Madison had changed.
Or maybe she had. Kafari shrugged her pack into a more comfortable position and adjusted the straps, then set out across campus. The library, with its all-important SWIFT transmitter, was nearly three kilometers from her little cubicle. She didn't mind the walk, most days, although the weather was sometimes unpleasant and she was often achingly tired.
"Don't worry about the fatigue," the doctor had told her, "it's just a byproduct of your body's effort to repair the damage. Take it slowly and be patient. It'll pass, soon enough, and you'll feel more like yourself, again."
Kafari wasn't sure, any longer, what "feeling like herself" actually felt like. She didn't know herself, any longer, didn't recognize the girl who lived inside her skin, these days. She peered into the mirror, sometimes, trying to find herself, and saw only a girl with eyes like flint who sometimes, for reasons Kafari didn't completely understand, made older, ostensibly stronger men shudder. She had lost herself, somewhere, in the smoke and the shooting and the killing.
Compared to others, Kafari had lost very little. She was far luckier than most of her friends, lucky in so many ways it was hard to count them all. Her parents had survived. They'd gone, that morning, to Grandma and Grandpa Soteris' farm, tucked back into a corner of Seorsa Gorge. Chakula Ranch was gone, and two of her brothers with it, but everyone else in her immediate family had survived, including most of her aunts and uncles and cousins.
They had come to the hospital in Madison to cheer her up. They'd all come to Madison again, just three weeks later, when President Lendan bestowed Jefferson's highest honors on those who had fought and, in many cases, died. Kafari's Uncle Jasper, Commander of Jefferson's Ground Defense Forces, had been one of thousands of soldiers killed in battle, trying to defend the northwestern portion of Madison. He had earned a Presidential Gold Medallion, which Abraham Lendan presented posthumously to Aunt Rheta and her son, Kafari's cousin Geordi. Aunt Rheta cried the whole time. So did Kafari.
And then President Lendan had called her name, as well as Dinny and Aisha Ghamal's. Stunned, Kafari joined Aisha and her son at the steps leading to the podium, where President Lendan waited. Kafari and Aisha clasped hands as they climbed up.
"For courage under extreme fire," the president was saying while film crews and reporters trained their cameras on them and transmitted the images to the entire world, "for brilliant battlefield decisions that saved lives, including my own, and for the determination to keep fighting against incredible odds, it is my humble honor to award these Gold Presidential Medallions to Kafari Camar, to Aisha Ghamal, and to Dinny Ghamal. But for them, I would not be here today."
The applause from the Joint Chamber floor washed across them as Abraham Lendan slipped the ribbon holding the medallion around her neck. As he shook her hand, he murmured for her ears alone, "Well done, my courageous captain. Very well done, indeed."
She touched the medallion with numb fingers, watched Aisha and Dinny receive theirs, then watched Simon Khrustinov accept two medals, one for himself and one for the Bolo. Her fingers kept stroking the heavy medallion around her own neck, as though trying to convince themselves that it was really there. She hadn't expected this. Hadn't expected anything like it. Her eyes stung as she descended the steps and returned to her seat, engulfed by warm hugs and tearful congratulations from her entire family.
She didn't display the medallion at her tiny apartment. It was too precious to leave it there, where locks were flimsy enough that a child of two could break the door open just by leaning on it. She'd asked her father to store it in the family's lock-box, which they had recovered from the wreckage of their house. Her parents were gradually rebuilding Chakula Ranch and Kafari helped as much as she could. She'd felt so guilty over running off to Madison for classes, she'd almost cancelled her plans.
Her mother had taken one look at Kafari's face after reaching that decision and stepped in, fast. "You're not going to sell your dreams or your future short, my girl. You need that degree. And Jefferson needs psychotronic technicians and engineers. We're a long way from the Central Worlds, out here, and we don't have much to offer that would tempt high-tech specialists into relocating. Besides," she winked, "your husband may decide to foot the bill for the rest of your education."
"Husband?" Kafari echoed, voice squeaking in suprise. "Mother! I'm not even dating! Who is it, you had in mind for me to marry?" Kafari was running through a mental list of men her mother might consider suitable, weighing it against a list of men Kafari thought she could tolerate, at least. She realized with a slight flutter of panic that those two lists did not converge anywhere.
Her mother only smiled in that mysterious and maddening way she had and refused to say anything further about it. Not that Kafari minded in the slightest. She was so grateful to still have her mother alive, tears threatened again. Kafari blinked and gently pushed those feelings aside, paying attention, instead, to the path she followed across campus.
Riverside University was a beautiful school, nearly a century and a quarter old. Native sandstone caught the late, westering sun in a glow like a faded echo of the sunsets that blazed across Klameth Canyon's high cliffs. The campus stretched two full kilometers along the south bank of the Adero River, with promenades and pathways and shade trees interspersed between lecture halls, research labs, sports facilities, and dormitories. Riverside's geographical setting provided beautiful views across the river and plenty of inviting, picturesque places to gather with friends or indulge a spot of romantic trysting.
Not that Kafari'd had much time for the latter. There were plenty of boys who'd shown interest, but Kafari wasn't particularly interested in them. Somehow, she just couldn't work up much enthusiasm for some barely post-pubescent kid whose sole interests were scoring on a sports field or in some girl's bed. She had more in common with the professors than with students her own age and sometimes felt that even the professors didn't really understand her. It was proving far harder than she'd thought, fitting back into an ordinary world, again.
Mostly, Kafari was determined to finish her degree in the shortest amount of time possible. She wanted to start earning money to support her family, rather than costing them money to support her. Thanks to the scholarship from Vishnu and the assistance she'd received as part of the new Educational Surety Loans—which helped students whose families and livelihoods had been adversely affected by the war—Kafari's only real expenses were room and board. She'd done a lot of searching, to find the cheapest possible place in which to live, no easy feat in war-scarred Madison, where the cost of housing had nearly quadrupled. Food prices had soared six to ten times their prewar averages, which made her job at a dorm kitchen esstential, since the dorm fed her twice a day in lieu of cash wages.
As she walked, listening to the river and the wind in the trees and the snarl of traffic beyond the edge of campus, a nameless, uneasy feeling she had experienced all too often, of late, crept across her, like shadows of the advancing evening. She couldn't identify any particular threat, but the carrying sound of voices from little gatherings scattered here and there set her teeth on edge, somehow.
As she passed knots of students, she fell into a habit she had cultivated, recently, of studying everything and everyone around her with piercing intensity. It was more than the heightened awareness she'd brought out of combat. It was a search for something in the faces of the other students, something that would explain to her why her skin occasionally crawled when she found herself in close proximity to people she didn't know.
She was nearing the edge of campus when the voices difting on the wind rose into a sound more strident than mere conversation. Her path had taken Kafari fairly close to a large gathering that was composed, if she were reading the shadowed figures accurately, of considerably more than just students. It was nearly dark, but street lights illuminated the area fairly well. She could see kids close to her own age, but there were older people in the crowd, as well, which had swelled to something between two and three hundred by the time Kafari arrived.
Some of the shadowy figures drifting through the group were common criminals, of a type that had always found a living at Madison's spaceport, where traffic was down to such a tiny trickle, there was virtually nobody to steal from, these days. Others in the crowd looked like seedy laborers thrown out of work, with too much time on their hands and not enough ambition to try something really back-breaking, like farming. Or terraforming land so it could be farmed. Or working long, bitterly hard shifts on the factory trawlers out harvesting the oceans for critically needed food and pharmaceuticals. As Kafari passed the outer fringes of the crowd, she caught snatches of what was being said.
