Rules of Engagement

Chapter Twenty-Three

The newsvid had two excited men yelling into the vid pickup. Prima could hardly make out what they were saying. Escape, pursuit, invasion . . . invasion? Who could be invading them? And why? Mobilization, one of the men said.

“What is it?” she asked again. The older boys were already moving toward their gunboxes.

“It’s the end of the world,” one of them said. Daniel, she thought. Secunda’s third.

“Don’t be silly,” another said. “It’s the heathen, come to try to enforce their dirty ways on us.”

“Why?” Prima asked. In all her years, no one had ever bothered Our Texas, and she saw no reason why anyone would.

“Don’t worry,” Daniel said, patting her shoulder. “We’ll protect you. Now you get on back to the women’s side, and keep order.”

Prima turned to go, still unsure what had happened, and what it could mean. In the kitchen, Secunda and Tertia were quarrelling over the meaning of the bright light, and both turned to her for an answer. “I don’t know,” she said. Who could know? Temptation tickled her . . . no, she dared not risk her soul asking an outlander such questions, but . . . she made up her mind, and went out to the weaving shed.

“Miriam!” The outlander woman turned from her loom. Her face was tight with tension; she must have seen the light too. “Do you know what that light was?”

Miriam nodded.

“Was it from space? From ships?” Another nod, this time with a big grin, a triumphant grin. Miriam mimed a rocket taking off, shooting another rocket.

Invaders. There were invaders. “Who?” Prima asked the air. “Who would do this? Why?” She jumped when Miriam touched her arm. “What?” Miriam mimed writing. Writing . . . Mitch, she recalled, had threatened to take Miriam’s right hand if she didn’t quit writing; she’d hoped it wouldn’t be necessary because the woman was a gifted weaver. Now she led Miriam to the kitchen and gave her the pad of paper and marker they used for keeping accounts.

Light is weapon Miriam wrote. Prima squinted, trying to read as fast as Miriam wrote. Weapon, that was clear. Ionizing atmospheric gases. That made no sense; she didn’t know any of the words. Miriam, glancing up, seemed to guess that. Made air glow she wrote. Well, but how could air glow? Air was just air, clear unless there was smoke in it.

“Who?” Prima asked again. “Who would attack us?”

Miriam scribbled rapidly. Guerni Republic, Emerald Worlds, Baltic Confederation, Familias Regnant . . . Prima had no idea what those were, besides godless outlanders. Battle in space, not attacking here. Someone you stole from.

“We don’t steal!” Prima said, narrowly stopping herself from slapping Miriam. “We are not thieves.”

Stole me, Miriam wrote. Stole children, women, killed men.

“That’s not true. You’re lying. The children had no families, and you women were rescued from a life of degradation . . .” But her voice wavered. Miriam had been here for more than ten years; if she still believed she had been stolen, if she had not understood . . .

I can prove it. Miriam wrote. Get to a transmitter—call—find out who that is, and ask them.

“I can’t do that! You know it’s forbidden. Women do not use men’s technology.” But . . . if she could find out. If it was possible . . .

I know how. Miriam wrote. It’s easy.

Forbidden knowledge. Prima glanced around, realized that the others in the kitchen were staring, trying to understand this conversation. “I—I don’t know where such machines are,” she said finally.

I know how to find them.

“How?”

Tall thin things sticking out the top of buildings.

“It’s still forbidden.” Thinking of looking up at tall thin things made her dizzy in her mind. Thinking of touching men’s machines was worse.

We can look at the newsfeed. She must mean the machine kept for the women to watch religious broadcasts.

“How? I don’t know how to set it up.”

I do.

Miriam went to the closet where it was kept, and pulled it out. More than a little afraid, Prima helped her pull it, on its cart, into the back kitchen where there were extra electrical outlets. Miriam uncoiled the nest of wires that Mitch had left, and plugged this one and that one into the back and sides of the machine. Prima had no idea which went where, and kept expecting the machine to burst into flame. Instead, it made a faint frying noise and then a picture appeared, the same background as the one she’d seen on the boys’ side. This time only one man looked back at her. Miriam kept tinkering with the machine, and suddenly it had a different picture, crisp and colorful . . . men in strange uniforms, very odd-looking.

