by David Weber
"Actually," Allison said slowly, at last, "I think there might be a completely legitimate reason. One I hadn't really intended to suggest."
"That sounds faintly ominous," Emily said.
"Not ominous, I hope. But maybe a little... intrusive."
"Definitely ominous," Emily said as lightly as possible. "Given that you're the mother of the mother of my husband's child, anything that strikes you as being more intrusive than that is probably fairly terrifying."
"I wouldn't choose that precise adjective," Allison said seriously, "but I'm afraid it is going to be rather personal. And if you'd prefer not to discuss it, that's entirely your decision. But given what's happened accidentally between Hamish and Honor, Emily, I can't help wondering why you've never considered the possibility of having a child of your own."
Emily's heart seemed to stop. It couldn't, of course. Her life-support chair's hardware wouldn't let it, any more than it would let her stop breathing. But despite her brutally damaged nervous system, she felt for just a moment as if someone had just punched her in the pit of the stomach.
She stared at Allison, shocked, unable to speak, and Allison reached out and laid her own hand atop Emily's right hand.
"This is coming from me, not Honor," she said quietly. "Honor would never dream of intruding on you the way I just have. Partly, that's because she loves you and recognizes how much emotional stress she's already accidentally inflicted upon you. And partly, it's because she's so much younger than you-which I'm certainly not. And partly because she's not a physician. We've talked, especially since she found out she was pregnant, of course, but she hasn't betrayed any of your confidences to me, and I'd never ask her to. Still, I'm sure you must realize that as a doctor, and especially as a geneticist, I'm very well aware of all the reproductive options which have been available to you. And that, Emily, suggests to me that you must have some deeply personal reason for not availing yourself of them.
"That's your decision, of course. But Honor's told me how you responded to the discovery that she's going to have a child. And I've just seen how you reacted to the awareness that you're also going to be that child's other mother. So I'm wondering why someone who so clearly recognizes how Honor must feel, and who so obviously wants and needs to be a part of that, has never had a child of her own."
A part of Emily Alexander wanted to scream at Allison Harrington. To tell her that however curious she might be, it was none of her damned business. But she didn't. The combination of gentle, very personal compassion and professional detachment in Allison's eyes and voice stopped her.
Not that anything could have made the topic any less painful.
"I have my reasons," she said finally, her voice far more clipped and harder-edged than usual.
"I'm certain you do. You're a strong, smart, competent person. People like you don't turn their backs on something so obviously important to them without reasons. The thing I'm wondering, though, is whether they're as valid as you may think they are."
"It's not something I decided lightly," Emily said harshly.
"Emily," Allison's voice was gently chiding, "no woman can have gone through everything you've survived without realizing that the mere fact a decision wasn't made lightly doesn't necessarily make it a good one. I'm a doctor. I specialize in genetic disease and repair-too often after the fact, even today-and my husband's one of the Star Kingdom's three top neurosurgeons. The sort they send the "Omigod!" cases to. If he'd been in civilian practice when you were hurt, he'd probably have been one of your doctors. Do you have any idea how much carnage, how many shattered lives and broken bodies, the two of us have seen? Between us, we've been practicing medicine for well over a century, Emily. If there are two people in the entire Star Kingdom who know exactly what you, your family, and all the people who care about you have been through, it's us."
Emily's lips trembled, and her single working hand clenched into a fist under Allison's fingers. She was shocked-physically shocked-at the abrupt realization that she desperately wanted to open her heart to Allison. By the discovery that she needed to know Allison did, indeed, understand the savagery with which the physical damage to her body had smashed far more than mere muscle and sinew.
And yet... and yet something held her back. Her own version of Honor's stubbornness and pride, her need to fight her own battles. As Allison had said, Emily Alexander was an extraordinarily intelligent woman. She'd had half a century in her life-support chair to realize just how foolish it was to insist on facing down all of her own demons, all her own challenges, unassisted. More than that, she knew she hadn't. That Hamish was there for her. That except for one brief period of weakness, which he bitterly regretted, he'd always been there for her, and she'd always relied upon him. But that was different. She couldn't have defined exactly how, yet she knew it was.
"Emily," Allison said again, quietly, as the silence stretched out between them, "you aren't as unique as you may think you are. Oh, the injuries you've survived probably are. At least, I can't think of another case in my own or Alfred's experience in which someone survived physical damage as extreme as it clearly was in yours. But people who are as badly injured as you were take damage in a lot of ways. Obviously, I've never had access to any of your case history. And I've never probed Honor for information about it-not that she'd have given it to me, even if I had. But I have to ask you. Like Honor, you don't regenerate. Is that the reason? Are you afraid a child of yours might share that inability?"
"I...." Emily's voice rasped, and she stopped and cleared her throat.
"That's... a part of it," she said finally, distantly amazed she could admit even that much to Allison. "I suppose I've always known it's not entirely... rational. As you say," her mouth twisted in a bitter smile, "the fact that someone has reasons for her decisions doesn't necessarily make those reasons valid."
