by David Weber
Since Harrington House was technically Grayson soil, and Honor tended to dress in her persona as Steadholder Harrington whenever she was officially “home,” she wasn’t in uniform tonight. But her father, for the first time since her childhood, was. Rather than the four golden pips of his pre-retirement rank, however, his collar bore two gold planets. A single broad gold band had been added to the three bands of a commander, and the unit patch on his left shoulder showed the Rod of Asclepius under the word “Bassingford.” In the newly reactivated Commodore Harrington’s case, both the staff itself and the single serpent were embroidered in gold rather than the silver of other Bassingford Medical Center shoulder flashes.
Which was rather the point of this evening’s festivities, she reflected. Her father hadn’t simply gone back onto active duty. Effective tomorrow, he was Bassingford’s one hundred and third commanding officer. Officially, that was because he’d been recalled by the Navy, and that was fair enough, because the Navy had wanted him back at Bassingford virtually from the day he retired and resigned his post as Head of Neurosurgery. In reality, though, it was the Yawata Strike which had returned him to active duty. He’d needed a few months to make up his mind. The process had begun shortly after the strike, but it had taken the Battle of Spindle and—especially—“Operation Raging Justice” to complete it. One thing was sadly obvious; if the Mandarins persisted in their current policies, Bassingford would need far more beds…most of which would be filled by Solarians. Alfred Harrington needed to be part of dealing with all those broken bodies and lives. That was what had finally pushed him back into uniform.
That and the need to do something healing rather than succumb to the part of him which had once been Sergeant Harrington, Royal Manticoran Marine Corps.
Now he smiled at his daughter, indicating the much shorter woman—no more than fifteen or sixteen centimeters taller than Allison Harrington—at his side. She had dark hair, ten or twelve centimeters longer than Honor had once worn her own, dark eyes, and a lively, mobile face. She, too, was in uniform with the Bassingford shoulder flash, although in her case, only the staff of the rod was in gold.
“Honor, this is Captain Sara Kate Lessem,” Alfred said. “Sara Kate, my daughter, Duchess Harrington. She’s—”
“Sara Kate!” Honor smiled broadly and enveloped the shorter woman in a hug.
“Ah, should I assume my introduction was a bit…superfluous?” her father asked after a moment while Hamish and Emily chuckled.
“Daddy, I’ve known Sara Kate for—what? Thirty T-years, Sara Kate?”
“I’m afraid it really has been about that long,” Captain Lessem replied with a smile. “It’s good to see you again, though. It’s been too long!”
“I’m sorry I missed the wedding,” Honor said, shaking her head. “I was…occupied at the time.”
“You mean you were off blowing things up again,” Captain Lessem observed.
“Well, yes, I suppose.” Honor smiled. “And how do you like being a respectable married woman?”
“Honor, it’s been three T-years now. How do you expect me to remember what it was like before? And speaking of respectable married women—?” Captain Lessem raised her eyebrows in Hamish and Emily’s direction, and Honor chuckled.
“Mom and Dad really did teach me better manners than that,” she said. “Sara Kate, this is my husband, Hamish Alexander-Harrington, and this is my wife, Emily Alexander-Harrington. Both of them have long, tiresome lists of titles we’ll leave to one side right now. Hamish, Emily, this is Sara Kate Lessem. I first met her when she was Sara Kate Tillman.”
“They have long tiresome lists of titles?” Captain Lessem shook her head, then shook hands with both of Honor’s spouses.
“At least half of which come from our association with her,” Emily told her with a smile. “May I ask how you and Honor come to know one another?”
“Uncle Jacques introduced us,” Honor replied before Lessem could, and it was her father’s eyebrows turn to rise.
“Jacques introduced you?” he said. “Wait a minute. Would this have anything to do with those anachronisms of his?”
“Of course it does. Sara Kate’s another member of the Society. Her particular interest is in what they called ballroom dancing from the last couple of centuries Ante Diaspora. It’s not what most people do today. Actually, I like it a lot better. So, Sara Kate, you’re at Bassingford these days?”
“I am,” Lessem confirmed.