Prima felt faint suddenly. Some of those odd-looking men in uniform were women. The view narrowed, concentrating on one of them, a woman with dark skin and eyes, and silver hair. Miriam touched one of the machine’s front controls, and a voice spoke.

“—Return of children captured with the piracy of the ship Elias Madero. Return of infant children born to Sera Meager during captivity—” Prima felt behind her for the table and leaned against it. That yellow-hair . . . this must be about that yellow-hair. “—Ships are destroyed; your orbital station is destroyed. To avoid more damage and loss of life, you are urged to cooperate with us. This message is being transmitted on loop until we receive a reply.”

Ships destroyed. Mitch’s ship? Was he dead? Prima felt the weight of that loss. If Mitch was dead, someone else would be Ranger Bowie, and she—she and the rest of Mitch’s wives and children—would belong to Mitch’s brother Jed, if he lived. Jeffry, if Jed had died.

The sound of gunfire in the street brought her upright. “Turn that off,” she said to Miriam. “Before we get in trouble. Put a—a tablecloth over it.” She knew she should put it away, but if Mitch was not dead there might be more news of him, and she could not bring herself to lose that connection. “It’s past lunchtime, and we haven’t served,” she scolded, brushing past the questions the other women wanted to ask. “Feed the children, come on now. Feed them, put the babies down for naps. What would Ranger Bowie think, if he saw us like this!”

They were washing up when Jed arrived, white-faced and barely coherent. “Prima—it’s terrible news. Mitch is dead or captive; all the Rangers are. Get me food, woman! I have to—somebody has to take over—” Prima scurried out, driving the maids away; she would serve him herself. Safer. When she had piled his plate with roast and potatoes and young beans, she summoned Miriam.

“Turn it on, but keep it low. Be ready to hide it again.”

The next time she came through the kitchen, all the grown women were clustered around it. This time the face on the screen was a woman in a decent dress—or at least a dress. Dark hair streaked silver—an older woman.

“She says the yellow-hair was a big man’s daughter.”

Oh, Mitch . . . ambition diggeth pits for the unwary . . .

“She says our men murdered people and stole things . . .”

“That’s a lie,” Prima said automatically. Then she gasped as the screen showed Mitch—sitting miserably at a table, not eating, with men she knew around him. Terry . . . John . . . and there was the Captain, Ranger Travis.

“—Rangers are either captive, or dead.” That was the voice from the machine, with its curious clipped way of speaking. The way Patience had spoken at first.

“Prima! Get out here!” That was Jed, bellowing as usual. Prima scurried away, resenting once again that part of Scripture which would give her to this man just because he was Mitch’s brother.

Mitch Pardue came to in the belly of the whale, a vast shadowy cold cavern as it seemed. He blinked, and the threatening curves around him resolved into something he recognized instantly as part of a spaceship. Not the shuttle, though, and not the space station he’d been on. He looked around cautiously. There on the deck nearby were a score of his fellows, most still slackly unconsious, one or two staring at him with expressions of fright.

Where were they? He pushed himself up, and only then gathered his wits sufficiently to realize that he was dressed in a skimpy shipsuit with no boots, with plastic shackles on his ankles. He felt his heart pounding before he identified the fright that shook him. He cleared his throat . . . and stiffened in outrage and terror. No. It could not be. He tried again, forming a soft word with his mouth, and no sound emerged.

He looked around frantically—on one side of him the bodies of his own crew, men he knew well, now more of them awake, and mouthing silent protests. On the other, another clump of men he knew—Pete Robertson’s bunch, he was sure—beginning to stir, to attempt speech, to show in their faces the panic and rage he felt in his own.

The troops that entered sometime later did not surprise him; he braced himself for torture or death. But after checking his shackles, they simply stood by the bulkhead, alert and dangerous, waiting for whatever would come.

