Firestar
Copyright© 2009 by Prince von Vlox
Chapter 28
HOME, FIRST LANDING
Patsy O’Hare looked around the patio of the restaurant. It was a warm summer day, and a breeze stirred her hair, the same breeze that a crowd of sailboats used on the river. Gulls swept back and forth overhead, looking for scraps to eat, and the crowds you always found on Tenthday filled the tables.
She wanted to be back at her desk. She had pallet reports to process and the take from a new batch of rats. But you didn’t turn down a lunch invitation from the Eldest of the Council, not when it was formally addressed to her as the Eldest of Sept O’Hare and Family North Point.
She’d twisted her lips when she’d seen that last bit. Her Family only had one Sept in it, and that Sept had less than 25 members. She was the oldest one in the Sept; nobody else from her generation was alive. In a technical sense, that made her the Eldest. But she didn’t feel like an Eldest; she was a retired Navy Tech/4 and a Senior Analyst in the Intelligence Service, none of which qualified her in the remotest for being an Eldest.
She spotted Eldest Marie sitting at a table overlooking the river and picked her way across the patio, moving as fast as her bum leg would go.
“You sent for me, Ma’am?” she asked.
“Patsy,” Eldest Marie said. “Thank you for coming. Please, have a seat. You know the others, of course.”
With a start, Patsy recognized the other members of the Executive Council. That made this far more than just a friendly lunch. “Um, aye, Ma’am.” Patsy nodded her head respectfully.
Eldest Marie picked up a pot. “Brew?”
“Uh, no Ma’am. Thank you, but I be tryin’ to cut back.”
The others chuckled, and Eldest Marie smiled. “We all should.”
Patsy nodded. “I didna expect to appear in front o’ the Executive Council when you invited me, Ma’am.”
“We’re meeting because it concerns you,” Eldest Marie said, “and because it concerns the future.”
“The future, Ma’am?” She looked from face to face. “Of O’Hare?”
“In part,” Eldest Kihei said. “We are nearly in a position to start bringing our lost ones home, and we’ve been trying to determine what we must do when they get here.”
“And you think I can help?” Patsy shook her head. “Ma’am, I’m an analyst, I can look at what you have an’ offer suggestions. I’m sure you have others who can help more.”
“Not in the way you think,” Eldest Marie said. She looked at Eldest Kihei, then back to Patsy. “What is the exact status of Sept O’Hare and Family North Point?”
“You know that, Ma’am.”
“Assume I don’t.”
“Ah ... Ma’am, there’s just the five o’ us in the Sept here on Home. Heh, we’re the only Sept in the Family, so that’s five o’ us in the Family. I’m the oldest, so I suppose that makes me the Eldest, what there is o’ me. We have land on Setosha, but nobody ta work it. I ... I tried to arrange a labor-share agreement wit’ Family Desert Hills, but I hadn’t thought they would pay us so little ta work the land, so in the end I told them no. Perhaps I could ha’ done better if I’d taken more time, more care, but there’s none o’ that to spare right now, Ma’am. An’ so...” She shrugged.
“You have no other Family, is that right?” Eldest Kihei asked. “It’s just your Sept?”
“Aye, Ma’am, we’re all that’s left o’ the whole Family, exceptin’ a few scattered cousins in the Fleet. That makes it hard for us. An’ five people are not enough ta be a Family.”
“We don’t want to make O’Hare a Ward of the Council,” Eldest Shawna said. “That’s been done and we don’t want to repeat the mess that it makes.”
“It makes divisions of the Council almost as interesting as asking the Navy’s opinion about anything,” Admiral Carter said.
Patsy felt her fingers begin to tighten on the maple arm of her chair. Carefully, she opened her hand and lifted it off the wood. Everyone fell silent, waiting for her.
“O’Hare is solvent, Ma’am. Not rich, no, but there’s no need for us ta be a Ward. I looked it up. There’ve been independent Septs before.”
“You’re too small to be a Family in your own right,” Eldest Marie said. “At least yet. Maybe, with luck, that will happen. But at the moment, no.”
“And we don’t want you adopted by another Family,” Eldest Shawna added. “If we let that happen, we would have Families adopting each other’s Septs left and right. That would strike at the very nature of the Families. Someone who was dissatisfied with what their Family was doing would get themselves adopted into a Family more sympathetic to their views. They wouldn’t work within their own Sept and Family to effect change. Families need that sort of encouragement from within, and concentrating it in a few of the more flexible Families would be detrimental to all the Families.”
