Nina Osier: Matushka

Of course. Maddy hadn’t heard the conversation Katy had had with Linc, because somehow during the past few hours Casey had finally mastered the trick of shutting the child out when he wanted to talk to his wife alone. They’d been so distracted, though, that Katy had not even realized the difference.

What a blessing that was going to be! She squeezed the child gently as she said, “He got away, Maddy. Hopefully he’ll get all the way through to New Orient, and he’ll tell the authorities there what’s happened.”

“Then are you glad you didn’t let that lieutenant shoot him down?”

“Yes. I’m very glad I didn’t do that.” For more reasons than I understand myself, little girl, Katy added mentally.

Then she stiffened, and she leaned on her daughter’s surprisingly strong young shoulders without realizing she was doing so.

“Katy. I have contact with someone on one of the ships. It’s nothing I initiated—he, or she, or it, was looking for a telepath down here and found me.” Her husband’s thoughts were more formal, more structured, than in their usual mode of communication; but if a third being was about to join them, then the formality was not surprising. What was astonishing was that anyone but Maddy, or possibly a Morthan healer, could be communicating with Linc by this means.

“Mum, you need to sit down.” Maddy’s voice came from far away, and the child was right. She drew Katy with her to the waiting area and its seats, and she settled her mother there as if for the moment their roles had been reversed.

It didn’t occur to the Kesran-reared child to request medical aid, not even here in Narsai’s most advanced facility. That was a blessing, because Katy wasn’t sick. She simply was too absorbed inwardly to direct her own body’s outward behavior, and now that she was no longer required even to maintain balance enough to stand that didn’t matter.

But she did say to her husband, “Linc, let Maddy know I’m okay. I’m scaring her, and I don’t want you bringing her in on what we’re going to have to do next.”

He did as requested. Beside Katy her daughter relaxed, and then assumed a protective posture that would have been comical if the situation had allowed for humor.

Hopefully the hospital’s staff had other things to do besides notice a distracted-looking woman in a Star Service admiral’s uniform, sitting in its emergency admissions waiting area with a slim pubescent girl who looked very much like her seated at her side. What Katy Romanova had to do now didn’t involve her body at all, but if anyone disturbed that shell it would interrupt something that definitely ought not to be interrupted.

“Who are you?” She asked the most natural question first, before she was even sure that questions from her would be welcomed. She had to know that, she had to have a frame of reference or she could not participate in this process in any meaningful way.

“Who are we would be a better question, Admiral Romanova.” The being was amused that she had thought changing her body’s coverings would conceal her identity. But that amusement was surprisingly gentle, it had no flavor of scorn as her mind tasted it.

She was “tasting” amusement? Senses for this being were rather different than the five she had always experienced, or even the sixth one with which she had made so many split-second decisions and had so often kept herself and her people alive when her five normal senses by themselves would have failed her.

“I am not like you, no. Your mate feels the need to assign me a gender, but I cannot classify myself in that way.” More amusement, followed by a brisk desire to proceed with business. “I am speaking for everyone aboard the vessels that survived your warship’s effort to destroy us, but my species is not the only one present here. As your mate has already learned, there are Morthan hybrids like him among us; and I do mean like him, and not like the Morthan that thinks of itself as ‘Marin.’”

“You mean Morthan hybrids whose telepathic abilities are limited? And who are capable of fighting?” Katy grasped that immediately, because she had always felt certain that Linc couldn’t be the only one of his kind. The first, maybe; but not the only one. And now that was being confirmed.

“Yes. Exactly so. Also we have full humans whose fellows have rejected them for reasons beyond their control. There are some who think of themselves as ‘scramblers’; I sense that this term has meaning for you, also, and that it is not a negative meaning.”

“Not at all!” Katy answered, and thought deliberately of her foster son.

“Excellent. And this one of whom you think with such affection, on whom you place such value, is also a member of an additional despised human sub-grouping. The Sestian female we have taken aboard would consider him a beast, would she not?” This amusement was different. Clearly the being did not approve of the Sestian’s attitude—although for some reason it had thought saving her life was worthwhile, when the Archangel was about to die and only a relative few of those aboard could be rescued.

“Yes. Dan’s grandparents were miners on Sestus 4, and you seem to understand exactly how it is for humans who are stuck with having to live there.” Romanova knew that her body had sighed, and she hoped she wasn’t alarming Maddy. But she could do nothing now to communicate directly with her daughter, not without breaking this communion that absolutely must not be disrupted.

“Just so. There are others like him here with us. Not only from his particular group, but a variety of other humanoid creatures whom your mind and that of your mate think of collectively as ‘rebels.’ That term I do not quite comprehend; who gave the government of a far away world authority over all of you here? I understand that individuals who claimed to represent you may have made such assertions on your behalf, but has any of you affirmed this personally?”

“That wouldn’t be possible,” Romanova said, and was surprised to think that she was defending Terra’s right to govern the Outworlds via the Commonwealth even though her Star Service oath obliged her to do exactly that. Never in her life had she been more aware of the dichotomy between Admiral Romanova and Katy, the girl who had once been female heir to the Romanov Farmstead.

She wondered in a tiny, uncontrolled corner of her mind whether Johnnie and Reen were all right, and remembered that Marshal Vargas had left them where he’d found them. So they, at least, should be safe now—although no doubt they were at least as frightened as any other civilians on Narsai, and maybe more so because they were so much better informed than were their more typical contemporaries.

“To be locked alone within a body; how terrible that must be!” There was genuine sympathy in the voice that no longer seemed alien to her. “But that is true for all of you, even for those called Morthans who have some telepathic abilities. But we digress, and there is no time for that just now.”

“Who else did you rescue besides the Archangel’s healer? And why did you make this alliance with the Rebs?” Along with the strangeness, Katy’s fear was abating. Like just about every other living creature she’d ever encountered, this one was capable of destroying other living things if it was given the right (or the wrong, as it were) conditions to require or justify doing so; but it wished her no harm. She was certain of that, to her very core.

“The humans who were brought into existence to be used by other humans, the ‘gens’ as you think of them who were aboard the warship, we had a duty to free if we were able,” came the answer to her first question. “And we do not know any Kesrans or any Sestians, so we claimed the opportunity that was offered to us. But you have known us before, Catherine Romanova; and you also, Lincoln Casey. And when you recognize us, then you will realize why we have made this ‘alliance’ as you call it—although to us the concept is not the same thing that it is to you, because we are not locked up alone in corporeal bodies. But you will remember that we had difficulty with this concept before, although after many rotations of accepting and caring for individuals cast out by your ‘Commonwealth’ we now understand you much better than we could understand you then.”