by Doris Egan
"Their weapons problem might be insoluble by sorcery."
"I have every faith in your ability to come up with something."
"And I doubt if this Jack Lykon would be willing to put himself in our power once the situation was fully explained to him."
"If he's really Tolla, he'll do his duty. And he seems like a nice guy, too."
Ran was silent, and I stopped myself from pressing the matter. Finally he said, "Let me think this through."
I said, "Of course," and congratulated myself for not bringing up the fact that his consent was required to repay the obligation to Stereth. It would work better if I didn't mention it.
Then Ran said, "Theodora?" His voice had changed.
"When that fool was trying to shoot you why did you call for Stereth, and not for me?"
Oh, gods. I'd been afraid he would ask that. I didn't have a good answer.
"You know, Ran, everything happened very quickly. I don't know why I yelled for Stereth; maybe I thought there was a better chance of his being armed."
"You know I've been carrying a pistol everywhere since that business in Trade Square."
"I… guess I forgot. I wasn't thinking clearly."
He fell silent, not fully satisfied, but not pursuing it. I've given the matter a lot of thought since then, because I didn't understand it myself. Did I trust Stereth more than Ran? Not that I was aware of. Didn't I love Ran; didn't I know he would act to protect me if necessary? Didn't I know very well he was carrying a weapon? There's no higher professorial power to hand me the answers to this quiz, but I think that in the end, the simple fact was that when I needed a natural killer my mind went automatically to Stereth.
I was in no shape to analyze the matter so thoroughly at the time, however. Ran looked troubled, and I was troubled myself.
After a moment he said, "Did you know that tool Loden"—it was always "that-fool-Loden," as if it were one word—"was using an attraction spell? Of course, he probably called it a love spell."
"You're joking."
"It was in his perfume. He was drenched with it. I had to suffer through the stink when we dragged him down to the hut."
It would in fact stink to Ran, if it was designed to attract females, which I assume from Loden's reputation is what he would ask for. Except that I hadn't much liked the smell either, though perhaps "stink" was a little strong.
Ran said, "He must have bathed in it. You didn't… notice anything?"
"I assure you I did not."
"No sudden urge to make love on the floor of the hut?"
"Perhaps he was given a hate potion by mistake. The only urge I felt was to knee him in the nuts, which I did."
"Interesting," he said, shifting from the husband to the professional sorcerer. "We'll have to analyze the situation when we have time."
I was about to suggest that barbarian genes might be different, but thought I'd pushed my luck enough with that topic.
No wonder he was uncomfortable. I'd spent my time hanging around with ne'er-do-wells armed with love potions, and then called on Stereth for rescue from the consequences of my visit. It wasn't surprising that my husband was a little miffed.
Only partly changing the subject, I said, "Stereth owed me a favor. For going to see the Tellysian ambassador."
"I see."
He was back to that stiff note, the same withdrawal I'd heard when I told him to go to Mira-Stoden.
Oh, hell. I'd just disgraced myself thoroughly, sliding around in the mud and bleeding all over my robes, from a situation I might have avoided with quicker thinking—since if I'd dumped Loden's IOUs back in the desk before I hid, they never would have bothered to haul down the bed. And it wasn't as if I'd needed the IOUs, the case was never going to court. Ran and I could have just told Lord Porath the story, and let him take it from there.
We may as well finish peeling the scab off any remnants of dignity and admit the whole thing.
"Ran, I'm scared."
He looked startled. "Loden and his friend are quite definitely out of the way, my love. Stereth and I made sure—"
"No, I'm scared of the idea of having a baby. I know I'm supposed to be some kind of rock-solid matriarch, passing the genetic torch down to the next stepful of Cormal-lons, but I keep—" I paused.
"Keep what?" His voice was quiet.
"I keep thinking I'm going to die. I keep having these dreams. I just find that, whenever I imagine having a child… I keep seeing him brought up posthumously."
"You never said anything."