"—raised our taxes and our tuition! And why? To subsidize a bunch of pig farmers who think we owe them a free ride! Just because they lost a couple of barns and a few scrawny goats!"
The venom in that voice shocked Kafari. Almost as much as the words, themselves. Nobody's asking for a free ride, she thought, flushing with sudden, hot anger. Doesn't this guy understand how the loans work? The money Granger families were using to rebuild, to buy new equipment, to put crops into the ground again hadn't come from subsidies or gifts. The Joint Assembly had authorized emergency loans and the money had to be repaid, with some fairly strict forfeiture clauses if loan recipients defaulted. There was no guarantee that out-of-work Townies would even be able to buy produce and meat, come harvest time. If the government had to introduce subsistence payments on a wide scale, there was almost an ironclad guarantee they would also set price caps on produce, driving prices down and potentially bankrupting producers.
Yet here was a man, obviously a Townie, ranting about free handouts that didn't exist. He was standing on top of something, a park bench, maybe, from which he held forth on a subject that made no sense at all to Kafari. "The government is falling all over itself, trying to rebuild a bunch of smelly farms, but nobody gives a damn about us. It isn't fair! Our homes were burned down, our shops and factories were blown up, but is anybody scrambling to help us rebuild?"
An angry rumble from the crowd drew a deepening frown from Kafari. Didn't that guy pay any attention to the news? Didn't anybody else in that crowd? President Lendan had already asked the Senate and House of Law for a massive urban aid package, with at least twice the monetary value of the farm-aid legislation already passed. Klameth Canyon had been hit hard, but even Kafari understood that the damage had been piecemeal, compared with the ruthless, systematic destruction Deng Yavacs had waged through the western side of Madison. Hundreds of homes and businesses had been destroyed. Most of the civilians had survived, huddled in deep shelters below the city, the kind of shelters unavailable to farm folk, but the economy would feel the impact of lost factories and retail shops for years to come.
The urban poor, swelled by newly unemployed laborers and their families, needed help desperately. But nobody was living in the sewers and nobody was starving. Not yet, anyway. That was why the rural bill had been pushed through first. It had been utterly critical to get a new crop in the ground and a farmer couldn't do that without money for seed and equipment. Didn't any of these people understand what it took to fill market baskets with produce and cuts of meat?
Kafari edged her way around the crowd, tired and hungry and abruptly chilled. Full darkness had descended and a heavy mist had begun to form along the river, where snowmelt from the high Damisi ranges tore past Madison's broad stretches of concrete and stone, warmed throughout the day by the sun. Radiant heat met cold water in a rapidly thickening fog that reminded Kafari of history lessons about old Terra, where places with exotic names like London and San Francisco were perpetually shrouded in thick blankets of mist penetrated only by something eerie and ominous-sounding called "gaslight" that never seemed effective at dispelling the darkness.
Kafari shivered as wet tendrils of grey reached out with cold, trailing fingertips and brushed her skin like something dead. She wanted, quite abruptly, to be somewhere warm and bright and cheerful, where she knew every face she was likely to meet and where she wouldn't hear ugly voices calling her pig-farmer and questioning her right to be here. She was tired and hungry and still had a wicked, long way to walk to reach her cubicle—
"Hey!" a rough voice said behind her. "You! Ain't I seen you someplace?"
Kafari glanced around, muscles tightening down in anticipation of trouble.
A big, hulking guy with a scraggly blond beard and fists like meathooks was glaring at her. Whoever he was, he was no student. He looked about forty years old and his clothes were sturdy, industrial-style garments like the ones factory workers generally wore. The men with him looked like more of the same. With a sinking feeling in the pit of her belly, Kafari tensed to fight or run.
"That's the jomo bitch from the news," one of the rough men growled, using a filthy pejorative Townies favored when referring to rural folk.
Blood stung Kafari's face, even as her belly turned to ice.
"Hey, jomo, you gonna save me?" one of the men smirked, rubbing his crotch vulgarly.
At one time, just a few weeks previously, Kafari would have counted on the sheer number of witnesses to deter something this ugly. But the people on the edges of this particular crowd, most of them middle-aged men whose faces blurred into a pale wall of hatred, looked more inclined to help.
Kafari threw pride to the wind and ran.
Her action caught them by surprise. A low roar of anger surged behind her. She was tired, murderously so, but she had long legs and a head start. The mob surged into motion behind her, individual voices snarling at her to stop.
Stop, hell. Do they think I'm stupid?
As she neared the edge of campus, the roar of traffic ahead blended with the roar of pursuit behind. Kafari dodged out into the street, playing tag with fast-moving groundcars. The scream of brakes and curses rose behind her as the mob surged into the street. She wasn't entirely sure where she was going. Her cubicle certainly wouldn't offer any real protection. Neither would any of the brightly lit restaurants that hugged the edge of campus, dependent on student money for their survival. A handful of waitresses and short-order cooks would be of no help whatsoever against a blood-crazed mob of unemployed factory workers. Kafari's strength was beginning to flag as physical exertion and the beginnings of hopelessness drained her burst of energy.
There wasn't a police officer or soldier in sight, naturally.
She staggered forward, tearing at the catches on her backpack so she wouldn't have to carry its weight any farther, and reached the corner where her street bisected the larger boulevard. Kafari was about to sling the backpack away when an aircar emerged from her street, skimming low. It halted literally right in front of her. The hatch popped open. Simon Khrustinov leaned across, holding out one hand. Kafari sobbed out something incoherent as she scrambled up, catching hold of a hand that lifted her with astonishing ease. She collapsed onto the passenger's seat. He yanked her across, feet sliding in through the open door, then shot the aircar skyward in a move that shoved her down against his knees.
The mob surged around the spot where she'd just been standing, snarling curses at them. Simon punched controls that slammed the hatch closed, then spoke tersely into the radio. "Major Khrustinov here. There's an unholy riot in progress at Meridian and Twelfth. You'd better get an armed riot control unit out here, stat. They're starting to loot stores," he added in a grim voice.
Kafari started to shake as reaction set in.
A warm hand came to rest on her hair. "Do you need a doctor?"
She shook her head, gulping down lungfuls of air.
"Thank God." Quiet, full of emotion she hadn't expected to hear.
He was helping her sit up, disentangling her fingers from their death grip on his shirt and the straps to her backpack, which lay awkwardly between his feet. "Easy," he murmured, turning her to sit in the passenger's seat. She was shaking so violently she couldn't even manage the safety straps. He fastened them gently around her, then produced a box of tissues from a console and pushed a wad of them into her hands. She tried to blot the tears dry, but couldn't seem to turn the faucet off.
"Th-they wanted to h-hurt me," she gulped.
"Why?"
"D-don't know. Called me a filthy j-jomo . . ."
He frowned. "A what?"
She tried to explain, got herself tangled up in the differences between Granger and Townie societies, finally managed to make him understand that the term was a crude insult derived from an African word for farmers. Anger turned his face to cut marble. "I see," he said quietly, voice dangerous. "Could you identify any of them?"
She shuddered. Face those animals again? Kafari was no coward, but the thought of a police station, formal charges, a trial with the press crawling all over her left her trembling violently again. "I'd rather not try."
A muscle jumped in his jaw. But all he said was, "All right. I'm going to take you someplace quiet and safe for a while."
He touched controls and the aircar moved sedately westward above the rooftops. Madison was beautiful at night, Kafari realized as her pulse slowed and the jagged breaths tearing through her calmed down to mere gulps. She blotted her eyes again, blew her nose inelegantly, managed to regain control of her fractured emotions.
"Where were you, just now?" she finally asked.
