by David Weber
She frowned, trying to parse the message’s officialese. On the face of it, it was simple enough, but there’d just about been time for news of Eloise Pritchart’s presence on Manticore—and of the bombshell she’d brought with her—to get back through the Junction to the people who’d sent it.
And that suggests it’s anything but ‘simple,’ she thought.
“All right, Chris,” she said finally, “I’ll see Mount Royal’s informed. At least they gave us a couple of hours’ warning before they jumped the queue.” She shrugged philosophically. “I know it’ll complicate things, but it shouldn’t make too many waves.”
“Ma’am, they’re supposed to tell us about this kind of thing a hell of a lot further ahead of time.” There was a lot of irritation in Dombroski’s voice. “They know that, and I doubt it just slipped their minds.”
“I’m aware of that, Chris,” Grimm said patiently, reminding herself of the strain under which he’d labored of late. “There’s no legal requirement for them to warn us, though, whatever the customary procedures may be.”
She gave him a pointed look. If he wanted some official protest, he wasn’t going to get one, however much she sympathized. She held his eyes until she was sure he’d gotten the message. Then she shrugged again.
“I admit it’s a violation of good manners,” she told him a bit wryly, “but we have to assume they have their reasons. And even if they don’t, Beowulf does happen to be a sovereign star nation.”
* * *
“I don’t understand why I have to be here,” Honor Alexander-Harrington complained. “I’ve been away from Trevor’s Star way too long already.” She crossed restlessly to a window, gazing out across the landscaped Mount Royal grounds. “Alice is on top of things, but I shudder to think about everything that can still go wrong on that front. And Hamish’s delightful phrase about excreting bricks is probably a pretty fair description of how ACS is going to react when Theisman starts bringing two or three hundred Republican podnoughts through the Junction!”
She heard the plaintiveness (it would never have done to call it petulance) in her own voice and grimaced. Alice Truman, the CO of Task Force 81, and Eighth Fleet’s second in command, was fully capable of handling things in her absence, and she knew it. In fact, if she’d wanted to be honest, what really ticked her off was that she’d far rather be at White Haven than here in Landing. Not that she had any intention of admitting that to a living soul.
“If I could tell you why you’re here, I would.” There was a certain tartness in Elizabeth Winton’s response. “Unfortunately, I’ve already told you everything I know. Beowulf’s specifically requested your presence, but their note’s remarkably short on details. It doesn’t say why. It doesn’t even say who. It just requests you be here to meet this ‘special embassy.’” The empress’s eyes narrowed. “If I were a betting woman, I’d be willing to wager it has something to do with relatives of yours, but that’s solely a guess, Honor.”
Honor grimaced again and rested both hands on the windowsill, leaning closer to the crystoplast. For her, that was the equivalent of fidgeting violently, and Nimitz crooned softly in her ear. She glanced at him, and his fingers flickered.
Honor looked at him, then, almost against her will, nodded. Ever since she’d learned her father’s treecat name, she’d thought it was even more appropriate than most. His roots truly did run deep, and he’d been the towering crown oak which had sheltered her more times than she could count during her childhood. But those roots of his, the thing which anchored him so securely against life’s tempests and undergirded so much of who and what he was, had been his sense of family. His awareness of who he was, where he came from, and everyone who’d gone before him.
That was the rich, sustaining soil from which he’d drawn his strength, and too much of it was gone now, seared away by the Yawata strike. His roots were beginning to recover, but healing was another matter entirely, one she was far from certain could ever be accomplished.
And Stinker’s right, too, she thought. It doesn’t make sense on any rational level, but what I really am is afraid. Afraid some message from Uncle Al or somebody else on Beowulf is going to start him bleeding all over again. Which is pretty stupid, when you come down to it. I sort of doubt the Board of Directors would’ve sent an official diplomatic mission—especially under such mysterious circumstances—just to deliver a family message. She shook her head. Am I really that fragile, myself? Running scared enough to jump at that kind of imagined shadow?