He should rally his men and jump them. He knew that, as he knew every word of Scripture he’d been told to memorize. But lying there, mute and hobbled, he couldn’t figure out how. He turned his head again, and saw Terry watching him. Get ready he tried to mouth. Terry just stared at him blankly. He nodded, sharply; Terry shook his head.

The women had been able to lipspeak to each other; some of them had a hand language too. Men should be able—he tried again, this time looking past Terry to Bob. Bob mouthed something he couldn’t figure out in return, and looked scared. Mitch was plumb disgusted. Giving up this way, what were they? He rolled over to attempt something with Pete, but one of the guards had moved, and was making very clear gestures with his weapon. Mitch looked closer. Her weapon.

“Stop it,” she said. “No whispering, no mouthing.” She had a clear light voice that didn’t sound dangerous, but the weapon in her hands was rock-steady. And he didn’t doubt the others would get him if he tried anything with her. Down the row someone made a kiss sound, a long-drawn smooch. Mitch looked up into dark eyes like chips of obsidian and didn’t make a sound. Another of the soldiers walked up to the smoocher and deliberately kicked him in the balls. He could not scream, but the rasping agonized breath was loud enough.

Another group of soldiers arrived; Mitch found himself suspended between two in space armor, propelled down a corridor to a large head. “Use it,” said a voice from inside the helmet. Man’s or woman’s, he couldn’t tell, but he had urgent need. So did the others, alongside him. From there, they were taken to a compartment with a long table set with mealpacks.

He shouldn’t eat. He should starve himself, rather than eat with these infidels. He tried to signal his team, figure out a way to stop them, but four of them were already tearing open the mealpacks. He sat rigid, jaws clamped on his hunger, while the others ate. After a short time, two of them dragged him away to a small cubicle where he faced someone in a fancier uniform.

“You won’t eat?”

He shook his head.

“We’ll feed you, then.” And in the humiliating struggle that followed, strong arms held him down while he was force-fed some thick liquid.

“You do not have the option of suicide, or resistance,” the officer said coolly, when they dragged him back to the same cubicle. “You will cooperate with us, because you can do nothing else.” After that, they took him back to a different compartment, a small solitary cell.

Mitch had, once or twice in his young days, travelled under a fake identity on Familias-registry ships; he had seen a few of the big commercial orbital stations. But nothing he had seen was like the interior of an elite warship. He wanted to despise it; he wanted to sneer at the exaggerated courtesy, the grave ritual, the polish and precision . . . but without a voice he could do nothing but experience it, and in that experience realize how foolishly he had misjudged his opponents. He had called down God’s wrath on his people, and here was the instrument of that doom: sleek, shining, perfectly disciplined, and utterly deadly.

He wanted to defy them. He wanted to hate and defy and condemn and resist to his last breath, but he kept thinking of Prima and Secunda . . . of the smell of bread from the ovens, the bright flowers in the gardens, of the sound of children’s voices echoing through the halls, the slap of the boys’ sandals when they ran; the clump of the bigger boys learning to walk in boots, the soft patter of girls’ feet . . . the feel of their soft little arms around his neck, the smell of their hair. His wives. His children. Who would be someone else’s, who might be forced out to work in someone’s fields, who might be crying, unprotected, afraid, because of him—he woke sweating, his own eyes burning.

In the empty hours, staring at the blank walls, he saw deeper into himself than he ever had, or wanted to. God was punishing him for his ambitions. That was only right, if he had done wrong. But his family—why should they be punished? His appetite disappeared, this time from no rebellion but sadness . . . and his captors did not force him to eat, this time.

Someone knocked, then entered. A man—he was grateful for that, at least—but in a uniform he had not seen before.

“I’m a chaplain,” the man said. “My own beliefs are not yours, but I am assigned to help members of Fleet with matters of belief and conscience.” He paused, paged through a small booklet. “I think your nearest word for me would be pastor or preacher. You are being returned to Familias space for trial, and our laws require that anyone facing charges of such gravity must be granted spiritual consolation.”

