Kafari stared at the letter, rereading the astonishing instructions for the third time, unable to believe the evidence of her eyes. Simon, who was technically a resident alien under the provisions of the treaty, wasn't even mentioned in the letter, which had been addressed to her. She had just about decided the thing wasn't a practical joke when Yalena crawled under her feet, trying to yank the power cords out of the back of her computer. Kafari snagged the struggling toddler and said, "Time out. You are not allowed to play with power cords. Two minutes in the time-out chair."
Her daughter, two years and three months old, glowered up at her. "No!"
"Yes. Touching the power cords is not allowed. Two minutes."
Nothing in the universe could sulk quite so well as a two-year-old.
With Yalena temporarily out from underfoot, Kafari called Simon, who was in Sonny's maintenance depot. "Simon, could you come into the house, please? We need to talk."
"Uh-oh. That doesn't sound good."
"It isn't."
"Be right there."
Simon opened the back door just as Kafari allowed Yalena to climb down from the time-out chair. "Daddy!" she squealed, running straight for him.
He swung her up and planted a kiss on her forehead. "How's my girl?"
"Daddy take Bolo?" she asked, hope shining in her eyes.
"Later, honey. I'll take you to see Sonny in a little while."
A thirteen-thousand-ton Bolo wasn't Kafari's notion of an ideal playmate for a two-year-old, but Yalena was enchanted by the machine, which looked to her like an entire city that would talk to her any time Daddy allowed her to visit. Which, granted, wasn't often, for any number of practical reasons.
"What's up?" Simon asked, keeping his voice carefully devoid of negative emotion.
"This." She handed over a printout of the letter.
Jaw muscles flexed when he reached the contents of paragraph two: Pursuant to section 29713 of the Childhood Protection Act, stipulating childcare arrangements for dependent children with both parents drawing paychecks, you are hereby notified of the requirement to remand your daughter, Yalena Khrustinova, for federally mandated daycare, to begin no more than three business days after receipt of this notification. You will enroll your daughter in the federal daycare center established on Nineveh Base before April 30th or face criminal prosecution for violation of the Children's Rights provisions of the Childhood Protection Act. Prosecution will immediately result in full termination of parental rights and Yalena Khrustinova will be remanded for permanent relocation to a federally mandated foster care program.
Pursuant to statute 29714 of the Childhood Protection Act, in-home child welfare inspections will commence one week from the date of Yalena Khrustinova's enrollment, to ensure that she is being provided with the federally mandated level of financial and emotional support necessary to her welfare. We look forward to caring for your child.
Have a nice day.
Simon looked up from the letter, met Kafari's eyes. He was still as death for a space of seven pounding heartbeats. "They're serious."
"Yes."
Jaw muscles flexed again. "We have three days."
"To what? Ask the Concordiat to reassign you to Vishnu? Or Mali? Or somewhere else? We're trapped, Simon."
"I'm trapped—" he began.
"No, we're trapped. What kind of marriage would it be, if Yalena and I are in some other star system while you're stuck here?" She swallowed hard. "Besides which, my whole family is here. We fought too hard for this world to just walk out and leave it to the likes of that." She pointed at the now-crumpled letter in Simon's fist. "Don't ask me to do that, Simon. Not yet. The courts are full of lawsuits challenging POPPA's programs. They haven't bought the entire judiciary. We're fighting for this world, fighting hard. We have to go along with them until enough people wake up and see where we're heading and do something to stop it." She had to choke out the final words. "It's just daycare."
He started to answer with considerable heat, then snapped his teeth together. Once he'd swallowed whatever had tried to rip its way across his tongue, he said, "It's not 'just daycare' and you know it. I can't force you onto the next starship that comes to call. God knows, I don't want to lose you. Either of you." He shut his eyes for long moments, fighting an internal battle that was wreaking visible havoc. Kafari wanted to comfort him, but didn't know how. She was scared, angry, ripped up inside with fear for her daughter. If those lawsuits failed to curb POPPA's campaign of social insanity . . .
Simon muttered, "You're the legal dependents of a Brigade officer. That's got to count for something."