A tiny smile flickered into existence. "Parked outside your apartment."
She blinked in surprise, finally managed to ask, "Why?"
His glance flicked across to meet hers, even as a wry smile touched his mobile mouth, softening the anger. "Actually, I was planning on asking you a fairly important question."
Her eyes widened. "You were?" Then, apprehensively, "What?"
"Miss Camar, would you do me the honor of dining with me this evening?"
She surprised herself by smiling. "I'd love to." Then she realized with dismay what she must look like, covered with fear sweat, eyes red and streaming. She cleared her throat. "I'm not really dressed for it."
"Somehow, I don't think the chef will mind."
"The chef?" That sounded expensive.
"Well, the cook, anyway."
They were still heading west, leaving the outskirts of Madison behind.
"Uh, where's the restaurant?" she asked, craning around to peer back at the receding lights.
His lips tightened. "Actually, it's in the middle of that nastiness back there. I don't have any intention of keeping the reservation. I hope you don't mind a couple of steaks on the grill? I installed it yesterday, when they finished putting in the patio behind my quarters."
Kafari blurted out the first, idiotic thing that came to mind. "You can cook?"
Grimness vanished, dispelled by a boyish grin. "Well, yes. It was learn to cook or resign myself to years of eating prepackaged glop. Have you ever eaten what the Concordiat fondly refers to as field rations?"
She shook her head.
"Consider yourself fortunate." His eyes had begun to twinkle, seriously interfering with Kafari's ability to breathe. Simon Khrustinov had remarkable eyes, full of shadows and mysteries, yet clear as a summer sky and just as vividly blue. They caught the glow from the control panel lights like radiant stars. The darkness surrounding the aircar wrapped around them like velvet, a private and wonderfully safe darkness that carried her away from danger and fear and the uncertainty that had lain like shadows across her soul since the day of her return home from Vishnu. Somehow, it seemed very natural to find herself alone with this man, heading toward his kitchen for a meal he intended to prepare with his own hands.
And wonderful hands they were, too, she realized, gulping a little unsteadily as she studied them. They rested on the aircar's controls with quiet ease. Strong hands, large and manly, with a sprinkling of dark hair across them. Crisp shirt cuffs hid his wrists from view. His uniform was missing, tonight, replaced by civilian shirt and slacks of a subdued, conservative cut. His clothes were sturdy, made of high-quality fabric that had been loomed somewhere very far from Jefferson. Unless she were much mistaken, the shirt was real Terran silk, worth almost as much as her parents' entire farm. Before the Deng razed it.
It shook her, that he'd put on such clothes to ask her to dinner.
The lights of Nineveh Base appeared across the Adero floodplain. Kafari had never been onto the base, although her uncle Jasper had been stationed there for a while. Her throat tightened. She blinked burning saltwater, then leaned forward with a soft gasp as the aircar swung toward one edge of the base.
A huge, black shadow loomed against the lights. The Bolo. Parked quietly at the end of what looked like a very new street, next to a low building that had obviously been finished in just the last few days. There wasn't any landscaping at all, just a broad stretch of mud bisected by a concrete walkway that led from a wide landing pad to the front door. A much larger adjacent building, clearly designed to house the immense machine, stood open to the sky, only partially complete.
The aircar settled to the landing pad and rolled neatly to a halt beside the Bolo's treads, which dwarfed their transport so completely, Kafari felt like a midget. She couldn't even see the whole Bolo from this angle. Simon switched off controls, then popped the hatches, jogging around to assist her with antique, off-world courtesy that surprised her. The touch of his hand on hers sent a tingle straight up her arm. A tremor hit her knees. The smile that blazed in his eyes was incendiary. What it wrought on Kafari's jangled insides was probably illegal on some worlds.
He offered his arm in a gallant gesture she'd seen only in movies. She laid an unsteady hand on the crook of his arm, smiling at her escort as he led the way past the Bolo's silent guns. She craned her neck to peer up at the turrets and weapons ports high above. It was hard to realize that she'd actually been inside it. Her memory went blurry, right about the time she'd sagged into that couch, with medication pumping into her system from the auto-doc. She had no memory at all of arriving at the hospital in Madison. She'd returned to consciousness to find her family surrounding her bed, waiting for her to open her eyes.
Simon Khrustinov followed her stare. "Sonny," he said, addressing the immense machine, "you remember Miss Camar?"
"Indeed I do, Simon. Good evening, Miss Camar. It is a pleasure to see you again. You look a great deal better."
She cleared her throat, awed by the sound of the Bolo's metallic voice and startled by its comments. "Good evening. Thank you. I am better."
"I am pleased the bee-stings healed without scars," the Bolo added. "I have studied the files posted on Jefferson's planetary datanet detailing the habits and temperament of Asali bees. An excellent choice of weapon, under the circumstances. It is fortunate the swarm attacked the Deng, rather than you and your companions."
Kafari stared, astonished. "Well," she managed after a moment, "they pretty much go after whatever's closest to the hive, especially if it's a moving target. Aisha and I were moving, but we weren't close to the hives when they broke open. The Deng were. And once those swarms got loose, the Deng were moving a whole lot faster than we were."
It took a moment for Kafari to realize what the rusty, metallic sound issuing from the speakers was. It was the Bolo's voice, chuckling. It sounded like a bucket full of rusted metal tossed down a steel stairway. She grinned, despite the prickle of gooseflesh. The Bolo had a sense of humor! Simon was grinning, too, openly delighted that she'd understood that gawdawful sound for what it was.
"Okay, Sonny, enough chit-chat for now," the officer said, smiling. "I promised to make dinner for Miss Camar." The smile vanished as a darker thought moved visibly behind his eyes. "Check the news from Madison, please. There's an ugly riot underway. I want to know when it's been contained and who to see about giving eyewitness testimony."
When Kafari stiffened, he glanced into her eyes and shook his head slightly, reassuring her. "Your name won't come into it. Mostly I want to know who the ringleaders were and what was behind it."
Kafari sighed. "I can tell you some of that. I stumbled into a big crowd. Two, maybe three hundred people. They were listening to a guy about my age. He was ranting about tuition hikes and government aid to rebuild farms, but not factories and shops. It didn't make much sense, not with the urban restoration package President Lendan's asked for, but the crowd was eating it up." She shivered. "Some of them were students, but there were a lot of factory workers, too. Laborers thrown out of work, men in their thirties and forties. Those were the ones chasing me."
"And using racist vulgarities," Simon added darkly. "Sonny, start paying attention to the chat boards on the datanet. I want to know a whole lot more about what's going on, here. We won the war. I'd just as soon we didn't lose the peace."
"Understood, Simon."
The Bolo fell ominously silent. Kafari shivered.
"Let's get you inside," Simon said at once, escorting her across the walkway to his front door. He palmed the lock open, then switched on lights in his private quarters. The room was heartlessly plain, new enough he hadn't had much time to decorate. The furniture was military issue, sturdy and functional, but not particularly fashionable. It didn't matter. It was quiet and unbelievably safe, probably the safest spot on Jefferson, guarded by the Bolo's guns. She started to relax. Simon turned on music, something strange and unfamiliar, hinting at far-away worlds Kafari could only dimly imagine. It was beautiful, soothing.
"Can I get you something to drink while I start cooking? I've laid in a supply of local stuff. Ales, wines, some kind of tea that I can't figure out what it's made from, but I like it. Tastes kind of . . . tangy-sweet, like fruit with a kick. It's great over ice."
Kafari smiled. "Sounds like felseh. That would be wonderful."
