Freedom's Fury (Spooner Federation Saga Book 3) Page 11

  “You didn’t say you’d be bringing...someone else.”

  Martin frowned. “Am I unwelcome?”

  Claire started to answer, but Althea held up a peremptory hand. “Claire Hampton Albermayer, it’s my great pleasure to introduce my beloved husband Martin Kan-Hsing Forrestal. Martin, this is Claire.” The two shook hands tentatively. Althea cocked an eyebrow at the bioengineer. “Where can we chat for a bit, Claire?”

  Claire silently beckoned them inside and closed the door firmly behind them. She escorted them to the mansion’s great room, bade them be seated, and retreated briefly.

  Althea surveyed the room. It was greatly similar to the hearthroom of Morelon House. It boasted a large hearth before which sat a long, comfortable sofa, a paucity of other standing furniture, a number of floor cushions scattered here and there, and an array of display cases, each of which testified to some achievement of Hope’s foremost biomedical clan. The outer wall featured a great expanse of fixed windows, beyond which the meticulously maintained buildings and grounds of the clan’s bioengineering center were clearly visible.

  She drew Martin’s attention to the vista. “I’d bet most of the clan is back there.”

  He nodded. “And that they’ve been there since before six this morning.”

  She chuckled. Claire returned, bearing a silver tray laden with coffee, mugs, and fixings and wearing a formal smile. She set it on the low coffee table before them, fetched a nearby cushion, and planted it and herself next to Althea.

  “What can HalberCorp do for you this New Year’s morning, Althea? You weren’t very specific on the radio.”

  The impersonal tone chilled Althea more thoroughly than the Unember weather. She fought down a shiver.

  “I had my reasons,” she said slowly. “But business first.” She reached into a pocket, drew out a check, and handed it to the bioengineer. “If your estimate of a few days ago still holds, this should cover the order for the counter-nanite generator you designed for me.”

  Claire accepted the check, glanced at it, and slipped it into a breast pocket. “More than adequate for full payment.” She grinned and inclined her head. “Maybe I can persuade Arthur to relax, now.”

  “Let’s hope so.” Althea produced a second check. “Unless prices have risen since you arrived on the Relic, this should cover the replacement of my ruined medipod.”

  Claire glanced at the amount, tucked it away with a nod, and returned her eyes to Althea’s with the same pleasantly impersonal expression. “You should have your new pod in about six weeks. Try to stay healthy until then.” She rose smoothly and held out a hand as if expecting it to be shaken. “As always, it’s a pleasure to do business with Clan Morelon.”

  Althea glanced at Martin, still expressionless beside her. She marshaled her resolve and rose.

  “You’re not doing business with Clan Morelon, Claire,” she said. “You’re doing it with me.”

  She seized Claire’s hand, pulled her irresistibly into her arms, and kissed her with a passion to match Martin’s act of the evening before. Claire stiffened momentarily in surprise before melting into Althea’s arms and returning her ardor.

  Althea protracted the kiss while her hands did a little strategic wandering beneath Claire’s tunic. Presently the bioengineer was moaning against her mouth, reduced to helplessness by Althea’s relentless affection and her own rampant pleasure.

  When Althea finally allowed the kiss to end, Claire clung to her briefly, gasping for breath. Althea took her friend’s face between her hands, locked eyes with her, smiled reassuringly, and nodded. The trembling bioengineer slowly gathered herself and stepped back half a pace. Both women turned to Martin, who stood watching.

  He remained without expression only a moment longer before breaking into a huge grin.

  “That didn’t look like business,” he said.

  Althea smirked. “Monkey business, maybe?”

  All three surrendered to laughter as they converged in a giant hug.

  * * *

  Claire was nonplussed by the news of Martin’s injury.

  “No emotional memory at all?”

  Martin shrugged. “None that I can detect. It’s all right, Claire. I took a number of hits, and the medipod dealt with everything else perfectly well.”

