Battleground (5 page)

H
ANNA
RETURNED TO EARTH IN OCTOBER,
unsure how long she would be there. Her work with Contact Education tapered off; her role now was to shut the division down, pending her return to Earth from an as yet hypothetical location “somewhere west of Orion,” Jameson said, uncharacteristically vague. Fleet's scientists had pounced enthusiastically on the second holo owned by young Destiny Roland, an alien's gift to the precocious Mia, which illustrated a patch of stars that had had some meaning to a whistling nonhuman observed one time two hundred years ago. It didn't seem like much—it might still prove a dead end—but the hypothesis that it included the star of the aliens' homeworld, combined with traces left in the mothership's data banks, might be enough.

Hanna had been away less than three months, but she found changes. Mickey was mobile, looking around at a welcoming world with eager interest, and trying to get hold of (and put in his mouth) anything that would hold still for it. Hanna held him and nuzzled him and got her hair pulled and thought with a hand clutching at her heart that she would be away much longer than three months next time. It was mixed comfort to see that Jameson had acquired a habit of casually picking the baby up and addressing comments to him that he could not possibly understand but that got a happy response. On one level, she was not surprised at Jameson's ease with Mickey; she knew that he rather liked what he called “the species human child,” and that relatives, friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers often inflicted their offspring on him in the course of his public life. But there had been a subtle restraint before, and it had vanished in her absence. Jameson behaved, in the terminology of her own culture, like one of her kinship group, as if there were some tie of love or blood to all of them, though the faraway persons who composed her actual kinship group were convinced that he was bad for Hanna in every way. His assumption that he stood in such a relation to Mickey would have horrified them. He must have known it, too, but it did not seem to affect him.

And it was clear that he
had
missed her, though he did not say so. He touched her more often and more openly, drawing surprised glances from people previously convinced that whatever he was getting from her presence in his home had little to do with affection—and Hanna could not decide if she liked it. She knew precisely how to respond to his touch when it was meant to arouse her—with the willing certainty of what he was going to make her feel. Now that he seemed ready to consider the possibility of loving her—
finally,
she thought—she also thought she probably did not want to wait another ten years or so for him to make up his mind. It seemed a long time to wait for the satisfaction of rejecting him.

Equally surprising, and more troubling, was the dramatic increase in the number of social gatherings at Jameson's home. Formerly these had been rare and Hanna had joined them with a minimum of discomfort, even, often, with enjoyment, because the guests were interesting. Now there were not only more of them; now the people invited were usually not companions she would have chosen. Many were from Heartworld, where Hanna was especially unpopular. She resolutely shut her mind to their frequently demeaning thoughts about her, and minded her manners. She was Jameson's guest herself, in the final analysis, so she owed the others courtesy, at least.

But at last she said to him: “What are you up to?”

She asked the question in his study after an especially boring evening, purposely avoiding the intimacy of the bedroom. This could turn out to be the kind of conversation you wanted to have with clothes on.

“In what way, exactly?” he said, which was his fairly predictable reply to such a global question.

“Fifty of the last sixty-five people you have had to this house have been from Heartworld, and most of those have close ties to its council,” said Hanna, who had expected the demand for precision.

“Groundwork,” he told her.

“For?”

“I don't intend to be exiled from the Coordinating Commission for the rest of my life.”

“No one ever thought you did. What does that have to do with the people I have to put up with lately?”

Her tone was amiable enough, if the question was not, and his was too.

“I've been hearing rumors of some weaknesses of Edward's for some time, and it seems likely that they're true. I've been informed, in the usual roundabout ways, that the administration in Arrenswood might be ready to forgive me. Apparently I've begun to look better to them again, compared to Edward.” He meant Edward Vickery, who had succeeded him on the Commission and took great pleasure in such mastery as he had over Jameson.

“To forgive you for me, among other things . . . ?”

They were standing nearly on opposite sides of the room. A cool wind blew in through the doors from the gardens outside. The smell of autumn came with it, the wealth of fallen leaves. Hanna was wearing something dark blue and long and beaded; the fabric was warm enough, but her arms were bare, and she shivered. But the breeze had nothing to do with the chill that touched her. She had known Jameson only briefly as a commissioner, and he had been different then: harder, colder.

