Nina Osier - Matushka

Oh, gods, why now? When on any day for the past seven months, this offer would have seemed like years of prayers and dreams at last coming true?

Fralick scowled. Like so many other superb politicians and diplomats, the face he showed to his immediate family was not always the one his public saw. He said reluctantly, “Well…she’s old enough to understand now, I think, why you’re sleeping in the same room with him. And I would rather leave her with you than with anyone else, Katy, with things the way they are right now. Then if anything goes down politically, she won’t be on one world and you on another and me on still a third. At least she’ll have one parent, if the worst happens.”

So that was it, even George thought that war might be coming. Romanova forbade herself to shiver, and she gave up the privilege of reminding him that long ago when they had faced each other in that alien court on Kesra he had claimed a girl-child wasn’t safe on Narsai. He had backed that claim by citing Katy’s own liaison with her cousin Ivan, starting on her thirteenth birthday as was usual with landed Narsatian women and ending only when she had “fled to safety on Terra” as George had chosen to paint the start of her military career; and he had pointed out that under Terran laws, Ivan Romanov would have been executed for the rape of a minor.

It hadn’t been like that, but of course no out-worlder really could understand something so essentially Narsatian. She hadn’t been running away from Johnnie, or even from sharing Johnnie’s bed. That hadn’t been offensive to her! Not that it had been especially pleasurable either, of course, in those years while she was still just a girl and her partner was a grown man; but it had been expected by everyone who loved her, after the first time or two it hadn’t been a painful thing, and she had enjoyed knowing that her body had the capacity to give her beloved Johnnie so much delight. There had been a sense of power in it for young Katy, and she had regretted giving that up somewhat more than she had regretted knowing she would never be Johnnie’s full partner in the management and primary ownership of the Romanov farm.

Or she had regretted it until George had come along, of course. By then she was a grown woman emotionally, not just physically; and from the first time he had put his arms around her and touched her lips with his, she had realized that she’d missed the whole point with Johnnie. She had known passion with George, real passion that she remembered with amazement now when looking at him disgusted her completely.

He had accused her of being a mother who couldn’t be trusted not to prostitute her daughter if she were allowed custody, or even unsupervised visits with the little girl on her own native world; and that accusation had been one of the most infuriating aspects of their messy parting. But then a relationship as volatile as theirs could not have ended less violently, she supposed. Only as she’d explored her bond with Linc afterward, had she finally made the wonderful discovery that it was possible to know both the tender security of her first love with Johnnie and the physical rapture of her union with George in a relationship with one man.

With Linc, who had been her friend for so long before he became more than that; and who now knew how to make her feel things in his arms that no George Fralick could ever make any woman feel. Morthan males had to wait until they were at an age where human males often were slowing down sexually, before they even noticed the opposite gender was there—but then they made up for it. Oh, how they made up for it!

She put all those thoughts aside now, even as she felt Linc’s touch within her mind and responded to his silent question with reassurance. To George Fralick’s image in the holoscreen she said, “I want her, George, of course I do. I always have, since the night we made her.”

Only Linc knew it when she added inwardly, and in despair, “But what in hell am I going to do with her now?”

“Having a child around right now is going to be difficult, but I don’t know what else I can do.” Romanova voiced her doubts to her husband anyway, as soon as the commlink to George Fralick was broken. “I’ve waited too many years for this, Linc. The only way I could have passed it up would be if I thought I’d be putting Maddy in danger—and I may even be doing that, but I still couldn’t say ‘no.’”

“You’d have been putting other people in more danger if you refused,” Casey said positively. “George knows you, Katy. Better than anyone else knows you except me, now. If you turned down a chance to have Maddy with you, he’d want to know why; and he’d find out, too.”

An excuse for doing what she wanted with all her soul to do anyway? Maybe. Hell, undoubtedly. Yet Linc had never in all the years they’d known each other given her false comfort, and he wasn’t doing that now.

And Linc also knew George Fralick, the man had been his first captain just the same as he’d been Katy’s. In those days Fralick had liked the young Morthan hybrid, had taken Casey under his wing and had taught him just as willingly as he had taught Romanova. To be fair, Katy reminded herself now, she had to admit that George deserved a large measure of the credit for the officers both she and Lincoln Casey had eventually become. The first captain a green ensign served under had an influence like no one else’s, before him or after him.

Or her, as the case might be. George’s example had also taught Katy how to nurture her own junior officers, years afterward when she herself became a captain.

Cab Barrett appeared in the bedroom doorway, emerged and shut that door behind her as soon as she was sure she was not interrupting one or more comm conversations. The Narsatian doctor said with satisfaction, “She’s sleeping, and that’s what she needs now. Stasis isn’t sleep, even though people usually find it comforting to think about it that way.”

“Can you tell me how she is, Cab? Or is that going to bother your ethics?” Romanova had moved from her chair to Linc’s side, and she was not surprised when he put an arm around her waist. Even after twelve years of physical intimacy, he never passed up an opportunity to touch her.

Nor did she want him to do so, but she was growing very sick of being clad in nightclothes as the morning wore on. She needed to get dressed now, she’d have to hustle and get to the public teleport station so that Maddy wouldn’t arrive there alone. It was safe for that to happen, of course; no world was safer for a young girl than was Narsai, contrary to the foolishness George had sold the Kesran authorities. But Maddy Fralick had lived her whole life cloistered within a household that most of the time consisted of a pair of neutered Kesrans, with a father who came and went on diplomatic business and with a visit from her mother once in each two years. So Romanova had to assume that even after the trip from one world to another aboard the starship Archangel, thirteen-year-old Maddy would still find the public teleport station a confusing and possibly intimidating place. She certainly wouldn’t do what Katy would have done at the same age, and confidently summon local transportation and finish the trip to her destination on her own.

Barrett said, “I made sure she didn’t mind my sharing my findings with both of you, or with Dan. She didn’t understand why I was asking, poor thing; medical privacy’s a concept she’s never been exposed to, at least not as a right for her to claim.”

Of course, she’s a gen. She doesn’t think of her body as her own, not even now that she’s run away from her owners.

Romanova and Casey had shared that thought, for the life of her she didn’t know which of them had originated it; and it didn’t matter. They both nodded, and Barrett continued speaking. “Anyway! Her fetuses haven’t suffered from the time she spent being undernourished, it didn’t go on that long and she went into it in perfect health. She needs to rest now, and eat, and feel safe. With any multiple pregnancy there’s more need for proper care than with a singleton, but the children should be born normally—although probably a bit early. Again, that’s normal with triplets. Where is she going to be living, Katy? I assume you’re going to hide her.”