he came on stage even worse than Anahita does, and she's shameless.'
'Diana! I'm so pleased to see you here.' Tess came up to them. Her entourage now included Arina and Kirill as well as the doctor and Vasil. 'Gwyn. I watched a bit of your rehearsal of-the one about the woman who saves the child from the revolution. I quite liked it, although I'm not sure the jaran will understand a man acting as Judge in such matters. I'll have to mention that to Owen. Do you think he'd be willing to change the Judge to a woman?'
'If you present the case strongly enough,' said Gwyn, 'and you think it would enhance the audience's understanding, I suspect he'd be willing.'
'Oh, here, Cara.' Tess turned and beckoned the doctor forward. Vasil had retreated back one step, watching these proceedings with a keen eye. 'Here's Lavrenti.' She delivered a long comment to Arina in khush, and Arina glanced at Kirill, bit her lips, and then nodded. 'Diana, let Cara see the baby.'
Diana handed the infant over. Dr. Hierakis handled the child briskly, for all its seeming fragility. 'Clearly he's premature. I'd like to examine him, but I'll want somewhere enclosed and warmer. And you and the mother as well, to answer questions. Perhaps you can find out who attended the birth? I'd like to talk to her, too.'
Now that the baby was gone, Diana realized how little its weight had been. She did not feel lightened of any burden with her arms now empty. Tess spoke in rapid khush to Arina and Kirill, and then, with a sudden, almost sly smile, turned and addressed an order to Vasil. The handsome man looked startled, but then he smiled and spun and walked swiftly away into the darkness. His golden-haired daughter ran after him, deserting her mother.
'Karolla Arkhanov and one of the Telyegin sisters attended the birth,' Tess said to Cara in Anglais. 'I sent Vasil to fetch Lydia Telyegin. Karolla is here. And, Cara-' She hesitated, glancing sidelong at Arina's good-looking husband. 'Kirill is the one I told you about-with the injured arm. If there's anything you can do…'
'I'll have to diagnose the injury first. But if he's gone three years with it, it can wait. This baby needs my immediate attention. Come on, then.'
Dr. Hierakis did not even acknowledge the two actors but merely strode away in the direction of Arina Veselov's tent. Arina walked beside her, looking anxious. Tess did not move immediately, and Kirill, strangely enough, lingered beside her. Diana noticed how close he stood to her, rather closer than mere acquaintances usually stood.
'Diana, I am truly glad you've come to this camp. I don't know-' Tess broke off. 'Well, it isn't my part to give you advice, especially since you haven't asked me for any.''
'No, please. What were you going to say?'
Tess sighed. She wore, as she usually did, men's clothing-the scarlet shirt and black pants of the jaran riders-and she wore a saber at her belt. She looked to Diana as if she fit in easily with the people she had decided to live among, and somehow Diana could not see herself existing so entirely within the jaran, so unconsciously at ease. 'You've brought your life with you, Diana, and however more realistic it might seem to try to keep the two things apart-that is, Anatoly and the Company-I think you have to consider finding some way to bring yourself into his circle, but also him into yours. Otherwise he will feel that you are deliberately keeping something from him.' At her side, Kirill watched her intently while she spoke, although he obviously would have no reason to understand Anglais.
'But I am-we all are keeping things from them.'
'Yes.' Tess grimaced. 'But we have to do it delicately and we have to try our best to make it seem that we are not.'
'I think I understand.'
'It won't be easy. Now, I really must go.' She nodded at them and walked off to Arina's tent with Kirill.
'Do you think they can save the child?' Diana asked.
Gwyn blinked once, twice. 'We'd better go, Diana. Rehearsal starts in eleven minutes.'
'Where did you get that retinal chip implant, anyway?' she asked after they had taken their leave of the family and started back through camp. 'My family was never able to afford anything like that, but one of my father's sisters got one when she qualified for the fleet navigation academy.'
'Got it in prison,' said Gwyn with a grin.
'Oh, I'll certainly believe that.' Then she sobered. 'But really, Gwyn, do you think they can save the baby?'
'I don't know. On Earth, there would be no question.'
'It seems wrong, somehow, knowing how much we could improve their lives and then not doing anything about it. Hiding it from them.'
'Who are we to judge what is best?'
Diana sighed. At the Company's encampment, Joseph had rigged an awning over the platform and now he and Yomi hung lanterns out to light the stage. A group of jaran children together with a steadily growing number of their elders gathered about thirty paces from the stage, waiting patiently for the spectacle to begin. Owen had decided early on that letting them watch rehearsal might help them understand the idiom. Diana recognized some of the faces-some of the children came every night-and she waved at them, and they waved back, eagerly, with smiles.
'Now.' Yomi called them to order. 'We'll start with a run-through, and then go back through the scenes. Anahita and Diana, your entrance.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
'Do you think you can save the baby?' Tess asked. She sat in front of a low table that seemed to be made of burnished black wood. But the field projected above the wood belied that illusion: a screen of three dimensions on which Tess manipulated words into a matrix by which a person ignorant of khush could learn the language quickly.
Cara Hierakis sat at a separate console, running analyses of blood samples. 'I'm not equipped to run a hospital here. The fact that the baby has survived a month is hopeful. The lungs are the greatest risk, and it shows no severe signs of respiratory distress. It's small and weak. It needs to be kept warm; it needs food-they're doing that now. If I could design an enhanced formula… but I'm not equipped for that.' She turned in her chair to regard Tess. 'Now do you see why I suggested to Charles that we take you back to Jeds?'
Tess stared into the matrix, shifting colors, floating words. Her shoulders tensed, and she did not look around at Cara. 'You have to test Ilya.'
'That's true. The more I know, the better placed I'll be to act correctly when the time comes. As it will.'
'You said yourself that as far as you know the reaction doesn't set in until after delivery.'
'As far as I know.'
'You also said that you're equipped to give a blood transfusion here.'
'I'm equipped for a rough field surgery, yes.' Now Tess could hear a certain amusement creeping into Cara's voice. 'Let me see if I can reel off the rest of the list. The other baby lived, which implies that it's a medical problem that can be overcome. I took blood from most of Charles's party before they rode north, thus supplying me with a bank. Bakhtiian would make a fuss, and he doesn't yet know you're pregnant anyway.'
'Can't know, Cara. Not for another month or two.'
'Yes, it must be hard for them to diagnose the condition any earlier than ten or twelve weeks' gestation. But what you're really saying, Tess, is that you've weighed the odds and are choosing to believe that I can pull you through under these conditions.'
'I believe in you, Cara. And anyway, you told me that the woman who bore the child who's now living almost survived.'
'Yes. If I'd reached her an hour earlier, I would have saved her as well as the baby.''
Now Tess did turn. In the artificial lights illuminating the interior of the tent, the sharp planes of Cara's face were softened. 'Who got her pregnant, anyway? You never told me.'
'None of your business, my dear. But he was no more foolish than you've been. Don't you people stop to consider that life grown on other planets is bound to have certain subtle and possibly lethal differences?'
Tess chuckled. 'But they're so like us. And they did come from Earth originally.''
