Copperwall Mountains,
County Duvalier,
Duchy of Shadow Vale,
Planet Sphinx,
Manticore Binary System,
August 1847 PD.
Allison Harrington shivered ever so slightly, despite her warm jacket, as the chill wind plucked exuberantly at her hair. They stood at least a thousand meters above sea level, looking out across the endless sweep of the Tannerman Ocean until it merged with the distant horizon, and she drew the crisp air of her new homeworld deep into her lungs.
“It’s gorgeous, Alfred,” she said, leaning back against the comfort of her husband’s towering bulk. “Way better than the video!”
“What? You thought I was stupid enough to show you the good video and spoil the real world comparison? Please!”
She giggled at that deep, resonant voice’s affronted edge.
“It was plenty good enough to convince me to come up here with you,” she told him. “But without the wind, without the air?” She inhaled again, even more deeply. “God. I understand exactly why you’re a ‘homeboy’!”
“You say that now,” he told her with a chuckle. “But your mom had a point about Sphinx winters. Once you see snow drifted up over the eaves, you may rethink that.”
Allison snorted, although he did have a point. They’d arrived in the Manticore Binary System only a T-month or so before the summer solstice in Sphinx’s northern hemisphere. They had over a T-year of glorious summer to look forward to, before they got to the autumn equinox. And then they had over a T-year and a half of winter to survive. Even in summer, Sphinx was far cooler than Beowulf, especially this high in the Copperwall Mountains, and she had to acknowledge—very privately, and only to herself—that she anticipated her first Sphinx winter with a certain trepidation.
“Quit trying to impress me with your hardihood, Marine!” she growled. “I know the real reason you keep telling me how terrible winter is. You’re just trying to impress me with the fact that you survived growing up here!”
“Actually, generations of Harringtons survived growing up here,” Alfred pointed out, wrapping his arms around her.
“Sure. Despite the horrible privations they endured. Although, I have to admit, views like this one probably make up for a lot of ice and snow.”
“I can’t disagree there, and this spot’s always been one of my favorite places. Sort of runs in the family, I guess. Stephanie Harrington loved it up here, although not for the same reasons I do.”
“She did?” Allison turned in his arms to look up at him “Why?”
“Because of the updrafts.”
“Updrafts?”
“Oh, yeah!” Alfred grinned. “Someone given to wild understatement might have called her an ‘avid’ hang glider. Apparently, she and Lionheart spent as much time in the air as they did on the ground! I’ve never been interested in the sport myself—somebody my size would make an ugly hole when he hit the ground—but I’ve been up here some days when the wind coming off the Tannerman was almost enough to pick me up without a glider.” He shook his head. “For someone like her, this must’ve been a door into Heaven!”
“Really?” Allison smiled up at him in delight, then looked back out over the ocean as she filed that new factoid away.
As the newest member of the Harrington clan, she’d barely started learning her way around the family history, but the more she learned, the more she liked. The Harringtons were sturdily, one might say determinedly, yeomen, with none of her birth family’s connections to inherited wealth and power. She liked that. She liked that a lot. In fact, she’d discovered she tended to wallow in that quiet, independent self-reliance that didn’t give much of a damn about what the world expected out of them. Yet there’d been Harringtons on Sphinx almost from the beginning of the Star Kingdom, and they’d played a far larger role in shaping that kingdom than her mother would ever realize.
Despite Beowulf’s proximity to the Star Kingdom, Allison had known precious little—as in virtually nothing—about Sphinxian treecats or their adoption bonds with humans. She certainly hadn’t known that the very first Harrington to ever grow up on Sphinx had been the treecats’ discoverer when she was only a child. Or that young Stephanie Harrington had been the first human adopted by a treecat. Or that she’d advocated fiercely, ferociously for them for the rest of her long life. Or that Dame Stephanie Harrington had risen to command the Sphinx Forestry Service and effectively drafted the Ninth Amendment to the Star Kingdom’s Constitution, recognizing and protecting them as the indigenous sentient species of Sphinx.
Maybe she hadn’t led an expedition to rescue Old Earth from the self-inflicted trauma of the Final War, and maybe she hadn’t helped found the Solarian League, or write the Cherwell Convention. Allison was sure her mother would have pointed that out, anyway. But Stephanie had very possibly saved an intelligent species from extinction, and she’d certainly preserved that species’ claim to its own homeworld. Allison took a strange, deep satisfaction from knowing she’d married into the family of that remarkable young woman.
