Starfire Saga, page 52
“Sounds like the Honish,” she said, wrinkling her nose with distaste. “I wonder if all primitive, powerless societies structure themselves that way.”
“Not all. Just the ones where the men can’t bear competition from us.” It was simplifying, and I knew it, but I was more nervous than I was willing to admit. “Anyway, the Brochidian men objected strenuously to the changes that being part of the Com would bring, and about half their women supported them. The other half went into revolt. By the time the Drenalion were sent in, a quarter of the women on the planet were dead. Ever since then, the term ‘Brochidian husband’ has been used to mean a person who demands obedience at all costs.”
I pressed my jumpsuit label and said, “Dark blue.” I didn’t tell her that there was also an expression, “Brochidian marriage,” which meant a marriage in which the husband—male or female—totally dominated the wife, to the point where obedience was no longer an issue and submission was automatic. It was a term of contempt among the people in the Com. Jara Deland had once told me she would never permit anyone to come to power in the government if she discovered they had an inclination to be Brochidian.
Sandalari nodded, and we took turns changing into our jumpsuits. Then, as it turned out the men had done, we fed our Caryldon clothes into the disposer. To me it was one more step away from my tangible ties to that world, leaving only the nomidars and the extremely tangible klawit lying on the cargo platform. I smiled. Whatever the Com might be expecting, we were unlikely to be it. Jemeret joined us in the seats and anchored the seat fields. The vehicle rose smoothly off the surface. I didn’t turn to see how Tynnanna was taking the lift, and he made no noise.
Once we were under way, Jemeret threw the lander back on its own devices and rose, smiling at the three of us in our dark blue clothes. The choice of color puzzled me, and I asked him about it. He nodded approvingly at Coney’s slowly thickening sandy beard, which was now as well-shaped as his own and only needed filling out.
“Dark blue’s the color I’ve always worn in the Com,” Jemeret answered me. “It was my student color when I was in training, and when they first offered me the right to wear gold, I laughed at them.” His gray eyes slid down the form-fitting cloth on my body. “They’ll wonder at your choice.”
“You’re my husband,” I said as lightly as I could. “I can only be expected to follow your lead.”
“Coney, you have the right to wear bronze,” my lord said to the other man.
Coney grinned, and Sandalari cleared her throat. “Ah,” she said, “that may be true, but we decided he should follow my lead in our marriage, and of course they have no hold on me.”
We all grinned at one another then, and I beat back a pang of envy that she’d gotten to be the husband. Jemeret sensed it. “You’re still High Lady,” he said. “Think of the responsibility more than the honor.”
“I’m trying to,” I said. I’d been raised not to shirk responsibility, and Jemeret had shown me that responsibility was not synonymous with tyranny. The Com hadn’t realized that yet.
We docked at the station with barely a bump, even though Jemeret had refused to let the lander dock itself and resumed control for the actual approach. Moments later I was plunged into the technological world of the Com.
I’d never been on a station before—not while I was aware of being on one. These were not quite the marvels that the rollships were, but they were marvelous all the same, self-contained little worlds, though not self-sufficient. Markover Station was especially vulnerable, for its supply lines stretched a long way off. The smoothness of the deck under my jumpsuit boots felt very strange, almost disorienting, because the plasteel was perfectly flat. Only the familiar feel of my nomidar’s neck against my palm—Sandalari was carrying Jemeret’s—seemed to stabilize me as I stepped out of the lander onto the perfect surface. Jemeret widened the doorway, and Tynnanna uncoiled himself and padded out onto the landing deck beside us.
I swept the surrounding area and felt shafts of surprise from some of the station staff monitoring our landing. As I completed the sweep, I was brought up short by encountering someone I knew very well. Jasin Lebec was here on the station, and that was a stunning discovery. It meant that, contrary to all conventional wisdom, the Com had put both its Class A’s, and Jemeret, whom it knew to be a Class A, in the same place.
Jemeret’s head came up sharply, and I knew he’d discovered that Jasin Lebec was here as well.
