He withdrew behind the lights.
Within moments Mira felt the first twinge—milder than the gripping pain she’d felt on Intel station. She lay back on the bed, suddenly wishing that her sister, Faja, or her friend Estelle were with her. Even Bethany Ionil.
A different kind of fear struck her. Only women caught in dire circumstances went through uncontrolled childbirth. Even on Araldis, natural birth was a rare thing.
‘What will happen?’ she asked after another contraction.
‘Your body will know what to do. Just accept what happens as part of a normal process. We are monitoring your progress.’ Dolin’s voice echoed past the lights. ‘Don’t be afraid.’
The next contraction squeezed her abdomen into a tight ball, and she gasped aloud.
‘We can’t administer pain relief with the accelerant, Baronessa.’
She nodded and felt another contraction. This one started in the small of her back and radiated to her side and down into her pelvis, finishing in a fierce cramp that made her draw her knees up. She grabbed the edges of the bed and rolled to one side.
Gloved hands reached through the bank of lights. ‘Stay on your back. We must feel inside the birth canal.’
‘No!’ Mira jerked upright. ‘Where are the women?’
‘Baronessa?’ said Dolin’s voice.
‘I want women in attendance.’
‘There are no women on this shift.’
Mira lashed out with her foot, knocking over a bank of lights. She slid off the bed to her feet and blinked into the dark side of the room. It was filled with male ‘esques.
She gritted her teeth through the next wave of pain, waiting for it to pass before she could speak again. When she could, she straightened. ‘Dolin...’
He righted the lights and moved them further back. Then he stepped to her side.
‘Yes, Baronessa?’
‘Find a woman to help me, then do not come back in here until the baby is born. None of you!’
‘But we must—’
‘As soon as the baby is born, you may do what is necessary to save it.’ She was quiet but emphatic, using the most commanding manner she could muster.
In the silence that followed something unspoken passed between the observers. They quietly disappeared, leaving only Dolin. He helped Mira back onto the bed.
‘Your customs don’t allow males present at the birth?’
She nodded. ‘Latino women are modest. I have adapted to... many things since leaving Araldis, but not this.’
The furrows in Dolin’s forehead grew deeper. ‘I’ll see what can be done.’
He disappeared.
She lived in the narrow world of managing pain until the door finally opened again, and a stocky woman dressed in food-smeared overalls entered. The dark hair escaping a white cap marked her as a domestic of some kind. She marched straight over to Mira’s side.
‘What’re all these harsh lights for? For Scolar’s sake... men!’ She straightened the cover and put her hand to Mira’s brow. ‘What’s yer name, love?’
‘Mira Fedor.’
‘Well, Mira Fedor. I’m Linnea, the galley supervisor in this place. Come from just down the mountain in Clementvale. Only ever delivered one baby the old way. Me own. Got caught out in the protein fields on Argamon. Had me son right there in the clod. Used me pocket knife to cut the cord.’
Her reassurances were thin, but her voice was strong and centred, like Faja’s. Mira became calmer—until the pain piled in again. She gasped for air.
‘Little breaths, love. Above it. Ride above it.’ Linnea left her to search through some drawers. She returned with a wad of absorbent pads and a white overall. She stripped out of her kitchen garb and donned the clean overall right then and there, unconcerned about modesty.
The sight of her bare chest made Mira gasp—not the nudity, but the myriad of finely inked lines spreading across her naked breasts. ‘Pensare!’
‘What?’ Linnea pulled the overall up and sealed the seam.
But Mira was caught in another contraction and couldn’t speak. When the wave of pain passed, she reached out for Linnea’s hand.
The woman stepped closer, surprised. ‘What is it, love?’
‘You belong to the Pensare.’ She traced her fingers across her own breast with her other hand.
Linnea nodded, understanding, and smiled. ‘Aaah. I’d heard it called different things, but never that. Here we are the Swestr—sisters. The women’s lobby. Even on famous Scolar, things are not always equal. Do you bear the marks?’