What spiritual consolation could an unbeliever, a heathen, give him? Mitch turned his face to the bulkhead.

“We have only the smallest chance to get those children out alive,” Waltraude said. “I know you want nothing to do with this Ranger Bowie—but unless he tells his wife to give them up, she won’t. And he is the only one who can influence his brother, who has now inherited responsibility for his wives and children.”

“But it’s ridiculous! Why can’t we talk to her?” Admiral Serrano said.

“I see no reason to negotiate with him—he’s our prisoner; he’s going to get a good, quick, legal trial and the death sentence—”

“Do you want those children? Their families do. Their families will want to know why all these lives were expended for the Speaker’s daughter . . . and children of their own family left in slavery.”

“Oh—all right.”

Mitch had not been to the bridge of a warship of this size; he was almost drawn out of his misery by the size, the complexity, the implications of power.

His guards led him before a woman—a woman in night-dark uniform, with insignia that he recognized as an admiral’s rank, and bright-colored ribbons on her chest. And he stood before her, barefoot and voiceless, and wanted to see in her the very image of Satan . . . but could not.

“You have a choice, Ranger Bowie,” she said, in the quick speech of these people. “Your former prisoner, Hazel Takeris, insists that you truly love your wives and children.”

He nodded.

“We are going to retrieve the other children you stole from the Elias Madero when you murdered their parents. However, your—the other men, on the surface—show no signs of cooperating with us. We are concerned that harm might come to your wives and your children, if they attempt to interfere with us . . . and we wish no harm to them. We want no child hurt, not so much as scratched. Do you understand?”

He nodded again, though he wasn’t sure he believed it.

“We do not make war on children . . . though you did. But we will have those children returned to their families, whatever it takes, and that might endanger other innocents. So—here is your choice. We can restore your voice, for you to transmit a command to your family, to release those children. Or, if you refuse, you can remain mute until your trial—however long that might be.”

He might talk again? He might have a man’s voice again? He could hardly believe it—but all around, he saw men and women listening as if they believed it.

“Our landing craft are ready to launch,” the admiral said. “If they are fired on, they will return fire. If they are obstructed, they will fight through . . . and your people, sir, have nothing capable of resisting them. So it rests with you, how this will be.” She paused, then went on. “Will you give these orders, or not?”

It was cooperating with the devil, to take a woman’s orders—a woman soldier, an abomination of abominations. For a moment he thought of the weapons hidden in the city, the chance that the other men might be able to launch them. Yet—he could almost feel against his cheek the soft cheeks of his daughters, could almost hear his children’s laughter. Kill them? Put them at risk? He had never killed a child in his life—he could not—but these people could, or said they could . . .

He nodded.

“You will. Good. Take him to sickbay, and have the treatment reversed, then bring him back to the bridge.”

He was a traitor, a backslider . . . all the way to sickbay, he trembled with the conflict inside. His guards said nothing to him, guiding him along with impersonal efficiency.

“We have to put you to sleep briefly,” the medic explained. “Just long enough to relax the throat muscles—”

He woke as from a moment of inattention, and felt a lump in his throat. When he cleared it—he could hear it. “I—can—talk . . .”

“Not to me, you can’t,” said one of his guards. “You can say what the admiral says you can say. Now come along.”

He sat where they told him to sit, and faced the little blinking light that was a video pickup, and though his voice trembled at first, it steadied as he went along.

“Jed, you listen to me. This is Mitch, and yes, I’m a prisoner, but that doesn’t matter. I want you to let the people that are landing take those outlander children with them. Prima knows which four. And send to Crockett Street Nursery for those twins, the yellow-haired sl—woman’s twins. I want all six of ’em released to the people that are comin’ for ’em. Prima, you get those children dressed, now . . .”

“Signal coming up, Admiral—”

“Let’s see it—”

It was a vid, from his home: Jed, looking angry, with Prima, well behind him, hands clasped respectfully in front of her. They were in the small living room, the one where he’d met the others so often, with the fireplace at one end and the conference table at the other.

