The Sardonyx Net Part 56

Her tone warned him. He sat on a straw chair. "What is it?"

She said, "I'm pregnant."

He blinked, and looked to see.

"It won't show for a while yet."

"Is it mine?" he said, incredulous. "Half," she said, smiling, head tilted to one side. He remembered the evening they met. She had worn a red shirt, and black silk pants.... She was wearing them now. It had to be coincidence.

"And you want me to _leave_ Chabad?" he said.

She frowned. "I didn't want to tell you. I would have, after the baby was born. I would have written to you, 'grammed a message care of your family, to Pellin. I -- it's complicated, Dana. I was going to marry Ferris Dur. But I didn't want to go to bed with him, and you were here, and I liked you -- "

"How can you have a child and not tell the father?" he said.

She stared at him, her amber eyes unashamed. "I told you," she said, "that's Yago custom."

He stood, because he couldn't sit any longer. "Yago custom," he repeated "And I suppose you plan to shut the kid up on the estate, with just slaves and her mother and her d.a.m.ned crazy uncle for company. She'll never see a starship, or a mountain, except those icebergs, she'll never see a horse or a dog or even a tree in its natural habitat, she'll grow up thinking slavery is humane and dorazine is a wonderful drug and hating her mother the way you and Zed both hate your mother -- " He drew a breath and found that he had run out of words.

Rhani's face was very white. Her hands were clasped in her lap, the knuckles icy. He wondered if she wanted to hit him.

She said, very calmly, "What would you want me to do, then? Would you stay?"

"Stay -- " He hadn't thought of it. No, he could not stay on Chabad. Nor would she leave, of course. His anger drained from him. He sat again, not too close to her. He wondered what the child would look like, would it -- she -- he -- whatever -- have black eyes or amber eyes? Red hair or dark hair? "No, I couldn't stay." He bit his lip. "Rhani, I'm sorry."

"No," she said, "You're right. It isn't fair to you."

"Nor to the child," he said.

She rose. "You wouldn't consider coming back, I suppose," she said.

"Coming back?"

"Yes." She walked to the headboard of the bed. It had shelves in it. She took something from one of the shelves. It was an auditor. She turned it on, and music filled the sunlit bedroom, well-remembered music; Stratta, Dana thought.

"Concerto in D, for Ella -- " She snapped the pellet from the auditor and tossed it into his lap. "There are two more downstairs," she said. "I found them into the com-net's music library." She leaned over him, hands on his shoulders. He felt their grip through the supple cloth. "Come back." Her fingers tightened. "I don't want my child to grow up hating me, Dana. She -- or he -- is not going to grow up alone on the estate with only slaves and her mother and crazy uncle for company. We'll live in the city. I'll bring her to the Landingport, and even to the moon. I'll show her holos of other worlds. I'll let her read Nakamura's _History_, and then, when she's fourteen Standard, I'll give her the choice I was never given: to leave Chabad, to leave me, and Family Yago."

"You'd do that?" Dana said. She nodded. "I don't believe you."

"Come and see," she challenged. "Come back to Chabad! Take her to Pellin with you. Let her meet your family, join your wagon journey to the mountains, eat goats and ride horses and live however people live on other worlds."

Dana thought: I never want to see this world again.... He laid his hands over hers. Stratta's melody mocked him in lifting tones. Well, Starcaptain, it said, so much for fine words and rages. What will you do?

"All right," he said. "I'll come back."

They stood on the shuttleship platform of the Abanat Landingport.

Chabad's sky burned about them, a harsh, stark blaze of blue. Porters with the "Y" insignia on their shirtsleeves jostled each other, jockeying around them.

The air smelled of sweat and heated metal. Dana's medallion gleamed gold against his cream-colored suit. He touched it; he had thought it lost in the debris of Michel A-Rae's house. Rhani smiled at the gesture. She was wearing blue-and-silver, Yago colors. She slipped her arm through his. "Are you so glad to be leaving, Starcaptain?"

"Yes, Domna, I am," he said. "After all, I've wanted to leave since I got here."

"Will you go home, to Pellin?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe I'll go to Nexus."