"I'm supposed to be undeterred by this stuff, aren't I? Go bravely ahead and do my duty, count not the cost—"
"Theodora—"
"But fond though I am of your family, dying wasn't on my list of things to do when I came back with you."
"Theodora, we take intuition seriously around here. Why didn't you tell me this?"
I was silent. Finally, I said, "How do I know how much is intuition and how much is nerves?"
He sighed. Then he put an arm around my shoulder. "I suppose we could go to one of these outplanet medical clinics and inquire."
Have you lost respect for me? Come on, Theodora, go for two tough questions in a row. "Ran?"
"What?"
"What were you and Stereth doing out at Moros' house?" Chicken. Buck-buck.
"Oh! I got your message. I decided to call Stereth to see if he thought anybody else knew where Moros had lived, and how long they'd known. If the place was cleaned out, you know, there was hardly any point in going. While we were talking, I mentioned I was joining you there. It was his idea to come alpng."
I grinned. "Stereth doesn't wait to be asked."
"Lucky for us both he doesn't. At least in this case." Then he smiled. "So this is why you've been going around even more tymon-crazy than you usually are."
"Perhaps you should rephrase that, my husband."
"Sim will be relieved," he said, ignoring my suggestion. "I couldn't give him any indication as to what troubles you might be getting yourself into. Now I can tell him to relax and take his holiday. He's straining to go to the Lavender Palace, you know."
"You mean he actually converses on topics other than food?"
"I've known Sim for years. It takes him a while to lose his natural reserve."
"Ah. I'll look forward to chats with him, twenty years down the line."
I looked forward to seeing him off to the Lavender Palace, too—after a prolonged period of bedrest on his part.
I decided to wait for the opportune moment to fill Ran in on that escapade.
And so we sat there, waiting for the carriage, tucked up against each other like two winter birds. He must have had some idea what was on my mind because at one point he kissed the shoulder of my messy robe and said, "Come on. Don't worry about it."
I heard the faint sound of carriage wheels, and touched a finger to my cheek, checking for any dirt we'd missed. The healer had asked me whether I had any sensation in certain parts of my face; now the question seemed full of sinister implications. I touched my left cheek again. "Ran, I can't feel anything on my face when I touch it! The whole texture of the skin feels strange."
He said, "Theodora, you're touching the bandage."
Oh. I was glad Stereth wasn't around to have witnessed that.
"Here's the carriage," he said, and a minute later he was helping me to climb in.
Look, when it comes to adventure I do the best I can. Some people are born to dazzle rooms with panther-grace after receiving the plaudits of the crowds. Some people are born to wear sensible shoes, and I'm one of them. After this encounter, I spent a few days at home, taking it easy and being pleasantly spoiled by Ran and Kylla. I had time to consider that a clear-thinking individual might have been more on top of the Loden situation if he or she had stopped to think how quickly those hired thugs in the market had swung into action—only a couple of hours after we gave Loden a description of Moros.
I also had time to think about Loden's, well, imp
otent perfume; probably he'd gotten it from Moros. Ran had seemed to feel it was the genuine article. Why then had I looked upon it with such justifiable contempt? Here are some of the mitigating factors I came up with:
(1) I'm a barbarian; what the effects of this heritage may be in terms of magic has never been thoroughly studied, but at its most physically mundane I don't believe my sense of smell is equal to a native Ivoran's; (2) my nose had been operating at a deficit ever since the Night of Cats; and (3) Loden, like many people, was ignorant of how an attraction spell works. It's a cheat, a bit of pure deceit that produces an array of physical symptoms which, in the right circumstances, convince the victim he (or she) is in the grip of sexual fever. When what they're really in the grip of is a list of medically determined effects, checked off coldly by the sorcerer-chef: Raised heartbeat (check one); dry mouth (check one); sweaty palms… Statistically, a good attraction spell will work about eighty-five percent of the time. The other fifteen percent are people who through circumstance or sheer eccentricity can divorce their symptoms from what they've been led to believe is happening to them.