"Against a rational government? Probably. Against POPPA? With the likes of Gifre Zeloc in the presidency and Isanah Renke leading the drive to rewrite Jefferson's entire law code? Or 'social progressives' like Carin Avelaine in charge of the Bureau of Education and bigoted fools like Cili Broska in charge of purging the public schools and university curricula of antipopulist bias? The people who thought up this," she pointed at the badly crushed letter in Simon's fist, "engineered a rigged election that nobody could contest. Your position as a Brigade officer not only won't help us, they'll go after you, with intent to destroy. If you try to fight them on this, we'll lose Yalena."
Watching the hopelessness settle across his face and shoulders was a pain that cut straight to her heart. He was holding Yalena tightly enough to make her squirm in protest. Then a thought blossomed to life in his face, one that straightened his shoulders again. "This crap applies to children with both parents working. If one of us isn't actively employed . . ."
Kafari saw exactly where he was headed. Knew in a flash that it meant trouble. Simon was "actively employed" under the treaty, despite the fact that his main job, these days, was conferring with Sonny once or twice a day and spending the rest of his time with Yalena. To get around the provisions of that letter and the legislation it represented, Kafari would have to quit her job at the spaceport.
The choices facing her crucified Kafari. Jefferson needed her. Needed psychotronic engineers, and not just at the spaceport. If the changes to higher education's curricula were an indicator, a whole new generation would grow up without the skills or knowledge necessary to produce more engineers of any sort.
Once in power, POPPA had launched a juggernaut of far-reaching changes in every conceivable portion of society. The Childhood Protection Act was just the tip of the iceberg. Environmental protection legislation was already crippling industry with clean-environment standards so stringent, heavy-industry manufacturing plants, industrial chemical production firms—including agricultural chemicals critical to producing Terran food crops in Jeffersonian soil—and even paper-production mills literally could not operate in compliance.
The financial penalties for failing to meet standards were so severe, whole industries were going bankrupt, trying to pay fines. Business leaders were filing aggressive lawsuits to challenge the lunacy, but the Senate and House of Law, urged on by the roar of the masses, just kept passing more of POPPA's social, economic, and environmental agendas. The subsistence allowance was already higher than the average yearly wages of low-skill menial employment, just kept passing more of POPPA's social, economic, and environmental agendas.
She focused on the crumpled piece of paper in Simon's white-knuckled hand, with its social-engineering mandate, and realized with a sickening sensation that it was already too late to fight that particular legal battle. If she or anyone else tried to protest, they would lose their children. And their children, trapped in POPPA-run daycare centers and schools, faced a brainwashing campaign of terrifying proportions. How many others had received letters like hers? The number had to run into the millions, at a minimum. Economic woes and stunning tax increases had forced Jefferson's middle-class families to become two-career couples, with spouses taking any job they could find, even menial labor, just to remain solvent. Those families couldn't afford to lose a second income, not even to shelter their kids.
And now the Santorinis were holding a gun to parents' heads. She should have seen it coming. It was a natural outgrowth of legislation that had outlawed home schooling, forcing parents to turn over their children to POPPA's indoctrination machine. Now they'd widened their net to snare preschoolers, as well, giving them complete power over children at their most critical formative stage, inculcating belief patterns that would last a lifetime.
She wondered with a sickening lurch in her stomach how many of the business owners filing lawsuits to overturn POPPA legislation would find themselves embroiled in custody battles for their own children? On the grounds of "improper emotional support in the home"? She shut her eyes for a moment, but couldn't blot out a mental picture of Jefferson's future that was so ugly, her breath froze in her lungs. She didn't know what to do. Literally didn't know what to do.
"Kafari?"
She opened her eyes and met Simon's gaze. His eyes were dark. Scared.
"I don't know what to do, Simon," she whispered, wrapping both arms around herself. "Jefferson needs psychotronic engineers—"
"Yalena needs her mother."
"I know!" Even she could hear the anguish in her voice. "Even if I resign, we'll gain only a couple of years. She'll have to start kindergarten when she's four, like it or not."
"All the more reason to idiot-proof her now."
"Can you idiot-proof a child whose teachers are part of the problem? Which they will be. The educational curriculum was practically the first thing they went after. My cousins are already fighting to undo the garbage their children are being taught, particularly the little ones, kindergarten and early primary grades. They come home from school and announce that anyone who picks up a gun—or even keeps one in the house—is a dangerous deviant. Farm kids are being told that killing anything, even agricultural pests, is tantamount to murder.
