In Enemy Hands

She concentrated on radiating an aggrieved sense of rebuke at him, but he only bared his fangs in a lazy, unmistakable laugh. And, just to make things worse, he sent her another strong pulse of that approval for White Haven.

She heard a quiet sound behind her and turned with a sense of relief for the distraction as MacGuiness stepped out of the pantry, his pantry, as every member of the Harrington House staff had been made thoroughly aware. The entire staff deferred to MacGuiness, and he was perfectly willing to delegate most tasks, but he was in charge of serving his captains meals, and he gave White Haven a small half-bow.

"Good morning, My Lord. May I bring you coffee?"

"You may," White Haven said with a smile, "but I think I'd prefer to start with a glass of juice and save the coffee to follow the waffles. I suspect I'll need something to chase the syrup through my system."

"Of course, My Lord," MacGuiness replied, and looked at Honor. "Are you ready for another serving, My Lady?" he asked.

"Um, yes. Yes, I am, Mac," she replied, and he smiled and turned back to his pantry.

His intervention, brief as it was, had been enough to redirect Honors wandering thoughts, and she looked up at White Haven with a smile as something quite different from last nights admiration colored his emotions. His surprise was something she'd felt before, and while she generally didn't comment on it, it felt so normal compared to the other things she'd been worrying about that she found herself explaining.

"You're wondering why I don't look like a pre-space blimp, aren't you, My Lord?" she teased gently.

"I, That is..." White Haven blushed. Her direct, smiling question had caught him without a graceful response, and his blush deepened at her soft laugh.

"Don't worry, My Lord. Mike Henke teases me about it all the time, and the explanation's simple enough. I'm a genie."

The earl blinked briefly, his expression totally blank, then nodded in sudden understanding. It was considered extremely impolite to use the term "genie" to describe someone, but given Harrington's neurosurgeon father and, especially, geneticist mother, she was probably more comfortable with the label than many. For that matter, the prejudice against genetically engineered humans was slowly dying out as the last memories of Old Earth’s Final War faded from the racial forebrain. But there had been no such prejudice in the early days of the Diaspora, and quite a few colonies had been established by genies specifically designed for their new environments.

"I wasn't aware of that, Milady," he said after a moment.

"We don't talk about it much, but I'd guess the majority of Sphinxians are genies by now," she replied. He raised a polite eyebrow, and she shrugged. "Think about it," she suggested. "Heavy-grav planets are one of the most common 'hostile' environments. You know that even today most heavy-worlders have shorter than average life expectancies?" She looked at White Haven again, and he nodded. "That's because even with modern medicine you can't put a body designed for a single gravity onto a one-point-three or one-point-five-gravity planet and expect it to function properly. I, on the other hand..."

She made a graceful gesture with one hand, and he nodded slowly. "I knew about the modifications for Quelhollow, but those are much more readily apparent than what you seem to be talking about," he observed.

"Well, Quelhollow had some other environmental concerns, whereas my ancestors were more of a... generic design, I suppose. Basically, my muscle tissue is about twenty-five percent more efficient than a 'pure human's,' and there are a few changes to my respiratory and circulatory systems, plus some skeletal reinforcement. The idea was to fit us for heavy-grav planets generally, not one in particular, and the geneticists made the changes dominant, so that every parent would pass them on to every child."

"And your diet?"

"I don't get more efficient muscles and a stronger heart for free, My Lord," Honor said wryly. "My metabolism runs about twenty percent faster, a little more than that actually, but not much, to fuel the differences. Which is why I can afford to eat like this," she finished, gri

"Actually," she added, cutting into the stack, "I tend to stuff myself at breakfast, then have a relatively light, well, light for me, anyway, lunch. The overnight 'down time' leaves me needing more reactor mass in the morning."

"That's fascinating," White Haven murmured. "You say more than half of Sphinx has the same modification?"

"That's only an estimate, and it's not one modification. The Harrington’s are descended from the Meyerdahl First Wave, which was one of the first, in fact, I think it was the first, heavy-grav modification, and folks like us probably make up about twenty or twenty-five percent of the population. But there are several variations on the same theme, and worlds tend to attract colonists who can live there comfortably. When you add the free passages the government offered to recruit fresh colonists after the Plague of Twenty-Two AL, Sphinx wound up attracting an even bigger chunk of us than most, including a lot from the core worlds who wouldn't even have considered emigration otherwise. In many respects, the Meyerdahl genies are the most successful, in my modest opinion, though. Our musculature enhancement is certainly the most efficient, at any rate. But we do have one problem most of the others don't."

"Which is?"

"Most of us don't regenerate," she told him, touching the left side of her face. "Over eighty percent of us have a built-in genetic conflict with the regen therapies, and not even Beowulf has been able to figure out how to get around it yet. I'm pretty sure they will eventually, but for now..."

She shrugged, mildly surprised at herself for offering the explanation in the first place, and even more for giving so many details. It wasn't something she thought much about herself, and some people still had fu

"Is everything ready for the ground-breaking?" she asked, and Miranda nodded.

"Yes, My Lady. I went over the details with Colonel Hill one last time last night. Everything's in place, the Guards satisfied with its crowd control measures, and Lord Prestwick will be here to express the Protector's personal thanks for your endowment."

Honor waved a hand to banish the importance of that last point, but Miranda, like her brother, had figured out that Honor's link to Nimitz let her sense the emotions of others. She appeared to have become even more aware of that in the three days since her own adoption, and Honor blinked as she realized her maid was deliberately using Nimitz to communicate her disagreement with Honor's attempt to minimize the significance of her gift to her adopted world.

Miranda held her gaze for a moment, and Honor blinked again. She'd become almost accustomed to having other treecats consciously use her link with Nimitz that way, but Miranda was the first human to do it, and Honor suddenly wondered if that stemmed from the fact that Miranda wasn't a Sphinxian. Was it possible that her lack of preconceptions about the 'cats' abilities actually left her better able to recognize, and utilize, those same abilities?

Perhaps. But at the moment, Miranda was concentrating on a gentle rebuke, and Honor sighed as she admitted the younger woman was probably right. Honor hadn't set up the endowment to curry favor with Protector Benjamin or anyone else. She'd done it because she felt it was important and necessary and because, unlike most Graysons, she had more money than she could possibly spend anyway, so she might as well do something useful with it. But that didn't change the fact that she had done it, and if the Chancellor of Grayson was going to come clear out here to thank her, the least she could do was respond graciously.