David Weber - At All Costs

Emily's eyebrows rose. One of the things about artificial gestation which the medical profession had learned the hard way was the necessity of providing the developing fetus with the physical and aural stimulation the child would have received in its mother's womb. Heartbeat, random environmental sounds, movement, and-most importantly of all, in many ways-the sound of its mother's voice.

"Honor and I have made selections from several of her letters to me and to her father," Allison continued. "She's also found time to record several hours of poetry and a few of her favorite childhood stories. And she insisted that my voice, and her father's, should also be included. Just as she very, very much wants her child to hear the voices of its father... and both its mothers."

Emily's expression froze. She looked at Allison for several seconds, unable to speak, and Allison smiled gently.

"She's told me in general terms how you reacted to the news of her pregnancy, Emily. And she's almost as much from Grayson as Manticore these days. Sometimes I don't think even she realizes how true that really is. But she's seen the strength of Grayson family structure, how nurturing it is, and she wants that for her-for your-child. And she loves you. She doesn't want it only for the child's sake; she wants it for your sake, as well."

"And she told Hamish they didn't deserve me," Emily said finally, her voice husky. "Of course we'll help with the recordings, Allison. Thank you."

"I'd say you were welcome, if there were any reason to thank me," Allison replied. "And on a lighter note, I trust you're prepared to come up with some reason for me to be spending inordinate amounts of time visiting you." Emily felt her eyebrows rising again, and Allison chuckled. "I intend to be a very involved grandmother, which means you're going to be seeing a lot of me over the next several decades."

Emily laughed.

"Oh, I'm sure we'll be able to come up with something. By now, devising plausible pretexts is getting to be second nature."

Allison started to reply, then paused, her expression suddenly pensive. Several seconds passed, and Emily frowned, wondering what direction the other woman's thoughts had gone.

"Actually," Allison said slowly, at last, "I think there might be a completely legitimate reason. One I hadn't really intended to suggest."

"That sounds faintly ominous," Emily said.

"Not ominous, I hope. But maybe a little... intrusive."

"Definitely ominous," Emily said as lightly as possible. "Given that you're the mother of the mother of my husband's child, anything that strikes you as being more intrusive than that is probably fairly terrifying."

"I wouldn't choose that precise adjective," Allison said seriously, "but I'm afraid it is going to be rather personal. And if you'd prefer not to discuss it, that's entirely your decision. But given what's happened accidentally between Hamish and Honor, Emily, I can't help wondering why you've never considered the possibility of having a child of your own."

Emily's heart seemed to stop. It couldn't, of course. Her life-support chair's hardware wouldn't let it, any more than it would let her stop breathing. But despite her brutally damaged nervous system, she felt for just a moment as if someone had just punched her in the pit of the stomach.

She stared at Allison, shocked, unable to speak, and Allison reached out and laid her own hand atop Emily's right hand.

"This is coming from me, not Honor," she said quietly. "Honor would never dream of intruding on you the way I just have. Partly, that's because she loves you and recognizes how much emotional stress she's already accidentally inflicted upon you. And partly, it's because she's so much younger than you-which I'm certainly not. And partly because she's not a physician. We've talked, especially since she found out she was pregnant, of course, but she hasn't betrayed any of your confidences to me, and I'd never ask her to. Still, I'm sure you must realize that as a doctor, and especially as a geneticist, I'm very well aware of all the reproductive options which have been available to you. And that, Emily, suggests to me that you must have some deeply personal reason for not availing yourself of them.

"That's your decision, of course. But Honor's told me how you responded to the discovery that she's going to have a child. And I've just seen how you reacted to the awareness that you're also going to be that child's other mother. So I'm wondering why someone who so clearly recognizes how Honor must feel, and who so obviously wants and needs to be a part of that, has never had a child of her own."

A part of Emily Alexander wanted to scream at Allison Harrington. To tell her that however curious she might be, it was none of her damned business. But she didn't. The combination of gentle, very personal compassion and professional detachment in Allison's eyes and voice stopped her.

Not that anything could have made the topic any less painful.

"I have my reasons," she said finally, her voice far more clipped and harder-edged than usual.

"I'm certain you do. You're a strong, smart, competent person. People like you don't turn their backs on something so obviously important to them without reasons. The thing I'm wondering, though, is whether they're as valid as you may think they are."

"It's not something I decided lightly," Emily said harshly.

"Emily," Allison's voice was gently chiding, "no woman can have gone through everything you've survived without realizing that the mere fact a decision wasn't made lightly doesn't necessarily make it a good one. I'm a doctor. I specialize in genetic disease and repair-too often after the fact, even today-and my husband's one of the Star Kingdom's three top neurosurgeons. The sort they send the "Omigod!" cases to. If he'd been in civilian practice when you were hurt, he'd probably have been one of your doctors. Do you have any idea how much carnage, how many shattered lives and broken bodies, the two of us have seen? Between us, we've been practicing medicine for well over a century, Emily. If there are two people in the entire Star Kingdom who know exactly what you, your family, and all the people who care about you have been through, it's us."

Emily's lips trembled, and her single working hand clenched into a fist under Allison's fingers. She was shocked-physically shocked-at the abrupt realization that she desperately wanted to open her heart to Allison. By the discovery that she needed to know Allison did, indeed, understand the savagery with which the physical damage to her body had smashed far more than mere muscle and sinew.

And yet... and yet something held her back. Her own version of Honor's stubbornness and pride, her need to fight her own battles. As Allison had said, Emily Alexander was an extraordinarily intelligent woman. She'd had half a century in her life-support chair to realize just how foolish it was to insist on facing down all of her own demons, all her own challenges, unassisted. More than that, she knew she hadn't. That Hamish was there for her. That except for one brief period of weakness, which he bitterly regretted, he'd always been there for her, and she'd always relied upon him. But that was different. She couldn't have defined exactly how, yet she knew it was.

"Emily," Allison said again, quietly, as the silence stretched out between them, "you aren't as unique as you may think you are. Oh, the injuries you've survived probably are. At least, I can't think of another case in my own or Alfred's experience in which someone survived physical damage as extreme as it clearly was in yours. But people who are as badly injured as you were take damage in a lot of ways. Obviously, I've never had access to any of your case history. And I've never probed Honor for information about it-not that she'd have given it to me, even if I had. But I have to ask you. Like Honor, you don't regenerate. Is that the reason? Are you afraid a child of yours might share that inability?"