"Ask my cousin Onatah to show you the school book her little girl is using. Kandlyn's only seven. She already thinks that everything alive has the absolute right to stay that way. Even microbes, for God's sake. The older farm kids know enough from direct experience to realize how stupid that is, but the younger ones and practically all the city kids are gobbling that crap down like candy."
A muscle jumped in Simon's jaw. "You're starting to see the enormity of this thing. There are a whole lot more children in cities and towns than there are on farms and ranches. A few years from now, nobody below the age of twenty will realize it is stupidity. That's why I want you to leave, now. Before it's too damned late.
Since you won't do that, at least consider this. Jefferson's need for psychotronic engineers won't vanish just because you quit your job now. You're one of the most employable people on Jefferson. We can make do with my salary for a couple of years. It's sacrosanct and comes directly from the Brigade. If they try to revoke it, they'll end up with a Concordiat naval cruiser in orbit, on-loading the three of us and Sonny, while Gifre Zeloc signs a repayment check bigger than they can afford to hand over. They know they can't antagonize the Concordiat, no matter what their propaganda says to the contrary.
"Men like Gifre Zeloc and Cyril Coridan in the House of Law, women like Fyrene Brogan in the Senate are smart enough to know the difference between the swill they feed subsistence recipients and what they can actually do. You'll notice that nobody's come knocking at our door to demand that we actually shut Sonny down. Or that we ship him out on the next available transport. That would ring alarm bells all the way back to Brigade headquarters at Central Command."
"But—"
"Kafari, please. We don't need your salary. But we do need you, at home, until Yalena's first day of school. Give Yalena those two years."
He was right. Absolutely and utterly right. At least until Yalena was old enough to enter school. "All right," she said, voice hushed. "I'll give notice."
The worst of the tension drained from her husband's rigid stance. "Thank you."
She just nodded. And hoped it was enough.
Kafari was fixing Yalena's breakfast when someone knocked at the front door. Loudly. Startled, Kafari sloshed milk onto the counter. Nobody ever came to their house without calling ahead, first, to make sure Sonny wouldn't shoot them as an intruder. Not even Kafari's family. And with spring planting taking up everyone's time, nobody in her family would be calling on them this early in the day, anyway. Simon, who had just strapped Yalena into the toddler seat, exchanged a startled glance with her.
"Who—?" he began.
"Trouble, that's who," she muttered, wiping her hands on a towel and striding purposefully through the house.
She opened the door to find a tall woman with pinched nostrils and a prune-shaped mouth, whose socially correct skinny frame was all hard angles and jutting bones. She was staring down at Kafari from a pair of steel-rimmed glasses of the sort preferred by POPPA bureaucrats. It was part of their "we're all just people" persona, which dictated that no one on the government payroll was better than anyone else and therefore should not look it.
With her was a hulking giant whose intelligence looked to be on the simian level, with muscles capable of breaking a small tree in half. He definitely did not subscribe to the "thin is in" mentality sweeping the civil service and entertainment industries. No, she realized abruptly, he's the enforcer. Just what were they here to enforce, at seven a.m. on a Tuesday morning?
"Mrs. Khrustinova?" the woman asked, her voice as warm as a glacier.
"I'm Kafari Khrustinova. Who are you?"
"We," she jerked her head in a gesture both abrupt and menacing, "are the child-protection team assigned to Yalena Khrustinova."
"Child-protection team?"
"Trask, please note that Mrs. Khrustinova is apparently in need of mechanical augmentation, as her hearing is plainly substandard, which directly jeopardizes the welfare of the child in her custody."
"Now wait just a damned minute! I heard you, I just couldn't believe what I was hearing. What are you doing here? I'm a full-time mother. You don't have jurisdiction."
"Oh, yes we do," the woman said, eyes and voice frosty and threatening. "Didn't you read the notice sent to every parent on Jefferson last night?"
"What notice? What time, last night? Simon and I checked the messages just before bed and there wasn't any notice."
"And what time would that have been?"
"Ten-thirty."
"Trask, please note that Mr. and Mrs. Khrustinov keep a two-year-old child awake far past the hour at which a child that age should be in bed."
"That's when Simon and I went to bed!" Kafari snapped. "Yalena was in bed by seven-thirty."
"So you say." The derision and disbelief beggared the limits of Kafari's patience.
Simon spoke just behind her shoulder in a voice as cold and alien as the day of Abraham Lendan's death. "Get off my property. Now."
