She watched a cube of basalt and a pyramid of marble step a pas de deux that surged and slowed in a tidal rhythm. They would approach one another with increasing speed, whirl in tight, fast orbits about one another, then withdraw gracefully to distant positions to revolve slowly about their common center before repeating the pattern. It went on for hours, until finally the two streaked directly toward one another and vanished in fiery mutual annihilation. There were many such dances.
She eavesdropped upon numberless conversations between shadowed titans, discussions of issues so abstract and complex that she could not make out even the edges of the controversy. As each tableau began, the voices of the Olympians were soft, their words were measured, and an air of sweet reason prevailed. Yet eventually those huge robed figures would begin to shout. At last they would fly into a rage and hurl themselves at one another, colliding with a clang that would shake a galaxy.
She watched a sequence of elaborately staged dramas that had a mythical feel: morality plays about courage and heroism, or suffering and endurance, or love and redemption. Though the actors were faceless shapes that barely mocked the forms of men, each had an inexpressible poignancy. It was as if stories Martin had read to her were being produced in the theater of her skull, for her sole entertainment. She could not interpret them, could not even think about them.
Behind it all, enveloping every instant of every scenario that played before her mind's eye, was a voice disconnected from all the rest. It whispered to her pleadingly, continuously, with an urgency to dwarf all the shouted words she had ever heard.
You must fight
You were born a warrior
You are the only hope
Though the visions of pirouetting abstractions, debates among Olympian forms, and foggily viewed morality playlets might someday depart from her memory, she knew, with the subconscious clarity and certainty that brooks no contradiction, that that voice and its whispered commands never would.
* * *
Althea did not come near to consciousness until the drugs shielding her from the pain of her injuries began to wane. When they finally failed, she broached the threshold with a thunderous cry, the protest of a great predator tested to its limits by an unprecedented trial of its strength. It shook Morelon House from roots to rafters.
For an eternal moment, pain was all she knew. She clamped her eyes shut and bore down against the flood of agony, pouring all her forces into the struggle to return her body to her command.
The pain refused to relent. It surged with every beat of her heart, unceasingly striving to reave her of all control over movement, thought, and awareness.
The endless whisper had told her that she must fight...but why? That she was born a warrior...but for what cause? That she was the only hope...but for what end?
Time enough for the rest of that stuff later. I will fight. Of course I will. It’s what I do.
She fought. She denied the automatic urge to flee from the pain, to hide in the recesses of the mind that nothing from outside can reach. She spurned the yearning for relief via narcotics and the loss of volition that would accompany it. She confronted her agony squarely, accepted it, embraced it, and made it part of her...a part that would, however grudgingly, bend to her will.
When she opened her eyes at last, there were a multitude of faces around her bed. Her parents, Martin, Charisse, Chuck, Patrice, Alvah, Barton, Nora, and Elyse formed the innermost ring.
“That hurt,” she gasped.
Elyse went at once to a nearby cabinet, searched briefly, and came back with a dermal infusor. Althea raised a hand with great effort, and Elyse drew back.
“No,” she whispered. “No more drugs. I have to fight.”
“What?” Elyse said.
“The pain,” Althea said. “I have to fight it down.” She struggled up onto an elbow, and a jolt lanced through her from her groin to the roof of her skull. She bore down and forced it back.
“There’s a nerve trunk that runs from the top of the womb up into the ventral abdomen and joins the spine,” she ground out. “It was badly abraded by the baby’s passage.”
“How do you know that?” Charisse said.
She scowled the question aside. Every breath brought a new siege of agony. “I have to learn to bear it, at least for now.”
“But why, love?” Martin said.
As her family looked on in wonder and terror, she swung her legs out from under the bedcovers, planted her feet on the floor, and struggled to stand. Her abdomen rebelled, sending forth a torrent of pain. She opened to it, absorbed it, and in so doing broke its power over her.
“Because the alternative is to remain drugged into unconsciousness.” She swallowed. “For the rest of my life.”
* * *
“No.”
“Martin,” she pleaded, “why not?”
He did not reply. He lay staring at the ceiling, as if he were alone in their bed. Althea slid across to him and slipped her arms around him.
It had taken three days of unceasing concentration and maximum effort, but at last she had gained the upper hand over the pain cascading through her. It was still there, but she had walled it off from her conscious mind, reduced it to a backdrop. Except for certain specific flexures of her body, she could function as she always had. The pain no longer impinged on her consciousness unless she willed it so.
The three weeks since then weighed far more heavily on her mind.
“Martin,” she said, “I am in control. You won’t hurt me. You won’t make me hurt myself. We can go back to our regular lives...well, except that I have to avoid some of my old exercise routines. But we can make love.” She forced down an ugly thought and swallowed through a dry throat. “Don’t you want to?”
He did not look at her. He remained silent.
—Don’t push him any harder, Al.
Why not, Grandpere?
—No good can come of it.
I don’t understand.
—And you’re better off for that. Trust me.
Althea’s willfulness surged high.
