Where a mad Goddess takes lives on a whim, but goes unpunished because she holds our world together. Where an innocent young man serves her with his every breath, because he loves the woman she was and can't bear to leave her alone in her darkness. Where Charles and I must pretend to have an arrow left in our quiver, against the near certainty that Terra will slide into terminal, impenetrable paranoia within a year.
"I can."
***
"Well," Armand said, "now you know."
It had taken him nearly an hour to clear the last of his neighbors from his hovel. The excitement of visitors from "the real world" had proved too much for some. He'd had to eject the last few with a combination of force and intimidation. But his sister and Teodor Chistyakowski had remained, proof against any semi-courteous suggestion that they should prefer to fly back to Jacksonville in darkness rather than spend the night on the Hopeless peninsula.
"Not everything," Teodor Chistyakowski said. "Why does it have to be you?"
Armand glanced at Teresza, who sat on their bed with Valerie at her breast again. She gave a tiny shake of her head.
"You don't need to know that. Let it stand that there's no one else who could do the job. No one else on Hope, at any rate." He smirked. "Be glad you're a girl, Chary."
"I always have been," his sister said. "But why?"
"Because the qualifications are sex-linked. Vicki's brother Conrad couldn't take her place, either." He peered out the door at the last sliver of the setting sun. "Not that I'd wish it on him. He struck me as a harmless sort."
Not that I'd wish it on anyone. Even Vicki.
Teodor rose from his seat at the table and joined him at the door. Though not quite as tall as Armand, the genesmith was equally broad and muscular. Between them, they filled the opening completely, darkening the hovel to the conditions of full night. Charisse reached for the alcohol lamp, wielded the sparker, and turned the wick key to produce a low flame that lit the space with a dim blue radiance.
"You have some sort of extra ability," Teodor murmured, softly enough that only Armand could hear. "Don't you?"
Armand nodded without looking at him.
"Do all the male children in your line have it?"
"I don't know." Armand scowled. "It doesn't matter. I'm not about to produce any."
"Armand," the genesmith said, his voice low yet throbbing with urgency, "there's information here. What do these Cabal types culture out of this ability? How does it safeguard the ecology of Hope?"
"Let it be, Teodor." It was almost a threat.
"What if you could use it without them?"
Armand turned suddenly to stare Teodor full in the face. Whatever the genesmith saw there, it made him step backward.
"This planet has interesting internal dynamics," he said in an elevated voice. "It's honeycombed by powerful streams of heavy metals that reach from the outer crust to deep in the magma layers. For all anyone knows, they could go all the way to the core. And the Spoonerites didn't know about them when they made planetfall. So for nearly twenty years, they couldn't figure out why the crops they planted in this lovely earth would wither before they matured enough to produce seed. The First Settlers had to live out of hydroponic tanks while they struggled to penetrate the mysteries of the soil.
"Every Hope child is taught early on that a trio of agronomists just happened upon a modification that made Terrestrial flora self-adapting to the conditions here. What that child isn't told is that the gene splicing the First Settlers put their plants through was entirely for show. The real action was underground, in a little vault in the rock where a man was condemned to live out a highly unnatural life.
"Because there was nothing to be done chemically or biologically about those metal streams, Teodor. As long as they permeated the crust, they'd poison all Earth life. Did you know that when Man first arrived here, Hope sported hundreds of different kinds of grasses, trees, and woody growths? Today there are only a handful of distinct native species left." He smiled broadly. "We were allowed to think that the technologically enhanced vigor of our Terrestrial organisms just out-competed the Hope stuff. But it wasn't that way at all. The native life needed those metal flows. If Earth life was to flourish here, the native life had to be sacrificed."
Charisse and Teodor stared fixedly at him.
"How?" Teodor whispered.
"The metal streams were suppressed, of course." Armand held out a hand, palm down, and pantomimed a steady, forceful push downward. "A very special man with some extra abilities was trained to use those abilities to cleanse the crust of antimony and copper. Once he'd learned how to do that, the life of Earth could mature here."