“She means she’s the Assistant Director and Head of Nursing and Physical Therapy,” Commodore Harrington put in.
“And I’ve had a lot more patients than I’d like since that business with Filareta.” Lessem’s expression was much less cheerful than it had been. “They may all be Sollies, but a broken body’s still a broken body.”
“I know,” Honor sighed. “And I hate it. If I could’ve avoided it—”
“If you could have avoided it, we’d be calling you God and lighting candles to you,” Lessem interrupted. “And if it had occurred to me that you were going to go off on a guilt trip, I never would’ve opened my mouth about it, either.”
“Oh, I like you, Captain Lessem!” Emily said enthusiastically. “Please! Kick her again!”
Lessem gave her a startled glance, then snorted in sudden understanding.
“Been brooding about it, has she?”
“Only sometimes,” Emily replied in the judicious tone of someone trying to be scrupulously fair. “Not more than every other time I see her.”
“Then consider her kicked,” Lessem promised.
“Oh, thank you both so much.” Honor rolled her eyes while Hamish and her father chuckled. “And you two aren’t helping this, you know,” she told the male component of the conversation severely.
“Not my responsibility to help when Captain Lessem and Emily are doing such a splendid job,” Hamish informed her. “Not that either of them’s likely to tell you anything I haven’t.”
“Acknowledged.” Honor nodded. “And I’ll try.”
“Good.” Lessem reached out to squeeze her upper arm gently. “That’s good, Honor.”
“I see Mistress Thorn’s minions are about ready to serve,” Hamish observed, looking back towards the ballroom. “Will you join us, Captain?”
“I’d be honored, My Lord.”
“On social occasions, it’s ‘Hamish,’ Captain.”
“Only if it’s also Sara Kate, My Lord,” Lessem replied a bit pointedly.
“Then would you join us…Sara Kate?”
“Thank you…Hamish.”
He smiled and offered her his arm while Honor took Emily’s hand and the four of them headed for the head table. Alfred looked around until he located Allison. As usual, she was at the center of a cluster of admirers—most of them male—and he headed across to rescue her and escort her to the same table.
She smiled happily as he swooped down upon her, ruthlessly exploiting his position as both husband and guest of honor, since the evening was the official announcement of his return to duty, and she tucked her hand into his elbow and squeezed gratefully as he led her away.
“I don’t know what you were thinking to leave me exposed that way.” Her tone was teasing, but there was an edge of seriousness to it. “My God, Alfred! You didn’t tell me we were inviting George Brockman!” She shuddered. “That man doesn’t have the faintest concept of what ‘monogamy’ means.”
“And if I’d thought for a moment that you weren’t perfectly capable of cutting him off at the knees—or at any other appropriate point on his anatomy—I’d have been there in an instant,” her husband assured her, and looked down at her with a faint twinkle. “Tell me with a straight face that you didn’t enjoy doing exactly that when—as I’m sure happened—he gave you the chance?”
“You may be able to throw me heartlessly to the wolves, but you can’t make me lie!” She lifted her nose with an audible sniff, then smiled wickedly. “I’m pretty sure the bleeding will stop in another hour o
r so.”
“Good for you!” Alfred laughed. “And while we’re talking about social lapses, were you aware Honor and Sara Kate Lessem—and Jacques, now that I think about it—all know one another?”
“Of course I was.” She looked up at him again with a devilish smile. “Dear me. Did I forget to mention that to you?”
“Out of consideration for your delicate condition, I will defer the proper response to that.”
“Oh, no, you won’t!” she told him pertly. “I’ve already had the peach preserves sent to our room.”
“You’re incorrigible,” he said, smothering a laugh.
“I don’t know why you and Honor keep saying that. I’m the most encouragable person I know!”
* * *
“It’s good to see him laughing again,” Emily Alexander-Harrington said quietly as her mother and father-in-law headed towards the table.
“Agreed,” Honor said, equally quietly. “And I think—”
She paused for a moment, then shook her head.
“You think what?” Emily pressed.
“Oh, it was just a passing thought.” Honor shook her head again, her expression sobering. “We’re all having a few of those at the moment, I think.”
