get no benefit from what we do up here, but...well, you know.”
He nodded.
“It’s not forever, Martin. Maybe just long enough for you and Claire to...do whatever needs doing on Hope.” Unless you decide to stay planetside. “Believe me, I’ll be thinking of you the whole time. I’ll long for you every moment of every day until the two of you are back in my arms. But I can’t go down there without risking more than I dare to risk.”
“I understand, Al. It’s just that...oh, forget it.” He slid forward along the concrete wall and took her in his arms. “What will I say to Bart and Nora? To Doug and Patrice? To Emma? To all our kin that love you?”
“Tell them...” She faltered, looked away and gathered herself, and returned her eyes to his. “Tell them that I love them. That I’ll be thinking of them. That no one will get within a parsec of them with a weapon in his hand, or I’ll drop a rock on his head.”
Freedom's Fury (Spooner Federation Saga Book 3) Page 34