“I’m not in pain any more,” she said. “Not the slightest bit. I’m back to...what I was before the stillbirth.” She groped for Armand’s words and parroted them. “Whole and perfect.”
“Really, Al? The pain’s gone for good?” Barton said, incongruously clad in a bathrobe and nothing else.
She nodded. “Really and for true. And I think it’s a fitting occasion for a little revelry. Wait, strike that,” she said with a frown. “Make it a lot of revelry.”
Her kin closed around her as Barton raised his hands high and cried out in a voice of triumph.
“Kill the fatted calf!”
* * *
Dinner that night was next to impossible. Every Morelon resident in the mansion wanted to be with Althea, at her side if courtesy, propriety, and the laws of physics would permit it. There was no way the kitchen could accommodate all of them at once, so Barton chose a team to help him clear the hearthroom and move the Sacrifice Day tables and chairs into it, and decreed that the evening meal would take place there.
Alvah exerted himself as never before. The Morelon kitchen poured forth an embarrassment of delights. A huge ham baked in a glaze of maple syrup and orange juice. A brace of roast chickens rubbed with some piquant spice. Thin slices of tender beef thinly garnished with a horseradish paste. Broccoli and cauliflower, newly picked and gently steamed, in a bath of cheddar cheese sauce. Freshly baked bread wrapped around a garlic sausage. And of course, a great tureen of corn from the clan’s own autumn crop, slathered with butter and sprinkled with salt.
Clan Morelon ate, and ate, and ate. The kin attacked their meal as if food were Man’s most recent invention, perfected only that evening. For their purposes on that evening, perhaps it was so.
“I get the feeling—correct me if I’m wrong, please,” Alvah said as he brought out a tray of delicate phyllo pastries for dessert, “that my kin enjoyed their supper this evening.” He looked directly at Althea.
“Not bad,” Althea said. “Second best thing to happen to me today.” She emitted a titanic belch, delicately patted her lips with her napkin, and the clan laughed as one.
“Al?” Barton said from the other end of their table. “Could you tell us a little more about these...medipods?”
“What would you like to know?” she said.
“Well, for starters, how much do they cost, and are they a substitute for the regular longevity therapies, and what would it take to get them for the rest of us?”
“I paid eight million apiece for our two,” she said. “According to Claire Albermayer, they provide all the benefits of the traditional longevity therapy and the new rejuv therapy, plus full treatment for any bodily malady caught in time to keep it from killing you. They do require regular maintenance and resupply, which Hallanson-Albermayer Corp will take care of at the appropriate intervals, for a fee. The big catch is that your pod is yours. No one else can ever use it. In fact, the attempt would be fatal. So each of us must have his own, which is probably just a leeetle beyond even our finances at the moment.”
“Whoo! You certainly got that right,” Patrice said. “It would consume the entire capital fund and a lot more, just for our kin under this roof.”
There was a momentary silence. Althea stood, reveled afresh in her completely open, completely pain-free sensorium, and swept the gathering with her gaze.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “Filthy rich Althea and Martin can afford perpetual youth and perfect health, right in the comfort of their bedroom, but the rest of us have to limp by on quarterly visits to the Hallanson clinic. Spinal injections. Skeletal realignment. Cartilage replacement. Electrostimulus. Vascular, pulmonary, and alimentary lavage.” She hunched in a parody of horror. “Arterial probes. Catheters. Enemas.” She shuddered, and the clan laughed again. “I sympathize. Really. So I’m going to make you an offer.”
With that, she had the absolute attention of everyone in the hearthroom.
“We’ve never discussed what the money in the clan’s investment account is for, or who has a right to draw on it, or anything else. I’m pretty sure it’s fat and healthy, though. Patrice, what’s the current balance?”
Patrice looked mildly surprised at the inquiry, but answered without hesitation. “Two hundred forty-eight million dekas and change, as the equities market stands.”