"Did you ever discuss the question with a good geneticist?" Allison's gentle voice was completely devoid of any shadow of judgment.
"No." Emily looked away. "No, not really. I consulted several of them. But I suppose, if I were honest, I'd have to admit I was just going through the motions. For me, perhaps for Hamish. I don't know." She looked back at Allison, green eyes brimming with tears. "I talked to them. They talked to me. And they kept reassuring me, telling me it wouldn't happen. And that even if somehow I did pass on my 'curse,' it was absurd to think any child of mine would ever be injured the way I was. And none of it mattered. Not one bit of it." She stared into Allison's eyes and forced herself to admit to someone else what she had never until this moment fully admitted to herself. "I was too frightened to be rational."
She hovered on the brink of telling Allison why. Of telling her what she'd overheard her own mother saying. Of admitting how deep that wound had cut, even though her intellect had fiercely rejected the searing hurt. But she couldn't. Even now, she couldn't expose that jagged scar. Not yet.
"If that's the only way in which you reacted 'irrationally' after what happened to you, then you're some sort of superwoman," Allison said dryly. "My God, woman! Your life was destroyed. You've rebuilt a new one, a deeply productive one, without ever surrendering. You're entitled to not be strong about everything every instant. And you have the right to admit that it hurts, and that things frighten you. Someday you need to sit down with Honor and let her tell you about the things she carried around inside for far too long. The things she didn't share even with me. They've left scars-I'm sure you've seen some of them-and she'd be the very first person to say that everything that happened to her was small beer compared to what happened to you.
"But I think perhaps it's time you revisited that decision of yours. Perhaps enough time's finally passed that you can think about it rationally... if you want to."
"I think.... I think, perhaps, I do," Emily said, very slowly, astonished at the words coming out of her own mouth. And even more astonished to realize how true they were.
"I think I do," she repeated, "but that doesn't magica
lly dispel the things that frighten me."
"Maybe not, but then again," Allison grinned suddenly, "that's my job."
"Your job?" Emily looked at her, and Allison nodded.
"You know what Honor's been through in terms of physical injury. Nothing that's happened to her was as severe as what happened to you, but it was more than enough to make her worry about passing her inability to regenerate on to her children. Fortunately for her, her mother happens-if I may be pardoned for blowing my own horn-to be one of the Star Kingdom's leading geneticists. I made identifying the gene group which prevents her from regenerating a personal project, and I found it years ago. The problem child is a dominant, unfortunately, but it's not associated with the locked sequences of the Meyerdahl modifications-if it were, Alfred wouldn't regenerate either, and he does-so it's not automatically selected for at fertilization. Once I'd determined that, I also determined that she carries it only on the chromosome she received from her father, and I've done a scan on her child. As a result of which, I was able to reassure her that she hasn't passed it along to him."
"Him?" Despite her own whiplashing emotions, Emily fastened on the personal pronoun.
"Oh, crap!" Allison shook her head, her expression suddenly disgusted. "Forget you heard that," she commanded. "Honor doesn't want to know yet. Which, if you'll pardon my saying so, is fairly silly. I always wanted to know as soon as possible."
"Him," Emily repeated. Then she smiled. "Well, once Grayson gets over the fact that he's illegitimate, they'll probably be pleased!"
"Bunch of stuck-in-the-mud patriarchal male chauvinists, the lot of them. It pisses me off to think how frigging delighted they're all going to be," Allison muttered, and Emily surprised herself with a genuine laugh.
"That's better!" Allison approved with a smile. "But my point is that even with Hamish and Honor's genetic material colliding as accidentally as it did in this case, his Y-chromosome's done the trick quite neatly. Mother Nature didn't even need my intervention."
"Not in her case," Emily agreed, and Allison snorted.
"Oh, for goodness sakes, Emily! This isn't the dark ages, you know. I haven't looked at your chart yet, for obvious reasons, but I will be frankly astonished if the problem is anywhere near as complicated as you seem to believe it is. Since we already know Hamish's genotype is perfectly capable of regenerating, and since we already know he and Honor can produce a child equally capable of regenerating, it's probably as simple as selecting the sperm with the genes we need. If it's not, then I feel quite certain I can repair the problem before fertilization. In fact, I could probably repair it after fertilization, although I'd hesitate to promise that without a careful examination of you both."
"You sound... remarkably confident," Emily said slowly.
"I sound-?" Allison paused, looking at Emily with an expression of almost comical surprise. Then she cleared her throat.
"Ah, Emily. Although I haven't reviewed any of your files, I know you spent quite some time on Beowulf after the accident. And I believe Dr. Kleinman is Beowulf-trained. He graduated from Johns Hopkins, Beowulf, didn't he?"
"I think so, yes."
"Then it would be fair to say you've been exposed to the Beowulf medical establishment in all its smug, not to say narcissistic, tradition-encrusted glory?"
"To some extent," Emily said, puzzled by the curious bite in Allison's tone.
"And do you happen to know what my maiden name was?"
"Chou, wasn't it?" Emily's puzzlement was, if anything, deeper than ever.
