His hug tightened. “Your bulletins were lifesavers, from my point of view. I watched them over and over. Trying to read between the lines, then trying not to read between the lines…That last one, after his heart transplant—you looked so exhausted, but it was like the sun had come up in your face.” He smiled. “And the next one was from him, and then…it was all right.” All right for then, at least. But that unwanted preview of mortality and loss and helplessness had been part of what had turned his career toward Sergyar space, as soon as he could engineer it.
She’d known what he’d wanted to hear, she’d known what he’d needed to hear…her first private tightbeam had been sped on its way within a day of the disaster, before she’d even slept, as far as he’d been able to discern. For all the assurances, subtle and unsubtle, that he’d received from her before, that message and the ones that soon followed had finally driven home to him that she truly considered him not a Betanly tolerated caprice of her husband’s, but an equal partner, worthy of all consideration. He’d always been a little bit in love with her, as what men around Aral were not? It wasn’t that he was more in love with her after, either. Yet there had flowed in under his feet with those messages, almost unseen, a profound and unshakable trust which had given him a new place to stand, when they all met again. And from that had followed…well, the rest of his life, so far.
When I was alone and afraid, you comforted me. He turned up her face and kissed her properly for that, a mere decade-and-a-half late. She looked pleased, if bemused; he did not attempt to explain.
He was dressing before they returned to weekend plans. She rolled over, plucked her wristcom from the bedside table, called up her calendar, and frowned. “Ah, I was afraid of that. I have two afternoon meetings that will put a hole in anything out of town…booked ages ago. I must tell Ivy to guard my weekends better in future.”
He sat beside her with his own wristcom, and they compared calendars. The results were disheartening.
“Dinner and a conference here again, that night?” Cordelia suggested at last, pointing. “We could even have dinner here. In Ekaterin’s garden—that would be nice. As long as we don’t let anyone else know where to find us. At least we can leave room at Penney’s for his other customers.”
Cordelia had expressed some guilt when she’d learned that having Penney’s Place to themselves had been no accident, but a security compromise Jole had arranged. His argument that Penney didn’t suffer since he was paid for a full occupancy that he and Ma Penney didn’t actually have to serve had only made a small dent in this.
“I won’t be able to stay very late. I have an early lift-off the next morning.”
She nodded understanding and blocked out the time, with a note to her kitchen staff. A mental review of his tomorrow-morning’s schedule was not much motivation, consolation, or help for tearing himself away, but with a heroic effort that he suspected wouldn’t garner much sympathy even if there were someone he could complain to, he decamped into the Kayburg night.
Oliver had been gone on his upside rotation for only half a week, and Cordelia wondered how it was that she felt bored. Bored and restless. Drumming her fingers on the black glass of the comconsole desk in her personal office, she stared out into the rainy night of the back garden. Low, colored lights among the plantings and walkways made oddly cheerful accents in the dark blur.
It wasn’t as if she didn’t have plenty to do. Once she’d worked through the top layer of the day’s crises, there was always another layer, further down and more detailed. And a third one below that. The best camouflage for work-avoidance was more work? She contemplated the paradox, and decided, in all fairness, that it was just task-avoidance. One particular task, albeit with subheadings. Drat it, as her delightful daughter-in-law would say. She’d been thinking about this for months, years. Decades, in a sense. There was no reason for it to suddenly seem hard, here at the point of final fruition.
She called up her secured-tightbeam recording program and settled more firmly in her chair, straightening her shoulders and fixing a reassuring smile on her face.
“Hello, Gregor. This isn’t a crisis-call; I’m merely making it emperor’s-eyes-only because it contains personal elements, and also to be sure it gets to you promptly.” Because the next message out would go to Miles, and on the not-unlikely chance that her son and foster-son compared notes, Gregor should not be blindsided. “The first thing you should know is that I am planning to hand in my resignation as Vicereine of Sergyar within a year. Or so. So you’ll be wanting to keep your eyes open for a possible replacement. Or choice of replacements, since the list of those willing shall likely be a subset of those most able and suitable.” She paused the recording to mentally muster her own list of qualities most desirable in the person or persons who would be inheriting responsibility for her planet. People who wouldn’t screw up all the projects she’d started or had in progress—certainly nothing on Sergyar was finished. And yet, wasn’t part of turning over turning over just such choices of direction, as well? Starting with turning over to Gregor, which had first been done almost three decades ago when Aral had laid down the regency, to generally good effect, barring a few shakedown problems. Which she tried not to remember and hold against Gregor, maternally or otherwise. The grinding nightmare with that ugly plot of Vordrozda’s and Hessman’s had worked out all right in the end, after all. Not to mention the whole Hegen Hub near-disaster, argh. Both of which, possibly, might seem longer ago to Gregor than to her.
She shook her head ruefully, jotted down a written list of her bullet-points—thankfully not with real bullets these days—and drew lines through half of them. Then through a few more, till she had winnowed it to her top three concerns. There would be time later to discuss the details, after all. She restarted the recording and delivered them with the clipped efficiency she had honed through decades of reports. Then paused once more. Restarted.
“Which brings me to the reason for my resignation. My health continues excellent, by the way,” she added hastily, anticipating and with luck heading off any alarm her emperor might be feeling on that score. She could barely recall what all she had said to Gregor when sending the first message about Aral’s death, three years back. She could call it up from the files to refresh her memory, she supposed. If given a choice between that and sticking her hand in a campfire, she’d pick the fire, thanks. Focus, woman. “That being the case, I have decided now is the time to pursue a long-delayed wish of mine.”
In much the same terms as she’d first explained it to Oliver, she went over the history of the sequestered gametes, their legal status, their journey with her to Sergyar, and the techno-conception of Aurelia and her five still-frozen sisters. Six weeks old, Aurelia now was—Cordelia had visited the rep center again just last night—two weeks past the time she had promised herself to make this happy announcement. Historically, the standard for such news had been three months past conception, she understood. In part because so many early hopes could be dashed with early miscarriages, in part because—what had they called it?—quickening, that was it, was the first certain proof of progress, back in medieval times before reliable pregnancy tests. She still remembered that strange faint flutter in her lower belly with Miles, of, heavens, forty-four years ago now. For which quickening had been all too prescient a term. She smiled a little, then paused the recording to consider the place of Oliver’s potential sons in this report. Miles’s half-brothers, technically.