A Handful of Stars (Star Svensdotter #2) Read online

  “Late for work?”

  “Yes, dear. On Mars.”

  “Work?” I said. “On Mars?” I said. “The American Alliance hasn’t even got a colony on Mars yet, Mother.”

  “I know that, Esther dear, but the only way I could get Professor Eakins to underwrite my trip was to promise I could get into Gagarin City by virtue of my Russian ancestry. My job is to report back to him on the social dynamics of a closed frontier. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a Darwinian social anthropologist.”

  “Mother,” I said. I think I even chuckled. “While it is true that Piotor Romanov became your great-grandfather when he walked across the frozen ice of the Bering Strait to marry Luba Shugak, your great-grandmother, we haven’t spoken Russian in our family for three generations. We’re not exactly kissing cousins to the Martians.”

  Mother waved this away as a point unworthy of serious consideration. “I expect they’ll be glad to see anyone by the time I arrive. And in the meantime,” she added serenely, “I can do fieldwork in the Belt. I’m sure studying its culture will be most beneficial to my major work on Mars.”

  “What culture?” I said before I could stop myself. “No, no,” I added hastily when she opened her mouth, “no anthrosociological lectures today. And who is this?” I said brightly, nodding at the young boy who had emerged from the smallest pressure suit. “Your assistant? I suppose he’s going to work on Mars, too? Little young, isn’t he, Mother? Even for you?”

  “No, dear.” With one gentle hand she pulled him forward, a thin boy, too thin, all arms and legs and thick, straight hair. It was so fair it was almost white and he was continually pushing it out of his eyes. Those eyes were so blue that meeting them was like staring into the heart of a starstone. There was a hint of determination around the jawline that could easily slide into stubbornness. He looked oddly familiar. Behind me Simon gave a muffled exclamation and Claire was eyeing me curiously.

  Mother placed her hands on the boy’s shoulders and said gently, “This is Leif, Esther dear. Your son.”

  I looked again into those blue eyes and this time it was like looking into a mirror. The ache in my lower back increased. “Simon?” I said in a muffled voice.

  “What?”

  “You—” I looked beyond Mother and the boy. “What the hell!” Everyone swiveled around to follow my gaze and what little noise there was inside the galley died away to a dead silence.

  The third figure had shed her pressure suit with more facility than the other two, to reveal the unmistakable black-and-silver uniform of the Space Patrol. She was patting it down when the silence in the galley registered and she looked up to find herself the cynosure of all eyes. Not noticeably discomposed, she looked us over with an impartial stare and her gaze came to rest on me. She stiffened into a freefall brace and saluted. “Patrol Lieutenant Ursula Lodge, reporting for duty, Ms. Svensdotter.” She reached into a zippered thigh pocket and pulled out a disk. “My orders.”

  The ache in my back stiffened into a cramp that coiled around my belly and caused me to double up, gasping. “Simon. You have command. Take over. Now.”

  “What? Why? What’s the matter?”

  “I’m in labor, you idiot, that’s what’s the matter!”

  “What?”

  “What!”

  My water broke, and I mean it really broke, flooding my jumpsuit and splashing all the way down to my shoes. Lucky for everyone in the room it adhered instantly to the cloth of my jumpsuit. I winced, first from the sound of Caleb’s voice roaring at me over my communit, and second from the strength of my first contraction. “Please don’t shout. I don’t think this is going to take very long.”

  “But they’re almost three weeks early!” Charlie sounded as upset as Caleb.

  “Archy!”

  “Jeez, boss, is this it?”

  “Archy, keep Caleb and Charlie off my channel, they can talk to Mother but not to me.” I should have done that before, but dammit I couldn’t think of everything, especially when I was about to drop two kids on their heads. But this was zerogee, another voice said in the back of my mind, and I groaned. No gee meant I would be doing all the work.

  · · ·

  My memory of the following nine hours, fifty minutes and twenty-two seconds is confined to flashes, sharply edited mini-scenes, like previews at the beginning of a showtape.

  Large drops of sweat rolling off the tip of Leif’s nose and floating away in the zero gravity as I hauled on his hands.

