by David Weber
“I do, Alley,” he whispered. “I do.”
And their lips met at last.
THE BEST
LAID PLANS
David Weber
“I don't really mind your going as far as the dam by yourself if it's all right with your mother, you pack a lunch, and you remember not to be late for dinner.”
“Of course it's all right with Mom. I talked with her after breakfast, before she left for the office, and she said it sounded like a good idea to her. I wouldn't have asked you if she hadn't.”
“Oh?” Her father cocked his head at her from the com screen a moment later, after the inevitable transmission delay. She could see the bulkead of his office aboard the space station Hephaestus behind him in the display, and his expression was just the tiniest bit skeptical “I seem to remember a few occasions when you neglected to make sure of that minor fact.”
She concentrated on looking simultaneously as innocent as the new fallen snow and moderately martyred. He continued to gaze at her for several moments, then snorted.
“All right, Honor. Go! Have fun. And be careful!”
“Yes, Sir,” she said obediently and waited for the display to clear. Then she shook her head. “And yada yada yada,” she added under her breath, rolling her eyes. “I'm not exactly an infant anymore, Dad.”
Fortunately, the link had already been closed. And even more fortunately, from Honor's perspective, her father hadn't specifically asked her if she'd asked her mother for permission. She could say with scrupulous honesty, as she just had, that she had discussed the possibility of the expedition with her mother over breakfast, and that her mother had expressed no opposition to the notion. Indeed, her female parental unit had been cheerfully in favor of it. Of course, Honor hadn't quite gotten around to informing her mother that she was thinking about making that trip today, but that didn't change the fact that Mom had clearly been agreeable to the notion in a general sort of way. And it wasn't her fault her mother was going to be tied up with patients straight through to lunch. Or that there were strict rules about not breaking into consult time or interfering with examinations, except in cases of emergency. And since no one could argue that this came under the heading “emergency,” it was obvious she couldn't possibly justify screening her mother directly over something this minor.
Honor was aware that a true stickler might argue that she'd been guilty of misleading both of her parents to at least a tiny extent, but she had cleared it, and with just a little more luck, Dad would forget to ask Mom if she had authorized the trip for today.
Yeah, sure! And when was the last time you had that much luck? she asked herself sardonically. Actually, the odds were pretty good she'd find herself grounded for at least a week, but that would be a fair exchange. If her timing was right, the huge banks of purple mountain tulip above the dam should have come into full blossom during the last three or four days.
Honor hadn't mentioned their existence to either of her parents, because they just happened to be her mother's favorite from among all the flowers and blossoming trees of Sphinx . . . and tomorrow just happened to be her mother's birthday. She had a carefully worked out plan that began with the double-chocolate cake (her mother's favorite flavor) and culminated with the original copy of the sixth-century Diaspora poet Dzau Syung-kai's collected works which her Uncle Jacques had found on Beowulf, and enough of those mountain tulips for the enormous centerpiece she was constructing for the dining room table would be the crowning touch.
She couldn't very well explain all of that if she wanted her birthday present to be a surprise, and even if she could have she was pretty sure her mother would never have let her go that far into the bush without “adult supervision.” Neither of her parents believed in keeping their daughter wrapped up in cotton, and they seldom objected to her spending a day rambling around in the woods as long as she didn't stray too far from the house. Her father insisted that she take along a pistol when she did (a paternal decree to a then eleven-year-old daughter which Honor suspected her mother, who'd grown up on über-civilized Beowulf, had taken some getting used to), but she'd been rigorously drilled in gun safety since her tenth birthday. Their definition of “too far from the house” (and especially her mother's) wasn't quite as flexible as she might have wished, however.
In fact, that was the reason she'd been creatively vague talking to her father. Honor never lied to her parents—even when she'd tried, her father had always been able to tell as easily as if her skull were made of glass and he'd been able to peer inside it, so she'd given up the effort early—but there was a difference between lying and . . . shaping the truth to best advantage, and this was a perfect example. There were two dams, both with their own populations of near-beavers, and she hadn't gone out of her way to tell Commander Harrington which of them she intended to visit. When he asked her about it, she was going to have to admit it had suited her purposes for both of her parents to assume she was talking about the one on Sand Bottom Creek, where she'd been conducting her school wildlife observation project for the last three months. And she was also going to have to admit that while she'd known neither of her parents would have any problem with her going by herself to Sand Bottom, they would have objected—strenuously—to her wandering off to Rock Aspen Creek. That was almost five kilometers deeper into the freehold . . . and the SFS had reported that peak bears were coming down out of the higher mountains early this fall.