“It seems to me that you would be wiser to keep me out of sight,” she said.

“Do you think I'm ashamed of you?”

She said slowly, “No. But . . . you know as well as I that people—some people, your people—think you ought to be. So wouldn't it be politic to give the impression that you are?”

“I made that mistake once before, and you left because of it.”

“This is not supposed to be permanent!”—it had already gone on longer than either of them had expected, and the unyielding strength that had comforted Hanna now felt, sometimes, like a weight.

“I don't suppose it will be. But when we decide to end it, other people's opinions will not be the reason. Many of them will never accept you. That is a fact. But they are damned well going to have to accept a fact themselves—that you and I will be together for as long as we choose and on whatever terms we choose.”

She looked at him in silence for a moment. She had pointed out on other occasions that he had a good deal more to say about the terms than she did; she might also have pointed out that insisting on the right to run his private life as he liked had nothing to do with her personally, and in the long run might do him little disservice in the society that would decide whether he returned to the Commission or not. Undoubtedly there were worse things than being viewed as a strong man's weakness, but she could think of better ones.

She started to turn around and walk away. She thought she had, but somehow she was drifting across the room, as if drawn by gravity.
I really must end this,
she thought, but somehow a kiss intervened, deep and sensuous, and somehow the gown was slipping from her shoulders, and
really, I really must,
and then the costly beading was hard under her back and she did not think of endings any more; not then.

H
ANNA BEGAN
TO ASSEMBLE
her Contact team. There was no reason to gather them physically together in these early days. The entire team would finally meet on the new
Endeavor Three
when the time came. But she contacted them individually and they conferred as best they could, given that they were scattered across human space, and those not actually in space lived in wildly divergent local times.

Bella Qu'e'n
, now home on D'neera, would be part of the team. So would the other three D'neerans who had completed Hanna's program and adjusted to living with true-humans. Hanna chose Dema Gunnar simply because Dema, when she studied at Contact Education, had been a serene presence, soothing to the overexcitable. Dema also had returned temporarily to their homeworld; she was attached to
Endeavor One
, and had been awaiting completion of its refit. Joseph Luomobutu, the most likely candidate to become overexcited, was already on the new
Endeavor Three
. He had studied with Hanna before on D'neera and later performed superbly in Contact Education studies. Besides, Hanna was fond of him. She did not know Arch Harm as well, but he was at ease with true-humans and generally could charm them into forgetting that there was anything different about him. He would be missed when he left
Endeavor Two
. Especially, as he observed to Hanna, by the women of the crew.

Hanna advised all of them to apply for home leave while they could get it.

She picked two true-humans, too—the ones whose minds she thought most fluid and flexible, and who had been most at ease with their D'neeran counterparts. They were younger than the D'neerans, perhaps too young, but more tolerant than even slightly older true-humans. Hanna hoped that would make up for their youth.

She told them to start tying up the loose ends in their lives.

There were some she needed to tie up too, but they were acutely painful, and she did nothing until winter was nearly on them, when Jameson gave her no choice.

•   •   •

She was home
early, but it was dark on the terrace behind Jameson's house. The November day had been unseasonably warm, but the rising wind was cold enough to cut through the terrace's minimal climate control. The major autumn storms were late and there were still leaves on the surrounding trees, yellow and brown, barely illuminated from a hidden source so that they glowed faintly. Enough were gone to make Admin's varied spires visible, looking farther away than they were. The towers were studded with the lights of men and women working through the night to keep civilization safe from ruin.

Jameson said, hardly raising his voice, “Thera. This child is drooling on my knee.”

Thera materialized. She had her own quantum-dimension capabilities. An independent planet would, of course.

“He does that,” Thera said. “Are you wet enough?”

“I think so.”

Hanna lifted her son and held him close for a moment. He laughed—he laughed often—and bubbled spit in her face. She gave him to Thera, who bore him protesting away. Mickey could manage a few steps on his own now, and did not like to be carried until he got tired of falling down and scrambling up again. There was a brief wail of “Mama!” and then laughter again, as he fixed his ready glee on something else. Hanna stored the laughter in her memory. The search for the unknown aliens' stellar system was narrowing, and Mickey's first birthday would fall just before she expected to join
Endeavor Three.