“You’re right,” she admitted out loud, leaning forward until her cheek touched the treecat’s nose. “And I guess it is pretty silly. It’s just—”
“Just that you’re human,” Elizabeth said quietly. Honor looked at her, and the empress shrugged, stroking Ariel’s ears as he lay across her lap. “I can read sign, too, you know. And I know you both well enough to follow the subtext.” She smiled sadly. “You’re not the only person who’s been hit hard enough to be a little illogical, either. Sometimes I think the smarter we are, the better we are at finding ways to hammer ourselves with imagined disasters ahead of time.”
“I don’t know about smarter,” Honor said, walking back across the room to the couch facing Elizabeth’s armchair. “I do think people with more imagination do a better job of putting themselves through the wringer, though.”
“All right, I’ll grant that.” Elizabeth’s smile turned mischievous. “But if I do, then you have to grant—”
A discreet, musical chime interrupted the empress, and she glanced at the small com unit on the coffee table between them.
“Ah, our mystery guests have arrived!” she said. “I wonder if Ellen and Spencer are going to let them join us without demanding some ID?”
She smiled whimsically, and Honor chuckled.
“I doubt it,” she said, shaking her head. “Ellen’s the only person I know who’s even more paranoid than Spencer. Now, at least.”
Her voice dropped and her eyes darkened with the last three words, and Elizabeth looked at her sharply. The empress started to open her mouth, but Honor shook her head quickly. The memory of Andrew LaFollet’s protectiveness—of all the years he’d served her and of how he’d died when she wasn’t even there—could still ambush her with no warning at all. But it was getting better, she told herself firmly. It was getting better.
“Anyway,” she went on in a determinedly brighter tone, “if one of them doesn’t insist on complete identification, you know the other one will. And Ellen isn’t about to let anyone into your presence without a complete briefing on—”
The door opened and Colonel Ellen Shemais, who’d headed the empress’ personal security detachment since she’d been a little girl, appeared as if the mention of her name had summoned her. Elizabeth looked at her, eyebrows raised, but the colonel only bowed to her.
“Your Majesty, Your Grace”—she angled her bow subtly in Honor’s direction—“the … special embassy from Beowulf.”
Elizabeth darted a surprised glance at Honor. All joking about their security personnel aside, the last thing the empress had expected was for the mysterious envoy to be shown straight into her presence. But Honor was just as perplexed as she was. All she could do was shrug at the empress, and the two of them stood, facing the small presence chamber’s door.
Perhaps a dozen people filed through it, and Honor felt her eyes go wide as she recognized most of them.
“Your Majesty,” Chyang Benton-Ramirez, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Beowulf Planetary Board of Directors, said with a small bow, the sort heads of state bestowed upon one another, “I apologize for the unorthodoxy of this visit, but there are a few things we need to discuss privately. Very privately.”
* * *
“I guess,” Elizabeth Winton said several hours later, in tones of profound understatement, “that I should be getting accust
omed to having foreign heads of state drop in with no warning, but I keep thinking we ought to get a little … I don’t know, regularity, I suppose, into this sort of thing.”
“Regularity?” William Alexander, Baron Grantville and Prime Minister of the Star Empire of Manticore, shook his head. “At this point, I’d settle for rationality! Does it occur to you, Your Majesty, that we’ve somehow stumbled through the looking glass?”
“It does seem that way,” she acknowledged. “I guess the real question is whether or not the good surprises outnumber the bad ones. I remember my father saying true leadership isn’t the ability to accomplish the things you plan on; it’s the ability to cope with the things you never in a thousand years saw coming.” She smiled a bit raggedly. “I seem to’ve been getting a lot of practice at that lately.”
“All of us have, Your Majesty,” Sir Anthony Langtry, the Star Empire’s Foreign Secretary, agreed wryly. “My people are supposed to have at least some vague notion of how other star nations are thinking—especially the ones we’re on good terms with!—but this blindsided us completely.”