He poured two glasses from a pitcher in his refrigerator, then suggested she make herself comfortable in the living room. "Don't be silly," she said, downing half the glass in one thirsty gulp. "You do the steaks and I'll do the veggies. What've you got?"
He rummaged, came up with several bags of frozen stuff and even fresh corn flown in from the one of the farms in the southern hemisphere. The southern harvests were small, given the limited amount of recently terraformed acreage, but they provided fresh food for those able to afford it. Kafari smiled. "How about corn and a Klameth Canyon medley?"
Simon grinned. "Sounds fabulous, whatever it is. I'll light the grill."
He vanished through a rear door while Kafari found the disposal bin and shucked corn. She found pans, switched on the range, got things started, and poured more tea, downing it thirstily. She found ingredients for biscuits and whipped up a batch, then popped them into the oven. A bottle of red wine she discovered in the pantry would go well with steak. She opened it to breathe and set the table, which had been tucked into one corner of the kitchen. Simon's quarters were small enough to be comfortable and convenient, large enough to avoid feeling cramped. The more she listened to his music, the more she liked it.
He came in, sniffed appreciatively. "What's that wonderful smell?"
"Biscuits."
"I didn't have any."
She grinned. "You do now."
"Wow! You can bake? From scratch?"
She grinned. "Some farmer's daughter I'd be, if I couldn't."
"What else can you do? Besides kill Deng and rescue planetary heads of state and whip up a batch of biscuits?"
She blushed. "Not a lot, I guess. I can hunt and fish and I know every game trail through this stretch of the Damisi. I can sew, sort of. Nothing fancy, but I can fix damage involving torn seams and I can make play clothes. Simple stuff. I'm pretty good at psychotronic programming," she added. "Nothing as sophisticated as your Bolo, but I'm qualified to handle urban traffic-control systems, factory 'bots, mining equipment, high-tech ag engineering systems, that kind of thing."
"A lady with multiple talents." Simon smiled, rescuing the steaks from a drawer in the refrigerator and dumping a bottle of some kind of marinade over them. He was stabbing the meat with a fork to let the sauce soak deep. Kafari wondered what the marinade was, since the bottle was a reusable one designed for something homemade, not a store-bought brand.
"What about you?" she asked. "What else can you do, besides defend worlds, run a Bolo, rescue damsels in distress, and cook?"
"Hmm . . . I like to read history, but I'm not what you'd call a historian. I tried learning to paint, when I was a kid, but I didn't have much talent for it. Can't hold a tune to save my backside, but I like music." He grinned, suddenly and boyishly. "I can do a few Russian folk dances."
"Really?" Kafari was impressed. "All those knee-popping kicks and stuff?"
He chuckled. "Yep. Even those. Mind you, it takes a bit of limbering up, but it's fantastic exercise. Really gets the blood pumping. Do you dance?" he asked, tossing the marinade bottle into the sink and hunting up a long-handled spatula.
"A little," Kafari admitted, following him outside when he headed toward the grill. The night was lovely, the darkness intimate, the stars brilliant despite the lights from Nineveh Base. The steaks sizzled when Simon dropped them onto the grill. "I learned a couple of traditional African dances from Dad, and Grandma Soteris taught me some Greek dances when I was a kid. There are always big community dances and fairs, once the harvest is in. Not only in Klameth Canyon, but in most Granger communities. Tradition's important to us. Not just traditional ways of farming, but family traditions, too. Stories and dances, folk arts and handicrafts, languages and literature and music. Even a way of looking at things that's tied to relying on the land."
Simon set the long-handled spatula aside and gazed into the darkness for a few moments, lost in thoughts that left him looking inexpressibly lonely. "That's nice," he finally said. An emotion that Kafari eventually identified as yearning filled his voice as he added, "I've never belonged anywhere, that way. I study Russian history and listen to Russian music, so I'll have some kind of connection with my ancestors, but I don't have a family to share it with."
Kafari hesitated, then decided to ask, anyway. "What happened to them?"
"My parents and sister were killed in the Quern War. I didn't have any other family, nothing to tie me to any particular place. Pretty much the only thing I wanted was to go away and never come back. So I looked up the Concordiat's recruiter and applied for training as a Bolo commander. I was eighteen, then. That was a long time ago," he added softly, still staring into the velvety darkness beyond his patio.
"You never found anyone else?"
In the space of one heartbeat, his whole body turned to rigid steel. Kafari wanted to kick herself all the way back to Madison. Then a deep, slow-motion shudder went through him and his muscles softened again into human flesh. "Yes. I did. In a way."
"You lost them, though, didn't you? On Etaine?"
She thought for a long moment that he didn't intend to answer. Then he started to speak, voice hushed in the cool springtime darkness. "Her name was Renny . . ." That he had loved her was obvious. That she had blamed him was incomprehensible. Kafari's brothers lay under deep-piled rubble, where part of the cliff had come down onto the house. There was very little doubt that the Bolo's guns had wrought much of the damage. Parts of a Yavac could be seen, jutting up through the jumbled piles of stone, very near what would have been the front porch.
But it didn't matter whether the Yavac's guns or the Bolo's had wrought the actual fatal blows. Terms like friendly fire and collateral damage were—to Kafari, anyway—meaningless. If the Deng had not invaded, her brothers would still be alive. The Deng had killed them, no matter who had fired the actual shots. When she tried to tell him that, Simon Khrustinov stared into her eyes for long moments.
Then he whispered, "You are a remarkable woman, Kafari Camar."
She shook her head. "No. I'm just a Jeffersonian."
The touch of his fingertips on her face, tracing the shape of nose and cheek and brow, left shivers coursing through her. "I'm beginning to think there's no such thing as 'just a Jeffersonian.' " He smiled, then. "I'd better turn those steaks before they're ruined."
That was just as well, since Kafari didn't think she'd have been able to say two coherent words together, in the wake of that brief but devastating touch. They were both silent for several long moments, Simon watching the steaks, Kafari watching Simon. The sizzle of dripping fat served as counterpoint to the softer rustle of wind in the meadow grasses surrounding Nineveh Base. The mouth-watering scent reminded Kafari that hours had passed since her hastily eaten lunch at the dorm kitchen. The buzz of the oven timer sent Kafari scooting back into the kitchen to test the biscuits. Her critical eye and the golden brown color, plus years of experience in a farm kitchen, told Kafari they were done.
She snagged a bowl and slid the biscuits into it, using a small towel to cover them, and rummaged until she found butter. No cane syrup or honey, but they ought to be tasty enough. Simon carried in the steaks, Kafari fished out the corn and dumped the veggies into another bowl, then they sat down. Simon poured the wine, tasting it expertly before filling Kafari's glass.
"Ma'am, this looks and smells like some kind of wonderful."
She smiled and passed the butter. "How'd the bake turn out?"
He broke open one fluffy biscuit, smeared butter, and tasted. Then closed his eyes and let go a sound that was more groan than sigh. "Oh . . . my . . . God . . ."
Kafari grinned. "I think that's the biggest compliment I've ever heard a man give somebody's cooking."
Simon opened his eyes and said, "Miss Camar, what I do is called cooking. This," he waved the remains of his biscuit, "is artistry."
"Thank you, Major Khrustinov." She smiled. "Maybe we could graduate to first names? I feel like I'm in grammar school, again."
The smile started in his eyes and spread to the whole of his body. "You sure don't look like a school girl, Kafari."
At the moment, with those remarkable eyes touching places inside that she hadn't even known existed, Kafari didn't feel much like a school girl, either. She bent over her steak, concentrating on knife and fork to regain her composure. The first bite caused her to roll her eyes upwards. "Oh, wow . . ." She chewed appreciatively. "What is that sauce?"
