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Harrington Freehold,

County Duvalier,

Duchy of Shadow Vale,

Planet Sphinx,

Manticore Binary System,

October 1859 PD.


“So you’re still sure this is a good idea?”

Alfred Harrington smiled as he used his right hand to blot sweat from Allison’s forehead while she squeezed his left in a two-handed, white-knuckled grip. She gritted her teeth, panting hard until the contraction eased, then let her head fall back.

“I seem to recall your thinking this would be a good idea while we were doing all the prep work!” she said tartly.

“Oh, I still think it’s a fine idea! After all, I’m the one doing the sweat-mopping and coaching, not the one out there on the field, so to speak.”

“And I will so make you pay for that remark.”

“Just giving you something to focus on beside the contractions. See how virtuous I am?”

Allison gurgled a somewhat breathless laugh and shook her head.

“Actually, if I haven’t mentioned it before, for the sort of insufferable cad who gets an innocent and unsuspecting young woman pregnant, you’re not too shabby.”

“Be still my beating heart!” Alfred shook his head. “Not sure I can handle all this effusive praise.”

She laughed again, then gave his fingers another, gentler squeeze before she released them. For the moment.

Both of their daughter-to-be’s parents were physicians, and somewhere around two thirds or three quarters of their friends—and virtually all of their professional colleagues—were also physicians, who worked in the two finest hospitals in the Star Kingdom of Manticore. Arguably, two of the finest hospitals in the entire explored galaxy. So all the prenatal care any expectant parents could have desired had been readily available. And taken advantage of.

But Alfred hadn’t stopped there. Given Allison’s determination that her child would be born in the same house in which he’d been born, he’d gotten his parents’ permission to install grav plates in the north wing. As Allison had already observed, the sprawling “farmhouse” which had shielded so many generations of Harringtons was definitely on the spacious side. Especially by the standards of a daughter of Beowulf.

Housing in a city like Grendel was usually constrained and tended to be . . . compact. Not because of expense, given that modern construction technology made building projects no Pharaoh would have touched relatively inexpensive in terms of both manpower and resources. No, the problem was simply physical space. Towers like the ones in which Allison had grown up—or like Carlton Locatelli, today—went straight up rather than spreading out because of the restricted footprint that allowed. A tower like Locatelli housed the population of a moderate-sized pre-space town or even small city in a structure whose base was barely two hundred meters on a side. It did that by stacking its inhabitants on top of one another, and interspacing commercial floors with shops, restaurants, libraries, nightclubs, and every other imaginable service provider that were all conveniently located for its tenants. But even a spacious apartment like Allison’s and Alfred’s seldom afforded more than a hundred and fifty or so square meters of actual floor space. There were exceptions, especially in the luxury towers, but by most standards, theirs was decidedly on the palatial side.

The Harrington freehold, on the other hand, was a perfect square, twenty-five kilometers on a side. Virtually all of those sixty-two thousand hectares remained in virgin forest, and the Harringtons meant to keep it that way. Despite which, there’d been ample space for the original house and its accompanying greenhouses to expand over the centuries. Even its tallest sections were no more than three stories, but it was at least ten times the size of their Locatelli Tower apartment. The north wing, which was actually the oldest part of the house, boasted only a single floor and around two hundred square meters of floor space. It had been converted into a guest wing a couple of generations back, since it still boasted its own kitchen, among other things, and Rebecca and Alexander had insisted on making it officially hers and Alfred’s. The fact that it was only a single floor had simplified fitting the grav plates—although it had still required a lot of structural work—which meant Allison could leave her personal counter-grav unit in the closet without subjecting herself to the full, heavy grip of Sphinx’s gravity.

That was a not-so-minor consideration for a woman who’d been pregnant for over a T-year.

She could forgive Alfred quite a lot, whenever she thought about that. Besides—

“Uh-oh! Hand!” she said, reaching up, and snatched at his left hand again as the fresh contraction started.

They hadn’t been bad at all when her labor first began. In fact, she’d had worse discomfort from indigestion, and she’d gone for a walk—with Alfred riding shotgun—and then come home and taken a long shower to help herself stay relaxed. But that had been fifteen hours ago, which was quite long enough, in her opinion.

