Matushka

Dan Archer moved his chair closer, and put both arms around the woman and held her close. He said in a voice that was as fierce as his manner was gentle, "God damn that bioengineering company that supplies the Service with gens, Matushka! I hope we do go to war against the Commonwealth, if the Outworlds form up our own service I'll join it. The way the government we've got now treats people like Rachel isn't human. Oh, hell, I'm sorry, Linc-but you know what I mean, don't you?"

Casey smiled, and set a mug of hot coffee at his foster son's elbow. He answered, "I'm part human, kid. Remember? And I know what you're trying to say, yes. But suppose you tell us just what happened to your friend here, and suppose while you're doing that we all try to get some food into us. She's never going to warm up until she eats, and she's much too thin for a woman who's carrying children."

* * *

"How did you know it's ?children'?" Rachel Kane asked in a voice that was steadier now. She had eaten a bowl of hot cereal laced liberally with sweetening, she had downed two cups of steaming chocolate, and although she kept the afghan held snugly about her she was no longer shivering.

The four former officers had stopped talking during the brief meal, in accordance with a strict military custom that Romanova and Casey and Kane had all learned during their Academy days and that Archer had learned after he had signed onto a ship as an ordinary crew member. He had done that as a boy of sixteen, desperate to escape life in the mines of Sestus 4; and with a talent for handling both machines and computers that had made it possible for him to be field promoted into a junior officer's berth. That had happened to him long ago, when he was still less than twenty years old and when his talents had come to the notice of Catherine Romanova's firstborn son Ewan.

Romanova loved Dan Archer for his own sake now, but her attachment to him had deep roots in his connection to her long-dead child. She looked at him this morning, as he sat in her kitchen beside the unlikely guest he'd brought home, and she thought of the first time Ewan Fralick had presented that gawky red-haired kid to her in her office aboard the old Firestorm-and she smiled at the memory. Bringing home yet another human or part-human stray was the best means she could imagine to honor Ewan's memory.

She felt a gentle inner tug, and looked up and heard her husband saying, "There wasn't any Morthan empathy involved, I'm afraid, Commander Kane. I know that you're a gengineered being because Dan already mentioned that. I also know from what I've heard and read about gengineered females that when your owners are ready for you to reproduce, it's done in batches. And you're about to burst out of that uniform, which means that you're either well along in your pregnancy or you're carrying more than one child."

"Very good, Captain Casey!" The young woman laughed, only a trifle harshly. "I'm a bit of an experiment, you know. Until me, female ?gens' were considered too valuable to risk in the Service and no gen had ever made it all the way through the Academy. And if I could get my hands on that damned ship's surgeon who started getting me ready to breed without bothering to tell me about it...!"

She shuddered then, and Archer put his arm around her again. He said softly and very gently, "Rachel, I'm sorry. If I'd had any idea! I always took responsibility myself, when I was with a woman that I knew I could make pregnant. But that wasn't supposed to be possible for you, dammit all!"

"It's not your fault," Kane answered him. She turned in the shelter of his arm, and she put her head down onto his shoulder.