by Paul Darrow
“Miranda.”
Grant nodded. “The tumbling moon.”
Rowena frowned, seemed bewildered.
Pi Grant, his eyes never straying from her face, said, “It explains a great deal. Miranda is a moon of Uranus that has been falling away from its mother planet for centuries. Like a ball gathering speed as it rolls down a hill. Its atmosphere has been in a state of constant disturbance. As time has passed, it has altered radically. You understand I am putting this to you as simply as I can?”
Rowena nodded.
The surgeon permitted himself a deep sigh. “Anyone bred in that volatile atmosphere cannot expect to survive for long in any other. Like Saturn’s, for example. This planet’s artificial atmospheric umbrella is very similar to that of Earth.”
“Why am I unaffected?” Rowena asked.
“I presume you were not born and bred on Miranda.”
“On Raphael.”
“There’s the difference.”
“But we lived on Phax. My mother showed no signs of deterioration there.”
Grant permitted himself a slight smile. “The air on Phax could be said to be intermediate. Neither one thing, nor the other. But she would, sooner or later, have succumbed. The deterioration would have occurred suddenly, almost without warning. It was accelerated when you came here.”
“Am I in danger?”
“If you mean from a similar reaction to the atmosphere,” Grant said knowingly, “I’ll make tests and find out.”
Rowena glanced at the sleeping child and the surgeon’s eyes followed her gaze. He smiled down on the boy. “I doubt that he will have a problem,” he said. “The air here will suit him. He is clearly an Earth child.” He looked up quickly, his gray eyes narrowing, like shafts of steel.
“That’s true.” Rowena said cautiously. “His father was a Federation soldier—killed in the wars for Uranus.”
Grant’s expression softened. “You have suffered your fair share of tragedy,” he muttered, almost as if speaking to himself.
“May I see my mother?”
“Yes. However, she will not see you. She has entered her last sleep. She will never awaken.”
Rowen could control her grief no longer. She cried out, turned her face to the wall and, as tears flooded her face, her body shook with emotion.
Grant sprang to his feet and rushed over to her. He took her in his arms, turning her towards him so that she buried her face in his chest. “We all die,” he said, soothingly. “It is the only sure thing in this uncertain Universe.”
Rowena looked up at him and he smoothed the tears from her cheeks. “You are in safe hands,” he said.
She stepped back from his embrace and glanced across the room. Her son was sitting up on the couch and was watching them.
Grant turned. “Ah, you’re awake!” he said, superfluously. He was embarrassed by the fact that he was strongly attracted to this woman and that the boy seemed aware of it.
The child’s face was expressionless. Only his eyes betrayed any feeling. They were as cold as black ice.
Grant shivered involuntarily. “I’ll conduct the tests I promised,” he said. “It will be necessary to submit your papers to a Coordinator.”
“I have gold,” Rowena said suddenly.
“It would be as well not to tell anyone else that.” The surgeon smiled warmly.
Rowena nodded. “I must not be separated from my son,” she said forcefully.
“Consider yourselves under my personal protection,” Grant said. He was aware of the boy’s steady gaze and felt that he was being viewed as if under a microscope. “Shall we go?” He said weakly.
He led them through the vast surgery adjoining the room in which they had waited so long for the sad news concerning Mara. Gleaming scientific equipment overlooked their progress.
“It was my decision and mine alone,” Grant was saying. “I could have used drugs to keep her awake, but her breathing was too irregular and painful and her suffering would have increased by the minute. As it is, she is sedated, will sleep for some hours and pass on in peace. Pain will be but a memory. I had no choice. I hope you understand?”
Rowena nodded. She showed no hint of grief. That time was now past.
“I was called upon because I have the highest authority here,” Grant continued, “with Alpha and Beta grades, that is. Anyone below can be dealt with by any of my assistants.”
They walked through an open doorway into a small cubicle that contained a solitary bed and a huge vase containing artificially scented flowers.
Mara’s expression as she lay asleep on the bed was one of utter contentment. A half-smile played around her lips. Her breathing was even and unhurried.
Grant stood back while Rowena, taking her mother’s hands in hers, stooped to kiss her brow. Then the boy stepped forward and did likewise. The child’s eyes were moist but, the surgeon noted, he did not cry as a four-year-old might be expected to do.
All three stood in the doorway for a last look at the dying woman before Rowena, quite abruptly, turned away.
Leading her child by the hand, she followed Grant to his office situated on the floor above.
This was an imposing room, luxuriously carpeted and furnished in the old style. A style once familiar on Earth, less so on Saturn Major.
The surgeon bid them be seated in comfortable chairs while he stood by a large picture window and gazed at the shimmering city outside.
“So much for death,” he said quietly, “now we must deal with the living.”
“The tests?” Rowena asked nervously.
He turned and smiled at her, almost lovingly. “They are very simple. A matter of taking saliva and a little blood. I’ll do it now.”
He walked over to a metal safe set into the wall and extracted a syringe and a number of glass phials.
