“What now?” asked Six in a long-suffering voice.
“I was just imagining what my family will say.”
“No prizes for that. They will fall over themselves to pick out the right-sized rexelene block to set me in.”
“That’s just it! I don’t think that they will! You see, on Coriolis a woman is revered for the number of children she has, and her consort …” Diva stumbled over the word, having suddenly realized something, “… her consort is awarded honours correspondingly. I don’t think anybody has ever had more than twenty, so I guess that this might make you one of the most important people on Coriolis!”
“And why should that bother me – it isn’t as if we are married, thank Almagest!” Then he caught sight of her face. “What? What’s wrong? Have I missed something? Did something change while I was inside enjoying having long needles stuck into unmentionable parts of me?”
“Err …” She bit her bottom lip.
Six narrowed his eyes. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Diva took a deep breath. “I forgot. That is … I didn’t really think about it until just now.”
“Didn’t think about what? Why do I get the distinct feeling I am not going to like this?”
Diva hesitated, showing a most uncharacteristic reluctance to speak. “You see … oh Lumina!” She drummed her fingers nervously against the table next to her. “You see, on Coriolis we don’t need a marriage ceremony. You are considered married when you … when you have a consensual child with somebody.”
“WHAT??!!”
“I said, you are considered married—”
“I heard what you said. Very clearly. You implied that we just got married.”
“That is one way of thinking about it, certainly.”
“And what other way is there, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Well – we would only really be married on Coriolis.”
“Very comforting. Diva, I could strangle you with my own hands right now.”
Diva took a step back. “No need to take it like that. I forgot!”
“You forgot!” He grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a little shake. “Forgot? How can you accidentally forget that you are marrying somebody?”
She wriggled out from his grasp. “There is no need to take it like that, Six. Most men would be delighted to marry me.”
“I am not ‘most men’. And since you spent the greater part of last year trying to avoid me like the plague, lady ‘I-would-never-have-a-relationship-with-a-backward-Kwaidian’, I think you have a lot of cheek!”
She stood up straight. “We won’t be properly married,” she said.
“No, I’ll just be your consort, I suppose!”
“Exactly!”
Six stared at her. “Fine!” he snapped. “Glad to have been of service.”
“No need to snap at me.”
“Just try to keep me out of the Rexelene Museum, will you. Whatever.” He turned away, disgusted, and strode out of the chamber, muttering under his breath about turning round for a moment and being attacked by backswampers.
Diva gazed after him and then shrugged. Trust a Kwaidian to make a big fuss about nothing, she thought. Then she followed him out of the chamber.
The man who contrived children was left quite alone again, to tender to his tiny dependents. He felt a wash of relief. He was really much happier on his own. He found visits in general very tiring, and the last two visitors in particular had left him absolutely exhausted.
WHEN THEY MET up with Grace again, outside the complex, both Six and Diva were very quiet. The Sellite girl looked curiously from one to the other and then put both hands on her hips. “Well?” she said, “What on Almagest has happened to you two? You look like you lost an emerald and found a pebble.”
Six jerked his thumb in Diva’s direction. “Ask her,” he said. “Ask my dearly beloved wife-to-be.”
“Excuse me?” Grace’s jaw dropped. “Wife?”
“Just a technicality, Grace,” said Diva. “Nothing to worry about.”
Six gave a harsh laugh. “Hah! Nothing for you to worry about, at any rate.”
“You are blowing this up out of all proportion, Six.” Diva explained what had happened, how she had been able to save the last fifty oocytes.
Grace hugged her friend, knowing how heartbroken Diva had been to have all her genetic material ripped out, to know herself infertile. “But, Diva – that is fantastic news! You have been able to have your own children after all! And fifty! That is the best news I have heard in a long time! And with Six, that is … that is … awesome!”
“It certainly awed me! She just happened to forget that it would mean we were married,” Six grunted.
“”Yes, Six, but what is it to you?” Grace asked. “You didn’t have anybody else in mind to marry, did you?”
“That is not the point. She tricked me into it.”
“I so did not! I forgot!”
“Very convenient memory, that. You should put it in a Petri dish and grow it. You would make a fortune.”
“So where will the children grow up?” asked Grace, trying to change the subject.
“The head physician tells us that they will have to stay on Xiantha – at least until they are of age. I suppose they will go to foster homes here, like the rest of the donor children do.”
That answered one of Grace’s questions. “Good. Because although I think you would make a great mother, Diva, I can’t quite see you changing nappies!”
“Change nappies?” Diva looked aghast. “That’s what nannies are for, isn’t it?”
Six gave her a long look of disbelief, and then shook his head. “What do you think people who haven’t got nannies do, your royal stateliness?” he asked.
“How should I know?” Diva tried to toss back her hair, forgetting that it was now shorter and spikier and rather greener, although that was growing out little by little. She looked more aristocratic than ever at that moment and Six felt a strong desire to shake her until her perfect white teeth rattled together. “I suppose they get their mothers to do that sort of thing. Anyway, the functionary said that the babies would be given out to Xianthan families. We can visit. They won’t need their nappies changing over a visit. Will they?” she ended, rather doubtfully.