Mira shook her head; another contraction was coming. ‘Mia sorella... sister... mine,’ she panted.
‘Roll on yer side. Let me rub your back, little Swestr.’
But Mira barely heard her. The individual stab of her contractions turned into one long excruciating pain that shifted to her back. Then a strange sensation overtook her body, as though her pelvis might split apart. Her focus fell to it, and the sense of movement within her.
‘It’s coming.’ She thought she’d spoken aloud. Had she?
Linnea began helping her onto the floor, into a squatting position. Her sturdy body bore Mira’s weight easily.
‘Better than on yer back, love. Use gravity to help you get yer little ‘un out.’
Mira’s legs trembled with the exertion.
‘It’s crowning. Now lean on me back,’ instructed Linnea. ‘I’m goin’ to get down low and make sure yer baby doesn’t slip.’
Mira collapsed across Linnea’s broad back, fingers spasming into the folds of the cook’s overalls.
‘Just one little push. Now. Not too hard. This one’s slipperier than an eel.’
Mira felt disembodied, separate from her skin. Not able to think.
‘Mira! Swestr! Push!’ said Linnea, sharply. ‘Bear down.’
Mira’s mind began to slip away somewhere, to a place that she’d been before. But then Insignia drew her back from that blissful oblivion, insisted she return.
Mira?
Insignia had been silent in her mind until now.
Our baby is about to be born, said the biozoon. You must help her.
Mira felt something. Her eyes flickered open.
Linnea had gripped her shoulder with one hand, reaching up, her other hand still cupped between Mira’s parted legs. The thick fingers bit into her flesh with no apology.
‘You must push now. This baby needs to be free of yer.’ Bright eyes and a sweat-glistening face. ‘This is yer important job, Mira,’ Linnea told her. ‘The one you were born for. Don’t fail yerself. Or yer baby.’
The woman’s intensity grounded her. Suddenly it wasn’t Linnea, a stranger, delivering her baby, but her beloved sister Faja. The same look, the same voice, the same determination.
Fa!
Mira let the sensations back in—the pain, the sense of her own body being torn—and pushed down.
She felt her baby’s head move.
‘Babe’s here!’ cried Linnea. ‘It’s here. Once more.’
Mira pushed again, and with the sliding sensation came a release from the pain.
‘Here, I’ve got yer babe in my hands.’ Linnea lifted a bloody bundle up so Mira could see.
With trembling fingers, Mira reached for the tiny body. ‘It’s a girl,’ she said.
‘Guess so. Can’t see no man’s tackle down there. Now lie yerself down on the bed while we deal with the afters.’
‘A girl,’ repeated Mira, as she weakly levered herself onto the bed. ‘Thank Crux!’
Linnea smiled, but continued to hold the infant. ‘Yer babe looks good an all to me, love. A tad undersized, as you’d expect, but its lungs seem to be working fine.’
‘I wish to hold her,’ said Mira.
Linnea shook her head and laid the bloody babe in the transparent crib. ‘Promised Dolin I’d put her straight in here, soon as I cut the cord. It’s the only reason he let me in. Once the scan’s done, yer can have her back. How are yer planning to feed her?’
‘Yeah. They do need it, yer know,’ Linnea said with gentle sarcasm. ‘And what name have yer picked?’
Mira felt her face warm with embarrassment at her exposed ignorance. Estelle wouldn’t have been so ill prepared. Nor Faja. Both would have picked their child’s name before the birth.
She spent some precious moments thinking about her sister and her best friend, wishing they were with her, longing for their company and advice. Then she let her self-pity go and looked to her child.
Our child, Insignia corrected.
THALES
‘Villon?’ The detention room was so achingly familiar that Thales felt compelled to say the old philosopher’s name aloud.
But no aged and gentle person emerged from one of the bedrooms; no refined and thoughtful voice replied. Villon was dead, and Thales found himself back in the exact room he had shared with the great man.
Rene had been in the docking bay when the politic guards led him away. He’d seen her there, pressed back against the wall, a slim almost ethereal figure with her fingers clasped tight. He didn’t call out to her or plead for her help. He hadn’t endured the last months to return home like a boy needing protection.