“Mitch, I don’t believe it’s you, or they’ve drugged you, or somethin’. It’s some kind of trick. An’ I’m head of the family now, and I’m not about to let any children of this house into the hands of those—those godless scum!”

Mitch felt the sweat spring out on his face, his hands. “Jed, you have to. They’re comin’ anyway—if you cause ’em trouble, they’ll be more people dead. Children dead, most likely—”

“Then they’ll go to the Lord. I’m not—”

Behind Jed, Prima had moved. Without looking up to face the vid pickup, she had stretched out her hand and touched the fireplace poker in its stand. Mitch’s breath caught in his throat.

“—Not going to let the honor of our name be smirched because you got yourself caught like a weakling—”

Prima held the poker . . . she held it easily, in a grip strengthened by kneading bread dough, wringing out wet wash, lifting babies. He knew the strength of those massive shoulders, those arms.

“Jed, please . . . don’t risk the other children for those few—it’s not worth it—please, Jed, let ’em go.” Before worse happened, before Prima did something he would have to notice. He struggled to keep his gaze on Jed.

“If they want a fight, they can have it!” Jed looked at much triumphant as angry. “The preachers have already told us to gather and fight—”

“The preachers—!” Mitch could hardly keep talking, as he watched Prima walk softly, softly on her bare feet, coming up behind Jed, raising the poker. Horror and hope warred in him—that any woman would strike a man, let alone strike without warning—that maybe, without Jed, the children would be safe . . .

“You could stop them,” Mitch went on, struggling to make Jed understand, Jed who had never understood anything he didn’t want to. He should warn Jed; he should admonish Prima. But the children—“You could convince them, if you’d try—” And on the screen Prima looked up at last, straight into the vid pickup, and smiled. “Do it!” Mitch said, not entirely sure who he was talking to, and as Jed opened his mouth, the poker slammed into his head with all the strength of Prima’s shoulders and arms . . . and blood spurted up, and she hit him again, and again, on the way down . . .

“Prima!” he yelled, and his throat cramped, closing on more. She looked up at the vid again, her face settling into its usual calm from an emotion he had never seen before. “Don’t let them hurt the children,” he said; his voice creaked like that of a young rooster learning to crow. “Don’t let them hurt—” His voice failed again; tears stung his eyes.

Prima’s voice on the link was far steadier than his had been. “I want to see . . . what kind of people they are, you would trust with our children.”

“Be careful,” he managed to whisper. “Please . . .” He was pleading with a woman . . . pleading . . . and that was wrong, but his throat hurt, and his heart, and he wanted no more pain, for him or the children. The screen in front of him blanked, and then he curled around his misery like a child around a favorite toy.

“I want to go,” said Hazel. “I should—the children know me; they won’t be as scared. Brun would go if she could.” Brun was sedated, in regen after an attempt at the delicate surgery that might restore her voice. She wouldn’t be out for another three days, at the soonest.

“Not a bad idea,” Waltraude Meyerson said. “And I, of course.”

“You! You’re not only a civilian, but you have no role in this . . .”

“I’m the resident expert you brought along—I should get to see these Texas mythologists on their own turf. And I would recommend, Admiral Serrano, that you send a member of your family—perhaps that grandson who keeps hovering around looking hopeful.”

“I hardly think Barin’s an appropriate choice,” the admiral said.

“These people care about families. If you send a family member, you are showing that you will risk family to save family. It is also as well that he is male—that will be more acceptable, as long as there are women along.”

“I see. And whom else would you recommend? Do you have the entire mission plan in mind?” Sarcasm, from Admiral Serrano, affected most people like being in close proximity to a large industrial saw, but Professor Meyerson didn’t flinch.

“No, that is your area of expertise. Mine is antique studies.”

Hovers held position above the streets, and a mobile squad kept pace with them, helmet shields down.

“Looks kind of silly,” Hazel said, “with the streets empty.”

