Shadow Tree Tower,
City of Grendel,
Planet Beowulf,
March 1860 PD.
Jennifer Benton-Ramirez y Chou reclined in the chaise lounge, gazing out across Grendel’s nightscape. The city never slept. In fact, it scarcely even slowed down, but there was something restful about the darkness. About the rivers of light running around the towers’ feet, the glittering air car bubbles moving purposefully between landing stages. The night breeze swept over the balcony, rich with the scent of spring, even at Jennifer’s elevation, and she felt the relaxation sink into her soul.
She’d always enjoyed Grendel’s nighttime respite, but tonight she didn’t just enjoy it; she needed it. The day had been . . . hard. She’d done her best to bury herself in the lab’s current research, but it hadn’t worked. In fact, it hadn’t really worked for the last six T-months.
She closed her eyes, and behind them she saw again Alfred Harrington’s brief message, announcing the birth of her first grandchild. A grandchild she’d never seen. One she’d realized she probably never would see. Harrington hadn’t been discourteous. Indeed, his tone had been painfully neutral . . . and she’d wanted to scream at him for that. But she’d throttled her rage, because she’d known even then that it was totally unreasonable. Yes, he’d lured Allison away to Manticore, yet much as it grieved Jennifer to acknowledge it, he could never have done it—never have fenced in Allison’s life that way—if Allison hadn’t wanted him to. He hadn’t been the Pied Piper Jennifer had accused him in her own mind of being. No. He’d been something even worse than that.
He’d been Allison’s escape.
How had they come to this, she wondered. How had she let it come to this? How could Allison not see everything she’d thrown away, rejected . . . and how could Jennifer have allowed the fact that Allison didn’t see that to poison their love this way? Was Caspar right? Had Jacques been right, when he’d warned her all those T-years ago? But she’d been right! She knew she’d been right. She’d had to try to stop Alley from embracing such a horrendous mistake!
And how is this better than just letting her go? Jennifer asked herself. Maybe if I hadn’t forced her to choose, she could have stepped back off the ledge when she realized I was right all along. But now . . . Now it’s too late, we’re both too deeply dug in, and she’ll never, ever forgive me. Never.
She’d made herself respond to Allison’s letter announcing her pregnancy, but she knew she’d been curt. Cold. She hadn’t wanted to be, but—
Was that the reason it had been left to Harrington to tell her about the actual birth? Had she finally managed to push Allison that far away?
A tear leaked from the corner of one closed eye, and she brushed it away angrily. Sitting here moping wasn’t doing anyone any good. She knew that. In fact, she needed to climb out of the chaise lounge and pull up Dr. Heyder-MacLachlan’s progress reports. If Heyder-MacLachlan’s team was right, the answer to the locked sequence in the Jakarta modification was probably—
Her uni-link vibrated.
She glanced at it, and her eyes narrowed as the bright yellow icon of an incoming interstellar message blinked at her. There was no sender ID, but it had been sent with her personal identifier, which meant it wasn’t junk mail, and she drew a deep breath.
“Accept,” she said, then jerked upright as Alfred Harrington’s face appeared on the tiny display.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” he said. “I thought you should know, though. Jacques’s operation ended badly. His team took heavy casualties. A lot of them were from neural disruptors, so one of our battlecruisers transported them directly to Bassingford. It doesn’t look good. Jacques—” He paused, inhaled deeply. “Jacques was wounded, too, and he asked me to message you. He thinks you’d better come to Bassingford. Com me when you clear the Junction. I’ll have an official air car waiting at the shuttle platform.”