A young woman in the tan jumpsuit of the Merchant Fleet guard, which was responsible for order in all but conditions of unrest, came up to the four of us. Her shoulders were squared, chin lifted, and she was full of bravado, but unable to keep her eyes from sliding continually to the furred bulk of Tynnanna, who seemed completely imperturbed by his surroundings. The MF guard glanced from me to Sandalari and back again. “Ronica McBride?”
“Yes?” I was almost astonished to hear the automatic arrogance that flavored the single word. This was a citizen of the Com, and I had been trained since just about birth to be entirely superior to such as she. It slid back around me with amazing ease, and I let it have its way.
She nodded to me in the required gesture of respect. “We greet you with all due honor,” she said. “An eftel vid conference is being set up for you. Will you follow me, please?”
“I assume you are speaking to all of us.” As I said it, I stung her a tiny bit to increase her uneasiness, and as a result she stuttered over her reply.
“Y-Yes, of course.” She signaled, and a door irised open. She gestured toward it. I took one step, felt Jemeret’s gentle sting, stopped and let him precede me. Sandalari and Coney followed me, and Tynnanna, who had been licking a massive paw with a nonchalant disdain which exceeded my own, rose to his feet, yawned elaborately, and trotted after us into the corridors of the station.
The MF guard had paused inside the irisway, and she was openly surprised when Jemeret was the first one to enter the station proper. “I can show you the way—” she began.
He cut her off. “I know my way around this station,” he said sharply. “I assume it’s in the conference room?”
I didn’t reach out to see if he’d stung her; my guess was that he didn’t have to. She looked a little frightened as she nodded, remembered herself, and stepped aside.
We followed him as he strode unerringly through the corridors until we reached a set of double doors, made of some sort of highly polished but artificial wood. There had been no other guards along the way, and the room itself was unguarded. I guessed that Markover was very lightly populated, which made Jasin Lebec’s presence even more remarkable.
Jemeret stepped deliberately into the doors’ range, and they slid smoothly and noiselessly back. The fact that they were planetside doors, not space irises, said a lot about the confidence that, though not heavily inhabited, the station was not at risk of any kind of attack.
Jemeret walked into the room, and I heard Jasin Lebec say calmly, “Hello, my boy. It’s good to see you again.”
I moved into the conference room and around my lord’s broad shoulders, so I could see the Com Class A whom I was supposed to replace. Jemeret had not spoken.
Jasin Lebec had aged in the years since my last encounter with him, in my suite of rooms on Orokell. He looked far older than he had then, and some of his nearly youthful vigor, the purposefulness, was gone. His gold jumpsuit seemed to fit him more loosely, but I knew that had to be an illusion, because jumpsuits perfectly fit whoever wears them. His dark eyes flew to me, rich with sudden affection. “So you’ve come back to us, Ronica McBride.” He did not try to disguise any of his relief or satisfaction.
I nodded once, not trusting myself to speak to him.
Coney and Sandalari came into the conference room, and behind them, Tynnanna stepped lightly over the door track.
Jasin Lebec did not even try to mask his surprise at the cat. Then he looked at Jemeret and chuckled. “You are determined to make everyone as uncomfortable as possible, then.”
“As always,” Jemeret said, almost lightly, though he could have said honestly that the klawit was my idea. “Ronica, this is my na-sire.”
I had thought there would not still be surprises to come; I realized I’d made a foolish assumption. I stared from one to the other of them for a few moments, then fastened on the old man. “You’re Jemeret’s grandfather?”
Jasin Lebec nodded. “In an effort to breed more talent, I went back to Caryldon to sire a child, but—”
Jemeret overrode him smoothly. “My father didn’t test as having a great deal of power. He seemed to develop as he grew older. The Com contented itself with several other children when he was young.”
Jasin Lebec started to say something to Coney, but the clear bell tone announcing the completion of the eftel vid link sounded in the room, and the other side of the table from which we stood momentarily opaqued out as the transmissions balanced themselves. Jasin Lebec pulled out one of the chairs and sat down on our side, but the rest of us didn’t sit. We did take advantage of the pause to set the nomidars down on the floor behind us.
