Earthly Crown (40 page)

“And for a female?”

“I haven’t worked that out yet, but I think puberty, marriage, childbirth, first grandchild, and menopause all define shifts in a woman’s status. But I’m really only guessing. It’s easier for me to learn about the men.”

“Do you like to travel?” she asked suddenly.

“Yes.”

“I do, for now. But I can see that I’ll get tired of it. Packing up every day and going on at this pace is bound to pall eventually.”

“We’re moving pretty fast, for a group of this size. I can’t begin to count the number of wagons, much less the people involved. How do they feed themselves?”

“You haven’t seen all those dirty animals being herded alongside? I suppose once you conquer a country, you can expect it to feed you. I don’t know. How they get along on a daily basis at all mystifies me. Look, there’s the camp.” She hesitated at the farthest rim of the circle of tents, peering into the camp to see if she could recognize anyone. A woman rose from beside the campfire and came to greet them.

It was Arina Veselov, a pretty young woman whom Diana had liked immediately. Her little daughter tagged at her heels and went to Diana for a kiss. Arina greeted Diana with a kiss on both cheeks and, haltingly, Diana introduced Gwyn as her cousin. Arina gestured for them to come in, to sit, and soon other members of the family gathered, since it was supper time. Children brought them wooden bowls of a watery stew and leather cups filled with pungent milk. Compared to some of the other camps, the proportion of children to women was higher here, as if this tribe had sent fewer of its children out into the safety of the plains.

“Who’s that?” Gwyn whispered, nodding toward a tall, golden-haired man who came into the circle of light attended by a plain woman and a beautiful young girl. The focus of the assembly altered subtly, warping to somehow pull him into the center of attention.

“That’s Arina’s cousin, Vasil. Isn’t he gorgeous?”

“He’s a natural charismatic,” said Gwyn, still softly, and still in Anglais. “I’ll have to make sure that Owen sees him. Owen loves to watch people like him.”

“And people like Bakhtiian. It’s funny, though. Charles Soerensen and Bakhtiian are in many ways the same kind of powerful leader, yet outwardly they don’t seem at all the same. And this man—Vasil—has the same kind of charisma that Bakhtiian does, but I don’t see him leading armies.”

“Not the same kind of charisma,” murmured Gwyn, thoughtful.

Vasil, noticing their attention, flashed them a smile across the gap. He had a warm smile, intent and encompassing, as if for that instant no thing and no one else was on his mind but the recipient of his smile. Diana smiled back. Gwyn bent his head in acknowledgment.

“Oh, and there’s the baby. This is Kirill, Gwyn. He’s Arina’s husband, and this is the little baby, Lavrenti. May I hold him?” She held out her arms and Kirill, with a smile, transferred the baby to her waiting grasp.

“Goddess, it’s small.” Gwyn examined the infant. “Are they supposed to be that small?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know much about babies, and nothing about Rhuian babies.”

The infant mewled and hiccuped and gave a little gasping cry and then relaxed. Arina came and knelt beside Diana, and while Diana held the child, Arina dipped a cloth in a cup of warm milk and dribbled the liquid into the baby’s tiny mouth. All at once, its lips caught on the cloth and it sucked away for one minute and then sighed and let go and fell asleep.

Diana glanced up in time to see Arina and Kirill look at each other. That glance they shared was despairing. They thought their child was going to die; they knew it. Diana clutched the little bundle closer to her, as if willing Lavrenti her own strength might make the difference. Kirill sighed and moved away to speak to Vasil’s wife. His left arm shifted strangely at his side, a dead weight that was only by some fluke attached to his body. Arina sighed as well and wiped a drop of rain off her face. Except the rain had stopped a little while ago. Diana settled the baby into the crook of her left elbow. His tiny head barely reached to her palm. His skin was remarkably clear and pale, stretched, almost translucent, and his tiny lips were perfectly formed, like a pale pink rosebud.

“Look,” said Gwyn. “There’s the doctor. Have you any idea yet of why she came with us, with the army? I can’t imagine why she didn’t leave with Soerensen.”

“There can only be one reason, Gwyn. See, Tess is with her. She stayed to be with Tess.”

Tess’s arrival in the camp brought a sudden flare of life to the quiet gathering. Tess kissed the women, hugged children, and seemed to have a separate greeting for each one of the score of people around the fire. Diana watched with interest as Vasil drew himself into her orbit and promptly became her other half, sharing in her progress as if he had been part of it all along.

