“I’m suggesting that you compromise your career,” she said. That she’d said your career, not our careers, was everything. Kit thought he’d understood the dynamic between them, and now he knew he was right. The corners of her mouth tugged down, and he could see for a moment what she’d looked like as a child, long before he met her.
“Okay,” he said. “My turn?”
She nodded.
“Here’s the first thing,” he said. “I’m not my father. And I’m not your mothers. I’m not going to make the decisions they made. You and Bakari are my first choice, every time. I’m not going to leave, even if it means cutting off a career path.”
“I just—”
He took her hand. “Hear me out?”
She nodded. The next tear, she ignored.
“I know this isn’t the perfect time,” he said. “But there’s never going to be a perfect time. There will always be something. Bakari’s development or my mother’s health or a conference we won’t be able to come back for or something. There’s always something.”
“Until Laconia decides to start another war to prove a point. Or the aliens kill us all.”
“I can’t control any of that,” Kit said. “All I can do is keep acting like the universe is going to keep existing and planning for a future in it. Nieuwestad is one-point-two g. It’s going to be hard on him, and us too. Jacobin-Black Combined Capital is a good company doing the kind of work we want to do, but that doesn’t mean we have to do it. We can break the contract and find something else. Or we can go and do the best we can. If we go, there are a lot of good programs for helping kids and babies with gravity transitions. And I’ll get up to go to the gym with you every day if you want. If we stay here, there are other jobs. We can do anything. But we’re going to be doing it together.”
Rohi’s eyes were red now, and she wicked the tears away with her napkin. “This is stupid.”
Kit took her hand. “You get scared when we talk about balancing the family and work, and it’s okay that you do. I get it, and I love you, and a good cry is just part of the way we talk about this stuff. And you never judge me when it’s my turn to be the weepy one.”
“I just don’t want to mess things up,” she said. “What if we mess things up for him?”
Kit stroked her knuckles with his thumb the way he did when she couldn’t sleep. “We will, though. No one’s perfect. Everyone’s carrying something that their parents would have done differently if they’d known. Or if they’d been better people. Or if things had just been different. That’s all right. It’s normal. Part of why I am what I am is all the bad choices my mom and dad made, and if they’d done differently, they’d still have made some mistakes somewhere along the line, and those would be part of me instead. They weren’t perfect, and we aren’t perfect.”
“He is, though,” Rohi said. “Bakari is.”
“He is, isn’t he?”
They were quiet for a little while. Jandol came out and offered to take their leftovers away. When Kit shook his head, the old man shrugged and puttered back to the kitchen.
Eventually, Rohi hauled in a breath, and when she sighed, she folded forward. When she spoke, her voice had lost its tightness. “All right. Thank you.”
“Don’t say ‘I’m sorry.’”
“I didn’t.”
“You were about to.”
She smiled, and he could see the storm had passed. “I was about to.”
He sucked up a mouthful of noodles and chewed. The lemongrass tasted real, and the noodles were soft and salty. If they’d gone a little cold, he didn’t care. Rohi sighed and relaxed into her chair.
After dinner, they walked home slowly. She took his hand, and he leaned against her. For a while, it was almost like they were courting again, only deeper. Richer. Fuller. This was the life that both of their parental groups had given up, and Kit didn’t understand any of them at all.
At the rooms, Giselle was sitting on the couch, spooling through entertainment newsfeeds on her handheld. As they came in, she lifted a finger to her lips and pointed toward the nursery.
“He fell asleep ten minutes ago,” she said. “Ate well. Shat out his bodyweight. Giggled, played, cried for fifteen seconds, and out.”
“Thank you, Mama,” Kit said, and Giselle stood up and wrapped him in her arms.
“It’s not for you,” she said, quietly enough that only he could hear. “I’m soaking in all the grandbaby I can while I have him. Storing up for winter.”
After she left, Rohi went to her office, walking softly to keep from waking the baby, and he sat at his own desk and pulled up his message queue.
He started the camera.
“Hey, Dad. I love you too. Thank you for coming close enough to send the message. I know how hard that can be. And I love you for it. Having a kid is the scariest thing I’ve ever done, and I love it. I love having a kid. I love being a dad.
“I know you and Mom didn’t have things go the way you’d have picked. But no matter what happened, I always knew you cared about me. I learned that from you. If that’s the only thing I manage to pass on, it’ll be worth it. It’s a great legacy. Seriously the best.”
He tried to think of something more, but exhaustion was seeping in at the corners of his brain, and he didn’t really know what else there was to say. He reviewed it, sent it, scrubbed his system the way he always did when he’d gotten something from the underground’s network, then showered and got ready for bed.
Rohi wasn’t there. He found her standing over the crib, looking down at the new little life they’d made together. Bakari’s soft, round belly rose and fell as he slept. Kit stood there with her and with him.
“He’s a strong little guy, isn’t he?” Rohi said.
“He is. And his parents love him.”
“Okay, then. Let’s go.”
Chapter Ten: Fayez
Planetary geology wasn’t the sort of degree people usually went into looking for a career as a kingmaker. There wasn’t a lot of crossover between freshman analysis of sedimentary patterns and having people vie for your influence over issues of life and death. Add in political sway over a galaxy-spanning empire, and the overlap was pretty narrow.
But without intending to, Fayez had stumbled into it.
He was floating in Lee’s private cabin with a bone-colored bulb of whiskey in one hand. It was a thick, peaty distillation that was too harsh for him when they were under thrust. A couple weeks on the float did something to deaden his taste buds, and so at times like this, it was perfect. Lee, Elvi’s second-in-command, was queuing up a message from home. Or, at least, from Laconia. Which despite having lived there for years, Fayez still didn’t think of as home.
“Here,” Lee said, pushing back from his station.
“Okay, who am I looking at?” Fayez said.
“His name is Galwan ud-Din,” Lee said. “He’s a senior researcher in extrapolative physics.”
“Right. So I’m not going to understand this at all, am I?”
“I told him to give you the educated layman’s version.”
The screen flipped to an image of a thin-faced man with a vast and well-trimmed beard and a collarless formal shirt. He nodded to the camera in not-quite-a-bow. “Thank you for your time, Dr. Sarkis. I want you to know how much I appreciate it.”
Since it was a recording, Fayez sighed.
“I wanted to share with you some thoughts my workgroup has put together. I think you will find them very promising,” the thin-faced man said, then visibly gathered himself. His expression settled into the thing Fayez expected on grade-school teachers who were trying to be approachable. “Light, as I’m sure you know, is a membrane phenomenon on the surface of time.”