In the furor of their arrival, and Mira’s transfer to Mount Clement, Fariss had eluded the guards. Even though she hadn’t really understood all the reasons for him risking detention again, she’d happily acknowledged his determination. If she’d forbidden him, he didn’t know what he would have done. His urge to obey her was so strong, and yet his desire to preserve the integrity of his world was equally so.
Fariss had supported him through her nonchalance, and he’d seen the sparkle in her eye at the promise of trouble. She relished conflict and battle.
‘Do what you must,’ she’d told him before they berthed on Scolar. ‘And I’ll do the same. Right now, that means not surrendering to your police. I’ll be there for you, watching from the sidelines.’ Her beautiful big eyes widened in thoughtful surprise. ‘And to tell you the truth, I’m not sure why, except that your skin feels good against mine, and your voice is like a song to me, and my guts tell me to protect you at all cost.’
Her unexpected declaration almost liquefied his resolve. Tears had burned his eyelids, and he’d knelt before her.
She’d cuffed him gently and pulled him to his feet. ‘Pleasure me now, before what will be.’
And they’d rolled together in their bunk with a passion that had left Thales weak again.
‘Msr Berniere?’
Thales blinked from his reverie. A guard was standing at the door of what had been Villon’s bedroom. How long had he been there while Thales was lost in thought?
The red-robed guard gave him a curious look. ‘Follow me.’
Thales walked between two Robes, along the familiar marble-grand corridors, until they ushered him into an opulent meeting room. This time, though, Thales viewed the whole Pre-Eminence building through fresh eyes, marvelling at the smooth polished flooring, intricately carved window frames and rich textured furnishings.
How luxurious these surroundings were, compared to the oddity of Rho Junction architecture, or Lasper Farr’s world of parasite-clean refuse. Now that he was home, he found the aesthetics of the building both soothing and unsettling. We have such wealth, but have lost our wisdom.
‘Thales Berniere.’
This time it was a member of the Sophos who spoke his name. A dozen of them sat along one side of a long table, as if keeping a deliberate physical distance from him.
Thales recognised most of them: Lauda and Kantos, Averro-ji and Juan Alermo. Sophos Mianos was the notable omission, but in his place sat his daughter.
‘Rene,’ whispered Thales.
His wife’s delicate complexion lacked colour, and she moved one hand repeatedly, back and forth, between her lap and her mouth. Thales remembered this agitated mannerism as clearly as if they had never been apart.
His heart contracted for an instant, but then the image of a broad face with thick lascivious lips entered his mind, and the pain eased. Fariss. Where are you?
‘Rene Mianos will represent her father on the Sophos until his return.’
Thales looked at her, sitting there among the aged male ‘esques. Rene had coveted a seat on the Pre- Eminence, and he’d worried that she’d thought his immaturity would hold her back. To see that she’d finally realised her ambition through her father’s misfortune—a misfortune precipitated by Thales—seemed more than ironic. Bitter amusement ate into his composure. Would his wife side against him?
Sophos Lauda began to speak. ‘The Sophos has reviewed both the recent farcast from the OLOSS summit on Intel station, and the recordings from the OLOSS ship which connected with the Baronessa Fedor’s biozoon companion.
‘You’ve made grave accusations and bold statements, Thales Berniere. You secreted yourself aboard an OLOSS ship in order to escape questioning for an incident in a kaffe klatsch, in the Kant quarter. During Sophos Mianos’s interrogation of the Latino noble Mira Fedor you chose to assist her escape by attacking Mianos, and accused him of murdering our greatest philosopher, Amaury Villon. An offence, I might add, that amounts to treason.
‘Having absconded on the Baronessa Fedor’s ship, and having been absent for some months, you now return to our notice, accusing Sophos Mianos of barbarity. You have also declared that members of the Pre-Eminence, and others in our world, have been infected by a virus that alters our ability to think critically. How would you defend yourself against the charge of insanity?’