He grinned. "It's a secret recipe. Something I threw together out of sheer necessity, trying to make military rations palatable."
"Huh. Bottle this stuff and sell it and your fortune's made. I'm not kidding. This is wonderful."
They fell silent for several minutes, applying themselves to the meal. Simon's wine, a local vintage, was a perfect complement to the steak. Kafari hadn't eaten this well since her last visit home from Vishnu, more than a year previously. Beautiful music washed through her awareness, soothing and lovely. She was aware of Simon, as well, with every nerve ending, every pore of her skin. She wanted more of this. Quiet evenings spent with someone special, enjoying good conversation, good food jointly prepared.
And she wanted more—much more—of Simon. More of his smiles, his remarkable eyes peering into the depths of her soul, more of the reasons for the shadows in those eyes, more of the teasing and laughter, and more—she had to gulp at the mere thought—of those incredible hands touching her.
The strength of her wanting was new to Kafari's life, new and a little frightening. She hadn't ever wanted anyone like this, never in her life. It scared her, made her feel shivery and strange, made her wonder if these feelings had always lain dormant inside her, hidden away until the right man came along, or if the war had somehow triggered them, changing her at a core level she didn't want to probe too deeply.
Mostly, she wanted, hoped—prayed—that Simon would touch her again.
He produced ice cream for dessert, then they washed dishes in companionable silence. When the last plate and pan had been wiped down and put away and the last crumbs had been swept away from counter and tabletop, leaving the kitchen gleaming again, Simon refilled their wine glasses and they moved into the living room.
"Oh, that was good," Kafari sighed, settling into the sofa.
"Yes," he agreed softly, sitting beside her, "it was."
Somehow, she didn't think he was talking about the meal. After a moment's reflection, Kafari realized she hadn't been, either. She wasn't sure how to proceed from here, felt abruptly awkward and shy. The Bolo saved her from tongue-tied silence.
"Simon," it said, overriding the music, "the riot has been contained. Madison police have arrested one hundred fifty-three people. Residences and businesses have been damaged in an area encompassing ten city blocks. The alleged ringleader is a student by the name of Vittori Santorini. The rally he conducted was entirely lawful. He is not in custody and will not be charged, as he did not participate in the actual riot. I have scanned the datanet as directed. He maintains a site that advocates abolition of special aid to farmers and ranchers, stronger environmental-protection legislation, and cost-of-living subsidies for the urban poor. His chat board averages three hundred seventeen posts a day and his newsletter has ten thousand fifty-three subscribers, ninety-eight percent of whom have joined within the past three point two weeks."
Simon whistled softly. "That's a lot of activity in a very short time. This guy bears watching. Sonny, monitor his actions, please, until further notice. Discreetly, mind."
"Understood, Simon."
"Do you have any visuals of him?"
The viewscreen on the entertainment center crackled to life. Kafari recognized him at once. He was young, not more than twenty. His hair was dark, his skin pale as curdled milk. His eyes, a nearly transparent blue that might have looked glacial, in another face, had a fire-eaten look about them. Shudders crawled down Kafari's back.
Simon looked down into her eyes. "That's the guy you saw?"
Kafari nodded. "There's something . . . not quite right, about him. His rhetoric didn't make any logical sense, but those people were spellbound."
"Charismatic fanatics are always dangerous. All right, Sonny, I've seen enough for one night. Thanks."
"Of course, Simon." The viewscreen went dark.
Kafari shivered again. Simon hesitated, then slid an arm around her shoulders. Kafari leaned against him, soaking up the warmth and basking in a feeling of safety that drove away the cold waves coursing through her. A moment later, warm lips touched her hair. She tilted her face up, drowned in the bottomless depths of those shadowed eyes. Then he was kissing her, gently at first, then with hard hunger. His hands moved across her, those beautiful hands, caressing, sliding around to cup and stroke, the heat of his fingers on her flesh setting her ablaze from within. Kafari whimpered, guiding his fingers to tweak one nipple. He fumbled with buttons and so did she.
There were scars under his shirt, old scars, jagged and white with age. He sat very still as she traced her fingertips across them, trailing the width of his chest and down one arm. For a long moment, Simon just looked at her, eyes smouldering, breaths unsteady and rushed. "My God," he whispered. "You are so beautiful it hurts . . ." He closed his eyes, clearly fighting for control. Eyes still closed, he said raggedly, "Not here. Not like this. You're too precious to just take you on a couch, like some rutting teenager with no control."
Kafari's eyes burned and her throat closed. Nobody had ever said anything half so beautiful to her, ever. She didn't think anyone ever could. "Why don't—" she whispered, then had to stop and swallow, hard. She tried again. "Why don't we move somewhere else, then?"
He opened his eyes, gazed into hers for a long time. "You're sure about that?" he finally asked, voice strained.
She nodded, not trusting hers.
The slow smile in his eyes would have dimmed the noonday sun. A moment later she was in his arms. He swung her up, off the couch, carried her into his bedroom, went to the bed with her. The feel of his body against her—and aeons later, inside her—was the most beautiful sensation she had ever felt. Tears came to her eyes as she arched against him, crying out softly and then more urgently. She wanted him, needed him, knew that she would go on needing him for as long as they both continued to breathe. In the shuddering aftermath, he simply closed his arms around her and held on, like a little boy seeking safety in a storm. She wrapped her arms around him, cradled his head against her bosom, and held him while he slept.
Kafari kissed his dark, sweat-dampened hair and knew that whatever happened tomorrow, nothing in her life would ever be the same, again. And this time, the difference between then and now was so wonderfully sweet, she lay awake for a long, long time, just savoring it.
Simon was nervous. So nervous, he had to dry both palms against his uniform trousers. It was, Kafari had assured him, a small wedding—small, at least, by Granger standards—but the crowd on Balthazar and Maarifa Soteris' front lawn looked to Simon like an entire small town had emptied itself for the occasion. Just family, huh? he thought, staring at the sea of strangers who'd come to witness their vows. He hadn't realized just how big a family he was about to acquire.
Wind ruffled his hair and sighed through the treetops. The sunlight poured down the high, rose-colored cliffs like warmed honey, spilling joyously across green fields and orchards heavy with fruit and half-grown calves playing chase in the nearest pasture. Simon breathed in the scent of flowers and living, growing things all around him . . . then Kafari appeared and everything else faded from his awareness. His throat and groin tightened, just looking at her. The cream-colored dress she wore set her skin aglow. Tiny wildflowers adorned her hair. A strand of pearls, harvested from her family's own ponds, lay nestled against her throat, their luster dim compared with the brilliance of her eyes as she caught sight of him.
She moved slowly forward, one hand resting lightly on her father's arm. Simon swallowed hard. He still couldn't quite believe she'd said yes. The welcome her family had given him still astonished Simon. He was an outsider, totally unfamiliar with their customs, yet they had made him one of them from the very beginning, greeting him with such warmth, he knew that finally, after a lifetime of solitude, he had found a place to call home. These people would be his family, in a way unique in his whole life.
Kafari's mother watched through streaming eyes as her daughter moved slowly between the rows of chairs toward him. Iva Soteris Camar was a small woman, slender and shorter than her daughter, with the kind of face Helen of Troy must have possessed by the end of the Trojan War, the beauty that had launched a thousand ships tempered by the agonies of war. She had lost two sons, had lost cousins and other relatives, neighbors and close friends. The pain of those losses was etched into her face, but her chin was up and the joy of seeing her daughter wed shone in her eyes, alongside the grief that her family was not complete, to watch it with her.