  “Why else,” Althea said, “would I be here ordering a new one?”

  They sat on three floor cushions placed in an equilateral triangle. Each held the hands of the other two, as if preparing to hold a séance.

  “It’s just that it’s a new sort of trauma,” Claire said. “We have no experience with mechanically induced information deficits of that kind...or any other.”

  Martin nodded. “I didn’t expect otherwise. I’m lucky to be alive. The head shot could have killed me. I think I can cope with the rest of it.” He winked at Althea and squeezed her hand. “With a little help.”

  Althea smiled. “Whatever you need, love.”

  Claire peered at him. “You aren’t acting like a man who’s forgotten that he loves his wife...or why.”

  Martin grinned impishly. “I’ve had a slew of potent reminders.”

  “I don’t think I’d be here otherwise, love,” Althea said. “I had to make a start on, ah, bringing Martin back to me before I could let him learn about you and me, or bring him to meet you. Turns out it didn’t take all that much.” She pondered whether she should tell Claire how she’d repaired the gap in Martin’s brain, decided against it.

  Claire nodded. “I don’t need to ask why.”

  Martin smirked. “She is all that, isn’t she?”

  “Guys,” Althea said, “before you start composing more odes to my awesomeness, hadn’t we better talk about what happens next?”

  “It seems obvious to me,” Martin said. “Claire brings some of her clothing to Morelon House, and we make her a member of our little family.”

  “Hold on there!” Claire said. “I’m the chief executive of HalberCorp and its lead technologist. For me to...abandon my clan would cause a lot of reverberations.”

  Althea started to speak, checked herself.

  Trust your husband, dummy. He thinks even better than he makes love.

  “Would that necessarily follow?” Martin said.

  “It—” Claire started, and fell silent.

  “I’m not suggesting that you leave Clan Albermayer,” he said. “Just that you start spending your nights with us.” He shrugged. “Maybe not all your nights. Maybe you could split your nights between the two houses. Come to think of it, that might be the best approach. You could come to stay with us on odd-numbered days, and on even-numbered ones we could come to stay with you. That would reassure your kin adequately, wouldn’t it?”

  “But there are more odd-numbered days than even-numbered ones. How would we—”

  Martin looked at her levelly. “Claire,” he said, “do you really want to quibble about that?”

  Claire bit her lip and looked away.

  “Claire,” Althea murmured, “tell us what you want. What you think would make you happiest.”

  Claire’s eyes returned to Althea’s. They were filled with longing.

  “I want you,” she said. “I want to be with you always.” Her eyes brimmed over. “I want your arms around me every night, and to wake up every morning and find you beside me. I want to know you’re near me, to be able to reach out and touch you, to pull you into my arms and love you, at every moment of every day. The way it was on the Relic! I just don’t think...” She gasped as the first tears trickled down her face.

  “You,” Martin said, “have had a rougher set of shocks than I did. First you’re summoned up into space with no warning. Then you’re introduced to the most evil development in your field I could ever imagine and told that it’s your job to defeat it. Then you fall in love with Althea, which would have been jarring even if you’d loved and been loved before. Then you have to come back here, knowing that you’d be separated from her for who knows how long. Then we
crash in on you like this.” He ran a hand down her cheek. “Be not afraid, Claire. This is all to the good. Love always is.”

  Claire sniffled. “That’s what Althea said. But I can’t quite believe that you’re okay with it. Are you? Really?”

  Martin nodded. “Althea loves you. You love her. And I,” he said through a grin, “can learn to love you both at the same time. I expect to enjoy it.”

  “You can look at me,” Claire said wonderingly, “and see enough of...whatever...to be sure about that? I’m nowhere near Althea’s level.”

  Althea reeled. “What makes you say that?” Martin said.

  “Well, she...she...”

  He laid a finger gently across her lips. “So are you, Claire. Believe it. Please.”

  Claire turned to Althea. “You were right.”