Althea nodded. “Divided by eight, that would cover thirty-one of you. Nine of you would be left out, and none of our more distant relatives could be accommodated at all.” She scowled delicately. “We wouldn’t want to drain the fund completely under any circumstances. It’s the clan’s protection against all sorts of possibilities and contingencies. But we might be able to justify consuming half of it: say, a hundred twenty million dekas. Patrice, do you concur?”
Patrice nodded somberly.
“That would provide three million dekas in purchasing power, near enough, for each of us. Martin and I are already taken care of, so leave us out of the equation. If,” she said, “and only if, I can get the price of a pod, FOB to our front door, down to six million each, I will cover the balance of the purchase for any resident of Morelon House who wants to expend his three million on a Hallanson-Albermayer medipod.” She glanced down at Martin, noted his shrug, and held up a hand before anyone else could speak. “Subject to review by the full investment committee and subsequent approval by the elders’ council and our clan head.” She looked directly at Barton. “Most high and beloved clan patriarch,” she said, eliciting a titter from the table, “do you think you would approve?”
Barton rose from his seat, eyes as wide as saucers. “Are you kidding, Althea? Of course I’d approve!” He looked around the table, focusing on each council member in turn. Not one raised a murmur of protest. “The council approves as well.”
“Then,” Althea said formally, “thus shall it be...” She hesitated, looked off briefly, and smiled. “Before God and Man.”
Her relatives surged from their seats to embrace her and her husband, half-smothering them in gratitude and love.
* * *
Barton, Nora, and Chuck Feigner approached them as the gathering dissolved at last. Their clan head was grinning widely.
“What’s with the ‘most high and beloved clan patriarch’ bit?” he said. He squeezed his wife’s hand. “Did you get that from Nora? She twits me like that all the time.”
“Well,” Feigner said, “someone ought to. You do enough self-abasing and forelock-tugging for five clan heads.”
“Spooner’s beard, Chuck,” Barton said, “I’m not even a real Morelon.”
“Hold it right there, Bart,” Martin said. “Am I a real Morelon? Is Chuck?”
Barton whipped his head back and forth between them in pretended fear. “I don’t dare say no, do I?”
“Let’s say,” Feigner rumbled, “that it might be considered imprudent in present company.”
“Nora,” Althea said, “would you permit me a moment’s latitude with your husband, please?”
Nora nodded. “Just don’t damage him.”
“Not a problem.” Althea reached for Barton, pulled him into her arms, grabbed his ass with both hands, pressed him full-length against her and awarded him a long, deep, juicy French kiss. He put up only token resistance before melting completely before her ardor. When she released him, he slumped bonelessly to the floor as the others laughed and applauded.
“How’d I do, Martin?”
“Let’s see,” her husband said, peering into the distance. “Nine point eight, nine point seven, nine point nine, nine point three from the Kosciuszko judge, and nine point nine. I don’t have my calculator with me, but barring a fall during the freestyle, I’d say you’ve got the gold medal for this year sewn up. Just a touch abrupt on the dismount, though. Maybe we should practice later.”
Althea bowed clowningly and crouched before Barton. “Welcome to the family, Bart.”
“Althea,” Nora said through her giggles, “you said a moment’s latitude. Not the to
tal ruination of my marriage.”
Althea grinned. “Any time you want some pointers, dear, just say the word.” She hoisted the stunned Barton back to his feet. “Are you okay, most high and beloved clan patriarch?”
“Uhhh...”
“Maybe you shouldn’t expect too much from him tonight, Nora,” she said. “His duties have been uncommonly heavy lately, after all.” Her brow furrowed. “Speaking of clan heads past and present, where’s Charisse this evening, Chuck? Not feeling so good?”
Feigner’s grin vanished. “I was going to ask if you’d seen her. She’s not in our suite, nor anywhere else in the house.”
==
Chapter 24: Sacrifice Day, 1313 A.H.
It was a few minutes past twenty hundred when Barton rose from his seat at the head of the central table in the Morelon hearthroom, waited to be noticed by his boisterously feasting kinsmen, cleared his throat and beamed at the other attendees. The others fell silent and gave him their attention.