Just as a hypothetical example, I might point out that somebody who considers herself in danger of immediate murder has reason enough for a raised heartbeat and sweaty palms without ascribing them to any other source. True, there are a few symptoms caused by an attraction spell that are not on the list of, say, a fear spell—but again, somebody in immediate danger of death is going to have their mind on other things.
Loden was an idiot to have tried it. But then, as I think we've all agreed by now, Loden was an idiot.
Several days later found me waiting nervously in the courtyard of Cormallon itself. I paced the length of the pool, past the columns, turned and paced again. For the sake of his sanity, Ran had left me alone and gone into the study.
Jack Lykon was upstairs, running his genetic scenarios on a locked Net terminal. Jack Lykon Cormallon, if you want to be technical about it; his adoption had taken place the day before yesterday. Papers were filed with the Telly-sian embassy detailing his voluntary agreement to place himself under House authority, and absolving the embassy and any Tellysian group or organization from any responsibility in the event of his death or disappearance.
Jack had been very nice about it, actually. "Don't be silly," he'd said, when I apologized for what we were putting him through. "I can't wait to get my hands on you, Theodora. That is to say, on your data."
"You won't be able to share it with anyone," I pointed out.
Jack grinned. He seemed none the worse for being the focus of an eight-hour, three-sorcerer spell that observers had been barred from, but which had left a very strange odor all through the top floor corridor. "Knowing the facts myself comes first; sharing is a distant second, I'm afraid."
"Hmm. No wonder you don't mind being a Cormallon."
He'd been running Net scenarios all day and night. By now he must have hundreds. He hadn't said it would take this long.
I'd been pacing, dinnerless, straight into the evening, when he appeared at the door to the dining room.
"Theo?"
I went straight to him. "What? Tell me."
He ran a hand through his sparse brown hair. His eyes were deeply lined, his casually tasteful Tellysian jacket long since discarded, his shirt rumpled and stained. "I asked— God, I'm thirsty." His voice had come out as a croak. He stared around at the dining room as though at a foreign land, then picked up a carafe of water from a sideboard and drank directly from it. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "I asked your husband to join us," he said, more firmly.
"I can't wait. Tell me now."
"It's not the kind of thing you can boil down to a sentence—"
Ran entered the other end of the hall. He glanced at a bottle of Ducort on a rack by the entrance, evidently wondering if fortification would shortly be necessary. Then he walked down the length of the sideboard, took in my state at a glance, turned to Lykon and said, "Jack?"
"Can we sit?" asked Jack.
Ran motioned toward some scattered pillows by a corner of the dining table. We sat.
Jack said, "First you have to understand that we're dealing with a lot of unknowns here. One specimen does not a statistic make. I had to tag a lot of variables with question marks, so I'm not speaking with a high level of confidence in anything I say."
He looked at Ran as though wondering how a sorcerer would take this kind of talk. The funny thing is, that's exactly how sorcerers do talk. He peered uncertainly into Ran's eyes. "Do you see the point I'm trying to make?"
"I do indeed, Mr. Lykon. You're being very clear. Please continue."
"Uh, yeah. Anyway, I ran all kinds of simulations, using different guesses in different phases. They're educated guesses, based on what we know already, but they're still guesses. I haven't found anything that looks like a 'gene for sorcery,' by the way. I assume it's genetically based, but it's obviously more subtle than that. We'll have to dig harder."
"Why do you assume it's genetically based?" asked Ran calmly, while I tried not to bite through my tongue.
"Well, everything's genetically based, in the final sense," said Jack. The genalycist's version of the hand of destiny. "Anyway, that's not the question you two are interested in. It gets complicated here—"
"Are Ran and I the same species?" I cut in.
He looked pained. "Theodora, for your own sake, try to let me tell this my own way, or you'll only get half the story—"
"Can't you give me a yes/no? I'll listen to the whole story afterward; I promise."