"So that you can meet Tori Lamonica, and run more drugs?" she teased.

"Oh, no," he said. "Not that. Never again." He smiled. "h.e.l.l, I'm going to look for legal work." Rhani mimed shock. He slipped his arm around her shoulders. Her hip kissed his. Once that delicate contact had been enough to make him stumble, but no longer.... He found himself glancing at her waist. She chuckled.

"Impatient man," she said. Sliding from his grasp, she stretched her fists to the light. "Ah, I almost wish I were going with you."

"No, you don't," he said. "You can't leave Chabad now. Your work is just beginning."

"True." She dropped her arms to her sides. A bubble circled overhead in a lazy spiral, awaiting permission to land. She said, "I have a dorazine factory to find a site for, a resolution to shepherd through the Council, and a party to go to. It's Imre Kyneth's seventy-eighth birthday."

Dana remembered Immeld saying, "_They don't celebrate birthdays at all, on Chabad!_" "I thought Chabadese didn't celebrate birthdays," he said.

Rhani smiled. "True. But the Kyneths do."

Stars, he thought: I know so little about this world, and here I am leaving it. For the twentieth time, he nudged the bag at his foot. In it were an auditor, three tapes Rhani had given him of Vittorio Stratta's music, a few bits of clothing, and a certificate which returned the ownership of one MPL starship from Family Yago to Starcaptain Dana Ikoro. _Zipper_ was his. In a short time -- a very short time -- he would ride a shuttle to the moon where she waited for him, fueled, tested, rebuilt, and ready to go.

"I would send best wishes if I thought he would remember me," Dana said.

"Imre might," Rhani said seriously. "He remembers people."

"Even slaves?"

"Even slaves." She stroked his arm. "You have no scar. I'm glad."

Bleakly he said, "There are other scars."

She flinched, and he was sorry. "I didn't say it," he said.

"You didn't say it," she agreed. But he had. He was not thinking of himself, but Michel A-Rae. The former Hype cop lay in the Abanat Clinic, under heavy guard. Dana no longer hated the Enchantean. It was hard to hate someone when you knew that he had spent ten minutes being torn to b.l.o.o.d.y strips by Zed Yago's merciless hands.

Catriona Graeme, on finding A-Rae, had wanted to charge Zed with a.s.sault.

Rhani had had to do some clever talking to get her brother out of that. She had pointed out to the mercenary that although A-Rae was under the jurisdiction of the Hype cops at the time of the incident, he was still an Enchantean citizen and thus the "a.s.sault" could technically only be tried in a Chabadese court.

Even Catriona Graeme agreed that it would be hard to get a Chabadese court to prosecute the case. Dana glanced behind them -- Zed was standing in a pillar's shade, watching the shuttleship load. He wondered what would happen to A-Rae. If Rhani's resolution failed he would be returned to Nexus for trial; if it pa.s.sed, he'd be tried on Chabad. Poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Dana thought.

He was pretty sure the resolution would pa.s.s.

The signal chimed two notes: _bing-bong!_ "That's the call to the shuttle," he said. "I have to go." "Yes," said Rhani. Dana picked up the bag. The sun made Rhani's hair seem waxed. Turning toward the pillar, Dana lifted a hand. Zed's left sleeve moved; it might have been a wave. I'm free now, Dana thought, for the hundredth time.

You can't touch me. And he wondered -- also for the hundredth time -- why he had promised Rhani that he would come back.

He would, though. Not soon; but in six years, or ten -- a long time, anyway.

"Good-bye," Rhani said. "I'll write to you."

"Yes. Send me a picture."

"I will," she said. "More than one."

"Send one of yourself, too."

She grinned. "You think you'll want one, once you're off my world?"

"I'll want one," he said, wondering what his child would look like, wondering what Rhani would look like, in two or three or six or ten years.

The signal belled a second time, and third. She pushed him. "Go!" Bag in hand, he loped toward the shuttleship. A crew member waved both arms from the top of the ramp. Dana broke into a run toward the tall ship that would take him to the moon, to his starship, home -- to the irrestistible clouds and the surging carmine currents of the Hype.