“Mortha can’t be happy about that.” Cabanne Romanova spoke up for the second time, thoughtfully. As she did so, Katy’s mother looked at Katy’s husband.
Linc Casey had never lived on Mortha, he had only visited there a few times—briefly and unhappily, and long ago. His reaction to the implied question was a slight but visible shrug.
“They’re not, I’m sure,” Katy affirmed. “But the Commonwealth’s other option is Kesra. That means they’ll choose Narsai, because Kesra’s population is almost completely native sentient—and they can be damnably paranoid about even the small number of human residents that they already have. Believe me, I’ve lived there and I know.”
She paused. And because she was so busy focusing on what she needed to say next, when she had just thought about what it had been like to be the Narsatian wife of a human resident of Kesra, a memory of George Fralick that she hadn’t meant to revisit while Linc was attuned to her thoughts flashed into her consciousness and caught her unaware.
For thirteen years she had kept this one thing secret from her second husband. When she had come back to the Firestorm after her divorce and had fallen apart in his arms—while they had made love for the first time—and through every moment of mental and physical communion between them since then, she had kept it safely concealed. But now the forbidden memory intruded, and before she could banish it a single vivid image spilled over from her mind into his.
She felt his hand tighten until she wondered if he had crushed the bones of her fingers. He perceived her pain, and it made him relax that brutal grip almost immediately; but the real damage was already done.
She didn’t look at him, but she felt his eyes on her—and felt his mind probing hers, with an urgency to which she could not possibly respond in this very public setting. All she could do was tell him, in silence and with terrible firmness: “Later.”
Old habits asserted themselves then, and he obeyed her. Even without sound, that word had been uttered in the Matushka’s command voice.
CHAPTER 18
Katy had hoped no one else would notice the by-play between wife and husband, but of course the small silence drew puzzled looks in their direction. Nevertheless long practice had kept her face impassive, even when she had been hurt by that powerful squeezing of her hand.
She resumed speaking as if nothing had happened, because nothing had happened that she had any intention of explaining. She said, “So if war does come, I think that instead of welcoming Commonwealth forces onto its surface Kesra is quite likely to deport all its human residents—even those whose families have lived there for generations. Of the other two Outworlds, Sestus 4 would probably execute or simply starve their human population if they could no longer ship their ores to Commonwealth markets; they wouldn’t have a use for their miners any longer. And Sestus 3 would go on pretty much as it is now, because they still haven’t got much beyond being able to feed their own population agriculturally and their need for industrial goods is supplied by Sestus 4. Unless Linc wants to correct me on that, he grew up on Sestus 3.”
“No, you got it right.” Her husband gave her a look that probably puzzled everyone else, but that she understood perfectly. She had just made him speak to her normally, when that was the last thing he had wanted to do, and this was one of the rare times when he was really angry with her.
He was sick inside, he needed to be alone with her and talk to her. And right now that could not happen.
But they had lived this way for more of their life together than not; constrained by those around them, forced to wait for privacy to take care of their own and each other’s emotional needs. This time was worse than any other such occasion either of them could remember, but they would get through it.
He pressed her hand very gently, and she returned that clasp.
“So who in hell is it that wants this war? Who are the Rebs, anyway?” A young commissioner wanted to know that, but her question brought mutters of agreement from all around the circle.
“Outcasts.” To Katy’s amazement, her mother took over at that point. Cabanne Romanova had been the source of her daughter’s rather deep voice, a voice that was more powerful than it was melodious and that demanded to be heard. When everyone looked in her direction, the former Senior Chair Councilor continued.
“Katy just reminded us that Kesra, even more than Narsai, wants no part of immigrants,” she said. “Even if anyone would want to live on Sestus 3, it actually has very little space available for settlers—most of its usable areas already belong to large landowners; and Sestus 4 is a hellhole for humans, a refugee would go almost anyplace else before he or she would voluntarily go there to live. Yet Terra’s started supplying gens to take over job functions that up until now gave employment to the Inner Worlds’ lower classes, and as a result those people are being displaced by the thousands.”
“So? Isn’t that what the newer Outworlds are for? Planets like Farthinghome, like Claymore. And the one in the Mistworld system where the locals agreed humans could live on the surface, while they stayed in the clouds? There’s always been excess population flowing outward from Terra and the rest of the Inner Worlds, and that’s what’s always happened to it.” The young commissioner was frowning. “Kesra’s the only other world that I know of where population growth is prevented as successfully as we prevent it here on Narsai, and that hardly counts because Kesrans obviously don’t reproduce the way humans do.”
They certainly did not. The idea of routinely neutering all but two humans within each family group, in order to allow that pair to breed without the need to limit the number of their offspring, was appalling to everyone present—even though except for Lincoln Casey they were all Narsatians, who had accepted since childhood that one youngster was the best possible family size and that third babies simply should not be born on their world.
“So you’re saying that these outcasts as you call them, these people who are trying to settle in places like Farthinghome and Claymore and Tenzing, are where the Rebs get their ships and the people to operate them? And that the reason they want the Outworlds separated from the Commonwealth is so that the established planets will stop sending food and manufactured goods to the Inner Worlds, and make those things available to them instead?” The youngest of the councilors was speaking now. The older ones were looking troubled, but were saying nothing.
“Yes, and I believe she’s right.” Katy Romanova’s tone was one of finality. “They can’t look beyond Mistworld for trading partners, you see. The sector beyond Mistworld has no M-class worlds, not for so many light years that even our deepest probes haven’t yet reached a place where planets humans can use start occurring again.”
“Like coming to the end of a dock and falling in, and you can’t swim. So you either drown, or you take away someone else’s flotation device and let him drown instead.” That, of course, was the Harbormaster. The commissioner in charge of Narsatian aquaculture was called that, facetiously and affectionately; and while his analogy sounded ridiculous, he nevertheless had grasped the situation in which the settlers of the newest Outworlds now found themselves. “So can’t the diplomats get Terra to understand that, and let us sell those people the things they need?”
“The gens have to eat, too, Harbie. Terra can’t let us send ‘their’ supplies elsewhere, even if we could afford to practically give our produce away to people who can’t possibly pay us for them at full market prices.” Tart but truthful words, from a councilor who was not one of the youngsters.