In fact, she was more than ready for their daughter to put in her appearance. She wouldn’t have missed her pregnancy for anything. The moment she’d first felt the baby move would live in her memory forever. Listening to the baby’s heartbeat. Feeling her move with greater and greater strength. Feeling her kick. Lying in bed beside Alfred, her head on his shoulder, while they both listened to the heartbeat. Even the days when their undutiful offspring had decided to dance a jig on her bladder. All of it—every single instant—was something she would treasure forever. She might have felt differently if she’d suffered from the morning sickness that was still too often a pregnant mother’s lot, but she’d dodged that pulser dart.

But now—

She held Alfred’s hand tightly, panting hard, then slumped back again as the contraction finally eased.

“Four minutes apart, Honey,” he told her, then. “Last one was fifty-seven seconds. Time, you think?”

“Probably,” she replied, still breathing hard. “I hope so, anyway! This is hard work!”

“I’ve been told that,” he said cheerfully, activating his uni-link and entering a code.

“Yes?” a voice said.

“Four minutes apart, fifty-seven seconds’ duration,” he replied. “My impatient spouse suggests it might be time for you to put in an appearance, Jessica.”

“On my way,” Jessica Harrington replied. “Fifteen minutes.”

“I’ll tell her to be patient.”

“If you do, she’ll kill you. Which would leave me with only one brother. The smart one,” Jessica said tartly. “Clear.”

“Would you really kill me if I told you to be patient?” Alfred asked quizzically, smiling down at Allison while he wiped her face and throat with a cool cloth.

“Oh, in a heartbeat!” she assured him. “In a heartbeat!”

“She’s beautiful,” Rebecca Harrington murmured five hours later, gazing down into the squinched-up face of the blanket-wrapped infant in her arms.

“Really?” Alfred stood looking over her shoulder. Now he reached out and brushed his daughter’s cheek with an infinitely gentle finger. “More beautiful than Leah? Or Alice? Or Anson? Or—?”

“Jessica’s right,” Allison said wryly from the huge armchair. “Richard is the smart one, isn’t he?”

“Well, I’m not sure he’s actually all that smart,” her mother-in-law told her, looking back and up over her shoulder at Alfred. “He’s the smarter one, but considering the questions his older brother just asked, that’s a lower bar than I’d thought.”

“Hey! I resemble that remark!”

“Yes, you do,” his mother said. “On the other hand, and bearing in mind that I would never play favorites among my grandchildren, I have to say young Honor here does have a couple of . . . inside advantages. First, of course, there’s Allison’s genetic contribution, which probably means she won’t have your ears or your father’s nose. Both of those are definitely points in her favor. And, secondly, she’s the newest of my grandchildren, which means I’ll get to spend more time spoiling her and that—for the moment—she enjoys Grandmother’s Favorite status. Although I will, of course, deny I said that if you breathe a word of it to your sisters. After which, Alley won’t have to kill you, because I will.”

“I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining or anything,” Alexander Harrington said a bit plaintively, “but she’s my granddaughter, too.”

“And your point is?” his wife asked sweetly.

“My point is when do I get to hold her?”

“You? A mere male? Surely you jest! The instant I let you touch this child, you’re going to start planning where to take her fishing and calculating how soon she’ll qualify for a hunting license!”

“Will not.”

“Will so,” his wife said firmly. “And we’ll just delay that catastrophic moment for as long as we can.”

“I don’t think that sounds very fair.”

“Give it up, Dad.” Alfred shook his head woefully. “The monstrous regiment of women is in charge, now.” He sniffed. “We’ll be lucky if we get to visit with her on alternate Wednesdays.”

“Ha! You’ll wish when it’s feeding time,” his father snorted. “Don’t forget, Alley’s DNA or not, Honor does have the Meyerdahl metabolism. And then there’s all those diapers. Parenting’s supposed to be a two-person job, and your mom and I always handled it that way. But there are going to be times when the two of you wish you were right here on Sphinx where you could call in the support troops.”

“I intend to call in a lot of support troops,” Allison said softly, holding out her own arms, and Rebecca smiled as she put the baby into them.

“Oh, trust me, Honey,” she said softly. “You call, and we’ll come running.”

“I know.” Allison smiled up at her a bit mistily as she held Honor close. “I know.”

Alfred perched on one of the chair arms and leaned close to rest his cheek on the crown of her head as they gazed down at their daughter. He tasted Allison’s deep, happy joy, reaching out across whatever linked them. Her happiness at the depth of his family’s love, the way they’d all embraced her.

And underneath it, like arsenic in the heart of honey, her bitter, bitter regret that her own mother no longer could.


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