“Scene stealer,” she muttered.

Gwyn chuckled under his breath. “Tess Soerensen?”

“You know who I mean.”

“Yes, and it was subtly done, too. Very natural. Wouldn’t he be awful to act with? He’d pull focus every time he came on stage even worse than Anahita does, and she’s shameless.”

“Diana! I’m so pleased to see you here.” Tess came up to them. Her entourage now included Arina and Kirill as well as the doctor and Vasil. “Gwyn. I watched a bit of your rehearsal of—the one about the woman who saves the child from the revolution. I quite liked it, although I’m not sure the jaran will understand a man acting as Judge in such matters. I’ll have to mention that to Owen. Do you think he’d be willing to change the Judge to a woman?”

“If you present the case strongly enough,” said Gwyn, “and you think it would enhance the audience’s understanding, I suspect he’d be willing.”

“Oh, here, Cara.” Tess turned and beckoned the doctor forward. Vasil had retreated back one step, watching these proceedings with a keen eye. “Here’s Lavrenti.” She delivered a long comment to Arina in khush, and Arina glanced at Kirill, bit her lips, and then nodded. “Diana, let Cara see the baby.”

Diana handed the infant over. Dr. Hierakis handled the child briskly, for all its seeming fragility. “Clearly he’s premature. I’d like to examine him, but I’ll want somewhere enclosed and warmer. And you and the mother as well, to answer questions. Perhaps you can find out who attended the birth? I’d like to talk to her, too.”

Now that the baby was gone, Diana realized how little its weight had been. She did not feel lightened of any burden with her arms now empty. Tess spoke in rapid khush to Arina and Kirill, and then, with a sudden, almost sly smile, turned and addressed an order to Vasil. The handsome man looked startled, but then he smiled and spun and walked swiftly away into the darkness. His golden-haired daughter ran after him, deserting her mother.

“Karolla Arkhanov and one of the Telyegin sisters attended the birth,” Tess said to Cara in Anglais. “I sent Vasil to fetch Lydia Telyegin. Karolla is here. And, Cara—” She hesitated, glancing sidelong at Arina’s good-looking husband. “Kirill is the one I told you about—with the injured arm. If there’s anything you can do…”

“I’ll have to diagnose the injury first. But if he’s gone three years with it, it can wait. This baby needs my immediate attention. Come on, then.”

Dr. Hierakis did not even acknowledge the two actors but merely strode away in the direction of Arina Veselov’s tent. Arina walked beside her, looking anxious. Tess did not move immediately, and Kirill, strangely enough, lingered beside her. Diana noticed how close he stood to her, rather closer than mere acquaintances usually stood.

“Diana, I am truly glad you’ve come to this camp. I don’t know—” Tess broke off. “Well, it isn’t my part to give you advice, especially since you haven’t asked me for any.”

“No, please. What were you going to say?”

Tess sighed. She wore, as she usually did, men’s clothing—the scarlet shirt and black pants of the jaran riders—and she wore a saber at her belt. She looked to Diana as if she fit in easily with the people she had decided to live among, and somehow Diana could not see herself existing so entirely within the jaran, so unconsciously at ease. “You’ve brought your life with you, Diana, and however more realistic it might seem to try to keep the two things apart—that is, Anatoly and the Company—I think you have to consider finding some way to bring yourself into his circle, but also him into yours. Otherwise he will feel that you are deliberately keeping something from him.” At her side, Kirill watched her intently while she spoke, although he obviously would have no reason to understand Anglais.

“But I am—we all are keeping things from them.”

“Yes.” Tess grimaced. “But we have to do it delicately and we have to try our best to make it seem that we are not.”

“I think I understand.”

“It won’t be easy. Now, I really must go.” She nodded at them and walked off to Arina’s tent with Kirill.

“Do you think they can save the child?” Diana asked.

Gwyn blinked once, twice. “We’d better go, Diana. Rehearsal starts in eleven minutes.”

“Where did you get that retinal chip implant, anyway?” she asked after they had taken their leave of the family and started back through camp. “My family was never able to afford anything like that, but one of my father’s sisters got one when she qualified for the fleet navigation academy.”

“Got it in prison,” said Gwyn with a grin.