Simon was a little in awe of Iva Camar.
As for Zak Camar . . . His was a face carved by wind and sunlight and adversity, but there were laugh lines, as well, and a solid strength that reminded Simon of trees whose gnarled trunks had seen five hundred years pass by since their roots had first dug into the ground. At their first meeting, Zak Camar had sized up Simon through hooded eyes, apparently possessing an instinctual radar that told him "this man's sleeping with your little girl—and if he doesn't measure up, he's gonna walk off this farm missing some body parts." Zak Camar's good opinion meant rather a lot to Simon, and not just because he wanted his body to remain intact.
Zak's dark eyes were suspiciously moist as he placed Kafari's hand in Simon's. Her fingers trembled, but her smile was radiant, hitting Simon like a blow to the gut. They turned to face the officiant, a tall, broad woman with dark eyes and a gentle smile. She spoke softly, but her voice carried a long way.
"We are here today to share the creation of a new family," she began, "a family that will forever be a part of the families from which it is descended. Some of those folks are here today and share this creation joyously. Some of them aren't, except in spirit and memory, folks who defended this land we stand on and folks who defended worlds so far away, we can't even see their stars, at night."
Simon's throat tightened savagely. He hadn't known she was going to say that.
Kafari's fingers tightened against his, causing his eyes to burn even as a wave of love rolled through him. The officiant paused, as though making sure he was all right before she continued, then nodded to herself and went on.
"All these families have different customs, different beliefs, different ways of worshiping, but they all share one thing in common. A belief that the joining of a man and woman is a sacred thing, to be done solemnly with proper ceremony, and joyously, with proper celebration. That's why we're here today, for the ceremony and the celebration as this man, Simon Khrustinov, and this woman, Kafari Camar, create a new family together." In a soft whisper, she asked, "You got the rings, son?"
Simon dug into the breast pocket of his uniform, produced the twin rings. He handed one to Kafari, held the other in unsteady fingertips.
"All right, son, repeat after me . . ."
Simon spoke the words in a hushed voice, to the woman who constituted Simon's whole universe in that moment. "I, Simon Khrustinov, do vow that I will love and guard you, provide for you and our children whether rich or poor, will care for you in sickness and health, will forsake all others and seek only you, so long as our lives endure."
Tears shone in Kafari's eyes as she, too, repeated the vow. Simon slipped the ring onto her finger, his voice almost a whisper. "Let all who see this ring know that you are now and forever my wife, Kafari Khrustinova."
"And let all who see this ring," Kafari murmured, slipping the matching band onto his finger, "know that you are now and forever my husband, Simon Khrustinov."
Simon lost himself in the warmth of her eyes, was jolted out of the reverie when the officiant chuckled and said, "You can kiss her whenever you like, son."
He groaned aloud and pulled her close, kissed her gently, was shocked by the roar from the watchers as Kafari's family applauded and whistled and tossed hats into the air and discharged what sounded like gunfire, but might have been only fireworks. Kafari broke loose just long enough to grin up at him. She winked. "You're well and truly caught, now, husband. There's no wriggling off this hook."
"Huh. You just try getting rid of this fish."
She kissed him again, then they turned and found Kafari's parents holding a broom decorated with fluttering ribbons and flowers, laid horizontally across the aisle between the chairs. They ran forward, hands joined, and Kafari's parents lowered the broom to the ground just as they reached it. They jumped the broomstick and ran a gauntlet of wildflowers and grain tossed at them from either side of the aisle. By the time they reached the end, they were laughing like children. The guests filed past in an endless parade, with hugs and handshakes and words of welcome. Simon lost count of them early on, knew it would take weeks just to memorize names and faces of the people who now constituted his relatives.
By the time the last guest had filed past, Simon's hand felt like it had been mauled, but he couldn't stop grinning. They followed Kafari's parents and grandparents into the side yard, where Grandma and Grandpa Soteris had set up tables full of food. Tubs full of ice cooled down bottles of everything from local beer and wine to fruity carbonated drinks and a couple of things Simon had never even heard of, but which tasted great. A grassy area big enough for Sonny's immense warhull had been marked off with fluttering ribbons. Music floated on the warm summer wind. Kafari led Simon out into the middle of the grassy dance floor and they began their wedding dance.
For the first verse, they danced alone. Then other couples joined them and pretty soon, the whole space was filled. After their first dance together, Zak Camar danced with Kafari and Simon danced with Iva, then the group dances began, complex circle dances and call-sets that Simon struggled through with much embarrassment and lots of good-natured laughter, since even the five-year-olds knew the steps better than he did. They finally broke away and gulped down mouthfuls of some of the best food Simon had tasted on any world. They fed one another while family members took photos and ran mini vid-cams, immortalizing their first meal together.
They danced some more, then went through the obligatory cake-cutting, champagne toast from a double cup, bouquet toss. Simon would have preferred—vastly—to spend the next week or so opening the mountain of wedding gifts piled onto six groaning tables. Unfortunately, Granger custom called for the bride and groom to open everything while everyone was there. It was considered an insult not to open a gift immediately.
So he and Kafari settled onto chairs and started opening packages, while Iva Camar jotted down descriptions of each gift alongside the names of those to be thanked. Simon had never heard the superstition that the number of ribbons broken while opening boxes presaged the number of children to be born into the new family. Naturally, no one told him until he had a pile of broken ribbons deep enough to cover both feet.
"You're kidding?" he said faintly when one of the aunts—he couldn't remember which—finally broke the news.
Laughter enfolded them, warm and full of sympathy.
Kafari just grinned. Notably, there wasn't a single broken ribbon in her pile. She winked as if to say, "I knew you'd break quite enough for the both of us, dear," and kept opening packages. By the time they'd finished, the afternoon was far enough advanced, it was time to begin the wedding supper. The hors d'oeuvres had been whisked away, replaced by steaming dishes that sent mouth-watering aromas wafting through the slanting afternoon sunlight. To his surprise, Simon was escorted to a set of tables reserved exclusively for the men of the family, while the women grouped around another cluster of tables, and the children occupied a third set, with strategically placed teenagers to supervise the toddlers and settle disputes amongst the little ones.
Simon found himself sitting beween Zak Camar and Balthazar Soteris. Some sort of blessing was spoken out by Balthazar, in a language that sounded to Simon like genuine Greek, then the dishes were passed around and they dug in with hearty appetites. At length, Balthazar broke the companionable silence.
"You'll be living in your quarters at Nineveh Base?"
Simon nodded, chewing and swallowing before he answered. "Yes. There's plenty of room. If necessary, I can build an extension to add new rooms."
"You can afford that?"
Simon glanced into the tough old man's eyes, trying to decide what question, precisely, he had asked. "If I have to, yes. My salary comes directly from the Brigade, not Jefferson's planetary coffers, for one thing. The government's obligated under treaty to provide me with suitable quarters, but if things look too grim to justify using Jefferson's public funds to expand my quarters—and just now, I'm afraid things don't look good at all—I certainly have the means to build a nursery or two, myself."
Balthazar and Zak exchanged a long glance that told Simon he'd succeeded in answering the right question, then Zak said, "From where we sit, things look mighty grim. If we don't get weather satellites up, at least, before harvest time, we could lose a lot of crops to bad weather. And the summer storm season's coming, which could spell trouble fast, if we can't properly track those storms."
Simon nodded, wondering how much to say, then decided these folks ought to know at least some of the raw truth. "From a system-defense standpoint, if we don't replace the warning and defense platforms the Deng blew out of orbit, we could get caught with our shorts down, even worse this time. The Deng would be bad enough, coming through the Void again. God help us if the Melconians decide to come calling."