Grace giggled, feeling that Six might well explode at any moment. She couldn’t help but feel for him. Diva seemed to be taking the whole thing as if she were ordering a Coriolan Ceremonious Robe. Poor Six!
“And will you really be considered a married couple on Coriolis?” she asked, and then thought of something. “Hey, Diva! That means that your father will have to recognize you again. If he disowned you for being sterile he can hardly do the same if you give him 50 grandchildren, can he? You will be welcomed back into the fold!”
“Fiftyfold!” said Six. Then he gave a sort of snort and looked away. This whole thing was ruining his nerves.
“Yes, I suppose I will. Now that I am going to have consensual children—”
“We.”
“What was that, Six?”
“I said, we.”
“We what?”
“And I am not using the royal we. You and I. Two people. There are two people who are going to have children. You and me. Got it?” He grit his teeth.
“Yes, of course I have. I don’t quite see your point, but still …” Diva wrinkled her brow and thought. “Where was I? Oh yes. Now that I am going to have children I suppose you are right. The ruling class on Coriolis will have to accept me. Although my mother already had, you know.”
“And what about Six?”
“What about him? Oh! —Well, they will have to accept him too. On Coriolis the person who is consort to the daughter of the Leading Elder is given a palace, and considered heir to the meritocracy.”
Six, who had perked up noticeably at the mention of a palace, deflated again. “I don’t want to run Coriolis!”
“Nobody said you could, did they?”
; “Yes. You just did.”
“I wish you would listen properly, Six. I said ‘considered’. In this particular case, I would be the natural person to take over the meritocracy, and after me, one of my children. My mother has already broken that particular taboo. You would still be a Kwaidian no-name, although they would have to accept your legitimate rights.”
“Rights? I have rights?” This was sounding better.
Diva thought about it. “Well, not really, not in your case, no. But they can’t throw you to the Tattula cats – unless I repudiate you twice of course. You have the palace. And I think you get an honour guard of some twenty men. But you would have to pay for those yourself, naturally, although you might get a small stipend.”
Six stiffened. “It seems to me that very little has changed.”
“Of course nothing has changed. We will just have some children in common, that’s all. I really don’t know why you are making all this fuss about it.”
“I feel as if I have been hit over the head with a block of magmite,” groused Six.
“You were keen enough to have a relationship last year, nomus!” snapped Diva.
Six’s eyes popped. “And what part of what happened today would you classify as a relationship, your worshipfulness?”
“Well, du-urr? Having children together?”
“That is not exactly the relationship I was envisaging.”
She grinned. “Nothing is perfect, Kwaidian!”
“If we are married I demand my marital rights!”
“Don’t be ridiculous! Under Coriolan law you don’t have any.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me? So we go on just as we were?”
“Of course not! We are married! We will have equal rights over the children.”
“On Kwaide women don’t have equal rights. A wife becomes the property of her husband!”
“Yes. Well. Kwaide! Tschkkk!” Diva rolled her eyes. “That’s why we had a revolution, remember?”
Six stood up. “I can see this is getting us nowhere,” he told them both gloomily. “Let me know when things change. I’ll be with my canth. I have the distinct feeling it understands me better.”
“Men!” said Diva to Grace. “The least little thing puts them out!”
Chapter 12
SINCE SHE HATED being late, Grace took care to be on time the next morning. She was shown to the same seat as the previous day, and spent the few minutes she was kept waiting running through her arguments again in her head. Although Six and Diva had both offered to accompany her, she had told them to wait with their canths some way outside the building. She wanted to try out her new-found independence on for size, to see if she was up to convincing some skeptical listeners. And she thought that there were one or two things that maybe her friends should be discussing right now.
She grinned to herself. She loved both Six and Diva, and could see them together, but she rather thought it might take them some time before they came to the same conclusion! Fifty children together! With the joined characters of their mother and father the system was in for quite an upheaval in fifteen or twenty years!
“If you would like to come this way?” The polite man in front of her was not the same one she had spoken to the previous day, but he was clearly waiting for her, so she got to her feet and followed him obediently along the passageway. Their shoes squeaked on the magmite tiling, and she thought of the canth waiting outside in the fresh air. How would its hooves sound on this floor?
At last they reached a small door at the end of the corridor, and she was ushered into the room. To her surprise, the Xianthan nodded and then withdrew, closing the door behind him.
“Hello, Grace! Not expecting me, I suppose?”
Grace stared. Instead of a Xianthan she saw that she was facing her own brother, Xenon 49, and Atheron. She immediately put her hand out behind her to feel for the door handle, but soft footsteps told her that they had not come alone to Xiantha. Her hands were pulled roughly behind her back, and a pair of prison cuffs were slipped over them.