  Archy counting minutes down between contractions as if he were launching a Saturn V rocket.

  Simon alternately yelling “Push!” and “Breathe!” at me and “Don’t touch anybody!” at Charlie over his communit.

  A little demon dressed up in Mother clothes insisting that I “Bear down, dear.”

  Somebody yelling. Somebody yelling a lot.

  And pain. A great deal of pain.

  I don’t like pain.

  Never have.

  Pain hurts.

  I distinctly remember wanting to speak to Caleb. I remember having a great deal to say to him, none of it complimentary.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like that; for one thing, Crip had promised me at least half a gee by the time I went into labor if he had to swing the Hokuwa’a around on the end of a string to get it, and for another, on the strength of her and Mother’s past performance, Charlie had predicted a quick, speedy, and practically painless delivery.

  You can’t trust anybody anymore. I concentrated on my heehees and to hell with whatever was going on down on Ceres.

  Eventually two other voices started yelling, too. I slid unresisting beneath a big warm wave of painless peace.

  · · ·

  I surfaced to the low hum of machinery and the soft murmur of my mother’s voice. For a moment I thought I was back in the chartroom bunk of my father’s crabber, headed for Kachemak Bay and home. My eyes drifted dreamily around the room, and came to rest on the digital readout next to the patient monitor. It was thirty-six hours later than it had been—when? I had a vague recollection of—what? a scarred, pitted bowling ball on an ebony lane, with stars for pins? with smallpox? and sirens howling? That couldn’t be right, but I wasn’t worried. I was cruising. I was copacetic. I was not in pain.

  “That’s right, dear,” Mother was saying into her headset. “Hudson’s Disease, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome.” She listened. “Some new fast-acting strain, Blackwell says, so the symptoms differed somewhat from the classic text. Archy and that nice young medtech of yours are formulating a vaccine to Blackwell’s specifications. When the ship’s crew has been inoculated, we’ll ship a load down to Ceres. Yes, dear. Twins, just as you said. No, dear, no trouble. Esther was in labor a little over ten hours. She went into hard labor almost immediately, for some reason, and I’m afraid she had rather a difficult time of it. Yes, dear. Yes, dear. Certainly. Carlotta, dear, I do know how to take care of new mothers. I was one twice myself.” She looked toward the dispensary hatch and said comfortably, “And now here’s Caleb, in case I have any trouble with her.”

  “Natasha? I’m Caleb. Nice to meet you in person.”

  “I know, dear,” Mother said, embracing him, “I feel the same way. Viewscreens are wonderful inventions but they aren’t quite the same as being there, are they? Although the wedding was very nice.”

  My head twisted around and I woke up from my dreamy state. “Caleb!”

  “Star!”

  “How are things at Piazzi City? And the Voortrekker?”

  “The hell with that! How are you? How are Paddy and Sean?”

  I remembered then. I was a mother. Gulp. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen them yet myself.”

  “Here you are, dears,” Mother said, pulling herself in from the next room with a double cradle in tow. “Star, you’re holding Sean. Caleb, this is Paddy.”

  They were identically tiny and identically red. Neither one had any hair to speak of and their eyes were shut tight like newborn
kittens. My soft little package lodged neatly between the elbow and wrist of one arm. Caleb could hold his in one palm. I looked down into their faces, asleep with a kind of frowning concentration. Unnoticed by either of us, Mother slipped tactfully out of the room.

  Caleb looked at me with a dazed expression. “Wow.”

  I felt a little light-headed myself. “We did good, Caleb.”

  “We did good, Star.” He pulled himself over to the bunk and kissed me.

  “Star?”

  We disentangled ourselves. “Yes, Leif?”

  He pulled himself all the way into the room, kicking his foot into a strap on the wall next to the bed. “Can I see them?”

  I looked into his anxious blue eyes and smiled. “You practically delivered them, Leif. You can see them whenever you want to.”

  Caleb reached up to give his shoulder a friendly shake, which yanked the boy out of his strap and sent him cartwheeling across the ceiling. “Thanks, kid. I owe you one.”

  “I take it you’ve met,” I said.