He treated Rowena with great gentleness as he took the blood from her ear lobe and asked her to spit on a piece of cloth which he folded and sealed in one of the containers. Then, he placed the phials in a rack next to the safe, attached a thin wire that jutted from the wall, threw one of many switches below the rack and waited.
After a few minutes, he switched off. He walked to a computer terminal set in a corner of the room and typed in instructions. Its screen glowed, revealing a set of figures.
Grant was aware that the boy had risen, crossed the room and was standing close to him, fascinated by what he was doing.
The surgeon explained the figures. “These indicate two things,” he said. “One, that you are a healthy, normal young woman. Two, that there is only a minor problem caused by entering this atmosphere. It is much as I expected. In all honesty, I have to say that your life expectancy is not as great as it would have been had you remained on Phax. On the other hand, any reduction in your life span should be minmal. Two or three Earth years at most. You are fortunate.”
Federation citizens, rarely sanguine when concerned with matters of life and death under its totalitarian rule, assumed fatalism and condensed emotion. Rowena said nothing.
Grant leaned against the wall. The boy was studying the equipment.
Grant said, “It will be necessary for you to stay here for a while to acclimatize, as it were. What will you do afterwards. Where will you go?”
With Mara’s imminent death, with her responsibility for the welfare of her son weighing heavily upon her, Rowena felt her strength draining away. All she could say was, “I’m not certain.”
There was a very long, tense pause between them. “I have need of a woman,” Grant said at length.
Rowena looked at him sharply.
“My woman died of the Orange Plague,” the man went on. “One of the legacies of the Earth Wars. Bacterial genetic weapons were used indiscriminately. There were many victims and she was one of the first. I’m talking about many years past. Long before the Federation decided on further wars for Uranus. There is no end to war, it is the humanoid vocation.”
He seemed to be losing himself in hi
s thoughts. Rowena was attentive and patient. Even the boy was listening intently.
“When all the wars concluded,” Grant said, “my masters were faced with a dilemma. Many fathers were dead, maimed or maddened and all their children were alone. The Federation future must be preserved, however, and I have an adopted son and daughter. There are many men like me who have been persuaded to assist the regime in a like manner. My son is named Del, my daughter called Anna.”
Grant came out of his reverie and spoke swiftly, almost nervously.
“I have much to offer in the way of position and influence. I have some wealth and I like to think I am a fair and honorable man. As far as that is possible in this Universe. I would never abuse you or your son. I would do my best to protect you both and I would treat the boy as my own.” He strode back to the window. “I realize this is very sudden.” he went on. “We have known each other such a short while. I suppose I must be an impulsive man. But I think that, in this sad age, the fine moment must be seized or lost for ever.” He shook his head and smiled wryly. “I’m quite shaken by all this.”
Rowena walked over to him and placed a hand on his arm. “Time is a relentless enemy. You are merely trying to defeat it.”
Grant took her in his arms and looked into her eyes. “Are you prepared to accept my extraordinary offer?”
“All the benefits would be on my side.” Rowena said. “All I can do is promise to try and alleviate any pain you may suffer. Be a companion in your loneliness.”
“From the moment I saw you, I needed you. Do you believe me?”
Rowena looked to the boy who was leaning against the wall and watching them intently. “The Federation could be hell for us,” she said. “We need your protection.”
“You have it.” Grant said with finality.
Rowena smiled brightly. “I accept!”
The surgeon smiled back at her, his glance tender and approving. “What is the boy’s name?”
Rowena’s smile faded. “He is called Kerguelen.” She looked at her son. “It means ’desolation’!”
4
Within nine Earth days, Rowena and the boy were ensconced in Grant’s palatial mansion situated in the protected Alpha grade suburbs.
They quickly learned that their benefactor was richer, more powerful and had greater influence than they had been led to believe.
His great house was filled with fabulous carpets from the weavers of Alpha Centauri. The walls of the vast reception rooms were hung with famous paintings from World and Venusian masters. Furniture was of rich mahogany and a teak as tough as that of Raphael, but far more decorative.
There were many servants. Slaves from Neptune, from the moon called Titan and from any number of Jupiter’s inhabited satellites.
Del and Anna Grant were natural brother and sister. They were the children of a Federation commander, a close friend of Pi Grant, who had been killed in action on the very globe where Mara had been born—the tumbling moon, Miranda.
Rowena and Kerguelen were welcomed enthusiastically. Pampered and fussed over, it seemed that their hosts’ love and respect knew no bounds.
All mourned at Mara’s funeral. The body was burned and the ashes fired into the colored Rings of Saturn.
Rowena, touched by the affection and generosity of the Grant family and household, swiftly set about establishing herself within it.
Del Grant was grown to ten Earth years and Anna was but a few months senior to Rowena’s son.
A slight, pretty girl, Anna easily adapted to her role of sister and protector of Kerguelen. She grew to love the boy and, sometime later, the grown man.
Pi Grant bonded formally with Rowena and, according to the custom, adopted her child.
Kerguelen, a difficult name for the servants and children, was foreshortened. For the time being, Rogue Avon’s son was to be called Kerr Grant.
None of these happenings were extraordinary in the Federation society of that time and place.