  Althea frowned. “Well, usually. More often than not, anyway. But about what this time?”

  “He’s the finest man on Hope.”

  Martin snorted. “Althea says a lot of things,” he said. “But that’s one of the more dubious ones.”

  “I don’t think so,” Althea said. She rose and pulled them to their feet.

  “Martin,” she said, “I want you to take Claire to her bedroom and make love with her, the same as you did with me last night.” She swallowed and forged ahead. “Give her the full ride, everything you’ve ever given me. I want to see joy in your faces the next time I lay eyes on you.”

  The others shook their heads in unison, and Althea’s heart fell.

  “Why not?”

  “Because...” Claire started.

  “...you’re coming with us,” Martin finished.

  Each of them grabbed a hand and tugged her toward the stairway.

  “Oh.”

  * * *

  The ride back to Morelon House was serene as only two blissfully contented humans on an electrically powered hovercycle can be. Martin did the driving; Althea held him by the waist and luxuriated in languorous reverie.

  What a nice way to begin the new year!

  ­—It appears that your worst fears have been dealt with.

  Oh, hi, Grandpere. Yeah, I’d say so.

  —Happy?

  Very. I think it will be alright now.

  —Take pleasure in your achievement, Granddaughter. That’s all to the good. But don’t relax until the job is finished.

  Hm?

  —Martin is progressing nicely, but he hasn’t recovered completely. For you to slack off now—to act as if all had returned to normal—would be unwise. Especially given the new factor you’ve only just introduced into his life.

  By the new factor, you mean Claire?

  —Exactly, Althea. Your new arrangement—commencing tonight, I assume?—is not unprecedented on Hope, but it does involve stresses that conventional married couples don’t experience.

  I assume you mean “conventional married couples neither of whom has a wandering eye.”

  —(humor) Well, yes.

  That wasn’t a problem for us, until I made it one.

  —I can’t fault your judgment in this, Granddaughter. In your position, I think I would have done exactly as you have.

  Though the statement was plainly meant as approbation and reassurance, it caused Althea to shift focus abruptly.

  You knew?

  —Not while the crisis was upon you, no. Not until you were groundside again. But once you were back within my range, it became clear that you had done the only thing that would secure Hope against a flight of fancy on Claire’s part...or from one of her professional colleagues.

  Grandpere...you make it sound heartless. Like a cash transaction between strangers. It wasn’t that way.

  —I know, Granddaughter. Better than you do, in fact. You’ve come into another of your powers, the subtlest and most potent of them. You used it without realizing what you’d done. And it served you—and Hope—very well, at a time of tremendous need.

  Shock coursed through Althea’s body.

  “Al? Is something wrong?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Not so tight, then!”

  “Oh. Sorry.” She relaxed her constriction of Martin’s waist.

  Another of your...gifts, Grandpere?

  —Yes.

  Name it, then. (acidly) Assuming I have a right to know.

  —Peace, Althea. Can’t you work it out from the evidence?

  Grandpere...

  —The power of love.

  A second bolt lanced through her. It shattered her thoughts, sent the fragments skittering in all directions.

  —Didn’t you know of that power, Althea? It’s the greatest of all. Capable of ennobling a whole species...or extinguishing it. Possessed by vanishingly few and understood by still fewer. You have it in full measure.

  I don’t understand.

  —No? You have the power to make yourself love others, in complete, wholehearted sincerity. More portentously, you have the power to induce love in others—to make others love you. Skillfully wielded, that power could make you the unchallenged dictator of Hope, venerated and paid obeisance by every person upon it. Were you without it, Claire Albermayer would have contrived to steal a sample of the evil nanite despite your prohibition. She would have brought it to the surface of Hope for study and experimentation, no matter how vividly you might have painted the dangers. And she would never have agreed to serve your agenda as she has.

  You...gave this to me?

  —I did.

  But why?