“Yes, we are,” Emily agreed, but she gazed at Honor speculatively, and Honor made herself look back with tranquil eyes as she tasted the curiosity in Emily’s mind-glow. She also didn’t mention what had spawned that “passing thought.”
“Tell me, have you given any more thought to a brother or sister for Katherine and Raoul?” she asked instead.
“I have.” Emily nodded, although the question seemed to have sharpened the focus of that speculation Honor had tasted. “In fact, I have an appointment to discuss it with Dr. Illescue at Briarwood tomorrow afternoon, before I go back to White Haven.”
“Oh, good!” Honor beamed at her, bending over her chair to envelop her in a gentle hug. “I’m thinking about doing the same thing. Maybe this time we can time it even closer!”
“There’s only a month or so between the two we have, dear,” Emily pointed out drily. “What? You want to synchronise the deliveries to the same minute?”
“Well, if neither one of us is going to be in a position to do it the old fashioned way, we might as well take advantage of the opportunities we do have. Besides—” she straightened with a devilish smile “—twins do run in Mom’s family, you know!”
Emily laughed, and Honor’s smile turned more gentle. But then she straightened and looked at Hamish across Emily’s head. She swivelled her eyes to one side, to where Sandra Thurston, Emily’s nurse and constant companion, stood chatting with James MacGuiness while he kept an eagle eye on the evening’s festivities. Her gaze came back to Hamish, and he shrugged ever so slightly, letting an edge of worry show in his own blue eyes.
Her mouth tightened as she put that together with the undertone she’d tasted in Emily’s mind-glow, but then she drew a deep breath. She wasn’t going to borrow any trouble, she told herself firmly. Not tonight. And not when all three of them had so much to be grateful for, including—
“You’re right about how good it is to see Daddy laughing again,” she said, looking back down at Emily and squeezing her good hand gently, then looked at Captain Lessem. “I think it’s going to be good for him to get back to work, too.”
“Well, I can tell you the entire staff’s damned glad we’ve gotten him back to work,” Lessem said frankly. “Lord knows we need him as a surgeon, but we need him even more on the administrative side.” She shook her head. “I wasn’t joking about how many patients we’re going to have, Honor. It’s bad already, and if those idiots in Old Chicago don’t get their heads out of—” She paused, then grimaced. “Out of the sand, it’s going to get a lot worse.”
“I know. And we’re trying to hold it to a minimum,” Honor said, easing Nimitz off her shoulder to join Samantha in the double highchair between her and Hamish. “And speaking of trying to keep things to minimums, where’s Martin right now?”
“I suppose, given your august connections I can tell you,” Lessem said, smiling crookedly at Hamish. “At the moment, he’s got a task group with Vice Admiral Correia. I don’t know exactly where they were headed, but I know it’s part of Lacoön Two.”
“If he’s with Correia, he’s probably in Ajay or Prime about now,” Hamish said.
“And just between you and me, I’m a lot happier with the thought of his facing off with Sollies instead of Havenites,” the captain observed.
“So am I, for now, at least,” Honor. “I just wish we had a clue about some way to convince the Mandarins to at least pretend they have a single functional brain amongst them.”
“I seem to sense just a little acerbity?” Lessem teased.
“Just a bit, perhaps,” Honor admitted.
“Tell me, Doctor—Sara Kate, I mean,” Emily said. “Honor mentioned something about ‘ancient’ ballroom dancing. How did you ever get involved with that?”
“Blame it on my misspent youth,” Lessem replied with a chuckle. “That and the fact that my mother knew Honor’s Uncle Jacques when they were college students. He got her involved with the Society for Creative Anachronisms, and she’s a physical therapist, too. Dance is sort of a natural connection for therapists. Or it can be, anyway.”
“Fascinating.” Emily shook her head. “I’ve had quite a bit of experience with therapists myself, over the years, but for fairly obvious reasons, no one ever suggested dance to me. I can see its applicability, though, now that you’ve mentioned it.”
