'They did?' Honor sat a bit straighter, her eyes brightening. 'How did it go?' she demanded eagerly.
'Well,' Emily said with a fondly amused smile. 'Very well, in fact. Of course, it was only the first day, Honor. You do understand that it's going to take a long time for them to make any real progress, don't you?'
'Of course I do.' Honor shook her head, her own lips twitching as she tasted Emily's response to her own eagerness. 'But the entire idea is incredibly exciting to a Sphinxian, especially one who's been adopted. After so many centuries when none of the experts could even agree on how intelligent the 'cats really were-or weren't- seeing them sit down with humans to formally discuss ways treecats can integrate themselves into human society as full partners is-Well,' she shook her head again, 'it's something there aren't really words to describe.'
'And it was all your idea, wasn't it, love?' Hamish said to Samantha, reaching out to stroke her silken pelt.
'My impression is that Samantha has a rather forceful will,' Emily observed dryly, and Honor laughed.
'From what the other 'cats have had to say since they learned to sign, that's probably as big an understatement as to say the Queen has a rather negative view of the Republic of Haven,' she said.
'Which,' Hamish said, his tone and his emotions both suddenly darker, 'is apt, but not as amusing as it might have been a day or so ago.'
'What do you mean?' Honor asked with abrupt anxiety, but Emily interrupted before he could reply.
'Now that is enough, Hamish,' she said sternly. Her husband looked at her, and she waggled her right index finger in his direction. 'We haven't seen Honor-you haven't seen her-for almost two weeks,' she continued. 'During that time, you've been wrestling with affairs at the Admiralty, and she's been dealing with the affairs of her Steading. Neither of you, however, is on duty tonight. You will not discuss the military situation, the diplomatic situation, or the domestic political situation-Manticoran or Grayson-tonight. Do I make myself sufficiently clear?'
'Yes,' Hamish said after a moment, blue eyes smiling at her. 'Yes, you do.'
'Good. And don't forget, either of you, that my furry spies,' she waved at the treecats, 'will report faithfully to me if my instructions are violated.'
'Traitors that they are,' Hamish muttered with a grin.
'Treason, my dear, is often simply a matter of perspective.' Emily told him, and her life-support chair moved silently back from the table on its counter-grav. 'And now, why don't the two of you run on? I've had a long day, and you do have a lot of catching up to do. But no shoptalk!'
'No, Ma'am,' Honor agreed meekly.
She and Hamish rose, and Hamish opened the door for Emily's chair. He bent and kissed his wife, and she reached up to run her working hand lightly over his dark hair. Then she was gone, and Hamish and Honor looked at one another.
'You know,' Honor said very softly, 'neither one of us deserves her.'
'I don't know anyone who could,' Hamish said simply.
He crossed the room to her, and she folded into his arms. Despite her own height for a woman, Hamish was slightly taller than she was, and his arms felt incredibly good about her. She leaned into his embrace, savoring the taste of his emotions, his welcome, and his love. The 'mind-glow,' treecats called it, and as she felt its bright power and savored once again the way the two of them fitted together on so very many levels, she knew exactly where the term had come from.
His mouth met hers, and her own arms went about him. Their lips clung together for what seemed a very long time, and then, reluctantly, she leaned back and looked across at him.
'I've missed you,' she said quietly. 'But you do realize that this is crazy?'
'Not crazy,' he disagreed with a small, crooked smile. 'Just... politically unwise.'
'And arguably in violation of the Articles of War,' Honor pointed out.
'Nonsense.' He shook his head. 'You know Article One-Nineteen only applies to personnel in the same direct chain of command.'
'And you're First Lord and I'm a fleet commander designate.'
'And the First Lord is a civilian, my dear.' Hamish's mouth quirked in combined amusement and very real and bitter disappointment. 'If I were First Space Lord, you might have a point. As it is, I couldn't legally give you a direct order even if I wanted to. Besides-'
A crisp, loud bleek interrupted him, and he looked down. Samantha returned his look sternly. Her right true- hand rose, its first two fingers closing onto her thumb in the sign for the letter 'N', before both true-hands moved in front of her, right true hand in the palm-out sign for the letter 'B' arcing from side to side in front of her to hit the back of her left true-hand, closed in the sign for the letter 'S' before opening back into the sign for 'N' and sliding down her left true-hand's fingers and palm.
'All right,' Hamish said with a laugh. 'All right! No more business, I swear.'
Samantha sniffed, flirting her tail, and Honor echoed Hamish's laughed.
'Have you ever noticed how thoroughly our lives are managed for us?' she asked. 'It was bad enough when it was just Nimitz. Then along came Mac, then Andrew, and Miranda, and Simon and Spencer, and Samantha. And now Emily.'
'We're obviously outnumbered and outgunned,' Hamish agreed. 'In which case, it looks like our only real option is to surrender.'
'Well, between them and Emily, Nico, Sandra, and Andrew have all conspired to see to it that no one is going to disturb us,' Honor said gently, reaching out to cup the side of his face in her right palm. 'And since they've all gone to such pains for us, I suppose we'd best be about it.'
The buzz in her ear woke her.
Forty-five years of naval service had trained her to awaken instantly and fully alert, but this morning, her eyes opened slowly, luxuriously as Nimitz's gentle amusement filtered into her mind over their link. Hamish's body was warm, pressed against her spine, his left arm flung across her. She'd almost forgotten how comforting it could be to wake up that way, and she smiled as she roused further, tasting Hamish's sleeping mind-glow.
He was dreaming, and it was obviously a good dream. Honor had been surprised, although she realized she shouldn't have been, when she discovered she could taste a sleeper's emotions as well as those of someone who was awake. She couldn't actually tell what Hamish was dreaming about, the way a treecat could have done with another 'cat, but the way he stirred slightly, fingers of his left hand tightening, suggested at least the subject.
Nimitz bleeked at her softly and leaned forward to touch her nose with his own. Then he sat up, and his right true-hand formed the sign for the letter 'C' and touched his right shoulder, then tapped the back of his left true- hand's wrist with the first finger of his right true-hand.
Honor frowned, then twitched the muscles of her left eye socket in the pattern which brought up the time/date display in her artificial eye's field of view. The numbers obediently appeared, and she sat up abruptly.
'Hmmm? Whazzat?' Hamish mutter-grumbled as she slid out from under his arm and swung her feet onto the floor.
'Wake up!' she said, turning to bend back over him. His eyes opened, and she tweaked the tip of his nose gently. 'We're late!' she continued.
'We can't be,' Hamish protested, sitting up in bed himself. His eyes lit as he completed the waking up process, and as she tasted his emotions, she was abruptly reminded that she didn't have a stitch on.
'Oh, yes we can be,' she told him, and swatted his right hand when he reached for her. 'And despite all the lascivious things going through your head right now, we don't have time to do anything about them.'
'Nico will get us up in plenty of time,' Hamish objected.
'Unless, perhaps, somebody suggested to him that he shouldn't,' Honor replied. His eyes widened suddenly, then narrowed, and she nodded. 'The same thought had occurred to me,' she said.
'She did seem rather insistent on our staying away from shoptalk,' Hamish conceded, climbing out of bed on the other side. 'On the other hand, she also knows we're both supposed to be seeing Elizabeth this morning.'
'Who happens to be her cousin and probably won't have her beheaded if we happen to be late because she didn't happen to wake us up in time,' Honor pointed out. 'Unfortunately for that polite fiction all our henchmen are working so hard to maintain for us, however, Nimitz says Andrew's sense of duty is about to cause him to knock on your door. At which point it will be rather difficult to pretend I spent the night in the Blue Suite where I was supposed to be!'