"Are you threatening me?" the woman snarled.
Kafari's husband was holding Yalena on one hip. His smile was a lethal baring of fangs. "Oh, no. Not yet. If you refuse to leave, however, things could get very interesting. Somehow, I doubt the Brigade would take kindly to having an officer's home invaded by petty officials attempting to enforce a dubious rule that I haven't even seen, let alone determined the legality of. This house," he added in a deceptively gentle voice, "is the property of the Concordiat. Its computer terminals are connected to military technology that is classified as sufficiently secret, no one on Jefferson has the clearance to access it. That includes any so-called home inspection team. You, dear lady, do not have a military clearance to come within a hundred meters of my computer terminal.
"If I were you, I would seriously reconsider the wisdom of trying to force the issue. I am a Bolo commander. In the building next door, a thirteen-thousand ton sentient war machine is listening to this conversation. That machine is judging how much of a threat you are to its commander. If that Bolo decides you are a threat to me, it will act. Probably before I can stop it. So have Trask, there, jot down this little note: the home-inspection provisions of the Child Protection Act do not—and never will—apply to this household. So kindly take your emaciated carcass and your large friend off the Concordiat's property. Oh, one last thing. If you value your sorry little lives, do not attempt to snoop into the Bolo's maintenance depot. I'd hate to have to clean up the mess if Sonny shoots you for trespassing into a Class One Alpha restricted military zone."
The woman's face went from paper-white to malevolent-red and her mouth opened and closed several times without sound. She finally snarled, "Trask! Please note that Mr. and Mrs. Khrustinov—"
"That's Colonel Khrustinov, you insolent trollop!"
Kafari blanched. She'd never heard that tone in Simon's voice.
The woman in their doorway actually recoiled a step. Then hissed, "Trask! Please note that Colonel Khrustinov and his wife maintain a lethal hazard that could kill their child at any moment—"
"Correction," Simon snarled. "Sonny has standing orders never to fire at my wife or my child. Those orders do not apply to you. Get the hell off my front porch."
He moved Kafari gently aside, then slammed the door and twisted the lock.
"Kafari. Take Yalena. And get your gun. Now. That lout looks stupid enough to try kicking the door in."
She snatched Yalena and ran for the bedroom. Her daughter was whimpering, having caught the emotional whiplash from her parents and the intruders trying to force their way into the house. She heard the sound of the gun cabinet in the living room opening and closing, heard the snick of the safety on Simon's sidearm as he prepared to do whatever became necessary. Kafari wrenched open the nightstand, shoved her thumb against the identi-plate, and clicked open the gun box inside. Kafari snatched up the pistol, barricading herself in the closet with Yalena.
"Shh," she whispered, rocking the frightened toddler. "You're just fine, baby." She hummed a tune low enough to calm her daughter, without blocking the sounds from the living room. She could hear angry voices outside as the woman and her accomplice argued in strident tones. After several tense moments, she heard the snarl of a groundcar's engine as it gunned its way down the driveway toward the street.
Simon appeared in the bedroom doorway, every muscle in his lean frame taut with battle tension. "They're gone. For now."
"And when they come back?" she whispered.
"They won't come back. Not yet."
"Not until they persuade the House of Law to pass an exception that covers us. Or get a presidential ruling from Gifre Zeloc that does the same thing. We have enough enemies to pass something like that in a heartbeat." She added bitterly, "It might've been easier just to send her to their stinking daycare."
"Liberty is never easy."
"Yes," she ground out between clenched teeth. "I know."
Some of the grim tension relented. "I know you know. It's one of the reasons I love you. You can stare something horrible in the eye and fight it to the death. And sometimes, that scares me senseless."
He was staring, bleakly now, at Yalena, who was sitting in Kafari's lap, playing with a strand of her hair. "Oh, Simon, what are we going to do?"
"Survive," he said, voice harsh with strain. "And," he added, forcing his voice into a more pleasant register, "eat breakfast. Nobody can fight a war effectively on an empty stomach."
Kafari couldn't help it. Her husband's tone was so droll, his suggestion so eminently practical, tension leached out in a semihysterical bubble of laughter. "There speaks the seasoned veteran. All right, let's go fry some eggs or something."
He gave her a hand up and took charge of Yalena, handing over his gun—and handing her, as well, the responsibility for first-strike should those two goons decide to swing back for another go at it. Kafari slid her own gun into a capacious pocket, being careful to engage the safety first, and tucked Simon's gun into a second pocket.