“Oh, I do it much more for pleasure than professionally,” Lessem said. “I even got Martin to take it up, and he’s remarkably good at it. To be honest, I’m looking for a new challenge for him.”
“You are, are you?” Honor smiled. “Well, in that case, you’ve come to the right place.”
“I have?” Lessem’s eyebrows arched, and Honor’s smile grew broader.
“Oh, yes. Tell me, are you familiar with the phrase ‘dosey doe’?”
George Benton Tower
City of Old Chicago
Old Earth
Sol System
“Sorry I’m late,” Permanent Senior Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs Innokentiy Kolokoltsov told his colleagues as he stepped through the conference room’s doors and they slid silently shut behind him. “I was ready to walk out of my office when one of my analysts—Stephanos Nye, I think I’ve mentioned him to you before—asked for an urgent appointment.”
“You could’ve screened to let us know you’d be delayed.” There was an unpleasant edge in Nathan MacArtney’s reply. Then again, they’d expected him almost an hour earlier.
“It’s not like we don’t all have plenty of ‘urgent appointments’ of our own we could be using our time on instead of sitting twiddling our thumbs,” MacArtney added.
Kolokoltsov frowned at him, his eyes cold. Of all the people in this room, MacArtney, as Permanent Senior Undersecretary of the Interior, bore the most direct responsibility for the unholy mess they faced. Kolokoltsov was prepared to admit he’d contributed his own fair share to the making of that mess, but none of the others could rival the string of disasters MacArtney and his ally, the late, unlamented Fleet Admiral Rajampet, had brewed up before Rajampet’s overdue suicide.
“I decided it wasn’t a very good idea to discuss highly sensitive matters over the com, Nathan,” he said after a moment. “We’ve got enough alligators biting us on the arse without letting anything…unfortunate get leaked.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Innokentiy!” Malachai Abruzzi, the Permanent Senior Undersecretary of Information, shook his head. “Our coms are the most secure in the entire galaxy!”
“Really?” Kolokoltsov crossed to the table, settled into the chair at its head, and turned it to face the others. “You’re confident of that, are you?”
“Of course I am!”
“Then perhaps you’d care to explain how the conversation you and Nathan had last
month about how to handle the Hypatian situation happened to hit the public boards in Hypatia last week?”
The silence in the deeply buried, heavily shielded conference room was as total as it was sudden, and he looked around his colleagues’ faces.
“What conversation was that?” Omosupe Quartermain asked after a long, still moment. MacArtney, in particular, had been on the Permanent Senior Undersecretary of Commerce’s personal shit list ever since the situation in the Fringe began deteriorating, since she and her colleague Agatha Wodoslawski, the Permanent Senior Undersecretary of the Treasury, were the ones trying desperately—and unsuccessfully—to cope with the catastrophic fiscal consequences.
“The one in which they considered how much simpler things would get if we dropped an intervention battalion or two into Hypatia to ‘encourage’ President Vangelis to call off the referendum. Something about shooting every tenth senator until they got it right, I believe.” Kolokoltsov’s voice was even colder than his eyes, and Wodoslawski joined him and Quartermain in glowering at Abruzzi and MacArtney.
“Oh, come on, Innokentiy!” Abruzzi protested. “That was never a serious policy suggestion!” He shook his head, expression disgusted. “For God’s sake, there are over two billion people on Hypatia, and another million-point-two in the Alexandria Belt! Someone really thinks a couple of intervention battalions are going to turn something like that around?! Give me a break!”
“Of course I don’t think that. That doesn’t mean someone else might not. And let’s be honest here, it wouldn’t be all that different from quite a few interventions OFS has pulled off out in the Protectorates, now would it? Did it ever occur to either of you that with feelings running as high as they are—and enough people on the other side primed to jump on any opening we give them—finding out that two of the ‘Mandarins’ are even talking about what would amount to a coup against a legally elected system president would play right into the hysteria mongers’ hands?”
“First, we were on a secure government com. Who the hell was going to hear about it?” Abruzzi demanded. “And, secondly, it should’ve been totally clear from the context of our entire conversation that we were venting our frustration, not recommending some kind of serious policy!”