Inferior offspring, that was both what his Morthan relatives had called him and how his parents had wound up regarding him in their different ways. And Catherine Romanova was reacting to what Rachel Kane had just said with another kind of unpleasant recognition, because she knew what it was like to have her reproductive potential regarded as someone else’s property.
Thank goodness Narsai’s laws and customs had changed during the years since she had been young, since the time when she had defied those who claimed to love her most and had accepted exile as the price of being able to have the children she wanted with the man she loved as their father.
That man hadn’t been Lincoln Casey, who when Katy Romanova was ripe for childbearing had been an outwardly mature man—a fully competent Star Service officer, her comrade and her friend—but who hadn’t been aware of her in that way yet at all. At that time in both their lives Linc had still been as puzzled and as vaguely disturbed by the mention of sex as a fully human boy of perhaps eight or nine standard years.
Now the two of them touched minds again, and again they separated after giving and accepting reassurance. Then Romanova asked in a mother’s gentle tone, “Rachel, you know how many babies you’re carrying and exactly how old they are. You did scan yourself, then, before you left your ship?”
There was a great deal more she wanted to know about that. How had this young woman been able to desert successfully, anyway, from a Star Service vessel where she had occupied the executive officer’s post? Where had she been, and for how long, that she’d arrived here half frozen and starved and suffering the psychological effects of long-term isolation? And if Dan was the father of her children—now, there was the greatest puzzle of all; because Dan had been dismissed from the Star Service, along with every other “scrambler” (Service vernacular for those officers who had been elevated from ordinary crew member status), a full eighteen standard months earlier.
But right now what mattered was figuring out how to keep this frightened mother-to-be safe and as healthy as possible. So Romanova listened with relief as Kane answered, “Yes, of course I did. I don’t have any idea how many eggs my body released, three would be an awfully small harvest; and I don’t know how many actually were fertilized and didn’t implant. But by the time I realized something was wrong and I did the scan, there were three embryos and they’d implanted and they were growing normally. And I still don’t have any idea why I didn’t just head straight for sickbay and get that corrected, it would have been so easy then. Except that—somehow, I just didn’t want to. I don’t know why, it still doesn’t make any sense to me at all.”
Romanova smiled then, and moved her chair close to Kane’s other side. She said gently, “I didn’t have my children because it made sense, Rachel. I had them because I wanted them, and it was my right to do that. It’s your right, too. Don’t tell me you’re a gen and that means the lab that created you owns you, because it doesn’t! I don’t care what Terran law says, a sentient being should never be classed as someone else’s property. Now,” and her tone that a moment ago had been tender and maternal became brisk and authoritative. “Linc, call Johnnie at the Farmstead and find out who he’s got out there with him right now. Dan, do whatever you need to do to cover your tracks from bringing Rachel here; I want to hear all about it, but not until we’ve done everything we can do to make her safe and keep her that way. And since she does have to have medical care—I think I feel terrible today. I think I’m going to give Cab Barrett a call, and see if she has time to come over here and give me a checkup.”
She gave Rachel Kane’s thin shoulder a swift pat, and she rose from the sofa. “Come on, now! Move!” she said, and realized that for the first time in seven months she sounded like Fleet Admiral Romanova. And it felt good.
CHAPTER 2
In the privacy of the bedroom that was Dan Archer’s one settled home in the universe, Catherine Romanova sat on the edge of the bed and talked with Rachel Kane through the open bathroom door. Narsai’s sun was fully up now, and its golden light filled the house. They were at the edge of park land here, so taller structures didn’t surround this little building and block it off from the sky and the sun and the stars.
Kane sounded more relaxed now, as if being alone with another woman meant that she could stop thinking about how she sounded or what appearance she gave. Which meant, Romanova thought as she prepared herself to listen to the younger officer’s story, that the relationship between this woman and Dan Archer might not be one of solidly committed intimacy. They had been lovers, obviously; they were friends and had been comrades, clearly. But Katy herself had stopped putting up any kind of a front for the man who had been her husband long before she first needed to tell him that she was pregnant, and such niceties in Linc’s presence had gone by the board while they were still cadets together.
But then, Rachel Kane was a gen. Romanova couldn’t imagine what it had been like to be reared in an institution, to be part of an on-going experiment in resurrecting a forbidden technology instead of a child in the home of parents whose love had called her life into being.
“Are you sure it’s safe for Captain Casey to be calling anyone and talking about my being here?” was how Kane began, nevertheless, as soon as the shower was off and conversation between bath and bedroom could be heard. “And what about the healer you called, will I be able to trust her not to contact the Terran Embassy and tell them where I am?”
“His name is Lincoln, not ‘Captain,’” Romanova answered, and smiled to herself. “The man he’s calling is my cousin, and Linc isn’t going to mention anything about you over a communications link. Not that Johnnie would say a word to anyone about something I asked him to keep quiet, but it makes sense to be careful even though we don’t sanction monitoring of private comms here on Narsai. Linc will just find out whether it’s safe for us to send you to the Farmstead, if you need a place to live quietly for awhile. If Johnnie has guests, we’ll have to think of something else. And as for Cab Barrett—doctors on Narsai don’t turn their patients in! Again, we’ll do things discreetly just for the sake of common sense; but she won’t care who you are or what interest any civilian or military authorities may have in you. To her you’ll be a pregnant woman in need of medical care, nothing more than that.”
“It sounds like a dream to me,” Kane said as she moved around in the small bathroom, putting on some of Romanova’s own night wear since she had arrived with nothing of her own except that uniform which had never been intended to be a maternity garment. “At least I can’t be identified as a gen on sight, I’m one of the first group that didn’t have a visible marker put on my face soon after birth. Mine only shows up under a personnel scanner. Of course every public building on Terra has a scanner at its entrance, though…is that true on Narsai, Admiral Romanova?”
“Katy.” Romanova sighed. “No, it isn’t. Never has been, never will be! We’ve had our share of social and political difficulties here, we’re a long way from being perfect; but that kind of intrusion on our citizens’ privacy is something we just wouldn’t dream of tolerating. A Terran-owned business tried doing that at its Narsatian outlet a few years ago, and they were forced to either take the damned scanner out or close down.”
The younger woman came out of the bathroom, clad now in a winter-weight bathrobe (although this autumn morning was rapidly warming toward a beautiful day) and looking comfortable at last. She sat in a chair, clearly joining Romanova on the edge of the bed didn’t enter her mind. She said, “All right. You want to know how it happened, don’t you, uh—Katy?”