Honor could understand why her parents might think that feeding the peak bears—especially if the meal in question happened to be their only daughter—wasn't the very best idea anyone ever had. On the other hand, she had no intention of doing anything of the sort. She'd grown up in the woods, hunting with her father and fishing the streams of her family's freehold or hang-gliding across it. She wouldn't go so far as to say she knew every nook and cranny—that would have been a bit much for a square of mountains and still-virgin forest twenty-five kilometers on a side—but she'd hiked and flown over most of those sixty-two thousand-plus hectares one time or another. And she knew Rock Aspen better than most, since it was one of her and her father's favorite places to fish. She knew how to keep her eye out for the nastier members of Sphinx's wildlife, too. That was something of a family tradition, after all, all the way back to Great-Great-Great-Great-Whatever-Grandma Stephanie. It was unfortunate that she couldn't hang-glide to Rock Aspen because of the tree cover (not to mention the quantity of tulips she planned to be bringing back), but her personal counter-grav would still take her up a tree in jig time, as Uncle Jacques liked to put it, if something wicked came her way.
And just in case something went wrong with Plan A, there was always Plan B, which was why she had claimed her Simpson & Wong from the gun safe. She didn't really expect to need it, but when the inevitable parental wrath descended upon her head, she would be in a position to point out that anything which had wanted to eat her would have had to comb the S&W's old-fashioned ten-millimeter slugs out of its teeth first. Her mother probably wouldn't be especially moved, but she expected her father would cut her a little slack if she could demonstrate she'd been suitably armed to deal with trouble. He'd probably prefer one of his pulse rifles to the S&W's old-fashioned nitro-powder, but he was also the one who'd taught her to shoot, and he knew what she could do with a rifle or a pistol. She'd just shot High Expert in the Twin Forks Youth League for the SFC and walked away with the Shelton Cup for the second year in a row, with a score of 600 out of a possible 600, and at a hundred meters, the S&W's 19.5-gram bullet, traveling at 840 meters per second, would deliver almost 7,000 joules of energy to any unfriendly critter she encountered. In fact, it would deliver over 3,000 joules all the way out to five hundred meters, although she didn't have any business shooting anything at that range “in self-defense.” Besides, the S&W was her favorite shoulder gun, and not just because it had been her birthday gift from Uncle Jacques two years ago.
It had been almost as long as she was, at the time, although she'd put on one
of the promised (or threatened) growth spurts since then. Now she was closing in on thirteen T-years old and already almost a hundred and seventy centimeters tall. That left her over thirty centimeters shorter than her father, but it meant she towered over her mother. Big enough to handle the S&W's buffered recoil, anyway.
Honor told herself that was a good thing and tried not to think about how . . . overgrown she was beginning to feel. No one was quite sure when so much altitude had crept into the family's genes, although the majority opinion was that they could look all the way back to Great-Great-Great-Great-Whatever-Granddad Karl. There seemed to be a few holes in that theory, as far as she was concerned, though. Certainly her grandfather had been tall—almost as tall as her dad, in fact—as had his parents, but most of the previous generations had been of little more than average height, so where had Grandad Karl's genes been then? Besides, there was her mom's genetic contribution to consider, and all of the Beowulf side of the family was on the short side.
Wherever all that height had come from, and however great a thing it might seem to the male members of the family, it was a pain in the backside for an all-but thirteen-year-old girl who could confidently expect to break a hundred and eighty centimeters before she was done and had a brilliantly intelligent, exotically beautiful, sleekly graceful, petite mother. She loved her mom dearly, but why, oh why, couldn't the female Dr. Harrington have passed along some of that beauty to her daughter? Or at least offset the upsizing which had afflicted the family for so long?
She brushed the thought aside, texted an “I'm going out, Mom!” to her mother's account; pulled on her jacket; slung the S&W over her shoulder; checked her belt gun, bush knife and counter-grav; made sure the uni-link in her pocket was fully charged; hung her lunch-packed rucksack over the other shoulder; snagged her favorite fedora from the coat tree; and headed for the door.
* * *
Laughs Brightly flirted his tail, but he also bleeked a laugh of agreement. Bright Water Clan's newest memory singer was the daughter of their mother's sister, and she seemed to feel it was her familial duty to restrain Laughs Brightly's sense of humor.
Or attempt to, at any rate.