Of course, she took an even deeper satisfaction from the fact that Allison Harrington wasn’t Allison Carmena Inéz Elena Regina Benton-Ramirez y Chou. Or even Allison Chou-Harrington. Alfred had been completely comfortable with the Beowulf practice of hyphenated married surnames; Allison hadn’t. The discovery that Stephanie Harrington’s husband, the man from whom Alfred’s first name descended, had changed his surname to Harrington because, as Stephanie had recorded in her journals, “He says there should always be Harringtons on Sphinx” struck another deep resonance with her, but she’d refused the hyphen before she knew a thing about Stephanie Harrington or Karl Zivonik.
Allison Harrington. She repeated the name in the depths of her own mind and almost purred in bone-deep satisfaction. If she had her way, no one in the Star Kingdom of Manticore would ever discover what her full maiden name had been. It was so glorious to be just “Dr. Harrington,” the newest intern at Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital, and not some avatar of centuries of inherited grandeur.
It bothered her—a little, sometimes—that Alfred’s family name had become part of her . . . camouflage. She loved him deeply, and his parents had welcomed her as a fourth daughter, but she couldn’t pretend that hiding behind the Harrington name wasn’t part of her escape from Beowulf. Thank God whatever link they shared meant Alfred understood exactly how that worked and that it could never mean she loved him one iota less.
“So, if wasn’t the wind that lured a younger Alfred up here, what did?” she asked, turning back to the ocean in the circle of his embrace.
“Partly the view.” He bent far enough to rest his chin atop her head, which took some bending, given the height differential. “Partly because every Harrington grows up reading Stephanie’s journals, and she describes this place in such loving detail. I think all of us come up here at some point as some rite of passage. And partly, because of how much I’ve always loved the Copperwalls. When I was a kid, I spent every hour I could either out in the bush hunting, or rock climbing. And this is a great place to come if something’s on your mind. That—” he waved one arm at the spectacular panorama “—always puts things into perspective.” He shrugged and wrapped both arms back around her. “So this was sort of a natural destination for me for a lot of reasons.”
“I can see that.” She nodded. “And I can’t blame you for loving it up here, even if it is quite a hike.”
“Well, next time, you can just crank the counter-grav and let me tow you, I suppose. Or, if you really want to cheat, we could fly. There’s a clearing big enough set down an air car just south of here. Of course, all those past generations of Harringtons would glower down upon such an effete evasion of responsibility to the name!”
“Yeah, sure!” She elbowed him none too gently in the belly. “Listen, O Mountain, some of us didn’t grow up in Sphinx’s gravity. For that matter, some of us don’t have the Meyerdahl mods, either. So don’t you go looking down your nose at me for my counter-grav, Karl Alfred Harrington!”
“Fair enough, I guess,” he acknowledged with a chuckle.
“Darned right.”
They stood in a comfortable silence, gazing out over the ocean, and Allison felt the chill, severe beauty of her new home soaking into her pores.
She and Alfred had moved to the Star Kingdom three T-months ago, as soon as he’d finished his internship. He’d begin his formal residency at Bassingford Medical Center, the Royal Manticoran Navy’s primary hospital on Manticore, next month, and Allison wasn’t entirely happy about that. Bassingford had a top-notch—and well-earned—reputation, and the Navy had always intended to assign Alfred to it, but while Allison might be a Navy spouse, she was very much a civilian. Which meant she would be beginning her internship at Queen Elizabeth’s a month or so after Alfred reported to Bassingford. Bassingford and QEH were adjacent, but they were also entirely separate campuses, and she was the daughter of doctors. She knew what long hours would be demanded of any intern or resident, and with the two of them on two different campuses, they’d see precious little of one another during their working days.
At least they’d be together for any time they could steal. But they’d also be on Manticore, not Sphinx, which was one reason she’d wanted to come up here and drink in the beauty of Alfred’s childhood mountains. And why she wanted to spend as much time as she possibly could with Alex and Rebecca Harrington.
She understood a lot more about Alfred’s inner strength now that she’d met the remarkable man and woman who’d raised him. She knew Jennifer Benton-Ramirez y Chou loved her deeply, but she couldn’t even imagine such a bitter clash of wills with Rebecca Harrington. It would never have occurred to Rebecca—not in a thousand years—to tell any of her children what he or she “had to be.” Which was how Alfred had ended up a Marine and now a Navy doctor. His oldest sister Jessica was a doctor of obstetrics with a bustling practice in Yawata Crossing, given the size of Sphinxian families. Clarissa, the middle sister, was married to a merchant service ship’s captain. She served as his ship’s purser, accompanying him on his voyages, and she, too, lived in Yawata Crossing whenever she was home, while Dominique, the youngest girl—two T-years younger than Alfred—was the mayor of Yawata Crossing’s chief of staff. Richard, the baby of the family, had followed in the footsteps of the first Harringtons on Sphinx, become a xeno-veterinarian, and joined the Sphinx Forestry Service. He was also the only one of Alfred’s siblings who didn’t live in Yawata Crossing, since he was currently stationed in Carson’s Hollow, halfway around the planet. It was a vastly larger family than the Beowulfan norm, and all of them had taken her to their hearts from her very first visit.