“The streets wouldn’t be empty if they weren’t there,” Barin said. His helmet informed him of the location of hotspots in the buildings; they were clustered behind every screened window niche. He hoped none of them had weapons that could penetrate their body armor . . . he hoped even more that Ranger Bowie’s transmission had convinced them not to fight. Right now the Fleet forces were on Yellow Two, which meant that even if they were fired on, they were not to return fire without authorization.

Hazel pointed out the main entrance to the house, and the side street that led to the women’s entrance. “I came through this door only once, when he brought me here.” Barin noticed that she did not say the man’s name or title. “I used that other door to take out refuse or go to the market.”

“But you think we should go in here?”

“It establishes authority,” Professor Meyerson said. She had elected to wear a skirt, though she agreed to wear body armor under it, which made her look considerably bulkier.

She led the way up to the door; it swung open just before she reached it. A stout woman wearing a blue dress with a wide flounced skirt glared at them. She had a flowered kerchief tied tightly around her head.

“That’s Prima,” Hazel said softly. “The first wife.”

“Ma’am,” Professor Meyerson said. “We’ve come for the children.”

Prima yanked the door wider. “Come in. Which one of you is the yellow-hair?”

“She couldn’t come,” Hazel said. “She’s getting medical treatment for her voice.”

“She abandoned her babies—abominations like her don’t deserve children,” Prima said.

“Are they here?” Hazel asked.

“Yes . . . but I’m not convinced they should go . . .”

Hazel stepped forward. “Please—Prima—let the children come.”

“I’m not giving those sweet girls up to some disgusting heathen,” Prima said. She had the taut look of someone willing to die for her convictions.

“It’s just me,” Hazel said softly. “You know me; you know I’ll take care of them.”

“You—you traitor!” Prima’s face had gone from pale to red, and tears stood in her eyes.

“No ma’am . . . but I had my family to think of—”

“We were your family—we treated you like family—”

“Yes, ma’am, you did. As well as you could. But back home—”

“And you!” Prima turned on Professor Meyerson. “You’re what—a woman soldier! Unnatural, disgusting—”

“Actually, I’m a historian,” Meyerson said. Prima looked blank. “I study Texas history.”

“You—what?”

“That’s right. I came to learn about you—about what you know of Texas history.”

Prima looked thoroughly confused, then focussed on Barin. “And you—who are you?”

“Admiral Serrano’s grandson,” Barin said. Then, when Prima seemed not to understand, he said, “The woman you may have seen in transmission—dark, like me, with silver hair? She’s commanding the task force.”

“A woman? Commanding men? Nonsense. No men would obey her—”

“I do,” Barin said. “Both as admiral and as my grandmother.”

“Grandmother . . .” Prima shook her head. “Still . . . do any of you have a belief in God?”

“I do,” Barin said. “It is not the same as yours, but in my family we have always had believers.”

“Yet you are a soldier alongside women? Commanded by women?”

“Yes, sometimes.”

“How can that be? God decreed that women bear no arms, that they enter into no conflicts.”

“That is not the doctrine I have been taught,” Barin said.

“You are a pagan who believes in many gods?”

“No, in one only.”

“I do not understand.” Prima looked closely into his face. “Yet I see truth in your face; you are not a liar. Tell me, are you married?”

“Not yet, ma’am, but I plan to be.”

“To a . . . another of these woman soldiers?”

“Yes.” If he survived this. He wished very much Esmay were with him.

“Do you swear to me, on the holy name of God, that you are taking them to their families?”

“Yes,” Barin said. Prima deflated; her face creasing into tears. Barin moved nearer. “Let me tell you about their families, ma’am, so that you will understand. Brandy and Stassi—Prudence and Serenity, as you call them—have aunts and uncles. Their dead mother’s sisters and brother; their father’s sister. Paolo’s grandfather and uncle, and Dris’s aunt and uncle. We have brought recordings of them, asking for the safe return of these children.”

“They are happy here,” Prima said. She looked down and away; she had the look of someone who will argue to the end but knows she cannot win. “It will hurt them to move them now.”