He turned, pointed at one of his bamboo chairs, and bore down. The chair rose unsteadily into the air, hung there a moment, and floated toward him as if drawn by an invisible pulley. He made it settle to the packed earth immediately behind him and sat in it as the genesmith stared in amazement.
"That man became the first God of Hope. He lived forty-eight years alone in a cavern deep beneath the surface of this world, with only his thoughts for company. His name was Emile Morelon." His eyes went to his sister's pale, disbelieving face. "He was Grandpere Alain's younger brother."
Teresza laid Valerie gently on the bed, went to Armand and draped her arms over him from behind. He laid his hands over hers and caressed them. Teodor and Charisse stood unspeaking.
"This peninsula will survive without the services of a God. We live mostly on fish here. I can probably contrive a way to grow enough strains of vegetables to keep us safe from vitamin deficiency. But there are too many of you...others to go back to hydroponics. Nearly all of you will die of starvation, and the survivors are likely to envy the dead."
"I will not give up my husband," Teresza said without preliminary.
Armand glanced up at her. "And I will not give up my wife and daughter...or my life."
"Then the rest of Hope is doomed," Teodor said.
Armand nodded.
***
"You could stay here, you know," Armand said. "Terry would like that."
Chistyakowski snorted and shook his head. "In one of your many guest rooms? I think I'd prefer more space than that."
"Oh, we could add a wing. But seriously, this isn't the worst sort of life men have ever known. What if it's the sole alternative to a painful death?"
The genesmith snorted and shoved his hands into his pockets. Armand saw his eyes wander toward the path back to civilization. It was lit by the barest stippling of stars.
"There's nothing for me here, lad. If you'd made time to get to know me before haring off into exile with my daughter, you'd have known that already."
"And perhaps you would know better than to speak to your daughter's husband as if he were a minor child," Armand said lightly. "If you're unimpressed by my position in this little community, you might at least show some regard for your daughter's free choice."
"Who do --"
"I won't let it pass a second time, Teodor."
The genesmith's eyes, unreadable in the darkness, fixed on his as if assessing a threat.
"Your grandfather would have cautioned you against treating that casually with me, young man."
"No doubt. But he would have offered the same advice to you. Especially in view of the situation you've placed your daughter in. Why did you afflict her so, Teodor? Did a woman once betray you, or were you just incapable of imagining a fidelity that springs from the will alone?"
Chistyakowski's lips drew back from his teeth. "Don't you dare suggest it was intentional, lad, unless you want --"
Armand struck the genesmith flush upon the nose. Chistyakowski windmilled his arms, fell backwards, and lay in the dust of the wash with his hands pressed against his face. Blood leaked between his fingers. He glared up at Armand with a new and wary respect.
"I told you I wouldn't let it pass again," Armand said. He marshaled his telekinetic power and held it at the ready, then reached down a hand.
/> Chistyakowski took it and allowed himself to be helped up. As soon as he was on his feet, he loosed a roundhouse right at Armand's jaw.
The blow stopped an inch from its target. Armand smiled as the genesmith struggled to move his hand in any direction at all, and failed.
"Teresza told me about how smart you are, Teodor. Over and over, in fact. Should I conclude that she overestimated you? Or have you just abandoned your good sense out of pique at having to treat with a twenty-year-old as an equal?"
"My daughter --" Chistyakowski growled, still struggling to move his hand.
"My wife," Armand said, "is sleeping less than fifty yards from where we stand. With my daughter in her arms." Chistyakowski's face clouded at the emphases. "She's fated to remain with me for the rest of our lives, and you know perfectly well why that has to be. But it's not all bad. Her relation to me has made her the queen of the first kingdom Hope has ever seen, complete with all the attention and adulation any queen could want, and she's found that she rather likes it. She won't like it when she hears about this episode tomorrow morning, but she'll forgive me for it, so don't make me hit you again."