  “We have,” Caleb said.

  “Did Mother tell you—”

  “Uh-huh,” Caleb said, and grinned. “Surprise.”

  “No kidding,” I said with feeling. I looked at him curiously. “You don’t mind?”

  Caleb shrugged. “What’s one more kid more or less?” and I remembered his dozen half brothers and sisters. He added, “It’s not every family that arrives with its own built-in baby-sitter.”

  Leif, recovering his balance against the opposite wall, grinned and it looked pretty much like a fait accompli. I gave in gracefully, keeping my reservations to myself for now. “This is true.” I settled Sean at my breast and he didn’t need to be told how; he latched on like an octopus and I could feel the milk in my breasts let down in a rush. I ran my fingertips over his forehead and down his tiny little nose. He was so perfect. I couldn’t believe I was responsible for something this perfect. “Oh, Caleb,” I said huskily.

  I heard soft smacking sounds. I looked over at Paddy and she was making yum-yum motions with her mouth. A baby bottle floated in the door from the next room. Leif snagged it out of the air and sent it on its way to Caleb and Paddy.

  And then I remembered. “Caleb.”

  “What?”

  “There’s a Patrolman on board.”

  He nudged the nipple of the bottle into Paddy’s mouth and readjusted her in his arms. He watched her feed for a moment, took a deep breath, and looked up at me. “We got a dozen Patrolmen on board, Star.”

  “What!” I guess I kind of yelled it out. Sean lost his place and let out a protesting wail. Okay, this mother stuff came first, I knew it, I’d known it when I’d decided to go through with rather than terminate my surprise pregnancy. “Okay,” I told Sean, “no yelling during feeding time.” He latched back on and the noise stopped like someone had thrown a switch. I looked back up at Caleb and in a lower voice demanded, “What do you mean, a dozen Patrolmen on board? The Patrol doesn’t maintain a presence in the Belt. What’re they doing here?”

  “They came on the Voortrekker with Perry. Perry says the Alliance wished ’em on her at the last minute and there was nothing she or Helen or Frank could do. It’s another reason she hitched on to the asteroid; talk about crowded, she couldn’t get here fast enough.”

  I leaned my head back against the bulkhead. Something was nagging at me, some elusive little thought… “Oh, God. Oh, God, Caleb.”

  “What?”

  “She said her name was Lodge.”

  He nodded, a rueful expression in his green eyes. “Ursula Lodge.”

  “Any relation?” I asked without hope.

  “Let’s find out,” He raised his voice. “Archy? You on?”

  “Of course I’m on, I’m always on. Boss?”

  “Hey, Arch.”

  “Boss, don’t you ever do that to me again!”

  “What? Don’t do what to you, Archy?”

  “All that bleeding! All that yelling! All that almost dying!”

  “Archy, I didn’t almost die, I—”

  “Yeah, right, boss, you can tell that to the marines! I’m not ever going through that again, you hear? I’ll move down to Ceres, I’ll go to Mars with Natasha, I’ll even go back to Terranova if I have to! No more baby-having! Is that clear?”

  “It’s pretty clear, Archy,” Caleb said solemnly.

  “Don’t you even talk to me, you ten-toed New South African slug, I’m not speaking to you, this was all your fault in the first place!”

  “Hear, hear,” I murmured.

  “Whaddya want, anyway?”

  “Could you find Lieutenant Lodge and have her report to us here, please?”

  “And that’s another thing! The Space Patrol, yet! They already pulled my plug once! What do you—”

  “Archy,” Caleb said firmly, “just have her report to us here. Now. Please.”

  There was the distinct sound of a huff in Archy’s voice. “As you wish, supervisor.”

  “Thank you,” Caleb told him, and said to me, “This is what comes of letting computers grow up.”

  I knew he was trying to get me to relax but with every passing second I could hear the Patrolman get closer. When the knock came I almost jumped out of my restraints.

  “Come,” Caleb called. “Leif, wait outside, please.”