I don’t think so, Grandpere.
—Althea—
Later, maybe.
She terminated the internal dialogue with a snap of her will and pressed her husband to her. He did not react.
“Martin,” she murmured, “what if the pain never goes away?”
He looked at her with something akin to pity.
“And what if it does?” he said at last. “There’s no point to it any more.”
“Huh? What—”
“Good night, Althea.”
He broke the embrace, turned away from her, and did not speak again.
==
Chapter 19: September 12, 1310 A.H.
“How long has it been?” Nora Morelon said.
Barton Morelon continued to run the brush smoothly though Nora’s mane of chestnut hair. “Coming up on two years now.”
I could never have imagined that it would last two weeks, let alone two years.
“Have you seen her recently?”
He did not reply.
“Bart...” Nora turned and took the brush from his hand.
“It’s been a while, love.” He scowled. “The last time got me wondering if she wants to see any of us, ever again.”
Nora’s eyes filled with sorrow. “Charisse did a bad thing, didn’t she?”
It wasn’t just Charisse.
He suppressed the thought and merely nodded.
“Is there any possibility of getting them to reconcile with one another?”
He caught her face between his hands and caressed it. “Nora...”
She looked unswervingly into his eyes. He muttered “I don’t know,” broke the gazelock, and dropped backward onto their bed. It was all he could do to contain his regrets. He dared not speak of them even to his wife.
Nora rose from her vanity bench, looked down at him for a moment, and smiled wanly. After a moment she stretched out beside him and slid her arms
around him.
“You feel responsible,” she said. “Why?”
He stared at the ceiling, willing his thoughts to jell.
“For a long time,” he said at last, “I bought the wrong story. I let myself believe that Charisse’s meddling was the whole problem.” He turned to face his wife. “I’m afraid that’s not the case, love. It never was.”
“Then what is?”
If only I’d shown some spine...behaved like a man instead of a sheep...
If only I’d done for them what they did for me.
“Imagine if we were to suffer a really bad disappointment, love,” he said. “Imagine that you’d discontinued the Inconceivable, and we started trying for a baby, and nothing happened. Imagine that after a couple of years, we went to Tad Leschitsyn and got ourselves tested, and I turned up sterile. What would that change?”
“Change? Nothing,” she said. “If we can’t, we can’t. That’s a possibility every couple has to face.” She brushed his cross pendant with her fingertips, then raised them to his cheek. “Would it change something for you?”
“Not the least little thing, love,” he said at once. “We’d go on just as we are now. A little sadder, maybe. But not every man would react the same way.”
And not every clan matriarch.
Nora’s gaze sharpened. “I don’t like what I’m hearing, Bart.”
I don’t like it any better. “That’s the way it is, love.”
“You’ve known this for how long now?”
He started at the disapproval in her tone.
“Pretty much since she pulled stakes.”
“And you’ve done nothing about it?”
“Well, what would—”
“Clan scion is a position of some influence, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“Hmph.” She shot upright. “Maybe it’s not too late.”
“Nora—”
She rose from their bed. “Get up from there.” She stood with arms akimbo, assuming a matriarchally stern look. It was so out of place on her that he had to force down a laugh. Fortunately, he managed. He rose and confronted his wife.
“This nonsense ends today. Go downstairs,” she said, “get Althea on the radio, and tell her that you’re coming over right now.”
“But—”
“Do it.”
He shivered briefly. “Are you really going to—”
She went to their closet, pulled out the gunbelt he’d given her for their fifth anniversary, and fastened it around her. It hung fetchingly from her hips. “In her famous phrase, you betcha.” She snatched her needler from the top of her dresser, glanced at the needle register and the charge state, and jammed it into the holster with a sharp thrust. “She’s coming home today, like it or not. And you can tell her so.”
* * *
Martin Forrestal was laboring indifferently over an autotiller fuel pump and wondering why he could no longer concentrate as he once had, when the door to his workshop crashed open with a report that foretold carpentry to come. He spun in his seat to find Nora Morelon, wearing a gunbelt and an unprecedented look of fury and striding toward him.
“Nora—”
She backhanded him across the face. The force of the blow hurled him to the floor. His workbench seat overturned and lay on its side, casters spinning uselessly in the air.
He put a hand to his cheek and stared up at the petite young woman, uncomprehending.
“What—”
“You fucking moron,” she hissed. “You useless, dickless, conscienceless piece of shit. You’re the reason Althea left us!”
He gaped at her.
“Do you speak the same language as the rest of us, you moral imbecile? Do you remember putting a ring on Althea’s hand, hearing Charisse say ‘For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, till death do you part,’ and the two of you saying ‘We do?’ I remember it if you don’t. Or was that your evil twin?”
He could not speak. Even if the right words had come to him, he could not have replied into the face of her anger.
“But one disappointment put all of that in the recycler, didn’t it, Martin? One little setback that millions of couples have faced since time began, and suddenly your wedding oath is null and void? Your obligations to your wife go to zero because she can’t give you children?” She bared her teeth. “Tell me how I’m wrong, you cretin. Tell me about the get-out-of-marriage-free card you had in your back pocket for that occasion. I dare you!”