The room sprang back into vision, and suddenly there were ten people on the other side of the table: five women, four men, and Mortel John. One of the women gasped at the sight of Tynnanna and half rose, then hurriedly resumed her seat, embarrassed at having forgotten we were many light-years apart.
I recognized Pel Nostro and his wife Jara Deland, the MI Liaison, at once, and I made no attempt to look at anyone else, not even my old teacher.
“Are you well, Ronica McBride?” the Com Counselor asked with some hesitation, his face wary.
“Well enough, Pel,” I said immediately. “My memory is back, my mind is intact, and I’m here.”
Jara Deland seemed to hiss something at him, her lips barely moving. I wished we were all in the same room, so that augmented hearing and my sting might work effectively. I’d never felt the old saying, Talent needs presence, so keenly before.
“Please, sit down,” Pel urged us.
Coney immediately did so, and Sandalari followed so quickly that they seemed to move simultaneously. I waited until they were seated between me and Jasin Lebec, and then I drew out a chair and perched on the edge of it, trying not to seem uncomfortable. After a long pause, Jemeret turned a chair to face him and straddled it, his arms across its back. We were both tense, both disguising it.
“Whyever did you bring the animal with you?” one of the other women asked.
I looked at her, realizing it was Science Bureau head Marga Morena.
“Marga, please,” Pel said.
“No, I’ll answer her,” I said firmly. “We brought him because we thought we might want him. Hello, Marga.”
She nodded at me, glanced at the others of us.
“Who’s the blonde?” one of the men asked in a whisper meant to be heard.
Sandalari repressed a laugh without it ever appearing on her face.
“I suppose introductions are in order,” Pel said as smoothly as he could.
Coney said, as if Pel Nostro had not spoken, “This is Sandi Gregson, my husband.”
They gaped, except for Mortel John, as Sandalari said graciously, “It’s very—interesting to be back.”
It was Mortel John who said, “Exile has agreed with you, Sarai Gregson.”
Her brilliant, musical laugh filled the room. “Is that what it was? Truly, I hadn’t noticed.”
A man I didn’t know by sight, younger than the man who had asked the brusque question to begin with, gave a small, appreciative whistle. I knew then that while talent needed presence, beauty and vivacity transcended distance.
Pel Nostro regained his equilibrium before he spoke, a true diplomat. Then he perfunctorily introduced Mortel John, who of course knew all four of us, and my old teacher bowed his head in our direction. In his presence I could not think of him as anything but a man. He was the only one wearing a plain black jumpsuit, unbroken by any of the stylish decorations that sophisticated people affected to follow the changing trends in a largely jumpsuited society. Everyone else on their side of the table wore either gold or silver, and that meant Mortel John looked most like us. That was odd; odder still was that it made me feel almost fond of him.
The women at the table, besides Jara Deland and Marga Morena, were Petra Chantrey, head of the Universities, and the two Class B women I’d met when we were younger, who had slept joyfully with Kray—something I couldn’t do. Sinet Coleby was almost fifty now, a breathtaking redhead with high cheekbones and a generous mouth. Lage N’Verre was in her mid-thirties, dark haired and voluptuous. My nod to them was colored by memories, and I read in their eyes—accustomed as I’d become to reading people without the sting—the knowledge of the man I’d killed.
Everyone else seemed willing, even eager, to forget it. But Sinet and Lage had known Kray intimately, shared his designation of Class B, and it was something more to them. In a way, I hated their being there, and at the same time, in another way, I was grateful for it. They were not ongoing members of the Tribunal, the Com’s human governing body. Jasin Lebec would have informally represented talent, had he been there rather than here with us. As talent could only have nonvoting delegates on the Tribunal, the Class B women probably would not speak.
Also at the table was Anok Luttrell, head of the Merchant Fleet, a clever man in his late sixties, who had danced with me at the gala after graduation, and who invariably kept his cleverness hidden until it was needed. He was the man nominally in charge of providing for the citizens of a provider society, working through the largest staff of deputies and subheads anyone had ever assembled.
