Adela de Montgarde stirred uneasily in her chair, experiencing both anxious anticipation to view the holo from Javas, and dread as to its contents. Why had he separated this string from the others? There were several other personal message strings from him; why had this one been given imperative-to-read-first status?
“System.” Her voice was soft in the confines of her private suite aboard the huge ship, and it carried with it a tone she didn’t much care for, a tone that told more about her feelings just now than she wanted to admit to herself.
“Ma’am?” the room system responded. The nondescript efficiency of the voice, different from the softly feminine voice of the system back on Luna, was at once annoying and reassuring.
“Please put a code one interrupt on all incoming messages until further notice.” There was a confirming chirp from the system, indicating that she wouldn’t be disturbed for anything short of a shipwide emergency. “Display personal string one-A, message one.” The corner of the room brightened, changing into what she recognized as Javas’ study at the family estate on Earth. He sat in one of the leather chairs before his old wooden desk. The large double doors behind him had been opened, and she could see the rolling Kentucky hillside spreading majestically into the distance. He looked worn, older, and she found it necessary to remind herself that this recording had been made only a few years after her departure from Sol system. How much older must he look now? she wondered as the sixteen-year-old recording coalesced before her. She wished, not for the first time, that she could have stayed behind at his side.
Her attention had been immediately, emotionally, drawn to his face when the image appeared, and it wasn’t until he shifted slightly in the chair before speaking that she became aware of the compact, blanket-wrapped bundle in his arms. One corner of the receiving blanket had been pulled aside, revealing a tiny, peaceful face. The infant was asleep, its fresh, pink features appearing incongruously small in the man’s strong arms. A thick mass of dark hair, in a shade that closely matched her own, stood out in marked contrast to Javas’ blond hair.
But Adela could see—perhaps in the man’s eyes or in the way his arms seemed to naturally enfold the baby in his arms—that the two were connected, bonded in a way that she was not. Bonded in a way she could only long to experience.
“Adela, my love, we have a son. His name is Eric, after your father. I regret that I was not able to discuss this with you and hope you will understand my reasons. If not, then perhaps it is your forgiveness that I…”
“Pause.” Adela stared in fascination at the frozen image before her, unable even to determine exactly what she was feeling at this moment. She hadn’t known what to expect of this string, but was this news more, or less, disturbing; more, or less, surprising than anything she could have anticipated? Was she angry with him for having done this, or joyful for the miracle that had produced this small part of herself, this proof of the love she felt for a man more than sixteen years distant in space, and forty years distant in time itself? Adela shook her head in frustrated confusion, pushing any decision she might make concerning her feelings away for now—much in the same way the worm had pushed the non-immediate messages further and further down the queue for later consideration. There was one thing, however, of which she was certain: The child was beautiful.
She opened her mouth to speak, to restart the playback, and was shocked at the croaked whisper that came out. The room system itself had not been able to pick up the word, and beeped in confusion. Adela cleared her throat.
“Resume playback, please.”
“… should hope for,” he said, finishing the sentence begun earlier. He stirred again in the chair, distracted from the recorder lens as a tiny arm came up from the blanket. The infant had been awakened by his father’s voice, she saw, and the little eyes blinked at the bright light streaming through the double doors into the Emperor’s study. The baby didn’t seem pleased, and wrinkled his brow in dislike at the intrusion into whatever thoughts had been going through its dreams, but did not cry. Javas stood, cradling the bundle protectively in his strong arms as he almost imperceptibly rocked the infant. “I won’t go into my reasons just now; I’ll save the lengthy explanation for the following recording in this string. But I wanted… to share this with you first.” He stood there for several moments, trying to think of something else to add and, although he looked as though he were about to say something, stopped when a tiny hand reached out and grazed his cheek. Whatever he was going to say was instantly lost as he smiled and lowered his eyes to the infant before silently commanding the recording to end. The image dimmed, then faded from view.
“Shall I display the next message, ma’am?”
Adela didn’t answer at first, and sat staring quietly at the now-dark corner of the room. She had discussed this possibility with Javas before leaving for Pallatin and had accepted, at the time, the implications. So why can’t I tell what I’m feeling right now? she wondered, and fell heavily back into the cushioning firmness of the chair. The gravity in her quarters—as in the quarters of nearly everyone on the ship who’d be visiting the planet—had been set to Pallatin-normal, allowing her an opportunity to adjust to the 1.2 g environment below. Her day was only half begun, and already she felt exhausted.
“Shall I display the next message, ma’am?” the system repeated.
“Uh, no,” she replied. “Replay previous recording.”
The corner glowed again as the message began once more. She let it play through till the end, waiting for the moment when Javas had stood just before ending the recording. “Pause, and mark.” The image froze. “Resume.” The playback restarted, and continued through his silent command to end the recording. “Pause, and mark,” she repeated just before the image began to fade. “System. Edit, please.”
“Ready.”
“Loop and smooth the marked segment, please.”
“Ready.”
“Playback.”
The computer had edited the recording, smoothly blending Javas’ movements from the moment where he smiled and turned his eyes to the infant and the end of the recording itself, looping the segment into one continuous image.
She rose then and approached the holographic projection before her, stopping mere centimeters from the lifelike image as she looked into the infant’s face. She wanted more than anything to hold, to touch her son and would have gladly given up the entire project and her role in it for just a moment alone with Javas and their child. She reached out, her fingers passing through the image, and noticed something she hadn’t seen from her previous vantage point when she’d first viewed the recording: A happy, toothless smile had spread over the baby’s face as it stared up into Javas’ eyes. Adela stepped through the image itself and looked down into the baby’s face from almost the same angle Javas had when he’d made the recording sixteen years earlier.
Although she knew better, she tried to force from her mind the fact that the baby seemingly looking up at her was now, at this exact moment back on Earth, a young adult.
“Eric,” she whispered, and felt the corners of her mouth turn up in the beginnings of a smile that quickly broadened of its own accord into a joyous grin.
Chapter Eighteen
Commander Montero, captain of the Imperial starship Levant, droned on, giving his delivery of the required precontact briefing as much excitement as he did most of his lectures. Which was to say that a schoolboy’s recitation of a memorized spelling list would contain more spark. Even the constantly changing images on the holoscreen behind him failed to enliven the briefing. The boredom hanging like a dark cloud over the room was compounded by the fact that virtually everything Montero said came from the mission data stick that everyone attending the briefing had already been required to review anyway. With only a week to go before the rendezvous with the Pallatin ship, even the busiest member of the mission would have had time to read the file. Twice.