The men exchanged glances that said, "Yep, we figured as much," dark glances that appreciated the confirmation of their own take on the situation, even as those glances slid inevitably to the womenfolk and children at the other tables. Simon's glance rested on Kafari, radiant as she talked with her mother and aunts and cousins, and felt a chill touch his own heart. He was no stranger to that kind of fear, but for once in his life, he was in the midst of others who felt exactly the same thing, for exactly the same reasons—and for exactly the same people, as well. It was a kind of belonging new to him, a bittersweet feeling that lessened his loneliness while giving him even more people to worry about defending—and to hurt for, if things turned bad, again.
Zak Camar, whose eyes reflected the pain of losing two sons, broke the dark and ugly silence. "We got more to worry about than just the satellites and the weather. No sense hiding from a truth, just because it smells like a dead jaglitch rotting in the sun. Taxes are up, too high by a long shot, to pay for all the rebuilding. We have more than a million people out of work. And we've got more companies going belly up, every day. A business can't make payroll if it can't manufacture or obtain raw materials or sell what's sitting in its warehouses."
Balthazar Soteris added in a harsh voice, "And a worker laid off and scraping by on government subsistence can't afford what we'll have to charge for the crops in those fields, come the harvest." He nodded toward the Soteris fields, green and lovely beyond the supper tables and dance floor. "Not if we hope to have enough money to plant again next year and put more acreage into terraforming. The government's already depleted almost a quarter of the food reserves in the emergency system, reserves it took several years to build. We can't feed the whole population of this planet indefinitely on the reserves. We have to terraform more acreage, particularly in the southern hemisphere, where the growing season's timed to put fresh produce on the tables during winter up here."
Zak added quietly, "We're short on agricultural labor, too. If we don't start sending some of those unemployed factory workers into the fields . . ." He didn't finish. He didn't have to, since every man at this large table knew exactly what would happen if there weren't enough workers to plant and harvest. Mechanical harvesters were fine, if you had them, but the Deng had blown most of them to slag. Simon eyed the heavily laden tables and wondered how many folks would be tightening their belts this winter. He was abruptly very glad his bride was related to farmers. Unless the government was forced into the drastic move of confiscating private food stores for redistribution, at least his wife and their children wouldn't run the risk of severe rationing that the unemployed townsfolk could well face.
Simon knew enough about the history of Russia, back on Old Terra, to understand with brutal clarity—sharpened by his own long experience of war—just what could happen to a society in which there weren't enough people on hand to plant and harvest. Even at the vast remove of centuries and many, many light-years, the old stories handed down from generation to generation about needing prescriptions from physicians to obtain meat for children, or eating wallpaper paste to hold off starvation, had the power to clench Simon's gut muscles.
"If they get hungry enough," one of the younger men said, "they can always enlist in the Concordiat defense forces and help us meet our treaty obligations."
"Huh," Zak muttered. "Not likely. There's already a whole passel of folk grumbling about sending troops off-world to support the war effort."
Simon was only too aware of the situation. By treaty, a Concordiat-allied world was entitled to defense. It was also obligated, under reciprocity agreements, to provide troops and/or munitions and materiel if the Concordiat found itself embroiled in a war that threatened multiple worlds. Between the mess along the Deng border and the utter disaster unfolding along a broad arc of humanity's border with Melconian space, nearly forty human colonies had already been swept into the fighting. A whole lot of that fighting was brutal enough, Jefferson's invasion paled by comparison.
The Concordiat was invoking reciprocity agreements on every world in the Sector, including Jefferson, Mali, and Vishnu. He suspected Mali's obligations would be met by providing raw materials needed to carry out the war effort, but Vishnu and Jefferson were relatively mineral poor, which meant their likeliest treaty export would be soldiers and technicians. Vishnu could contribute food, but Jefferson couldn't afford to ship any of its produce, grains, or Terran meat off-world. There were a lot of grumbles on the datanet and the streets, and Jefferson's Assembly—Senate and House of Law—hadn't even voted, yet, on whether or not to honor the treaty. If they refused to honor it . . .
Simon's supper turned leaden in his belly. He'd be called off-world, for sure. And that would leave Kafari torn between her marriage and her family. He couldn't imagine that she'd be very happy sitting in some officer's quarters at Sector Command, talking to other home-bound spouses to pass the time while waiting for word as to whether or not he'd been killed in combat, yet. It wouldn't be much easier, doing the same thing from home, surrounded by family but unable to see him between missions, simply because Jefferson was so difficult to reach from the current battle fronts, leaving too little time to travel all the way out here and back again.
One of the younger men, a good-looking kid about nineteen or so, who could easily have posed for a sculpture of Hylas, broke through Simon's grim reflections.
"If the Senate and House of Law tell us to go, I'll be on the first troop ship out. The bastards can't threaten Jefferson again if we drive 'em back into their own space, tails tucked under." He frowned, then, and glanced at Simon. "Do Deng have tails, sir? I was trapped in our barn, when it collapsed. Never even got to see any of the brutes."
Simon very carefully did not smile. "No, the Deng don't have tails. But the Melconians do."
He brightened. "Good. We'll shoot 'em off, sure enough."
Several of the young men his age nodded vigorously, clearly ready to volunteer at a moment's notice. At Simon's elbow, Zak Camar was nodding, as well, but there was pain far back in his dark eyes. These kids were so young. . . . They were the same age Simon had been, when he'd left his smouldering homeworld on a Concordiat naval cruiser, headed for the war college at Sector HQ.
Like the boy Simon had been, they, too, had seen war unleashed in their own backyards, so they weren't rushing in blind or indulging a penchant for bravado, which so many other young men had indulged over the millennia humanity had been fighting wars. These kids knew exactly what it meant to pick up modern battlefield weaponry and go out onto the pointy end of combat to fry enemy soldiers—or die trying. Somehow, the fact that they knew made the pain of their going worse. Much worse. When Simon glanced at Balthazar Soteris, he realized the old man had seen and understood exactly what thoughts had just been rattling around in Simon's head. The respect that came into Balthazar's eyes was one of the biggest compliments Simon had ever been paid.
When Balthazar spoke, he changed the subject, asking yet another silent question. "Kafari going to finish that degree of hers?"
"Yes, sir, she is. I'll be paying the rest of her expenses," he added, in answer to the unspoken question, "so the Educational Surety Act funds she's been using can go to someone else who needs them. She's already qualified for work as a psychotronic technician, but we talked it over and she's decided to go for a full engineering degree. Her professors on Vishnu have agreed to let her complete the degree work from here." He grinned, then. "Part of the engineering program requirement is working on a live psychotronic system, class seven or higher. Sonny volunteered to serve as her practicum device. He thinks rather highly of her."
"Wow!" Young Hylas, across the table, had gone wide-eyed with surprise and a healthy dollop of envy. Most of the men at the table mirrored the exact same expression. Zak Camar's eyes glowed with justifiable pride. It wasn't just everyone who earned a Bolo Mark XX's respect, after all. Kafari's father clearly understood that he had raised one truly remarkable daughter.
Talk shifted, then, as the younger men asked questions about the Bolo he commanded and Bolos in general and what it was like aboard a naval cruiser and what it took to get into the war college at Brigade headquarters. Evidently somebody had primed them not to mention Etaine, because nobody did, for which Simon was immensely grateful. Once he realized his new family intended to respect his need to keep those memories private, he relaxed and thoroughly enjoyed sharing stories from his admittedly interesting career.