She paused long enough to call up their datanet account, where she found the notice in question. It had been sent at one-thirty a.m., a decidedly odd hour to be posting notices of this magnitude. It was short and pungent.
All parents are hereby notified that per administrative ruling 11249966-83e-1, the in-home inspections and daycare provisions mandated by the Childhood Protection Act have been expanded to cover every child on Jefferson, regardless of the employment status of the parents.
Somebody, Kafari realized with a cold chill, had been watching them. Closely enough to notice when she resigned her position at Port Abraham. Noticed and acted, with frightening speed. Had everyone else on Jefferson actually received this notice or had it been crafted especially for them, to force the issue of home inspections that POPPA clearly wanted to conduct in Simon's quarters? Gaining access to their quarters must be high on somebody's list of priorities. Simon's enemies wanted either revenge or his military information, or both. In an equally plausible alternative, they might be trying to score a public relations coup by forcing the "hated foreign tyrant" to surrender custody of his child in obedience to the will of the people.
The speed at which the Santorinis engineered massive changes in public opinion continued to terrify Kafari. She printed the message and carried it into the kitchen, where Simon had already put Yalena back into the toddler seat and was busy at the stove with eggs and a frying pan.
He glanced at the message, grunted once, and shrugged. "They can try. Easy over or sunny-side up?"
Well, if Simon could set it aside for the moment, so could she. "Sunny sounds good to me."
He smiled at the double-entendre contained in that answer. "Me, too."
By the time she had the ham and juice ready, the worst of the shakes had gone and the cold knot of fear in her middle had begun the thaw. They had gained a breathing space, for today, at least. For now, for this morning and this meal, she was at home with her husband and her daughter. She would allow nothing to intrude deeply enough to spoil the moment. Time enough for worry, tomorrow.
She called her boss at Port Abraham, the next morning, to ask if they might still have a slot for her. Al Simmons, the port's harried director, lit up with relief. "You want to come back? Oh, thank God! Can you start today? Can you be here in an hour?"
Kafari, startled by the urgency in her former boss' voice, said, "I need to enroll Yalena in daycare before I can start."
"Do it today. Please," he added.
What in the world had been happening at the spaceport—or on Ziva Two—that had Al so frantic? She cleaned up Yalena, putting her in a rough-and-tumble jumpsuit, and drove over to the daycare center on Nineveh Base. She felt like Daniel, walking into the lion's den. The moment she opened the door, Kafari was engulfed by the sounds of happy, shrieking children at play. It was such a normal scene, her rigid defenses wobbled slightly. The group consisted of children between the ages of six months to six years, at a glance. Kafari was greeted by a young woman in what appeared to be the daycare center's staff uniform, a bright yellow shirt with dark green slacks and a cheery smile.
"Hello! You must be Mrs. Khrustinova. And this is Yalena?" she asked with a radiant smile for Kafari's daughter. "What a beautiful little girl you are! How old are you, Yalena?"
"Two," she answered solemnly.
"My, such a big girl! Would you like to play? We have all kinds of fun things for you to do."
Yalena, eyes wide with interest, nodded.
"That's my girl! Come on, let's take you around to meet everybody."
Kafari spent the next twenty minutes greeting various staff members, some of the exuberant children, and the daycare center's director, a pleasant, motherly woman whose office was mostly glass, giving her a view of the main playroom.
"Hello, Mrs. Khrustinova, I'm Lana Hayes, the director of Nineveh Base Daycare Center. I'm a military mom," she added with a warm smile, "with two boys off-world. My husband," she faltered slightly, "my husband was killed in the war."
"I'm so sorry, Mrs. Hayes."
"He died in combat, protecting the western side of Madison." She brushed moisture from her eyes. "My sons were already in the military. When the call came, they volunteered to transfer to a Concordiat unit. They wanted to avenge their father, I think. It's an unhappy reason to go to war, but they loved their father and losing him was such a blow to them. To all of us. My daughter is still here. That's her, with the two- and three-year-olds." She pointed to a young girl of about sixteen, who was playing with a group of toddlers.
"This," she gestured toward the children beyond the glass, "is our way of staying busy, giving other folks a little peace of mind that their kids are in good hands. We average one staff member per six children, in Yalena's age group, so there's always close supervision of the little ones. The older children are a little more autonomous, but we still maintain a ratio of one staffer to ten children, just for safety's sake.