She smiled at the memory, but then her smile faded. Alfred’s parents were older than hers, and neither had received prolong. Age was paring away their strength, and it was bitterly unfair that she must lose her heart-parents so damnably young.
“You do know your mom wants grandchildren—or, rather, more grandchildren—don’t you?” she asked now.
“Excuse me?” She felt Alfred’s surprise through their link. “Exactly where did that come from? She hasn’t said a word about that. Or not to me, anyway.”
“She didn’t really ‘say it’ to me, either,” she admitted. “But she does. I can tell. Partly from watching her with your nieces and nephews. But she’s spent a lot of time showing me your baby pictures, too.”
“Oh, my God! Not that—please!”
“Hey, they’re not that bad! Not once you let your hair grow down over the ears, anyway,” she added judiciously.
“Oh thank you!”
“You’re welcome.” She patted one of the arms wrapped around her. “But she’d really, really like another little boy or girl to dote on. She’d never push us to produce said little boy or girl, but she wants one. And so do I.”
“You do, don’t you?” he said, leaning into their bond. “Then it’s probably a good thing I do, too. But you’ll be at Queen Elizabeth’s for at least a couple of years, and we both know how demanding that’s going to be. So, are you thinking about tubing a kid?”
“No.” The sharpness of her own response surprised Allison just a bit.
“Why not?” he asked gently, and she scowled at the horizon.
It was a valid question. In fact, “tubing” a child—bringing the fertilized zygote to term in an artificial womb—was the norm on Beowulf. For that matter, it was a broadly accepted option on most Core Worlds, because it made so much sense. The child could be more closely monitored during the pregnancy; it decoupled the child physically from her mother, so there was no need to worry about accidental falls, diet, or any other maternal health issue; and it freed the mother not just from the discomfort and limitations of the pregnancy but also from any impact on her professional life.
But . . .
“Mother and I disagree on a lot of things,” she said at last, “but not on this one. She carried Jacques and me to term the ‘old-fashioned’ way, and she told me she’s never regretted it. Of course, the women in my family have always had easy pregnancies. She wasn’t morning sick a single day! But she also told me something I’ve never forgotten.”
“What?” His voice was even gentler, and she patted his arm again.
“She told me it’s better for the baby, because whether we remember it later or not, what we experience in the womb is huge in shaping our ability to connect with the people around us and, especially, with our parents and family. We learn to recognize the voices of people who love us, who are waiting for us. Our mothers’ movements, the secondhand motion we experience, are part of it, too. Oh, obviously it can be a negative experience, as well. If a mother’s in a bad personal relationship, if the voices we hear are angry or stressed, that can mark us, too, and not for the better. And if a pregnant mother doesn’t watch her own health, that can have all sorts of negative repercussions.
“I know the artificial wombs provide aural stimulus, and the better docs make sure they simulate the mother’s normal movement, as well. But Mom was convinced—and I think she’s right—that no simulation is as good as the reality. Maybe it’s irrational but there it is. We both think that way. But the real reason she carried us to term?”
She turned her head, looked up at him again, her eyes soft.
“The real reason was that she refused to share the experience with a piece of hardware, however good it was. She could have made all the voice recordings, chosen the music we heard, controlled every aspect of our gestation and birth, and she wouldn’t do it. It would’ve been a hell of a lot more convenient for her, but she didn’t care. Because all those months we spent hearing her voice, she spent feeling us grow under her heart. Feeling us come into being. Waiting for the first moment she felt us move, the first time she pressed the stethoscope to her stomach and heard our hearts beat inside her. I want that, too, Alfred. Especially with our first child. And I want that child born here—on Sphinx.”
“Honey, are you sure about that? I know I tease you about counter-grav, but Sphinx’s gravity really is thirty percent higher than Beowulf’s. That can be hard on pregnant mothers. Even those with the Meyerdahl mods.”
“I’m very sure,” she told him. “I’m a Sphinxian now, and my child will be a Sphinxian from the moment she’s born.” She smiled up at him with a glint of challenge. “Don’t mess with me on this one, Harrington!”
“Do I look stupid, woman?” He shook his head. “If that’s what you want, that’s what you’ll get. But we’ll definitely have to wait till you’ve got your residency out of the way. Trust me, the hours’ll be tough enough on someone who isn’t pregnant!”
“Well, of course we’ll have to wait. But the good news is that Queen Elizabeth’s and Bassingford are both right there in Landing, so once we find an apartment, we’ll have lots of opportunity to practice the preliminary phase, shall we say, of the procreative process!”