He released Chistyakowski's hand from his psionic grip. It dropped to the genesmith's side.
"King of a kingdom that can barely feed itself," Chistyakowski growled. "What a step up from heir to the Morelon fortune!"
Armand nodded. "It has its drawbacks. But it's the role I play here. Our neighbors want me to play it, and I find that I'm willing. They're unanimously grateful for the improvements I've made. As you saw, they can be quite protective."
"And when you start taxing, and controlling, and summoning their daughters to your bed?" Chistyakowski said. "Do you expect their assessment of your contributions to remain in your favor then?"
Armand snorted. "Get serious. Terry would kill me, if no one else beat her to it. The Hopeless are such anarchists that they couldn't even bear the featherweight rules of your society!"
"Anarchists with a monarch. Then what about your successor...Armand?"
"One problem at a time, Teodor," Armand said. He waved expansively at the lands to the north. "When we've raised this peninsula a notch or two above jungle subsistence, this time working with the planetary ecology instead of against it, then there'll be time for long thoughts."
Chistyakowski regarded him steadily in the darkness. Behind him, the village was silent.
"And you japed about overestimating my intelligence," the genesmith said. "You've set a process in motion here. A process with a powerful engine behind it. That engine won't simply stop running at your command. Give that a few moments' thought before your next spate of self-congratulation, if you want...your daughter, and the children she'll bear someday, to live as freely and as heedlessly as you've done to date."
Chistyakowski turned and stalked back to the hovel.
Chapter 35
After their lovemaking, Ethan had held Victoria gently for a long while before finally turning onto his side and surrendering to sleep. His form was still in the darkness. His light snore was almost inaudible. He wasn't what kept Victoria painfully awake, all her muscles rigid and her mind racing.
Why haven't I conceived?
A year and a half of nightly sex, with not even the thought of contraception, and her periods continued like clockwork. She wondered if the hormone infusions and terminal treatments had impaired her fertility. But they'd had no other perceptible effect, unless she was correct in crediting them with her enhanced libido. Despite all, her menstrual rhythm was unchanged from before her apotheosis.
She cast about for something else to blame it on. Ethan's ejaculate was copious enough. He emitted it vigorously enough. If he was sterile, surely he'd have known it. Given his guilelessness, he'd have admitted it to her before they became a couple. She was certain of it.
How certain am I of myself?
She'd never had her own fertility tested. It hadn't been a factor in her plans, or her mother's plans for her...as far as she knew. She wasn't sure why it had risen to haunt her now, in the closeted, subterranean life to which she'd doomed herself.
Would I want to have a child here?
It wasn't a matter of whether she'd be allowed. Ianushkevich and Petrus knew that they could no longer restrain her.
How would I explain to him that his mother can never go out of these apartments? That his playfriends can't come to visit? That he can't discuss her, or where she lives, or what she does, with anyone else in the world? That the day he first leaves these chambers will be the last time we ever see one another?
He'd flee this place as soon as he was physically able. How would I deal with losing him to the real, open, sunlit world?
The prospect weighed heavily upon her. But despite all, she couldn't chase off the vision of an infant in her arms. A child of her own, to love and be loved by, without regard for her unique and irrevocable station. Someone who would depend on her for things other than protection from a hostile ecology. Things more definite and less grand.
It might not matter. I might be a freemartin.
Family-intensive Hope society regarded infertile women with pity. There weren't many of them. They tended not to marry. Most didn't live long.
Armand would never have accepted a barren wife.
Even after a year and a half as Terra, a goddess immured beneath two hundred feet of rock for the good of all the world, she hadn't surrendered that set of might-have-beens. Ethan could have her in his arms, he could be loving her with all his considerable strength, she could be at the point of climax, ready to explode, and Armand's face would intrude. She'd find herself thinking of Morelon House, and the huge cornfields behind it, and the dinner she'd once had there with stately old Alain and gracious Elyse and chattery Charisse, and her tears would spring forth unbidden.