She said, “I wish I knew how long I will be gone. However long it is, I will miss so much of him!”

Jameson felt, and did not resist, her longing to take her son with her. He knew she was resigned to the fact that she could not possibly take him into potential danger.

She picked up
danger
from a thought—not as a specific threat, but as something that would be an intrinsic part of her mission, at least at the beginning.

He said, “Hanna, I have been thinking about Mickey's future if something should happen to you.”

“I see that you have,” she answered.

“There is a reasonable solution, if it's acceptable to you.”

She thought—to herself—
There is no “reasonable solution” to Mickey's growing up without me!

He said, “I hope you will formally arrange for my guardianship of Mickey in the event of your death or disappearance.”

Hanna slowly turned her head. No one had to tell her what that could mean for Mickey. She had no reservations about leaving him here while she was gone; she had simply assumed that he would stay where he was in Thera's care. Since her journey to New Earth, knowing the likelihood that she would have to leave again, she had not even thought of removing Mickey from this house. But the responsibility Jameson now proposed taking on was something different. It was vast.

“You would do that?” she said.

“What did I just say?”

“Yes, then,” she said at once. Strong and clear. No hesitation. The people of her kinship group would love the child completely, but he was not a telepath. He could never be D'neeran.

She said, “I'm very grateful, Starr.”

“There is something else,” he said. Now he was beginning to pick his way very carefully.

“Gadrah,” she murmured, catching another thought, put on alert by something behind it.

“I know you want to go back there.”

“When I can; when I can go where I want.”

She saw, with dread, something in him rising to speech.

“Hanna,” he said softly, “Oversight is nearly finished with Gadrah. There were fewer than three thousand people left on the entire planet. They are all leaving. When the last of them has gone there will be no one, and all flights will cease. It will be an uninhabited world.”

“No . . .” The grief for Michael Kristofik was not gone but she had thought it retreating. She felt it swell, and swell again to monstrous size in a breath, so fast there was no time to put up a defense. “No!” she cried, and the tears came and she doubled over, out of control, gasping for breath; there was no point even attempting control when it was like this. She hardly felt Jameson's hand on her back. There was nothing else he could do for her yet.

Finally she could speak, between fresh bursts of tears, and it was all anguish.

“I can't bear it—I can't bear it!—to think of him all alone on an empty world—nothing but the wind—not even a friend at his side—that loving, that dearly loved man—no, no, that is just not acceptable! Oh, love of my life!” she cried.

Jameson could not quite be still at that last outburst. Astonishingly, it hurt.

He thought:
What did Kristofik ever do for her except nearly get her killed? What did he ever do except get himself killed, and leave her alone to grieve?

But he had had his own chance, and knew it, and he also thought:
What was he to her that I cannot be?—I have never asked. But . . .

If I had not been so intransigent, seven years ago . . .

If she had not been so proud . . .

Seven years ago, though, others—not all of them human—had already been moving on paths that would intersect Hanna's. She would have met Michael Kristofik, inevitably.

When he thought she could listen he said—because it was best to do this quickly—“I thought you would feel that way. Hanna, I'm going to have his remains removed from Gadrah. You don't have to decide until you're ready where you want him finally buried. Nearby, perhaps, so you can take Mickey there when it's time. But I'm going to make arrangements immediately, while there is still substantial traffic.”

Done.

He closed his eyes in relief.

“Thank you,” she whispered, and after a silence in which she projected nothing of her thought, did not even look at him, said wearily, “I think I'll go to bed now. I'm so cold.”

He watched the exhausted woman go into the house. Her rational mind knew as well as his that there was nothing left of Michael Kristofik but bones and scraps of tattered skin, but the man would be more than bones to Hanna for a long time still.

Jameson was on his way to join her and hold her—tonight, only hold her—when he remembered something he had said himself, something unplanned: “Nearby, perhaps, so you can take Mickey there when it's time.”

It seemed he expected both of them to stay—nearby. Near himself.