“You didn’t ask him how your daughter is?” That question came from Paolo Giandrea, who was sitting in a guest chair in his own office and watching the woman who’d taken over his chair with astonished eyes.
“I know she’s all right, or he’d have told me in graphic and heart-rending detail just exactly how she wasn’t all right,” Katy said, with a ghost of a grim smile playing about the corners of her mouth. “Trust me, that’s experience talking and not speculation! And much as I love my daughter, right now she’s not my top concern. Not while I know she’s safe, and believe it or not she is safe with her father. He didn’t know harming Linc would harm her, and frankly I didn’t know it either. Now!” She changed the commlink’s settings, and said to ops, “I’m ready for Admiral Tanaka now, Ensign.”
Another familiar face appeared in the holoscreen. This one had almond-shaped black eyes, black hair that was showing white at its temples, and the smooth golden skin of a human whose ancestors had been bred in Earth’s so-called Orient. But Willard Tanaka had grown up on New Orient, actually, and was therefore just as much a colonists’ descendant as was Katy Romanova.
And yet if war came he would not be finding himself on the other side of the battle from his birthplace, because New Orient was a so-called “Inner World”; one of the first Terran colonies, now regarded as a co-equal part of the mother planet’s political structure.
There were six “Inner Worlds,” plus Terra itself. The rest of the Commonwealth consisted of Narsai, Kesra, Mortha, and the Sestus System with its two inhabited worlds, plus additional planets located even farther out and inhabited almost entirely by non-human species that had entered the Commonwealth purely for the trade advantages their membership brought.
Narsai and Sestus 3 were completely human worlds, with no greater populations of aliens and hybrids than had Terra (percentage-wise, anyway). Narsai was a place of crowded cities, where population growth was strictly limited and rich agricultural lands were carefully managed—with the result that there was always food for export, and that life for most Narsatians was comfortable. Sestus 3, by contrast, was sparsely settled—but that was because it had so little to recommend it. With its stinking (although perfectly breathable) atmosphere and its sparse soils and wildly uneven climate zones, it was positive proof that there could be such a thing as a Class M world where humans seldom chose to live if they had the option of living somewhere else.
Kesra, of course, belonged mostly to its indigenous species with their incredibly long life spans and their huge extended families. The native Kesrans did not overrun the relatively small land areas of their planet, though, because within each family most of the adults were deliberately neutered or naturally infertile males and females. Only one or at most two breeding pairs were allowed in each such group, in each generation. The humans who lived there were mostly transients, with just a few permanently resident families like that of George Fralick—whose forebears had been rewarded for helping the Kesrans, with the gift that to a Kesran was the most valuable thing one could be offered. Land enough for a residence, on their land-poor planet.
And then there was Sestus 4, where the main usefulness of humans was to serve the indigenous species through dangerous labor such as that which Dan Archer’s grandparents had died performing in the mines; and then there was Mortha.
On Mortha there were millions of humans, and more millions of part-humans, and a relatively small number of more or less “pure” native Morthans. Mortha was the wild card of the Outworlds, because so many of the men on Mortha had been born on Terra or one of the other Inner Worlds; and because there were so many Morthan hybrids scattered throughout the Commonwealth, utilizing their unique gifts as healers of both the bodies and the minds of just about any other humanoid species they encountered.
“Normal” Morthans did not become fighters, which was one reason why Lincoln Casey had been such a fiercely driven cadet when Katy had first known him. To prove that he could do anything a fully human warrior could do, had been what motivated him in those days. Yet if Morthans as a species had been willing and able to go into battle as did their Terran counterparts, they would probably have been far more dangerous; because the abilities that they used to heal, could have been used just as effectively to devastate. What better advantage could there be, than to perceive an enemy’s thoughts and feelings?
Again, Linc was different. He could not touch just anyone’s thoughts, he could only touch Katy’s—and now, little Maddy’s as well. So Linc would never face the choice of whether or not to use his late-blooming and still terribly limited gifts to do harm. But the idea of a Morthan who might turn his mental abilities toward tormenting other beings, in the manner of humans who since time’s beginning had killed and tortured their fellows, was an idea that frightened Katy Romanova like no other.
So the Rebs were trying to gather a fleet, were they? And rumor said they were forming it up out beyond Mortha; that was the first thing she had learned from Paolo Giandrea, when she had asked him for the swiftest possible briefing on why he had been conveying George Fralick to meet with other Commonwealth representatives on Terra. Somehow that didn’t surprise her, because peaceful Mortha was without a doubt the safest bulwark in the universe that the Rebs could have placed between themselves and the Star Service ships patrolling the vast distances among the Outworlds. And right now, obviously, the Commonwealth’s more powerful members were concentrating on negotiations with the Outworlds’ official representatives instead of massing military power to find that rumored Rebel fleet and wipe it out.
Yet if Sestus 4 should ever stop sending the Inner Worlds the ores their industries required, or if Narsai ever declined to send foodstuffs—or if Mortha stopped absorbing excess human males, and refused to send out its own men to become healers all over the rest of the human-explored galaxy (and yet never to sire offspring of their own, which no doubt made them particularly acceptable additions on worlds where population pressures were an issue)—that was the day when Terra and the other Inner Worlds could be counted upon to send as many ships as it took to destroy the Rebels, until the so-called trade balance was restored.
It was no balance, it was more like tribute. Katy Romanova knew that, but until now that had always been the Narsatian Council’s concern and not hers.
To the man in the holoscreen she said, “Hello, Bill. It’s been a long time.”
“Too damned long, Katy! We’d started wondering if you and Linc had died after you left Terra, and no one had bothered to tell us.” Her successor as Fleet Admiral gave her a warm, genuine smile of comradeship. “So you accepted recall. That’s good, we need you.”
“But you don’t need my husband?” She deliberately used the words that defined the relationship, and not Linc’s name. She needed another rumor confirmed or denied, and now was as good a time as any to try to make that happen.
Her tactic worked. Tanaka sighed, his smile disappeared, and he answered her with an old friend’s bluntness. “Katy, we’re not accepting Morthan officers anymore. Linc won’t be getting a recall, and from what I remember of his health just before you both retired—isn’t that just as well?”
“Maybe. Although Linc is perfectly well again now, thank goodness.” Romanova leaned back in the captain’s desk chair, and regarded Tanaka thoughtfully. They had never served on the same ship, but he was a member of her Academy graduating class. She knew the man, had socialized with him from time to time over more than forty years and had served with many officers who had shared his bridge and his wardroom.