"Well, yes. Except that if I'd stayed on Beowulf, I'd have been known by my entire maiden name... whether I particularly wanted to be or not. Which, as it happens, I didn't."
"Why not?" Emily asked, when she paused.
"Because my full family name is Benton-Ramirez y Chou," Allison said, and Emily's eyes widened.
Of all the medical "dynasties" of Beowulf, acknowledged throughout explored space as the preeminent queen of the life-sciences, the Benton-Ramirez and Chou families stood at the very pinnacle. They were Beowulf, with a multi-generational commitment to the field of genetic medicine which stretched back to well before Old Earth's Final War. George Benton and Sebastiana Ramirez y Moyano had actually led the Beowulf teams to Old Earth to battle the hideous consequences of the Final War's bioweapons, and Chou Keng-ju had led the bioethics fight against Leonard Detweiler and the other "progressive eugenics" advocates six centuries ago. Among the many jewels in the crown of their families' achievements since was a leading role in the development of the prolong process itself. And-
"Well," she said, mildly, after a moment, "at least I finally understand exactly where Honor's rather... volcanic attitude towards the genetic slave trade and Manpower comes from, don't I?"
"You might say she imbibed it with her mother's milk," Allison agreed. "Bad science, no doubt, but I did breast-feed, and having a direct ancestor's signature on the Cherwell Convention didn't hurt, I suppose." She smiled thinly. "My point, however, is that if I come across as sounding just a bit breezily confident, I come by it honestly. I can't give you an absolute, categorical assurance that you and Hamish could produce a biological child who will regenerate. The probability that you couldn't, especially with my intervention, is so vanishingly small I literally couldn't quantify it, but it does exist. What I can guarantee you, however, is that with my intervention you won't produce a child who can't regenerate."
She looked straight into Emily's eyes again.
"So tell me, Emily. With that guarantee, do you want a child of your own, or not?"
* * *
"Mr. Secretary, you have a com call from Colonel Nesbitt," Alicia Hampton said from Arnold Giancola's display.
"Ah?" Giancola gave her his best absent-minded smile, then shook himself visibly. "I mean, by all means put it through, Alicia. Thank you."
"You're welcome, Sir," she said with a slight, fond smile of her own, and her face disappeared from his display. A moment later, Jean-Claude Nesbitt's face replaced it.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Secretary," he said courteously.
"Colonel," Giancola nodded. "What can I do for you this afternoon?"
"It isn't really anything especially important, Sir. I'm just screening you to let you know I'm about to begin the regular quarterly security review." Giancola's expression never changed, but he felt his stomach muscles tense. "I know it's a pain," Nesbitt continued, "but your personal staff is going to have to be vetted again, as well. Under the circumstances, I thought I'd give you a heads-up so we could try to avoid any scheduling conflicts that might interfere with your planned workload."
"I appreciate that, Colonel," Giancola said, and a particularly attentive observer might have noticed that his eyes narrowed ever so slightly as they met Nesbitt's on the display. "But if you're quite satisfied with your own arrangements, I feel confident we could accommodate our schedule to yours. If you'll contact Ms. Hampton when you're ready to begin, we'll be at your disposal for you to proceed any time you're ready to begin."
"Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I understand," Nesbitt said with a respectful nod. "And I appreciate your readiness to cooperate."
"One can never be too careful where security matters are concerned, Colonel," Giancola said seriously. "Was there anything else we needed to discuss?"
"No, Mr. Secretary. Thank you. I have everything I need."
"In that case, Colonel, good day," Giancola said, and cut the circuit.
* * *
Yves Grosclaude leaned back in the comfortable flight couch and wished his mind were as comfortable as his body as his air car sliced through the night shrouded mountains on autopilot.
None of this was supposed to have happened. None of it. He'd agreed with Giancola that it was time to take a firmer line with the Manties, and God knew they'd certainly managed to stiffen that ninny Pritchart's spine! But who would ever have expected her to do something like this? And now that she had, what the hell did they do about it?
He frowned, w
orrying at one thumbnail with his teeth, wondering how Giancola could remain-or, at least, appear to remain-so unconcerned. He supposed that after this long without detection, he should be feeling less worried, himself. After all, if anyone was going to suspect something, certainly they should have done so by now, right?
But it didn't work that way. Whether anyone suspected now or not, eventually they would, and there was no statute of limitations on treason.
He drew a deep breath and forced his hand back down into his lap. There was nothing to do about it right now, and if the war lasted long enough, and if Giancola played his political cards astutely enough, it was entirely possible that President Giancola would be in a position to quash any unfortunate investigations after the fighting finally ended.
And if he couldn't, at least Grosclaude had tucked away the vital evidence he could undoubtedly trade to the prosecution for at least limited immunity.
That, he knew, was all he could realistically do to disaster-proof his own position. In the meantime, he'd just have to keep his head down and concentrate on being as innocent and above board as possible. It wasn't easy, but he hoped this ski trip would help. It ought to at least let him burn off some of his accumulated nervous energy!