Sharp Nose shook his head in one of the gestures the People had learned from the two-legs with whom they shared their world. Laughs Brightly was almost a full hand of turnings his elder, and much as Sharp Nose loved him, he had never understood how his prankster brother could be so popular with the rest of the clan. Crooked Tail, who was almost certain to become one of Bright Water's elders in the next few turnings, was not noted for his sense of humor. Yet even though every member of the clan knew exactly who had purloined his treasured supply of stored golden ear, no one—including him—had attempted to take Laughs Brightly's ears over it. No doubt that was because they knew he would return every single ear of grain the moment Crooked Tail asked him to. Which, of course, made it a matter of pride for Crooked Tail to find all of Laughs Brightly's hiding places personally. Exactly how Laughs Brightly had managed to steal away the other Person's entire supply without being caught at it was just one of those mysteries Laughs Brightly excelled at creating. Still, he had been scrupulous about leaving Crooked Tail the clues he needed to identify the one who had “borrowed” his grain.
Sharp Nose said now.
Laughs Brightly laughed again, then leapt lightly down to his brother's lower branch and stretched out beside him.
Sharp Nose twitched his whiskers at the idea that Thunder Mist was “not far” from the clan's central nesting place, but Laughs Brightly's mission was clearly an important one. They were well into leaf-turning. It would not be so very much longer before the first snows began to blow down from the mountains, and green-needle and gray-bark pods were an important—and tasty—part of the People's diet during the months of ice. And he had to admit that he was flattered by Laughs Brightly's invitation. Although Sharp Nose was respected as a hunter and a tracker, he was not one of those normally chosen for the sorts of tasks the clan's scouts usually undertook. He knew part of that was his youth, for he was barely half Laughs Brightly's age, and the opportunity to spend the day in his brother's company was an attractive thought. In many ways, for all its importance, Laughs Brightly's task was routine, but Sharp Nose could still learn a great deal under the tutelage of such a skilled scout. Besides, despite the difference in their ages, he and Laughs Brightly had always been close.
* * *
From comments her mother had made upon occasion, Honor supposed that someone who hadn't been born and raised on Sphinx might have found the morning chilly. For her, though, it was merely a bit brisk, and she walked with her jacket unsealed, enjoying the crisp, clean air. Dried leaves crackled underfoot as she made her way through the near-pine and red spruce, the sound sharper and louder than it really should have been thanks to the dry weather. It wasn't as bad as it had been upon occasion, though. Every four or five planetary years—twenty or twenty-five T-years—they had a really dry summer and fall, the sort that turned Sphinx's forests into tinder boxes. She couldn't remember a year like that, but her father could, and he'd been increasingly firm in his warnings about careless use of fire as the long, slow summer drew on. The predictions were that this winter would produce even more snow and snow pack than usual, though, and that should help next year. She didn't know about that; it would be only her third winter, and the first one didn't count, since she'd been born halfway through the first one and didn't remember it at all.
And it would also probably
be her last winter at home. Her pace slackened for a moment, and she looked around and filled her lungs to the aching point with the cool Sphinxian air, the treasured scents and smells of the woods of the planet on which she had been born and raised. She would miss them—oh, how she would miss them!—but there was always a price to pay for dreams, and she'd known ever since she'd been a very little girl sitting in her father's lap what her dream was.
Honor didn't really know where it had come from. Part of it was probably her father's example, although she had no temptation to become a physician as both he and her mother had. Besides, he'd been only the third member of her family to serve in the Royal Navy, and the only one in the last three or four generations. He hadn't started in the Navy, either, although he'd never explained to her exactly why he'd transferred into it from the Royal Marines. She'd asked—once, when she'd been much younger—but he hadn't told her. That was unusual, because he and her mother always answered her questions. She was pretty sure that meant it had been something ugly, something he hadn't wanted to talk about with her until she was older. Or maybe even at all. Fathers could be like that. Especially, she suspected, with daughters, which was pretty silly, since he was the one who'd taught her how to dress out her own game when she'd been only ten T-years old and she'd been cleaning fish for at least two T-years before that. But she supposed there was a difference between skinning and butchering prong bucks or a Baxter Goose and killing another human being.
She'd found her father's medals two years ago and looked them up. That was how she'd found out that the Osterman Cross was the Star Kingdom's second highest decoration, that it could be earned only for “extraordinary heroism” in combat, and that it could be awarded only to enlisted personnel and noncommissioned officers. But she'd also discovered that the award was classified. Or if it wasn't officially classified, where, when, and how Platoon Sergeant Harrington, RMMC, had earned it wasn't part of the public record, at least, for some reason. Then there were the three wound stripes he'd been awarded. He hadn't gotten those as a Navy doctor, either, and if he hadn't wanted to discuss how he had earned them with his then eleven-year-old daughter, he'd earned that right, as well. Someday, she knew, he would tell her about them, if only to be sure she truly understood the possible consequences of the career she'd already chosen. Until that day, she could wait.