“Oh, I’ll certainly believe that.” Then she sobered. “But really, Gwyn, do you think they can save the baby?”

“I don’t know. On Earth, there would be no question.”

“It seems wrong, somehow, knowing how much we could improve their lives and then not doing anything about it. Hiding it from them.”

“Who are we to judge what is best?”

Diana sighed. At the Company’s encampment, Joseph had rigged an awning over the platform and now he and Yomi hung lanterns out to light the stage. A group of jaran children together with a steadily growing number of their elders gathered about thirty paces from the stage, waiting patiently for the spectacle to begin. Owen had decided early on that letting them watch rehearsal might help them understand the idiom. Diana recognized some of the faces—some of the children came every night—and she waved at them, and they waved back, eagerly, with smiles.

“Now.” Yomi called them to order. “We’ll start with a run-through, and then go back through the scenes. Anahita and Diana, your entrance.”

“D
O YOU THINK YOU
can save the baby?” Tess asked. She sat in front of a low table that seemed to be made of burnished black wood. But the field projected above the wood belied that illusion: a screen of three dimensions on which Tess manipulated words into a matrix by which a person ignorant of khush could learn the language quickly.

Cara Hierakis sat at a separate console, running analyses of blood samples. “I’m not equipped to run a hospital here. The fact that the baby has survived a month is hopeful. The lungs are the greatest risk, and it shows no severe signs of respiratory distress. It’s small and weak. It needs to be kept warm; it needs food—they’re doing that now. If I could design an enhanced formula…but I’m not equipped for that.” She turned in her chair to regard Tess. “Now do you see why I suggested to Charles that we take you back to Jeds?”

Tess stared into the matrix, shifting colors, floating words. Her shoulders tensed, and she did not look around at Cara. “You have to test Ilya.”

“That’s true. The more I know, the better placed I’ll be to act correctly when the time comes. As it will.”

“You said yourself that as far as you know the reaction doesn’t set in until after delivery.”

“As far as I know.”

“You also said that you’re equipped to give a blood transfusion here.”

“I’m equipped for a rough field surgery, yes.” Now Tess could hear a certain amusement creeping into Cara’s voice. “Let me see if I can reel off the rest of the list. The other baby lived, which implies that it’s a medical problem that can be overcome. I took blood from most of Charles’s party before they rode north, thus supplying me with a bank. Bakhtiian would make a fuss, and he doesn’t yet know you’re pregnant anyway.”

“Can’t know, Cara. Not for another month or two.”

“Yes, it must be hard for them to diagnose the condition any earlier than ten or twelve weeks’ gestation. But what you’re really saying, Tess, is that you’ve weighed the odds and are choosing to believe that I can pull you through under these conditions.”

“I believe in you, Cara. And anyway, you told me that the woman who bore the child who’s now living almost survived.”

“Yes. If I’d reached her an hour earlier, I would have saved her as well as the baby.”

Now Tess did turn. In the artificial lights illuminating the interior of the tent, the sharp planes of Cara’s face were softened. “Who got her pregnant, anyway? You never told me.”

“None of your business, my dear. But he was no more foolish than you’ve been. Don’t you people stop to consider that life grown on other planets is bound to have certain subtle and possibly lethal differences?”

Tess chuckled. “But they’re so
like
us. And they did come from Earth originally.”

Cara smiled suddenly. “That was well done, Tess. Getting that Chapalii cylinder to Charles, with the heart of the Tai-en Mushai’s private data banks encoded into it.”

Warmth filled Tess at Cara’s words. “Praise from you is rare, indeed. I love having this modeler at my disposal. Besides this matrix, I’m running several programs off the early language data base and seeing if I can find the evolutionary links between Rhuian languages and Earth languages. But my time is so limited.”

“Which I remind you has been your choice all along. You are welcome to return to Jeds any time. Which you won’t do. Be that as it may.” Cara rose and came over to stand beside Tess, resting a hand on Tess’s shoulder and peering at her matrix, which rotated slowly on the screen in front of them. “If we can only coordinate our research…I can’t yet prove that the Chapalii genetically engineered the humans they transferred from Earth to Rhui, although I
know
they did.”

“How do you know?”

“If you study the history of disease and mortality among humans, which I’ve done, and then compare the Rhuian humans to Earth models, the Rhuians are too healthy and too long-lived given similar conditions.”