Echoes Of Honor

business, Your Grace, but did you have a chance to read the report I sent you?'

'Please, Allison, in private at least,' Benjamin protested. Allison glanced at the two armsmen standing just inside the library doors and the second pair hovering watchfully if unobtrusively over the Protector’s daughters and their game, then shrugged. 'Privacy' was obviously a relative concept.

'Very well. But did you get a chance to read it, Benjamin?'

'I did,' he said, his tone suddenly graver. 'More to the point, I had Cat read it. She has a better biosciences background than I ever managed to acquire.'

'That’s because I wasn’t a stodgy old history and government science major,' Katherine told him, and her eyes twinkled at Allison. 'And I wanted to thank you for being the one who turned up the truth, Allison. It’s exactly the sort of multifunction kick in the seat of the pants I’ve come to expect from Harringtons!'

'Excuse me?' Allison looked puzzled, and Katherine grinned.

'I imagine you’ve heard at least a few people muttering about how ‘proper’ Grayson women don’t work?'

'Well, yes. I have,' Allison admitted.

'Well, that’s one of the stupider social fables around,' Katherine said roundly. 'Traditionally, women haven’t been paid for working, but believe me, running a Grayson home requires more than someone to bear and raise children. Of course, most of us were never allowed the formal training men got— Benjamin was dreadfully unconventional in that regard—but you try tearing down an air filtration plant, or monitoring the metals levels in the vegetables you’re planning on cooking for supper, or managing the reclamation plant, or setting the toxicity alarms in the nursery, or any one of a thousand and one other ‘household’ chores without at least a practical education in biology, chemistry, hydraulics—!' She snorted with magnificent panache.

'Elaine and I have the degrees that go with what we know; most Grayson women don’t have that certification, but that doesn’t mean they’re ignorant. And, of course, Elaine and I are from the very tip-top of the upper class. We really don’t have to work if we don’t want to, and most women can at least turn to their families or clans for a household niche to fill even if they never manage to catch a husband, but there have always been some women who’ve had no option but to support themselves in the workplace. Most people try to pretend they don’t exist, but they do, and that’s one reason all three of us—' she waved her hand at her husband and sister wife '— were so delighted to see women like Honor and yourself. Anyone with a halfway functioning brain knows women can, and have, and do ‘work’ just as hard as any man on this planet, but you and Honor rub their noses in it. You’re even more visible than Elaine and I, in some ways, and you and other Manticoran women are one of the big reasons other Grayson women are stepping into the work force at last. In fact, I understand Honor insisted that the Blackbird Yard actively recruit local women, and I hope to goodness other employers have the sense to do the same!'

'I see,' Allison said. And, intellectually, she did. Emotionally, the sort of society which could draw such artificial distinctions to start with was too alien for her to truly empathize with. She considered it for several more seconds, then shrugged.

'I see,' she repeated, 'but I can’t really claim any special credit, you know. All I’m doing is going right on as I always have.'

'I know,' Katherine said. 'That’s why you’re such an effective example. Anyone who sees you knows you’re more interested in getting the work done than in ‘making a point’... which, of course, only makes the point more emphatically.' She smiled gently. 'It was exactly the same thing that made Honor so effective, too.'

Allison blinked on unexpected tears and felt Alfred’s arm slip around her and tighten. Silence lingered for a moment, and then Katherine went on.

'But as Benjamin says, I did read the report. The appendices were a bit too abstruse for me, but you did an excellent job of explaining the major points in the text, I think.' She shook her head with a look of ineffable sadness that sprang from a very different source, and Allison reminded herself that between them, Katherine and Elaine Mayhew had already lost five sons to spontaneous early-term abortion.

'To think that we did it to our birthrate ourselves.' Katherine sighed, and it was Allison’s turn to shake her head.

'Not intentionally or knowingly,' she pointed out. 'And if whoever it was hadn’t done it, there wouldn’t be any Graysons today. It was a brilliant approach to a deadly problem, especially given the limitations under which it was implemented.'

'Oh, I know that,' Katherine said, 'and I certainly wasn’t complaining.'

And that, Allison realized with some surprise, was actually true. She very much doubted that it would have been for her in her guest’s place.

'It’s just that—' Katherine shrugged. 'It comes as a bit of a surprise after all these centuries, I suppose. I mean, in a way it’s so... prosaic. Especially for something which has had such a profound effect on our society and family structure.'

'Um.' Allison cocked her head for a moment, then waved a hand in a tiny throwing away gesture. 'From what I’ve seen of your world, you seem to have adjusted remarkably sanely on a family level.'

'Do you really think so?' Katherine asked, cocking her head to one side. There was a tiny edge to her voice, and Allison raised an eyebrow.

'Yes, I do,' she said calmly. 'Why?'

'Because not every off-worlder does,' Katherine said. She glanced at her husband and her sister wife for a moment, then back at Allison, almost challengingly. 'Some seem to find some of our lifestyle ‘adjustments’... morally offensive.'

'If they do, that’s their problem, not yours,' Allison replied with a shrug. Inwardly, she wondered which off-worlder had been stupid enough to step on Katherine Mayhew’s toes... and to hope it hadn’t been a Manticoran. She didn’t think it would have been. For the most part, the Star Kingdom refused to tolerate intolerance, although it was less self-congratulatory about it than Beowulf, but she could call to mind one or two Sphinxians who might have been prudish enough to offend. Given the enormous disparity between male and female births, Grayson attitudes towards homosexuality and bisexuality were inevitable, and Sphinx was by far the most straitlaced of the Star Kingdom’s planets. For a horrible moment, Allison wondered if somehow Honor could have—? But no. Her daughter might have been more sexually repressed than Allison would have preferred, but she’d never been a prude or a bigot. And even if she had been, Katherine Mayhew certainly wasn’t the kind of person to bring it up to hurt Allison now that Honor was gone.

'Of course, I’m from Beowulf, and we all know what Beowulfans are like,' she went on calmly, and almost despite herself, Katherine chuckled. 'On the other hand, genetic surgeons see even more different sorts of familial arrangements in the course of our practices than most family practitioners do; it goes with the sort of diagnostic research we have to do. I’ve been doing rounds at Macomb General here in Harrington, too, which gives me a pretty good opportunity to compare Manticoran and Grayson norms, and I stand by what I said. Your children are among the most secure and loved ones I’ve ever seen, and that’s comparing them to Beowulf and the Star Kingdom both. That’s what matters most, I think, and your traditional family structure— especially in light of your environment—represents an incredibly sane response to your skewed birthrates.' Katherine gazed at her for a moment, then nodded, and Allison grinned suddenly. 'Now, your social responses, as I believe you yourself were just pointing out, might leave just a tad to be desired from the viewpoint of a forward, stubborn, uppity wench like myself!'

'You’re not the only one of those in this room, believe me!' Benjamin laughed. 'And I’m doing the best I can to change the rules, Allison. I figure that if Cat and Elaine and I can kick the door open and keep it that way, those budding real estate tycoons over there—' he twitched his head in the direction of the game board as it became Jeanette’s turn to cackle in triumph '—are going to make even more changes. For a bunch as conservative as we are, that’s blinding speed.'

'So I’ve seen.'

Allison leaned back beside Alfred and looked up at him with a gracefully quirked eyebrow. He looked back down, and then shrugged.