Ethan had noticed once. She'd never seen him so crestfallen, before or since. It had taken a lot of persuading to get him to accept that his lover "just gets this way sometimes."
That could have been mine.
But not if she couldn't bear children.
The thought spiked her resolve. All the difficulties faded to nothing.
I'm going to have a baby, whatever it takes.
Her researches would begin in the morning.
***
The morning passed in near-perfect silence. Charisse and Teodor rose with Armand and Teresza, groomed themselves as best they could in a hut with no walls for privacy and only cold running water, and sat down to breakfast, a collation of greens and beans from Teresza's garden, without a visible reaction. The four of them ate without conversation. When all were finished, Charisse undertook the washing-up while Teresza saw to Valerie. Teodor and Armand remained at the table, carefully avoiding one another's eyes.
Armand had come to regret the exchange of the evening before. He wanted to back and fill, to qualify his more extravagant proclamations, but saw no way to introduce the subject that would preserve him from embarrassment before his sister and his wife.
I acted like a pompous ass. Whatever my position here, I had no call to treat my wife's father like an annoying mendicant. But I can't promise him anything that would endanger Defiance. My responsibilities lie here. And if I stay here, then Terry has to stay here too.
Charisse stood with her back to them both, laboring over their dishes. Teresza reclined on their bed, pillows arranged to prop her into a semi-reclining position, with Valerie as ravenous as always at her breast. Her ethereal smile spoke of a state free from care.
Abruptly, Armand blurted, "I never did thank you."
Teodor's eyebrows rose. "For what?"
Armand grinned. "For my wife. For the most perfect woman ever to tread this ball of rock."
Color rose into the genesmith's face. "Well..."
"You did design her, didn't you?"
Teodor winced. He nodded and looked away.
"Then it's appropriate for the beneficiary of your labors to be grateful for them, wouldn't you say?"
"There's no need," he murmured in his lowest register. "She's yours now. You've already given her more than I ever could." There was a faint catch in his voice. His eyes darted to Valerie and quickly swooped away. "More than I thought you could. Just take good care of her." He rose, strode to the door, stepped out and pushed it closed behind him.
Armand was staring at the door in heightened discomfort when his sister shook the water from her hands, wiped them on her skirt, and said, "That's that. One last chore and we'll be off."
"Huh? How come --"
She smiled faintly, held up a hand, and strode out much as Teodor had.
Twenty minutes later, the visitors returned, arms heavily laden. Two small engines dangled from the ends of Teodor's massive arms. Charisse trudged in just behind him, carrying a huge bundle of off-white silk. She staggered at the lintel and would have fallen forward into her burden, but Teodor dropped the engines and caught her. A grayish metal box slid from the top of the pile of silk and headed for the ground. Armand shot out of his chair and caught it a bare six inches from impact.
Teodor snorted. "Why the acrobatics? Why not just use your psi?"
Armand reddened. "Because I didn't think of it." He turned the box over in his hands. Its face bore a dial calibrated in Megahertz, a pair of toggle switches, and two small grilles. The backplate revealed a recess intended for a low-voltage alternating current plug.
"What's this?"
Charisse unloaded the silk onto the table and cocked an eyebrow. "Has it been so long that you don't recognize a radio any more?"
Teresza sat up and focused on them. Valerie lost her grip on her nipple and began to cry softly. Armand opened his mouth, found it too dry to speak.
"But --" he croaked.
"No power for it, right?" Teodor drawled. "Not much of a problem. Get one of these engines working, mount a magnet on a rotary bearing, belt it to the pulley, loop some wire around it, and you've got yourself an alternator. If you don't have a magnet, just grab a chunk of iron and whack it around a bit. You can get half an ampere at twelve volts out of any old piece of junk." He grinned. "Then you can listen to all the chatter during the end of the world. Even contribute a few words if you like. The right-hand grille is a condenser mike. Just push the toggle to talk."
Which Art In Hope (Spooner Federation Saga Book 1) Page 24
