“Please. No,” she cried.
He reached toward her, pleadingly. “Lutha. Please. We’ll pick someone who isn’t … intrusive. Someone tactful.”
She snorted.
“Some Fastigats can be,” he said in an offended tone.
“The Dinadhi will allow me a companion?” She sneered. “Someone nonfamily?”
“If he goes as your assistant or servant, yes. You’ll need some such to help with your son. You’ll have to take the boy.”
She laughed again, this time incredulously. “You’re joking, of course.” He knew how ridiculous the idea was. Even the invigilators who had summoned her to this meeting had been aware of the problem Leely presented. They’d brought a whole crèche team with them to take care of Leely while she was away.
He shook his head at her, leaning forward to pat her knee, an avuncular gesture. “Believe me, Lutha, I wouldn’t ask it if it weren’t necessary. The Dinadhi won’t accept you without the boy.”
“You expect me to drag a child across half a dozen sectors to…” This child, she said to herself. This particular child, with his particular problems.
“Spatiotemporally, it’s not half a dozen sectors,” he told her. “I wish it were, quite frankly. We’d be safer!”
She made herself relax, slowly picked up the cup once more, finding it fresh, steaming hot. “Will you go?” he asked.
“Do I have a choice?” she grated. “If I don’t go, you’ll—”
“Nothing,” he assured her. “Really nothing. We have the power to compel you, but compelling you would be useless. We need your willing, intelligent cooperation. It’s up to you whether you give it or not.”
As though that old devil conscience would have let her say no! “You know me,” she said angrily. “You knew I wouldn’t say no. Didn’t you?”
As he did. As Fastigats did. Lutha told me all about Fastigats. Fastigats get to know people very quickly, very well, very completely, as had this bald, quirky old empath across from her who hadn’t come right out and told her he was one of them. Who hadn’t needed to, any more than Leelson had, when they had been together.
“You’re going to be fine,” Leelson had said often during her later stages of pregnancy, soothing her in moments of dismay.
“I know,” she’d snapped. “Women have been having babies for hundreds of thousands of years.”
“Well, yes. But I don’t regard that as particularly comforting, do you?” He made a face at her, making her laugh. “Stars have been blowing up into novas for billions of years, but that doesn’t make their near vicinity desirable.”
“If you intend a similarity, I am offended,” she said. “Though I may have assumed the proportions of a nova, I have no intention of bursting. I merely scream when I stand up, because it hurts to stand up! This may sound like an explosion, but actually—”
“We are not Firsters. You could have—” he interrupted gently.
“Don’t tell me. Of course I could have.” Could have chosen not to be pregnant. Could have chosen to delay the development of the fertilized egg. Could have had the baby developed in a biotech uterus, given crèche birth. She hadn’t chosen that. Why not? She didn’t know why not! Why had he gotten her pregnant in the first place? Fastigats could control that if they wanted to! Obviously, he hadn’t wanted to!
“Well then?” Leelson being reasonable.
“I keep thinking it must be boring for you.” Great Gauphin, it was boring enough for her.
“A new experience is seldom boring. Womb-birth is becoming quite rare, and rare happenings appeal to the collector’s taste. All Fastigats are collectors.”
She didn’t say what she was thinking, that the whole thing had been an accident. That she’d had second thoughts about it, but then Leelson’s mother had said—Leelson had said…
The less thought about all that the better. Still, she was peevish when Leelson seemed more fascinated by the pregnancy than he was by her. She said this, laughing at herself.
“It’s not true,” he assured her. “I am passionately fond of you, Lutha Tallstaff. You are like a dinner full of interesting textures and flavors, like a landscape full of hidden wonders. I am not ignoring you in all this.”
True. When one had a Fastigat for a lover, one could not complain of being ignored. One’s every whim was understood; one’s every mood was noted. For the most part, one’s every desire was satisfied, or thwarted, only to make the satisfaction greater when it occurred. If a Fastigat lover was not forthcoming, it was not through lack of understanding. Sometimes Lutha felt (so she told me) she was understood far too well. Sometimes she longed for argument, for passionate battle, for a sense of her own self back again. Pride kept her from showing it, that and the fear that Leelson would accommodate her. Only a fool would take on an opponent who could block every thrust before it was made.
It was easier during those early months after Leely was born, for then Leelson switched at least part of his searching intelligence from her to the child, leaving Lutha to her udderish moods and mutters while he hovered over the infantender, forehead creased, feeling his way into that little mind.
“Like a maze,” he’d said, almost dazedly. “All misty walls and dazzling spaces. Hunger or discomfort comes in like jagged blobs of black, and the minute he eliminates or burps or takes the nipple, he’s back to dazzling spaces again.”
“No faces?” she’d asked, disappointed. Babies were supposed to recognize faces. Like baby birds, back when there had been birds, recognizing the special markings of their own species. Eyes, nose, mouth: that configuration was supposed to be instinctively recognized by humans. Lutha had read about it.
“Well, I can’t feel faces,” he’d replied. “No doubt they’re there.”
Later he postulated that Leely recognized something else or more than faces. Some quality unique to each person, perhaps. Some totality.
“He’s not one of us, I’m afraid. Not a Fastigat.” Leelson had shaken his head ruefully over the four-month-old child.