"Nothing is ever that simple. The category of species is imposed by man—by our attempt to cut up the universe into pieces to better understand it. The categories were never really that hard and fast, though. We want yes/no, either/or, yin/yang, but it's all really a continuum even gender is a continuum. There are plenty of babies born each year whose sex isn't clear to the attending physician. They have to make something up on the spot, or the parents get upset, then all hell breaks loose twelve years down the road—"
"Jack, this is fascinating, but I need to know about my own kids here—"
"Theo, I'm trying to tell you why I'm not the oracle with the final answers."
"And I'm grasping for straws, Jack. Throw me a couple of uncertain hypotheses. Please."
He sighed heavily. "All right. The signs seem to indicate that you two can conceive."
Score one! I would have smiled, but I was waiting for the other shoes to drop. I say 'shoes,' because Jack was showing centipedelike tendencies.
He said, "As far as I can tell, my highest-probability guess is that the child would be a functional, viable being, with a strong chance of being sterile."
"What odds?" I said.
"Functional and viable? Seventy-two percent. Sterile, ninety-three percent. And I'm saying it with a confidence level of eighty-five, plus or minus five."
I turned to Ran, whose dark eyes had the slightly dazed look of someone who's been slapped but is trying to continue in proper social fashion. The Cormallon council must never hear about this. He took my hand.
"The functional and viable rating is based on out planet medical care being available at all times, as well as access to a proper environment for premature births. The odds drop substantially without those two factors."
I asked, "You think it'll be premature?"
He shifted uncomfortably on his pillow. "Not exactly. Well, yes, it probably would be. It gets complicated here because Theodora isn't a normal Pyrenese—"
"Whoa! Where did you get that idea?"
"Your genes say so, Theo. You've got a higher portion of tagged unknowns than is usual for a standard citizen. Not that that makes you a freak or anything; there are always a proportion of unknowns showing up in the general population. It keeps us boiling. You've got plenty of company, statistically, but it makes our job that much harder."
He wiped his face again and glanced around for the carafe. It was still on top of the sidebo
ard. He shrugged, giving it up for lost, and said, "I had to run a lot of extra scenarios. That's what took me so long. I was hoping to get a better run of luck somewhere along the way, but it didn't happen. The vast majority of combinations ended in death."
I said, slowly, "You said the fetus was viable…"
"Yeah. The fetus lives. You die. Eighty-nine percent of the time."
Ran's hand had frozen into something metallic. I said, "Why?"
"Incompatibilities between you and any offspring you would have with Ran. They're quite survival-oriented little packages, though; whenever the scenario ended in death, it was usually yours."
"Huh." I felt a slight tremor of hysteria somewhere down on the ocean floor. "It's good to know I'd be producing high-caliber individuals."
Ran said, with no emotion whatsoever, "You're not sure about this."
"I'm not sure of any of it. That's what I'm telling you. You wanted an expert opinion, and that's what you've got—an opinion." Jack let his professional facade crack by a millimeter. "I'm sorry, Theo. This isn't what I wanted to tell you."
I saw that his insistence on keeping this on a theoretical level, his clinging to the role of detached expert, was born of his own discomfort with making me unhappy. I said, "It's all right. We wanted the facts, as well as you could discern them."
"I'm sorry," he said again. He looked at a loss, as though any words beyond those two had deserted him.
I turned to my husband, "Ran?"
He still had that slapped look. His eyes focused on me slowly. I'd wanted a child, for what I thought of as the usual reasons; but Ran defined his identity around his family. I don't think it had really, seriously occurred to him that he wouldn't live the same traditional life everyone else in his family took for granted. That this particular branch of Cor-mallon would come to an abrupt breaking-off because he'd married me.
"Ran?" I asked, uncertainly.
We'd been speaking with Jack in Standard. Ran looked down at my hand, still in his own. He raised it and covered it with both his palms. "Beloved," he said, in Ivoran, "we will think of something."
Maybe we would. But I couldn't see any good answers anywhere on the horizon.