  Lodge’s silver-and-black dress uniform looked parade-ready, the ceremonial dagger on her hip was gleaming and the bars on her collar shone. Compared to our rumpled selves and especially to me she looked smart and professional. She had brown eyes and brown hair cut short that made her look like a sculpture by Praxiteles. Her figure was compact and muscular, her jaw square and heroic.

  Caleb looked her over and appeared unimpressed. “I admit my memory is not what it was, Lieutenant Lodge, but I do seem to recall making a request that all Patrolmen on the Belt Expedition adopt the uniform of the crew.”

  I lifted Sean to my shoulder and patted his back. Paddy was sound asleep in Caleb’s arms. This domestic scene might have lulled a less wary or less intelligent person into relaxing. Lodge was neither unwary nor stupid and her shoulders tensed. Caleb didn’t say much, but it was how he didn’t say much that made him such an effective security chief. When Caleb interrogated, he leaned forward with an expression that told his victim there was nothing more important in the entire solar system than he was at that very moment, that Caleb would be nothing less than enraptured by any confidence his victim might care to share with him. Under the influence of that compelling green gaze, his victim became anxious to unload everything he knew, to confess every sin, real or imagined, to lay his burden down in the sure knowledge that Caleb would pick it up and in so doing grant absolution and a full pardon. When Caleb had a subordinate on the carpet, that same bright green gaze turned bored and impersonal and it soon became painfully obvious that no excuse however ingenuous or even true was ever going to compensate for any dereliction of duty, no matter how small or insignificant. Usually even the most self-possessed subordinate had been reduced to terminal stammers before Caleb had even opened his mouth. I settled back and watched him go to work.

  Lodge’s face reddened slightly. She did not shift her stance. She had yet to meet my eyes straight on. When she spoke her voice was unexpectedly soft, low, and gentle, an excellent thing in a woman, not to mention all the better for soothing the ire of an angry superior officer. At least I hoped Caleb was her superior officer. “I feel more comfortable in the uniform of my own service, sir.”

  Caleb didn’t say a word. He looked at her, unwinking, unsmiling, completely disinterested in her comfort or lack thereof.

  I’ll say this for her, the woman had backbone. She stuck out that cold stare for a full sixty seconds without wilting, which had to be some kind of record. Then she crumbled. “Permission to be excused, sir.”

  Caleb shifted Paddy to his other arm and looked at the blinking red chronometer on his communit. “You have ten minutes, Lieutenant.”

  She wa
s back in eight, breathing heavily. This time she was clad in a standard-issue crew jumpsuit, which silver blue color actually did things for her dark complexion. There was a tiny barred silver-and-black shield beneath the name tag below her left shoulder.

  Caleb lifted his eyes from his communit and said pleasantly, “Lieutenant Lodge, I believe you have yet to be formally introduced to our boss, Star Svensdotter.” No words of censure, no hint of reproof. Sometimes Caleb scared even me.

  “No, sir,” Lodge said woodenly. “Ms. Svensdotter.”

  I nodded. “Lieutenant Lodge.”

  She made as if to hold out her hand, then thought better of it. I recognized the ring she wore, though. A West Pointer, God help us. Those brown eyes, thick-lashed and intent, looked me over and weighed me up with a measuring, assessing, altogether speculative look. I stood it with what I felt was composure for as long as I felt necessary. “Sorry,” I said finally. “No horns.”

  She smiled. Like her low, soft voice it was another surprise, lighting up her square face with humor and intelligence. “No tail or pitchfork, either, I see.”

  “No.”

  “You can’t blame me for looking for them.”

  “No,” I said. “I imagine what your family has been saying to the trivee lately is nothing compared to what they’ve been saying among themselves.”

  “What are you doing here, Lodge?” Caleb said.

  “The American Alliance convinced the Terranova Habitat Assembly that a detachment of Patrolmen would enhance the security of the Terranova Belt Expedition.” She recited it by rote. “As well as establish a Patrol presence in an area of expanding Terran interest.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  Her brown eyes looked at me a moment longer, and then shifted to Caleb. “Permission to speak freely, sir.”

  “Granted.”

  She turned back to me. “I understand your reasons for being suspicious of me, ma’am, but this isn’t Terranova and I am not my uncle.”