“So what has this got to do with going to war?” Maddy didn’t sound like a Romanov now, she sounded like a Fralick.
Katy reminded herself, firmly, of how much she once had loved the man who was this child’s father. And she said, “I’d like to know that, too, Johnnie. And before we get right on top of MinTar, please!”
“All right.” Ivan Romanov was well aware that his conversations tended to ramble, and he seldom took offense when an exasperated listener asked him to come to the point. “Uncle Trabe is an Isolationist. So are most of the Council’s other members, which isn’t surprising. Being conservative’s natural when you’re past a certain age, that seems to be true on any world and for any sentient species. But as you know, Katy, the Council can’t always control what the commissioners do.”
“Commissioners?” Maddy asked. Clearly Narsatian government hadn’t been one of the subjects her tutors on Kesra had made her study.
“A commissioner runs Narsai Control,” Katy explained, and wished with all her soul she had decent scanners at her disposal. She hated flying along blind like this, able to navigate and to communicate but not able to do much else. “A commissioner oversees trade with the other Outworlds, and with Terra. A commissioner makes sure the farms are run according to all environmental regulations. And so on, there are sixteen professional and commercial guilds and all their commissioners are popularly elected. Councilors serve by inheritance, just as Johnnie said, although within the Council itself the seat order is elective.”
“Oh,” Maddy said, as if she had understood. Which she probably had. “But the Council decides matters of state? They’d make the decision, if the other Outworlds started fighting against Terra and Narsai had to join one side or the other?”
“Yes. We believe that type of decision is best made by people descended from our original settlers, that it’s far too important to be left to popularly elected leaders.” Katy had learned that line of catechism by heart almost as soon as she could talk, and she said it now automatically. But it had a hollowness in it, today, that she’d never heard before.
Her sons had never asked her questions about Narsatian government. The boys had been like her in that way, they didn’t care about such things. Civilian government had to be dealt with as the ultimate policy maker for the military, but that was the only way it really had mattered to Katy until now; and it never had mattered at all to Ewan or to his brothers.
But Maddy had more of George in her, in that respect at least. She said now, “That sounds to me like the balance of powers between branches that most self-governing planets try to set up. But it’s gotten out of balance, if the people on the Council don’t know or don’t care what everyone else on Narsai really wants them to do.”
“Give this child the Senior Chair, and tell Uncle Trabe to take a rest!” Johnnie Romanov said, and he grinned sardonically. “She just said in two sentences what I’ve spent the past year trying to tell him, and I haven’t been able to get through. Maybe we ought to fly on over to the university right now, Katy, and introduce Uncle Trabe to his granddaughter.”
Katy did not dignify that suggestion with a reply. Instead she said quietly, “So you think the Council will do whatever it takes to keep us neutral. Is that right, Johnnie?”
“That’s exactly what I think. And eliminating half a dozen scramblers, each of whom could have captained a Reb ship, was a pretty good morning’s work if there’s any truth to the rumor that the Commonwealth has agents on Narsai and that our policies concerning strangers give them one hell of a lot of maneuvering room.”
Katy’s stomach turned over, and she swallowed hard in an effort to calm it. Turning a blind eye to anything that happened among visitors on Narsai, or even among residents who weren’t native-born citizens, was a very old tradition; even her otherwise gentle father would never question that custom’s morality.
She would not have done so herself, in the days before she’d left Narsai to live most of her adult life elsewhere. And she had lulled herself into believing that during the intervening decades, as Narsai’s rigid reproductive customs had gradually ceased to be enforced with the old vigor, probably other traditions had also been relaxed.
If she had not believed that, she would never have risked bringing Linc to live here with her. She was a Narsatian citizen, anyone who committed a crime against her would be prosecuted; but Linc was a dual citizen of Terra and Mortha, not Narsai, and no local authority would protect him if some other off-worlder tried to do him harm. His status as her husband by Service-logged marriage would not help him, because according to the customs of Narsai he was nothing more than a person of the opposite gender who was a guest in her household.
Maddy, although born on another world and fathered by a non-Narsatian, was nevertheless just as well protected here as Katy herself was. Her sons hadn’t been, because citizenship was conferred upon a child by its same-gender parent.
Thank gods for that much, at least. Katy said now, “Maddy. Listen to me, and do what I tell you even if you hate it. When someone asks your name—”
“I know,” the girl interrupted, a rudeness she hadn’t once committed in her mother’s hearing before now. “Papa already told me, and he recorded me that way when I had to register with Narsai Control before I could teleport down. I said I was Madeleine Fralick when I met Linc only because he called me that first.”
Bless you, George; or damn you, George? Katy could not make up her mind. But as she used what pitifully little scanner capacity she had in this vehicle to check out her house before the aircar was set down at its front, she said to her cousin exactly what she thought next. “Johnnie, the stakes in this game just went up. Didn’t they?”
Her cousin caught what she did not say, could not say in front of Maddy unless the time came when she absolutely must. Ivan Romanov nodded, though, when she stole a glance in his direction.
Fralick knew a great deal about Narsatian laws and customs, and he had deliberately given his daughter their full protection at the expense of his own ego. So the odds were enormously high that Fralick knew what had become of Lincoln Casey, who was not present in the house they were about to enter.
The scanners couldn’t tell Katy that, but her mind could. Linc wasn’t there. Either that, or only his corpse was; because even his dormant consciousness was missing from their home.
The Morthan physician walked into the Archangel’s brig, and the guards retreated. Lincoln Casey had witnessed that reaction from full humans to a Morthan hybrid’s approach many times, and he still could not determine whether it was awe or whether it was disgust.
One thing was certain, many full humans were afraid of Morthans to at least some degree. They were sought out to be trained as healers because their ability to read their patients’ thoughts and feelings was so useful for that purpose, yet humans seldom completely overcame an instinctive disquiet about allowing themselves to be invaded in that way. It was tolerable when it was being done for medical purposes, but when the Morthan wasn’t there to provide care the humans around him usually preferred to go elsewhere if they could do so.
The exceptions, of course, were the human males who became mated to Morthan females. And the elemental discomfort most humans felt around Morthans was probably very much connected to what they knew (or at least believed) about such unions; female Morthans weren’t called “loreleis” in Terran Standard slang for no reason.