“There’s been a lot of that happening lately, Tony.” Baroness Morncreek’s tone was desert dry. She and portly, fair-haired Bruce Wijenberg were the only other two members of Grantville’s Cabinet at the table. Hamish Alexander-Harrington had been present, but he and Sir Thomas Caparelli were currently closeted in a separate meeting with Gabriel Caddell-Markham and Justyná Miternowski-Zhyang.
Honor was no longer in Landing. She’d tried to stay, but Elizabeth and Hamish had put their joint foot firmly down. It had been a pretty near thing, even so, but the CEO of Beowulf’s support had turned the trick.
“Francine’s right, Tony.” Wijenberg nodded in wry agreement with Morncreek. “And I doubt you’re any more surprised than she and I are! The Exchequer and Ministry of Trade do have our own high-level contacts in Beowulf, and we never saw it coming, either.”
“Well, now that we’ve all expressed our surprise, what do we do about it?” Elizabeth asked.
“Your Majesty, forgive me, but that’s a no-brainer,” Grantville said. “If anyone at this table can think of anything more valuable than adding Beowulf to our list of ‘associated powers,’ please tell me now what it is!”
* * *
“Jacques!”
One of the things Honor always associated with her mother was her ability to take surprises in stride. There was nothing phlegmatic about Dr. Allison Harrington. Indeed, what most impressed people who met her were her wicked sense of humor (there was a reason the treecats called her “Laugh Dancer”) and enthusiasm. Her ability to focus with total intensity upon whatever her current project might be while still bounding effortlessly from one focus to another. She wasn’t erratic; she simply multitasked with a joyous abandon any AI could only have envied. Yet under all that zest, there was a calm balance, a treecat-like sense of composure which met even the most unexpected events without missing a beat.
But not today.
She took one look at the small, almond-eyed man who’d followed her daughter from the air limo in Harrington Steading’s colors, then flung herself into his arms, and her daughter could taste the incredible brilliance of her sorrow-burnished joy and astonishment.
“Hello, Alley.” Jacques Benton-Ramirez y Chou’s voice was husky as he hugged his twin sister fiercely. She put her head on his shoulder, and he nestled his cheek against her. “It’s good to see you, too.”
* * *
“I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner,” Jacques said some time later.
He looked down at the glass in his hand, then raised his head and leaned back. He sat with his sister, his brother-in-law, and his niece on the terrace overlooking the White Haven swimming pool. The sun was setting, and this late in the local year (and this far north) evenings were chill, even on Manticore. Wisps of steam rose from the heated pool, gleaming gold in the sun’s slanting rays, and he was grateful for his light jacket.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, looking into Alfred Harrington’s eyes, “but with so much pure hell breaking loose, I just couldn’t justify taking personal time.” He shook his head. “Al told me how bad it was, but I knew you and Alley had each other, and I figured, well …”
His voice trailed off into silence, and Alfred shrugged.
“We got your letters, Jacques. It’s not like we didn’t know you were thinking about us. And I figured you probably had your hands full back home. Besides”—his tone darkened, despite his very best efforts—“like you say, Alley and I had each other. And the twins. And Honor, once she got back from Nouveau Paris, for that matter.”
Jacques started to say something more, then stopped. It wouldn’t have done any good … and there was no need to actually say it, anyway. He and Alfred had been friends for almost eighty T-years. In fact, it had been Jacques who (much to the surprise of the rest of his all-too-prominent family) had introduced the towering young Manticoran naval officer, yeoman, and ex-Marine sergeant to his younger sister.
Technically, Jacques and Allison were fraternal twins, although he’d been born five T-years before she had. Their parents had filed for a single-birth pregnancy, only to discover they’d conceived twins. The second child could have been placed for adoption, of course, but they’d known they wanted a fourth child after they packed their eldest off to college and qualified for another. So the second embryo had been held in cryo until that day, and Jacques had ended up with a younger sister as well as a twin.