"The beauty of this system, particuarly for the folks with lower incomes, is that it's free of charge. Everyone on Jefferson has access to it. That means every child has an equal chance to a good future. We have plenty of educational programs for the children, as well as play spaces and activity centers."
She handed Kafari a packet of brochures that enumerated the advantageous programs and equipment available at Nineveh Base Daycare Center. It was a nice facility, there was no denying that. Plenty of child-safe equipment for playing in groups or alone, activities ranging from art projects to simple scientific experiments in a classroom-lab setting. Good access to data terminals for the older kids. Up to three meals a day and healthy snacks on demand. Older children could take dance classes, participate in plays, learn music. It was, in short, a first-rate daycare program.
With a lot of overhead to maintain and a large number of staffers to pay, all provided at taxpayer expense. Kafari found herself wondering who was going to keep paying those salaries, in the coming years. The government couldn't keep up that level of expenditure for every daycare center on Jefferson, not over the long haul. Not without charging for the services or making massive budget cuts elsewhere. And probably not without imposing new taxes, which POPPA had promised not to raise. Kafari couldn't imagine anything stupider than believing POPPA could fund even half its agenda without raising taxes. Substantially so.
There was a surplus of stupid people on Jefferson.
Mrs. Hayes seemed to be a nice-enough person, but she also appeared to genuinely believe in the moral rightness of the arrangement, without the slightest concern for the cost. Kafari was betting that Mrs. Hayes did not come of Granger stock. People who made their living from the land realized that nothing in life was free, no matter how often someone insisted that it was.
She handed over a set of forms for Kafari to fill out, then took Yalena to meet some of the other children. The forms Kafari was required to fill out left her with a deep sense of foreboding. There were questions she was legally committed to answering, which violated every right-to-privacy statute on the books. Grimly, she filled them in. Most of the questions about Simon, she left blank or answered in terse phrases.
Place of birth: off-world.
Occupation: Bolo commander.
Annual salary: paid by Dinochrome Brigade.
Political affiliation: neutral, as mandated by treaty.
Religious preference: blank. She wasn't even sure he had one. He certainly had never voiced it, if he did, and the subject had never come up. Grangers believed in freedom of worship and the right to do so unencumbered by another's curiosity.
Educational level: blank. She had no idea what the educational level was for an officer of the Brigade. Did an officer's training at the war college count as "education" or as "military service"? She knew that Simon was far more widely read than she was and held expertise in a surprising range of fields, but had no idea whether to put in "high school" or "college" or "advanced training" as an answer.
Description of employment: classified. She genuinely didn't know most of what Simon did, while on Brigade business. She wasn't sure she wanted to know. Virtually all of it was secret. Not even Abraham Lendan had known most of what her husband's job required. He certainly wasn't sharing information—or anything else—openly with Gifre Zeloc.
When Mrs. Hayes returned, she frowned over some of Kafari's answers. "Your husband's information is highly irregular."
"So is his job," Kafari said bluntly.
Mrs. Hayes blinked. "Well, yes, that's true enough. Not a citizen, after all, and being an officer . . ." Whatever her train of thought, she didn't finish it aloud. "That's all right, my dear, we'll just turn it in the way it is and if anyone raises questions, we'll fill in the missing information later."
Like hell, you will, Kafari thought, giving Mrs. Hayes a slightly wintery smile.
"Very well, I believe we're all taken care of, here. You mentioned needing to leave for a new job?"
"Yes, at Port Abraham."
"You were fortunate enough to find a job at the spaceport? What is it, you'll be doing there?"
"I'm a psychotronic engineer."
Mrs. Hayes' eyes opened wide. "An engineer?" she asked in tones of flat surprise. "A psychotronic engineer?"
A wild desire to shock this saccharine woman took possession of her. "I did my practicum work on the Bolo."
Her mouth fell open. "I see," she said faintly. Mrs. Hayes was staring at her, had to make a heroic effort to marshal her scattered thoughts. "I see. You must understand, most of the mothers whose children come here are military wives. They don't work, almost as a rule, or if they do, it's doing fluffy sort of things, hair-dressing, fancy sewing, manicures. The usual."