“Elyse has told me,” he said, “that it used to be the clan’s custom to have the oldest person present tell the Sacrifice Day story. The Kramniks never did it that way, as far as I know. But my memories don’t go back all that far, so you shouldn’t put too much stock in that.
“One way or another, it’s a little weird for me to be standing here, giving this little sermon.” He glanced about the room. “I don’t see anyone here who hasn’t heard it before. Any one of you could deliver it. I have no doubt that some of you could do it more justice than I. But we’re here, and it’s my job by general assent, so I’ll do the best I can.
“Time was, all of Mankind lived on a single world called Earth. Time was, all of Mankind suffered under the rule of States: vicious, lawless organizations that killed, stole and threatened to get their way. Time was, the billions who suffered such rule thought it was inevitable...that there was no other way for men to be than to be ruled.
“Then came the Spoonerites. They broke the mold. They denied the necessity of the State and proclaimed that men are free by natural right. They knew themselves to be few, so they concentrated in a single land they thought might find their message agreeable, called Canada. And after a few decades, they succeeded in casting down the State that ruled that land and setting its people free.
“But apparently, to a people who’ve never had it before, freedom is really frightening. Most Canadians wanted the State back, and no one alive today could say why. The Spoonerites and the few Canadians that agreed with them couldn’t make any headway against the tide of adverse opinion.
“So the Spoonerites had to withdraw, away from the population centers of Canada, deep into the northern wastes of Earth where no one else lived. But it wasn’t enough. In a world partitioned into States, a free man has no safe place to hide. The States of Earth were determined to eliminate the Spoonerite creed in the most thorough way they could think of: by eliminating everyone who believed in it.
“And they did. They killed nearly half a million people to do so: every Spoonerite on Earth. But they missed our ancestors. Our ancestors had managed to get off Earth, and onto a passing interstellar wanderer, before the States could get them. And after many years, and many trials, and many sieges of fear that they might never find a planet on which to settle, they came here, to Hope.
“That was thirteen hundred years ago. We don’t call ourselves Spoonerites any more. Why bother? There aren’t any non-Spoonerites to contrast ourselves with. Every last person on Hope is completely free—a Spoonerite in fact if not in name. So we don’t use the term among ourselves. We just live the life they bequeathed us. It cost half a million lives to make freedom possible for the descendants of a few thousand lucky survivors. That’s the sacrifice we honor on the shortest day of Hope’s year.”
He paused and briefly looked down at the table. His gaze stopped at Chuck Feigner, still without his wife and unable to say why. Barton awarded him what he hoped was an encouraging smile and passed on. Nora caught his eye from his left and nodded in approval. He patted her hand and smiled.
“I’ve learned a lot, these past few years, about sacrifices made by others. Men who preached a message of freedom long before the Spoonerites. Most of them suffered for it. Many lost their lives, as the great majority of the Spoonerites would eventually lose theirs.” He fingered his cross pendant. “And of course, there was the greatest sacrifice of all, the one that taught men that justice is eternal, that good and evil aren’t just matters of opinion, and that the real, unchanging laws of nature aren’t the consequences of random chance.
“We for whom freedom is a living reality owe many a debt. They’re not debts we can repay, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there, that we shouldn’t be reminded of them. That’s why I’m standing here this evening and spouting off this way. We need the reminders. We need to remember that the freedom and peace we enjoy had to be fought for...that many others never knew the least smidgen of it.”
He looked down the table at Althea and Martin. “Al? Martin? Is it still on?”
Althea appeared disconcerted to be addressed in the middle of the Sacrifice Day soliloquy. “Uh, yeah. All the tests are complete, our gear is aboard, and the reactor is loaded to the eyelashes. We launch tomorrow as soon as possible after dawn.” She squeezed Martin’s hand, and he smiled at her. “Assuming nothing cataclysmic between now and then.”