“They are happy now,” Professor Meyerson said. “They are small children, and I know—Hazel told us—that you have been kind to them. But they will grow older, and you are not, and cannot, be the same as their own family. They need to know their own flesh and blood.”

“They will cry,” Prima said, through her own tears.

“They may,” Professor Meyerson said. “They have had a difficult few years, losing their parents and then coming to such a different place, and leaving it again. They cried when they came here, didn’t they? But in the end, all children cry over something, and that is not reason enough to leave wrong as it is, and good undone.”

“I am undone,” Prima said, folding her apron. “But I had to try—”

“You are a loving mother,” Professor Meyerson said. Barin was surprised at this; he had not thought of Meyerson as having, or caring about, families. Yet her tone of absolute approval seemed to settle Prima. “I want you to see recordings of the children’s families.”

“I don’t have to—I believe you—”

“No, but it may help you understand.” She nodded to Barin, who set up the cube reader and display screen. “We have brought our own power supply, since your electrical lines carry the wrong voltage for our equipment.”

“This is men’s work,” Prima said.

“God gave eyes to men and women,” Professor Meyerson said. She put the first cube into the reader. “This is a recording of Brandy and Stassi’s parents before they were killed.”

On the screen, a woman with a long dark braid over her shoulder cradled a baby in her arms. “That’s when Stassi was born; their mother’s name was Ghirian. Her parents were from Gilmore Colony. Brandy was a year old then.” A man appeared, holding an older infant in his arms. “That’s their father, Vorda. He and Ghirian had been married eight years. His family had been merchant spacers for generations.”

“They—were married?”

“Oh yes. And very much in love, though I understand from Hazel that you do not value romantic love between men and women.”

“It doesn’t last,” Prima said, as if quoting. Her eyes were fixed on the screen, where the affection between mother and father, and parents and children, was obvious. “It cannot be depended on to make a strong family.”

“Not alone, no. But along with honesty and courage, it’s a good start.”

The screen flickered, and now showed a slightly older Brandy, stacking blocks with an unsteady hand.

Prima sucked her breath through her teeth. “Boy’s toys—”

“We value all the gifts God has given a child,” Professor Meyerson said. “If God did not mean her to build, why would he have given her the ability? They sent this recording to her grandparents; her mother’s father was a construction engineer in Gilmore. He was pleased that his granddaughter had inherited his gift.” The child pushed the blocks over, gave a dimpled grin into the camera, and stood up, dancing in a circle. Then her mother came into view, carrying Stassi, now a wiggly toddler herself. She reached out and caught Brandy to her, gave her a little hug. Professor Meyerson turned up the sound of the cube reader.

“—So we’ve decided to take them with us. Captain Lund says that’ll be fine; there are two children about the same age, and a couple of older ones. The ship has a fully equipped nursery and playroom, with all the educational materials you could hope to see, so don’t worry about them falling behind. It’s as safe as being onplanet—safer, in some ways. No bugs!” The woman grimaced. “And no weather. I know, I know—you like the changing seasons, but with these two if it’s not colds in winter it’s allergies in summer.”

Professor Meyerson stopped the reader. “That was made just before they rejoined the Elias Madero, about a year before they died.”

“Was there sickness on the ship after all?”

“No.” Could she not know? Was it possible? She glanced at Hazel, who shook her head. “They were killed in the capture of the ship, ma’am.”

“No . . . it must have been an accident. Mitch would never kill women—”

This was farther than they’d meant to go; they’d assumed the wives knew how outworld children were taken. Professor Meyerson said nothing, clearly at a loss to think how to put it. Prima blanched.

“You think—you believe our men killed the parents, orphaned those children on purpose? Killed mothers? That’s why you attacked us?”

“They considered them perverts,” Professor Meyerson said. “That’s what was on the recordings.”

“I don’t believe it! You’re lying! You have no proof!” She grabbed Meyerson’s arm. “Do you? Does your . . . your device show anything like that?”