“Not to mention how it would change the way we define a Family in the first place,” Eldest Reesa added. “We can’t let you get adopted, and you’re too small to be your own Family, but you need to be part of some Family so you have a voice in our mutual affairs. It is terrible to lose any Family’s voice.”
“What’s left?” Patsy asked. “If I can’t be one, an’ I can’t be t’nother, what can we do?” She shook her head. “There’s no middle ground.”
“Are you sure?” Eldest Kihei asked. “What is the one thing that is keeping you from being considered a Family? It’s your size. You have five members here on Home. You have another 20 scattered through Space. What if there was a way to make your Family bigger?”
“The Council has a problem.” Eldest Marie smiled and refilled Patsy’s cup. “We are going to have people, hopefully many people, returning from captivity, soon. We could, and will, incorporate most of them into their original Families. But some of them have been gone a generation or more, and making places for them in their Families will be very difficult. What if we put them in your Family instead?”
“My Fam--?” That idea was so crazy she almost didn’t know what to say. “You’re tellin’ me,” Patsy said slowly and carefully, “that you would take these people, lump them together, and somehow make a Family of them?” She shook her head. “I don’t think that would work.”
“And why not?” Eldest Kihei asked. “War is the great stirring pot of the human race. Our own ancestors left Old Earth because of war. Unsettling populations through war is a great human tradition, as is figuring out how to make all the pieces fit back together again afterwards. If we can fight this war and win it, surely we can overcome the next challenge, winning the peace that follows. And making Families out of the people returned from captivity is one way we’ll win the peace.”
“But Ma’am,” Patsy said, “getting’ all o’ these people to work together would take management skills, counselin’, accountin’, more skills than I can number. An’ excuse me, Ma’ams, but I rose to the exalted rank of Tech/4 when I was in the Fleet. I don’t have the basic ‘knock their heads together’ skills you need. It’s a good idea, but it falls apart on that alone.”
“What if we loaned you people with that kind of experience?” Eldest Marie asked. “This will be a very big job. No matter how we bring our people back, we have to teach them how to be part of the Families again. There’s every reason to put experts with all the necessary skills to work helping you and O’Hare. What do you think?”
Patsy tasted the idea slowly, analyzing it like she would any evidence brought in by the pallets or cats or even the comets. Something warm and golden bloomed in a part of her heart, something that had been cold and empty for too long.
“That just might work, Ma’am,” she said at last. She could feel the Hope. So simple. There was something about it she liked: O’Hare’s need and the Families’ need coming together. She took a deep breath, trying to stay calm. “That could make the whole plan work. But where will you find people like that? Surely they already have duties and work.”
“Some names have been floated around,” Eldest Marie said, smiling. “It would be strictly as a loan, you understand. You would have these people until things settled out a bit and you could see what skills your own people bring with them. I suspect you will find yourself managing a horde of people just as determined as you to rebuild what we’ve lost in this war.”
“But, then, what would I do?” Patsy wondered. “People like you offer would run right over the top o’ someone like me.”
“Why, that’s what the Council is for,” Eldest Reesa said. “We look out for each other and help each other. Unofficially, of course,” she added, casting a guileless gaze across the river. “We would never interfere with each other’s Family affairs.” Admiral Carter choked on something and found relief in another sip from her cup.
“So what do you say, Eldest Patricia?” Eldest Marie asked.
“You’re serious?” Patsy asked. And then her eyes grew wide as she realized how she had been addressed. “You are serious,” she whispered. “You really want me to do this.”
“It’s our way of saying thank you for the job you did with K-303,” Eldest Marie said. “And it solves some of our problems without creating too many new ones. And, like most of the rewards the Council offers, there’s a lot of work for you to make this into something worthwhile.”
“A lot o’ work ... yes. I think it would be a lifetime o’ work, Eldest Marie.” The Hope that had been a mere candle flickering in the darkness was suddenly a roaring flame. “And worth every day of it an’ all. Aye, Ma’am, this’ll work,”
She’d wondered what she’d do after bringing in her kill. Now she knew. She’d fought and she’d killed, and she’d guided others who’d done the same. But now it was time to put that in her past. Now it was time to build.