Kafari couldn't quite believe what she was hearing. Granted, she hadn't spent a great deal of time with other military wives, mostly because her work at the spaceport had taken up so much of her time during the past three years. Simon was not really in the thick of the military social life, either. Partly, that was simply because he wasn't in the same league as other officers, who felt uncomfortable around him. It was difficult to be completely at ease around a man who commanded the kind of firepower Sonny represented, did not fall into the ordinary chain of command, and was answerable solely to the president and the Brigade.
Simon received very few invitations to Nineveh Base social affairs.
She hadn't realized, during her idyllic girlhood, that Brigade officers, the most heroic and legendary figures ever produced by a human military organization, were also its loneliest. As cliched as it was, they really were a breed of men apart, both figuratively and literally.
Mrs. Hayes, recovered enough composure to ask, "Will you be working on Ziva Two? Or the spaceport?"
"The port. I'm going back to the job I left about a month ago, to devote more time to Yalena. When the new legislation went through, I couldn't justify sitting in the house all day when psychotronic engineers are needed so urgently. So I'm going back to work, this afternoon."
"That's very commendable of you, my dear. Such initiative and patriotism! I'm sure the girls on the staff will be delighted to hear that you're doing your part to rebuild our lovely world."
"Thank you, Mrs. Hayes. If that's everything, I'll just say goodbye to Yalena and head out to the spaceport."
"Of course. I'll give you a brief tour, if you have time?"
Kafari nodded. "I'd like to see the facilities," she answered with unfeigned honesty.
It was, she had to admit, everything the brochures had promised, a first-rate center with everything spotlessly clean and new. The walls were brightly painted with educational murals. There were dress-up clothes, toys appropriate to every conceivable interest, except, Kafari noted with an inward frown, anything remotely military in nature. She found that odd, considering the circumstances. These were the children of soldiers, but there wasn't a single toy gun, a single dress-up uniform, a single warplane or toy tank anywhere to be seen. She filed the information away for future reference, already wondering at the motivation behind that omission.
Otherwise, it was satisfactory in every way. Even the kitchen was first-rate, serving healthy snacks on demand, at no cost to the children or their parents. For the older kids, datascreens and hookups into the datanet were available for after-school study or educational computer games. "We get a fair number of school-age children," Mrs. Hayes explained, "who come here for recreation, sports, dance classes, equipment for science projects, that sort of thing. We're trying to serve the entire community, so parents won't have the added burden of expensive equipment at home. That can be very hard on a single-income family living on a soldier's pay."
Kafari nodded. That was true enough, but she was totting up the cost in her head, again. She didn't like the answers. Aloud, she said only, "It's a very nice facility, Mrs. Hayes. I'm sure Yalena will enjoy her time here."
Mrs. Hayes glowed with motherly pride. "That is quite a compliment, coming from a colonel's wife, my dear. You really should be invited to more of our social events. I'm sure the officer's wives would enjoy meeting you."
"That's very kind of you, Mrs. Hayes."
"Not at all. Not at all, my dear. Well, let's look up Yalena, so you can be on your way."
She found her daughter playing with a colorful puzzle, absorbed in trying to fit the pieces together in a way that made sense. "That's a very nice puzzle, Yalena. Do you like it here?"
Her little girl smiled. "Yes!"
"I'm glad. Mommy has to go to work, sweetheart. I'll come back in a few hours. You can play here with the toys and the other children." She kissed her daughter's hair and smiled when Yalena scrambled up to give her a hug.
"Bye-bye, sweetheart. I'll see you in a little while."
"Bye-bye."
Her daughter was already absorbed in the puzzle again when Kafari paused in the doorway leading to the parking lot. The director's daughter was helping her, smiling and praising Yalena's efforts. Well, she thought on her way to the Airdart, it could've been a lot worse. Given the draconian wording of the letters they had received on the subject, she'd expected to find a regimented military school with children drilled into marching lockstep, responding to orders barked by a socially correct matron in uniform, wielding a bullhorn and a bullwhip as badges of office.
It was not a comforting thought to realize things might've been better, in the long run, if Jefferson's children had been herded into such places. People would've protested sharply, maybe enough to call a halt to the madness. As it was . . . Only time would tell. And that was the best Kafari could do, without running for the nearest off-world ship that docked at Ziva Two. As she lifted off, flying toward Madison and the spaceport, she couldn't help wondering if she were making a serious mistake.