Thales locked his knees to stop his legs from buckling. He was not afraid of the Sophos, but his wife’s presence made this more difficult. He would hurt her when he spoke of his encounters with her father, and then she would choose not to believe him. Whatever... friendship might have endured beyond their separation would surely be destroyed.
‘I will not even address the charge of insanity, Sophos Lauda. My mental health is not relevant, as I will repeat my story in my own words, and then offer proof of it.’
He looked along the row of faces. Age had blurred their features, as well as something else—disinterest, perhaps. It was as if they were merely going through the motions of a hearing that would never amount to anything. These people would be impossible to convince or move to action; the motivation did not lie within them. They were too comfortable. Diseased.
Amaury? Give me guidance. But Amaury Villon was gone. Mixed emotions swirled within him. He would let them see what it was to question. Remind them of the nature of passion.
‘After leaving Scolar, circumstances saw me in the company of the Baronessa Fedor. Though the decision to break away from the OLOSS ship that transported Sophos Mianos out to question her was the Baronessa’s, I would have supported her action. I regret the injury caused to my father-in-law, but he... intended to impound her ship and hold her in detention. The Baronessa was desperate and frightened.’
He told them of Mira’s story and the invasion of Araldis, but throughout his tale the faces remained unmoved, almost bored.
‘How did the Baronessa become pregnant in this untenable situation?’ asked Rene.
Thales looked directly at her for the first time. Her eyes seemed dull to him, her sharp intellect hidden behind cloudiness. ‘That is her story to tell, if she so wishes, and in truth I did not know of her pregnancy until our paths crossed again more recently.’
‘Where did you leave the Baronessa’s company?’
‘On Rho Junction. She was abducted by a Post- Species sect, and I met a tyro from Belle-Monde who offered me quick passage back to Edo.’
‘Belle-Monde?’ It was Kantos who spoke, but they all adopted a similar disdainful expression. ‘What would one of the famous Belle-Monde tyros be doing on Rho Junction?’
Thales told them about Lasper Farr and the DNA.
‘You expect us to believe that we’ve been infected with a virus that affects our desire to question, that softe
ns our intellect.’ Kantos burst into laughter. ‘Of all the preposterous accusations! This one borders on hallucinatory.’
Thales expected the others to share this open scepticism. ‘The virus affects the orbitofrontal cortex, where decision-making occurs. Have you noticed a change in each other? A reluctance to make decisions? A tendency to maintain equilibrium? A fatigue that takes you when deep thought is required?’
The Sophos members exchanged eyebrow-raised glances.
‘There is something else you can check. Fortunately, I chose not to carry the DNA in my bloodstream, as Commander Farr wanted me to. That, coupled with the virus the Commander administered to force me to comply with his wishes, would surely have killed me. As it was, it left its legacy.’ He touched his cheek. ‘Necrosis. The Baronessa’s biozoon has helped the healing.’
‘But surely your Health Watch would have protected you?’ said Rene.
He stared at her intently. ‘It had been tampered with. Commander Farr scanned me when I returned to Edo. He told me that my most recent update had been sabotaged.’
Rene’s pale face flushed. Her hands flew to her cheeks. ‘Impossible. You used the Sophos clinic.’
‘Someone deliberately interfered with my renewal, Rene Mianos. Scan my immunity and match it to the batch I received.’
A murmur spread along the table. One to the other, they whispered and conferred.
‘Gutnee Paraburd’s premises were in the port terminal. Search his office and question him,’ Thales continued. ‘You shall soon see the veracity of my story.’
‘Who would have created such a virus, and why, Msr Berniere?’ asked Rene. She seemed to struggle to form the simple question.
‘I met the tyro Tekton of Lostol. He was able to trace the chain of business from the laboratory on Rho Junction to the original supplier.’
‘Which was who?’ demanded Lauda. Of all the Sophos, he seemed the sharpest, the most energised.
‘Her name is Miranda Seeward, a dieter of some note and also a tyro on Belle-Monde.’
The Sentients of Orion Page 96