Then some of the older men started discussing the rebuilding effort that was still underway and the talk revolved around what constituted the best designs for barns and equipment sheds, how to jury-rig machinery to do work it had never been designed to do, as a stop-gap until replacement equipment could be obtained, and which livestock bloodlines had survived and could be cross-bred to strengthen the herds and flocks on various farms, come the next spring breeding season.
It was comfortable talk, flowing around Simon in an easy flood as he plowed into his dessert, listening and learning what was important to these people and what problems they would need to solve before they could start operating profitably, again. Laughter from the women's tables and shrieks from the children, most of whom had finished eating and were now romping in a variety of games and races, served to deepen Simon's quiet enjoyment of the evening. Running beneath that enjoyment, down in the core of his being, was a fizzing anticipation of their wedding night. Simon could hardly wait to climb into their aircar and fly his wife someplace exceedingly private.
By the time Simon and Kafari finally escaped into their aircar, the night was well advanced. Simon grimaced at the decorations on the car, mostly in washable paint of some sort, but with several yards of fluttering ribbons attached at various points along the airframe, none of them in any position that would create a flight hazard. Kafari was giggling as she tumbled into the passenger seat. Simon ran through his preflight checklist, then sent them aloft, while a sea of upturned faces watched from the yard. People waved until they'd gained enough altitude, they couldn't see anything but a shapeless blur against the lights blazing from the Soteris homestead.
Both moons were up, little Quincy a thin crescent near the horizon as they climbed vertically up out of the canyon, and the much larger Abigail at full-moon stage, shedding pearlescent light across the tops of the cliffs. Kafari sighed happily. "It sure is beautiful, isn't it?"
"Sure is," Simon agreed. He wasn't looking at the moonlight.
"Not yet, if you please, sir," she said primly. "Where are we going, anyway?"
Simon just waggled his eyebrows. She'd been trying for days to pry out of him the destination he'd chosen for their honeymoon. He'd done a lot of legwork, researching Jefferson's favorite vacation spots. Most of them were rustic cabin-in-the-woods sorts of places, taking advantage of Jefferson's truly spectacular wild lands. There was an urban resort town in the southern hemisphere, with plenty of nightlife entertainment, but Kafari didn't strike Simon as a cabaret-and-gambling type of girl. Besides, he hadn't wanted to travel that far from Sonny, not with another invasion from the other side of the Void still a possibility.
So he steered them north, cruising near the aircar's upper range for speed, and watched the moonlight fall across Kafari's face. She reached across and rested one hand on his knee, a burning contact that interfered with his breath control, even as it whispered of domestic comfort and the small, exquisite pleasures that come with the intertwining of two lives lived together. He smiled and curled his fingers around hers, just holding her hand while they sped northward.
"Not much out this way," Kafari said lazily, at length.
"Nope."
"There's some nice fishing, along the northern reaches of the Damisi."
"Yep. Of course, I'm done with fishing. Already caught what I wanted."
She smiled. "There is that." Then she added, "Just a little hint?"
"Nope."
"Wretch."
"Bet you say that to all the guys you marry."
She grinned. "You'll pay for that one, loverboy . . ."
"Oh, goodie—can we start now?"
She swatted his thigh. "Just fly the aircar, if you please."
He sighed. "Yes, dear."
She reached forward with her other hand and switched on some music, hunting through the collection uploaded to the aircar's computer system. "Oh, I like that one," she said at last, programming in her selection.
"Oh, God . . ." Simon groaned aloud as the music she'd chosen turned his blood to steam. He was fond of the ancient Terran classical composers and Ravel was one of his personal favorites. He'd just never realized just how provocative Bolero really was. "Wife, you haven't got so much as a shred of pity."
"I know," she murmured with a deep chuckle that made Simon consider very seriously landing the aircar on the nearest flat stretch of ground and showing her exactly what she'd wrought. A fragment of advice from his father floated into his mind, giving him the patience he needed: Take it slow, son, and it'll be worth the wait—for everybody involved. So far, his father's advice hadn't steered him wrong, yet.
You'd have loved her, Dad, Simon whispered to the stars, and you'd have been so proud of her. You, too, Mom. He hadn't talked to his parents like this in years, but it seemed right, somehow, flying through the star-dusted darkness with Kafari at his side.
Thirty minutes later, he swung the aircar around on a new heading, following the instrumentation as the Damisi Mountains swung sharply to the west. His flight computer picked up the signal from the landing field and radioed their approach automatically. Kafari leaned forward, eyes glowing as brightly as the stars above their canopy. "Oh . . ." It was a soft-voiced sound, reverent and surprised and tinged with overtones of deep amazement. "Oh, Simon, it's perfect."
"You've been here?" he asked, disappointed.
"Oh, no, never. We couldn't ever afford to come here. This is where off-world tourists and business tycoons from Mali stay, when they come to Jefferson. And some of our own wealthiest families have cottages here. Senators, trade cartel executives, people like that."
Simon smiled. "In that case, it just might be good enough for you."
Kafari's eyes widened. Then she chuckled. "You are going to spoil me rotten, you know."
"That's the general idea." He squeezed her hand, then concentrated on final approach. He set them down gently and taxied over to the parking area, sliding into the space assigned by the resort's air-control computer. A moment later, they were on the tarmac, pulling luggage out while a servo-bot came racing up to ferry their bags. A human-operated groundcar arrived to ferry them.
"Good evening." The young driver smiled, jumping out to check the servo-bot and holding the passenger door of his groundcar open, "and welcome to Sea View. It's a real privilege to welcome such distinguished guests." When Simon glanced into the young man's eyes, he realized the greeting wasn't just standard patter. He'd meant every word. Deep emotion burned in his eyes, the kind founded in personal gratitude of life-altering dimensions. Simon wondered who'd survived, to put that look in his eyes. The young man's crisp white uniform, trimmed in scarlet and gold, glowed in the light of the double moons, but not as brightly as that look in his eyes. Simon smiled.
"Thank you, very much. My wife and I are delighted to be here."
A startled grin broke across the younger man's face. "Wow! Congratulations!"
Kafari broke into a broad smile as she slid into the ground car, moving over to give Simon room to join her. The driver jogged around and a moment later they eased smoothly away, heading down a wooded lane that lay like a dappled ribbon in the moonlight. The snow-covered Damisi rose majestically to their right.
The driver spoke quietly from the front. "There are alpine lakes just above the lodges, where you can fish, swim, sail, ski, and hike. In the winter we have some of the best snow skiing anywhere on Jefferson, but in the summer, like this, there's an abundance of thermals for gliders and ultralights. We have a wide beach at the bottom of the cliff, with a breakwater to ensure plenty of calm water for swimming and snorkeling, or you can sail or just soak up the sun. There are plenty of group activities, if you like that sort of thing, plenty of privacy and solitude, if you don't."
When the groundcar stopped at the entrance to their private cabin, they could hear the crash of the surf far below.
"There are beach cabanas for refreshments," the driver added as he held their door, "and plenty of shuttles running up and down the cliff for your convenience. And here's the servo-bot with your luggage."
The driver opened the lodge, handing Simon the key as he pointed out the main amenities: datanet hookups with built-in terminals, kitchenette and dining nook, bedroom, sitting room, jacuzzi, all the comforts of home with a view of the ocean through a massive window that overlooked a rustic deck. The driver unloaded their luggage and Simon handed him the customary tip, then they were finally alone again.
"Wow," Kafari breathed softly. "Being Mrs. Khrustinova is turning out to be a pretty good deal!"
"You betcha, it is."
"That being the case," she said, voice going abruptly husky, "let's get started making some little Khrustinovs."
She melted against him . . . and that was the last coherent thought Simon had for a long, long time.