Continuous warfare had decimated the populations of the nine planets and vast areas that had once supported wild, humanoid, even alien life had been devastated by the pollution, destruction and decay that attends the beast called Man.
It was, therefore, quite natural for Pi Grant to seek a mother for his adopted children and a companion for his bed. The established order required, even commanded, continuity and rationalization.
He was envied by many. Rowena, though not an intellectual equal, was possessed of beauty and a comparable charm. The general female population of Saturn Major tended to be devoid of both.
Even the fact that her father had been a dissident in the wars for Uranus hardly raised an eyebrow. Those wars were long gone and there was a new attitude in the corridors of power that led to the chamber housing the Federation High Council. An attitude of compromise and conciliation. This was a time for the ambitious to catch their breath, to watch and wait.
In any case, the daughter of a little known deceased rebel posed no threat and Grant’s influence was enough to squash any rumor or criticism.
Mara’s precious papers, as far as they went, had sufficed to satisfy an investigation by the Coordinator. The only thing that puzzled, intrigued him, was the boy’s origin.
Rowena, sensing danger, claimed that she had never known his father beyond one brief encounter. She claimed Kerguelen was a child of rape. That ended the matter.
Grant laughed at her when she offered him the gold bequeathed her by her mother.
“I have no need of it,” he said. “In you, I have something more precious than gold.”
On their bonding night, he took her very gently through their act of love. It was as if he was handling a rare and delicate object that might break.
She was unskilled in the practice of sex but, contrary to her imaginings, this pleased rather than deterred him. He delighted in her and in her magnificent, sensuous young body. His lovemaking was tender and considerate. A severe contrast to the almost violent coupling she had experienced with Rogue Avon.
In truth, she felt she was a poor reward for Grant’s generosity, care and undoubted love. Nonetheless, she appreciated the power that she had now achieved over him.
Now she began to taste the sweet corruption that the Federation system offered its privileged grades. As long as she continued to please her man, appeared witty, charming and reasonably intelligent and as long as she flattered and subtly insinuated herself in the affections of Grant’s influential colleagues and friends, she would herself achieve influence and the tools of deceit.
Faithful in her fashion to both Pi Grant and her new Federation masters and accepted as a member of Saturn Major society at its highest level, she set about her twin tasks.
Using all the facilities that the system and privilege could provide, she would raise her son to manhood. At no time would she permit him to become anyone’s creature but her own.
She would seek any and all information concerning Rogue Avon. If, as she suspected and as he himself had suggested, he had been hunted and killed by his enemies, then she would discover the manner of his death. For the moment, this was her main concern. Later, her vengeance would become her grand obsession.
She set about learning all she could of the workings of the regime she had once been taught to hate. Her hatred now tempered by opportunism.
Since the internecine wars on Earth and its neighboring planets, there had been many rearrangements of the Federation power structure.
The population had shrunk alarmingly. Only now, by encouragement, sometimes through force, was it on the increase. Soon, the Federation would be on the march again. It would search for the living space to replace that devastation caused by the lost ambitions of forgotten families and factions.
For the time being, the Alpha and Beta grades indulged in almost barbarous hedonism but, all the while, they recruited and reserved their strength.
The grades below were drugged into submission. They performed the menial tasks and provided the cannon fodder f
or future adventures.
Strangely, these underprivileged masses learned to admire their place in the scheme of Federation affairs. History and the men who mould it have often succeeded in creating such a class. Propaganda, fear, controlled pleasure and war are near perfect instruments for nurturing a slave mentality.
Inevitably, there were aberrants. These were silenced by law, by torture or by death.
Death had brought Rowena and Pi Grant together. It was the only thing that would separate them and it would come sooner rather than later.
Meanwhile, there was life. Rowena, determined to live it to the full, never ignored what she considered her duty towards her new family and she made every effort to control her son’s destiny.
She enrolled him in the military college that was fast gaining a reputation for excellence throughout the known Universe. It was the college where Pruth had once taught.
Kerr revealed an aptitude for languages and a love of mathematics .
The first skill surprised many, for he was considered a taciturn youth. The second, presumably, was a legacy from Rogue Avon’s defeated father. A gift from a lost generation that was useful in two essential fields—finance and gunnery.
It was the tradition that each student be partnered throughout his school life by a “Brother.” Kerr was linked with Amiyak, a fair-haired, studious boy who was the adopted son of Makarov, the Principal of the Academy. Amiyak’s rheumy eyes put Rowena in mind of a sad dog.
Kerr began to wonder if there were any natural sons in the Federation. There were, but they were considered the backbone of Empire and were housed and schooled on Earth.
Although there is no greater enmity than that between members of the same family who have fallen out, blood was still considered a stronger indication of allegiance than anything else. In time, Kerr Avon, known as Grant, would unravel that paradox.
With the quiescence of peace and the momentarily stagnant ambition of his Federation benefactors, he was permitted a life of luxury and contentment. He learned from the best teachers and used the best equipment that Pi Grant could provide. He was being groomed, as were all the others, to be a part of the officer elite that would lead the Iron Guards and Death Squads in the future building of Empire.