Shame swallowed him as he stared up at her. Since Althea’s departure, he had not allowed himself to think of her for as much as ten seconds at a time.
Nora drew her needler with a speed and fluidity that would have done credit to a gunfighter of many decades.
“Get up from there,” she grated. “You and I are going up to your room.”
“Why—”
“Shut up.” The needler was leveled at his chest. “You’re going to mend your marriage today. You’re not costing this clan any more members or causing it any more problems.”
He rose uncertainly. Nora’s aim remained rock steady on his breastbone.
“What’s that gun loaded with?” he croaked.
She bared her teeth again. “Give me an instant’s trouble, try my patience in the least little way, and you’ll find out. Boy oh boy, will you find out.”
* * *
When the doorbell rang, Althea dragged herself reluctantly to her cottage’s front door, admitted Barton, and gestured for him to follow her to her office. She resumed her seat at her desk, shoved her computer monitor and keyboard to one side, waited as Barton settled into her guest chair, leaned back and steepled her fingers.
“You said this couldn’t wait.”
He nodded. “It can’t. I have it on the highest imaginable authority.”
She peered at him. “Who?”
He chuckled mirthlessly. “My wife.”
“Ah.”
Althea had seen unhappiness before, but Barton wore a version new to her. He looked as if he were about to confess to a heinous crime.
“It’s basically like this,” he said. “I have to convince you to come back to Morelon House with me. I’m supposed to use all my powers of persuasion, up to and including my nonexistent charm. If I fail, Nora will rip my guts out with her fingernails and use them to plug up the drafts in the hearthroom.” He looked crestfallen. “She promised.”
Althea’s mouth fell open. Despite the melancholy she’d endured since her self-imposed exile, she could not help but laugh. It infected Barton as well.
When they ran down, she said “And what’s the oh-so-formidable Nora Fitzpatrick Morelon doing while you’re here trying to reason with me?”
“Althea,” he said, “it might be better if you didn’t know.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “But I want to know, Bart.”
“So did I,” he said. “So I said so. And she told me. But I’m not happier for it.”
She opened her mouth, closed it without speaking, and turned away to stare out the window. She struggled to keep her mind off Martin or the occasion of their parting.
“Al,” Barton said, “how’s the pain?”
Without looking at him, she said “It’s still there. I keep it in check.”
“How?”
She shrugged. “By refusing it my attention. By not permitting it to affect me.”
“Are you able to work?”
She spread her arms to encompass her desk, her computer, and the file cabinets she still could not manage to obviate. “Does it look as if I’ve been playing games? I broke the billion-deka mark eight months ago. In paper assets, anyway. Rothbard alone knows what I’d net if I were to liquidate.”
“What about the spaceplane?”
“Gathering dust and cobwebs.”
“Oh.”
They sat in silence for a long moment.
“I can’t imagine that you’re happy about all this
,” Bart said.
She shrugged again. “I don’t let myself think about it.”
He nodded. “I know how that works. I did a lot of not thinking about it before I married Nora. About a lot of things, too.”
She snorted. “Have you kept in touch with your old clan?”
“I have,” he said. “Things are a lot better over there now. Keeping Dad gainfully occupied with something other than his plots seems to have done Clan Kramnik a lot of good, to say nothing of the money.”
“You’re not going back, I trust?”
He scowled. “Not a chance. I’m a Morelon now.” The scowl vanished as he leaned forward and fixed her with a look of assessment. “What are you?”
The question stopped her breath in her chest. She flattened her palms against the surface of her desk and leaned toward him.
“What,” she said slowly, “gives you the right to ask me that?”
His gaze hardened, and she sat back once more.
“Seven years ago,” Barton said, “you came to Kramnik House with a proposal of marriage. Shortly after that, you rescued me from imprisonment at my father’s hands, brought me to Morelon House, brushed Charisse aside, found me a room and some changes of clothes, and told me to make myself at home. And shortly after that, you co-officiated at my wedding to your cousin. We are kindred, Althea, just as much as if we’d had the same parents. That gives me whatever rights I might need to try to repair a rift in my family. Today or any other day.”
He rose and glared down at her.
“I know I can’t compel you to come with me. I’ve seen what you can do. I’d have to be an idiot to match my physical prowess against yours.” His eyes softened. “Anyway, that’s not my style. So I won’t try to command your cooperation. But that’s not my style either. All I can do is ask. Plead, really.”
He extended his hands in supplication.
“Come home to your family, Al. We miss you. All of us. Martin, too. Will you please give him a chance to show you? Is the love you remember enough to move you, or does your clan scion have to get on his knees and beg?”
Althea rose, circled her desk, wrapped her arms around Barton Morelon, buried her face against his shoulder, and released a flood of tears.
Freedom's Scion (Spooner Federation Saga Book 2) Page 19