How ‘bout that, Tessa? She asked her long-gone sib. You always told me I could be more than I thought; I guess you were right after all.
“If anyone can make this happen, Ma’am,” she said, offering Eldest Marie her hand, “I guess I’m the one.” Eldest Patricia of Family North Point, she thought. She tasted the words, and found she liked the way they fit.
FAMILIES HOSPITAL SHIP WALTER REED
“So you’re back with us,” the doctor said.
Corey forced her eyes open. “Wha...?” The room swam a bit behind the doctor, and she had trouble focusing on the woman’s face. All she could really see was a blur of a head above a white coat. She tried to move her lips, to swallow, to wet something so she could speak.
“We almost lost you,” the doctor went on cheerfully. “Almost being the operative term,” she added, as she consulted something above Corey’s head. “Your Personal Capsule was breached and leaking fluids. Good thing you didn’t try any serious acceleration. We’d have needed a sponge to send you home. You were breached and leaking fluids too, lost quite a bit of blood before you finally passed out.
“It’s a weird bit of luck you had, Andersen, but you bled just enough to seal the hole with ice and your arm. Luck. If your arm hadn’t flash frozen there, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
I guess Captain Johnson was wrong, Corey thought. I guess I still had some luck left. Her arm was flash frozen? That was bad. Between cell rupture and gangrene, she could lose it. How long had she been out?
She must have said something, or made some sort of noise. The doctor smiled. “Don’t worry, you’ve healed up quite nicely, and we’ll soon get a prosthetic made for you. After a few months, you won’t even know the difference.”
Did I lose my other hand? Corey thought dully. Or did she say arm? Please let it be the arm with my clunker.
“What ... else?” Her mouth felt like it was filled with lint, and she had to force the words out.
“Nothing we couldn’t cure,” the doctor assured her with a bright smile. “A little vacuum exposure, but you know about that. Only the frozen part was exposed, anyway, and some radiation ... quite a bit of that, actually. You must have been near something hot when it blew. Gave us a worry for a few days, I’ll tell you. But you’ve been pulling through nicely. Now that you’re awake, we can really start healing you.”
“Days?”
The doctor nodded. “We kept you out nearly 16 days,” she said. “You’re on the hospital ship Walter Reed headed for Home. We should be there in another 12 days.”
The doctor continued with other medical details. It seemed like she was talking about someone else. Corey ignored her. She only wanted to sink down into the bed and vanish. Home. That meant back to the Family. Great Aunt Joanne was going to win after all. There was no way she was going to let her leave, not after this. Corey turned her face towards the bulkhead and closed her eyes.
She had tried to free Sonia and Heather. There was no way anyone could keep them from having babies if she was beyond reach. But now they were going to have a half-crippled sib hanging around the home. Babies. She wasn’t interested in them. Well, maybe from Alan’s genome, but that was as likely to happen as Great Aunt Joanne letting her leave Red Ridges.
Eventually, the doctor left. The medication must have started again. Everything around her grew soft and fuzzy. She saw uniforms and someone in bandages, but none of it made sense. Things mingled--flashes of explosions ... babies ... voices--they were too tangled together and she lost track of them. One image overflowed another, and they were all wrapped in a soft grayness that she couldn’t cut through.
When she could finally focus on the universe again, she was on a shuttle of some kind. She could hear the sound of the engines winding down. There was a subtle shift in her weight as the artificial gravity went off. Somewhere a hatch sighed open, and she could smell rain-drenched air.
Two medical technicians picked up her litter and carried her through a hatch and down the ramp. Something cool and wet dripped across her forehead. Raindrops? A few steps across the grass, and she was inside a building; from the noise and antiseptic smell, it had to be a hospital. Things blurred a bit again, and when she could get a grasp on her surroundings once more, she was being tucked into a hospital bed.
The privacy curtains around her weren’t closed. She could hear voices in the corridor, though she couldn’t make out the words. She turned her head toward the brightest light in her room. The window was partially open, and she could see scattered patches of blue through rifts in the clouds. The outside air smelled of wet grass and dirt and something else that said this air had never been recycled. Home ... the free, fresh air of home. She had helped keep it free. Maybe that would make what had to come next easier to bear.
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