He’d always adored her, and he’d developed a fiercely protective streak where she was concerned as they both grew older. There’d been times when she’d cut him down to size with bloody efficiency for “interfering” in her life, but he hadn’t let that faze him. It wasn’t easy being a Benton-Ramirez y Chou, and he’d known how much Allison hated the thought of being squeezed and molded into one of the roles expected out of her family. He hadn’t wanted her forced to be anyone she didn’t want to be, and he’d been damned if he’d let anyone do that to her, even if his “nosiness” and “rock-headedness” had pissed her off upon occasion. And he’d been picky as hell about who he encouraged to get close to her, too. Yet he’d never had a single qualm about introducing her to Alfred Harrington … and he’d stood as Alfred’s best man at the wedding.
There’d never been a moment in all the years since when he’d felt the least trace of regret, either. Jacques Benton-Ramirez y Chou had two birth brothers, and he loved both of them (although Anthony could really piss him off; not all sibling rivalries died with the mere passage of time), yet the truth was that he was closer to Alfred than to either of them.
God, he looks awful, he thought now, and the frigging strike was three damned months ago! He must’ve been a basket case, right after it, and I let my goddamned “responsibilities” get in the way? Christ! Four fucking days. That’s how long it would have taken. I could have given him the four days to at least come out here and tell him in person that I—
Tell him what? The question cut Jacques off in mid-thought. He couldn’t have told Alfred one thing he didn’t already know. Couldn’t have accomplished anything Allison and his daughters and son couldn’t. Yet he knew he would never forgive himself for not somehow accomplishing something anyway.
“Daddy’s right, Uncle Jacques,” Honor said now. “We knew what you’d have said. You did say it, in your letters. And it’s not like we’re the only family—here or on Beowulf—who’s had to deal with the same thing. We’re … handling it as well as anyone else, I think.”
“I can see that,” Jacques replied. But he and Honor had always been close, and he knew she saw the question behind his lie. If you’re handling it that well, why are all of you still here and not home on Sphinx? He saw the awareness in her eyes, but she only looked back steadily.
“At any rate, I’m here now,” he said more briskly, “and it looks like I’m going to be able to stay for at least a while.”
“Really?” Allison looked across the lawn tab
le at him, and he heard the happiness in her voice. “How long?”
“At least—” he began, then paused and quirked an eyebrow at Honor. “What, another T-week or so, you think, Honor?”
“About that.” She smiled crookedly. “Maybe a day or two longer.”
Allison and Alfred both looked sharply at their elder daughter, and Honor tasted their emotions as they did the math. It didn’t take long; every Manticoran knew when the Solly attack was due to reach Manticore.
“Well, we’ll be delighted to have you,” Allison said after a moment. “On the other hand, if you’re going to be here that long, maybe we should go ahead and reopen Harrington House, Honor?” She gave her daughter a half-humorous, half-resigned look. “He wouldn’t be staying so long if it weren’t official, and if that’s the case, he probably needs to be close to Landing. Besides, your father and I have been imposing on your and Emily and Hamish’s hospitality long enough.”
“You know perfectly well that you haven’t been imposing on anyone, Mother. But if you want the house, of course you’re welcome to it. For that matter, I’ve told you before—it’s yours and Daddy’s now. I spend every minute I can here at White Haven, anyway, and it makes a lot more sense for you and the twins to use the house than for it to just stand empty.”
She shrugged, although “stand empty” was a highly inaccurate description of her Jason Bay mansion’s normal state. It was fully staffed at all times, whether she herself was in residence or not. For that matter, it was Harrington Steading’s embassy on Manticore, and its official functions never shut down. But the true reason she’d avoided the cliff-top mansion since coming home from Haven were all the memories it held of Andrew and Miranda LaFollet, of Farragut, and of Sergeant Jeremiah Tennard. Eventually she’d have to return, she knew, but she wasn’t prepared to confront all those reminders just yet.
And Mother knows that, too, she thought. But if she thinks Daddy’s healed enough to go home—as far as Landing, at least, even if he’s not ready for the freehold yet—that’s got to be a good sign. And she’s right, having Uncle Jacques along will help a lot. Besides, it really is more home for them than it is for me. That’d be true even if I hadn’t married Hamish and Emily, given how much time I spend completely off-world.