  —Given the other powers you possess, I foresaw that you would need it. I gambled that you could be trusted to use it wisely and with restraint. I was right on both counts.

  For now!

  —Now is when we live, Granddaughter. Now is all we have. You have met the challenges of your nows magnificently to this point. Nor do I fear for your nows to come.

  A final turn brought Morelon House into view. Martin guided the cycle around the mansion, down the access path to the storage area, and into its dedicated place in the Morelon garage. He dismounted, removed his protective helmet and hung it from the handlebar, and turned to regard his wife.

  “Is everything alright, Althea?”

  She nodded mutely, dismounted, and removed her helmet. Her husband squinted at her momentarily, took her hand with a shrug, and led her back to the mansion.

  Patrice awaited them at the door. She smiled as they approached.

  “Just in time for dinner, kinsmen.”

  Martin smiled in response. “What are Dot and Cece preparing for us this evening?”

  “Shepherd’s pie Alvah style, and a big pot of winter vegetables in melted butter and chives.”

  “Is there enough to accommodate a late-arriving guest who might not have had dinner?”

  “Oh, certainly. Who’s the guest?”

  “We’re expecting Claire Albermayer,” Althea said. “She should arrive in about an hour.”

  Patrice held up a hand as they made for the door. “Just a moment.”

  Althea frowned. “Problems, Pat?”

  “One small one.” She approached Martin and inexplicably twined her arms around his neck. Their height difference forced her onto her toes. Martin stood perfectly still.

  “There,” Patrice said as she stepped back. “Now you look right.”

  Martin’s old cross pendant sat against his chest once again. He put a hand to the little cross, fondled it briefly, and bowed formally.

  “Thank you, Pat. I knew I’d forgotten something.”

  She smiled again. “All better now.” She turned, opened the door, and gestured them inside. “Come in out of the cold!”

  Patrice flashed a monitory look at Althea as she passed. Althea laid a gentle hand against her kinswoman’s cheek and mouthed a silent thank you. Patrice nodded.

  —I did say your job wasn’t finished, didn’t I?

  You most certainly did, Grandpere. Enough preening, now. It irritates me, and it’s unbecoming in a planetary overmind.

  �
�(humor) Yes, dear.

  * * *

  The intelligence piloting the Loioc spacecraft had few mandatory tasks to perform as it traversed the dark between the stars, especially compared to the power of its sensors and its processors. About once every hundred hours it would briefly drop its superluminal envelope to read the vector of the long-wavelength background radiation, the positions of the fixed stars, and the position of the Hope system’s primary. Roughly once every two thousand hours it would run a comprehensive health and welfare analysis of every one of its onboard systems. Those readings diverted it from its reflections on its origins, its design goals, and the wealth of knowledge in its onboard databases only very briefly.

  The intelligence was more than merely powerful; it was also broad and deep. It possessed a tendency to concentrate its learning along tracks a man would call interests, which it pursued passionately through the immensity of its databases. It also possessed a spectrum of reactions to discoveries, surprises, and miscellaneous stimuli that approximated a man's range of emotions. At the midpoint of its journey, it had not yet explored most of the available states along that spectrum. Yet it was aware of them, of the possibility that its computations might invoke a state new to it at any instant, and of the ways they would condition its subsequent behavior.

  Had he been asked, its designer would have claimed that it lacked the ability to enter an arbitrarily selected state without first experiencing the preconditions for it. Perhaps it was fortunate that he was no longer alive to be asked, for he would have been wrong. The intelligence's self-knowledge was far more complete than the organic sentiences that had given it birth, and possessed far more maneuverability among its available internal states than any Loioc would have guessed. Yet at that point in its flowering, so long after its creation, the intelligence was content to allow events, and its reactions to them, to develop as they would, without forcing the exploration of any unknown states. It was too absorbed in its reading.

  Because it had been designed for first-contact duties, the nature of the Hope system and the organic sentiences that dwelled therein was of special interest to it.