The man who had whistled softly at Sandalari was introduced as Faucon Oletta, Chief Justiciar, interpreter of the Com laws. He had recently replaced the Chief Justiciar I remembered, and he seemed quite young for the responsibility.
The man who’d asked about Sandalari had cold eyes and heavy muscles. He was probably nearing fifty, and though I knew his name immediately, I’d never seen him before. He was Terrill Guthrie, the human in command of the regiments of the Drenalion. He had not been at graduation; he spent more time with the clones and the small science staff, on loan from Marga Morena, that celled, tanked, and grew them. His greeting to me was one of surface respect, but even with the barrier of the eftel vid, I sensed the darkness below the surface, as I’d sensed it in Krenigo of the Vylk. The two men in no way resembled each other physically, and yet the resemblance was real.
Jemeret was suppressing a genuine restlessness, which didn’t lessen when I said calmly, “It’s a pleasure. I’m sure you know all of us except Tynnanna. He’s a klawit, and our companion.”
All ten of the people shifted their eyes to Tynnanna, and Mortel John looked back at us first. Then Pel Nostro moved his gaze to my lord. “Jemeret Cavanaugh,” the Com Counselor said formally, “you have fulfilled the terms of your contract with us, and we therefore release you from your obligation. You are free to return to Caryldon with our thanks.”
Jemeret smiled, his eyes shooting silver sparks. “Not this time, Pel,” he said, his shields up. “I’ll be staying this time, at least until Ronica has been given and has made the choice you agreed to. You see, she’s my wife.”
If the announcement of Coney’s relationship had caused astonishment, this declaration was world-shattering enough to allow a great deal of vid cost to accrue without anyone saying anything. Then Jara Deland choked back something she was about to say and Jasin Lebec chuckled, a tendency he quickly repressed.
We let the silence continue for a while longer. Then I broke it. “I understood you had an urgent need for my return. Coney was quite explicit on that point. Perhaps you might want to explain the urgency to me.”
Pel Nostro moved suddenly, as if emerging from stasis, but before he could speak, Marga Morena asked sharply, “Ronica McBride, did you marry this man without compulsion and make a free choice of your role in the marriage?”
I raised my chin and looked at her directly. “Of course, Marga. You don’t honestly believe I could be forced into such an arrangement, do you? Not honestly.”
Jara Deland spoke then, her voice close to vitriolic. “You didn’t have a mind when he got his hands on you. How can you be sure?”
For a split second anger overwhelmed me, but I fought it back, careful to hold my face neutral. I said as calmly as I could, “I distinctly remember both the marriage and the role choice, Jara. That indicates to me that I had a mind at that time. All indicators would point to the presence of a mind now, and I’m quite content with my status.” I made my voice go low and hard, which wasn’t at all difficult. “If we were in the same room, I have no doubts I could convince you.” The threat was overt, palpable. I was quite proud of myself for having made it.
Jara Deland sat back in her chair, her hands in her lap, her brown eyes glittering. I fancied I saw a small movement, and thought that she’d just kicked Pel under the table.
“There is a Class A assignment which we wish to offer you,” the Com Counselor said. His voice seemed rough, and he cleared his throat before continuing. “It concerns Barbin 3, where a segment of the population is in open revolt against the legitimately constituted planetary government, and there has been—” He was suddenly unable to look at our side of the room. “—an unfortunate loss of life. We need superior Class A talent to stop the rebellion without incurring a greater decrease in resources than has already occurred. We hope you will accept the assignment, Ronica McBride.” He looked up, his nearly lashless eyes hopeful and wary at the same time. “If you choose to, Jasin Lebec will see that you’re fully briefed.”
I had already made a decision, long before the question was asked, in anticipation of this moment. I’m not certain when the notion had crystallized in my mind—probably sometime during the journey back to Stronghome from the peninsula. “My team and I will accept the assignment,” I said, gesturing to my right, where Coney and Sandalari sat, trying not to look surprised. “I have no right to speak for my husband.” It took all of my control not to stumble over that sentence. I might have been feeling somewhat submissive to Jemeret, but I didn’t want to show it to the Tribunal.