Atheron’s soft voice began to speak to her. “We really couldn’t allow you to ruin the Donor Program a second time, you know. I think it was very short-sighted of you to think that we would. You have underestimated us. When it came to my notice that you were interfering with Sellite business here on Xiantha … it seemed, well, an opportunity almost to good to miss.”
Grace was very, very scared. She was wearing no orthogel bracelet, and Six and Diva would have no idea she was gone for several more hours. She thought of her canth. If they took her away from here it wouldn’t be able to move away from the building! At least they would give it food, she thought. At least it would have water. She closed her eyes, and told herself that she was all kinds of a fool! Why had she had to go and stick her nose in Sell business for a second time! How naïve she had been to think that they would not be watching what she did! She struggled against the cuffs, but knew that her chances of escape were nil.
“Wh-what are you going to do to me?”
Atheron smiled in his cloyingly convincing but icy cold way. “You have been a repeated thorn in my side, Grace. I think it is time for the thorn to be … shall we say … pulled out?”
“The Xianthans will not let you take me away like this!”
“No. You are most probably right. Which is why they are not going to see you. It seems that your interlocutor of yesterday was told that you had been most unfortunately struck down by an illness, and had to cancel all appointments for today. And the Xianthan who so kindly escorted you here is one of our own men. He will already be erasing all traces of your presence here this morning. So all we have to do is get you to one of the sleds, and … the job will be done! In no time at all we will have you up in one of our space traders.” He gave her another sweet and rather sad smile. “Once you are there it is rather up to us what happens to you, I am sure you will agree. Open hatches are so very dangerous in deep space, I hear. One never knows who will be foolish enough to ignore safety protocols and take short cuts! Most regrettable. And always fatal, of course.”
Grace went cold. And then colder. Her stomach churned at the thought of being thrown out of a hatch into empty space. She was so terrified that for a second her mind blanked out completely and she swayed on the spot.
The man behind her back moved past her momentarily, and she saw that he was a burly Xianthan, swathed in colours which she now knew he was unfit to be wearing. She kicked out at his legs, and saw with great satisfaction that he tumbled to the floor, blocking the area between her and Atheron and Xenon 49.
In a flash she was out of the door, and ducking down the corridor, back the way she had come, running for her life along the magmite floor, under the domed magmite roof which protected the whole complex from the lethal flare rays from Almagest. Behind her she heard them shouting, and then coming after her. Panic gave her a massive dose of adrenaline and she threw herself desperately down the hallways. She could hear that they were gaining on her, and although she knew that some of the remaining Xianthans – possibly all of them – would be loyal, she didn’t dare risk it by ducking into any of the rooms to either side of the corridor.
She clattered on, her hands uncomfortably fastened behind her back still, and with no very clear idea what she was to do.
Then she was out in the rexelene foyer of the building, and she could see Six and Diva with their two canths, tiny dots about half a kilometre away, far too far for help.
Suddenly a slight movement, a flash of gold, caught her eye, and she saw that her own canth had followed her up to the entrance. It was grazing lazily almost directly in front of the headquarters.
She hurtled through the double doors, calling for the equine urgently – clicking her tongue in the way the canth keeper had shown her. The canth reacted instantly, seeming to blend with the background as it leapt over towards her. She knew she had no chance with her hands behind her back, so she slid them down and stepped rapidly through them so that alth
ough her hands were still tied, they were now in front of her. The canth lowered its neck; she clambered on, grabbed at its mane with two desperate hands, and urged it to run.
But she was too late. It had taken too long. A burly hand had hold of her foot, and she was being tugged off. She gave a cry of despair, and screamed for Diva and Six to help her.
The canth was rolling its eyes, terrified of the men running up to it on all sides. It hesitated, and then snatched its head round at the hand on Grace’s foot and took a bite at it. There was a cry of pain, and the restricting influence vanished. The frenzied canth swirled around, again with its teeth bared, and the other men jumped back too.
Grace urged the animal to fly with all her mind and her body, and it finally obeyed her, heading off to the south as fast as it could go, thankfully leaving all the furore behind them, the attacking figures dwindling into the distance.
Grace found that her cheeks were smeared with tears. “Thank you,” she sobbed. “Oh, thank you!” The hoof beats of the canth drummed into the earth as they added more and more distance between them and their pursuers.
DIVA WAS IDLY contemplating the Donor Headquarters building in the distance when she saw somebody come hurtling out, with several figures in pursuit.
“Six? Look over there. Something is happening!”
Six strolled over. “What? What’s the matter?” Then he saw the movement in the distance, and strained his eyes to see what was going on. “That looks like Grace, but it can’t be … wait, it must be, because the palomino canth is going to her …”
He was interrupted by the scream for help, which traveled right down his spine and identified itself unmistakably as his friend’s voice before he had time to consciously think about it.
“—Grace is in trouble! Come on!” He called to his canth, and Diva followed suit. They leapt up into the saddles and galloped up to the figures around the door.
Ammonite Planets (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #1-3 Page 73