Barton nodded. “Sacrifice isn’t something permanently behind us. Althea and Martin will be sacrificing quite a lot quite soon. Tomorrow morning they’ll be going to the Relic, the planetoid that the Spoonerites rode through interstellar space to come here, to begin the construction of a base of operations. Once it’s secure and properly equipped, they’ll settle in to do some very hard thinking and some equally hard work. And then they’ll be alone.
“They’ll spend an indefinite interval in sperosynchronous orbit, doing high-energy physics. Researches into whether the laws of the universe as we know them—as the Spoonerites endured them—can be changed. Researches aimed at freeing us of Hope to wander the galaxy, to see if Man has kindred around some other star. Eventually, to visit Earth and learn what’s been going on there in the eighteen hundred years since the Spoonerites departed.
“They won’t know the security or comfort we know. They’ll breathe recycled air, eat food concentrates, and drink water distilled from...uh, distilled water. They’ll be alone, with only one another for companionship and protection, in an environment that will try its best to kill them. They’ll be exposed to mortal danger every second of their stay. But they’ll be doing it willingly, in obedience to their own initiative and sense of priorities. Why?
“I had to think about that for a long time. They don’t owe anyone anything. No one is clamoring for interstellar travel. No one on Hope would gain anything obvious from such an achievement, except the ability to travel very long distances at enormous cost, probably into even greater danger than they’ll know on the Relic. So why are they doing it?”
He paused again as murmurs circled the table.
“Althea has an explorer’s temperament. She’d probably say she’s doing it out of curiosity. Just to see what’s out there.” He chuckled. “Martin, of course, is doing it for Althea. Because the big lunk is so crazy in love with his wife that he can barely let her out of his sight. Am I right, Martin?”
Martin smirked ruefully and nodded.
“But whatever they might say,” Barton continued, “they’re undertaking an enormous effort under conditions of great hardship and greater danger...and if they succeed, their success won’t be theirs alone. It will bring gifts of knowledge to all of Hope. The sacrifices will be theirs alone...but the rewards from it will flow to all of us.”
He picked up his wine glass and raised it.
“Let’s have a toast. First, to our honored dead, and to those who suffered hard lives to bring their descendants here, in whose memory this feast was first established. Second, to our ancestors whose labors brought peace and pros
perity to our world, on whose successes we build each and every day. But third, to Althea and Martin, who’ve decided, entirely on their own initiative, to embrace hardship and danger once more. For knowledge. For the possibility of finding kin around other stars. And by their example to renew our bonds to all our race, near and far, past, present, and future. Win, lose, or draw, I salute them as our brightest, our bravest, and our best: the Spoonerites of our time.”
Althea and Martin stood, tears leaking, as the other attendees surged to their feet and raised their glasses high.
* * *
“Are we really going to do this?” Martin murmured.
Althea peered at him through the darkness. “Well, I am. You can still back out.”
He snorted and squeezed her gently. “Not a chance. You need a minder worse than anyone I’ve ever known. Besides,” he said, “who’s going to debug whatever weird contraption you wind up building to sling you around the galaxy?”
Her mouth curved into a grin. “Good point.”
They lay against one another in the warmth and silence.
“What do you think it will be like?” she said.
“Hm? What will what be like?”
“Living on the Relic,” she said. “Metal tunnels. Hard vacuum. Eating nothing but concentrates. Constant danger. Zero gravity.” She smiled. “Making love in zero gravity.”
He shifted to face her. “Well, we know it’s been done. By people with far fewer resources than we have, at that.”
“Hm? What will we have that they didn’t?”
He chuckled. “Come on, Al. We’ll be barely eleven thousand miles from a perfectly good planet, with the means to go home whenever we like. And wealth enough to have Patrice buy whatever we might decide we need, load it into the mass driver, and fling it up there. That’s quite a set of advantages.”
“Yeah. I suppose it is.”
But maybe not enough to pull this craziness off.
—It will be enough, dear.
Freedom's Scion (Spooner Federation Saga Book 2) Page 24
