In Enemy Hands

"Oh, I like it all right!" she assured her guide. "Honor promised I would, and she's always been a truthful sort of girl." Her eyes danced at Miranda's expression as she referred to Honor as a "girl." Well, it wouldn't do these people a bit of harm to have someone take a little starch out of Honors reputation. Allison knew her daughter well enough to know that too much deference would be suffocating to her.

Besides, she told herself cheerfully, the girl's always taken life too seriously. It'll do her good if she gets back to find out I've made a spectacle of myself!

She smothered a giggle at the thought. Like Honor, she hated the way she sounded when she giggled. Both of them were convinced it made them sound like schoolgirls, and Allison’s small stature only made it worse. Not, she reflected complacently, that anyone who'd ever gotten a good look at her would mistake her for a child. That thought threatened another giggle attack, but she suppressed it firmly and waved a reassuring hand at Miranda as the Grayson regarded her anxiously.

Poor girl probably thinks I'm having some sort of attack! I wonder what she'd think if she knew I was pla

Allison took several minutes to examine the office carefully, but only a part of her attention was on desks and coffee tables and credenzas. She was thinking about her sixty years in the Star Kingdom and rubbing gleeful mental hands together as she contemplated yet more worlds, literally, to conquer.

Allison Harrington knew perfectly well how the rest of the galaxy regarded those libertine Beowulfans. She sometimes wondered just how her home world had ended up as the uncontested holder of the Galaxy's Most Decadent Planet Title, given that Old Earth, for one, was every bit as sophisticated and "libertine" as Beowulf, but the universe worked in mysterious ways. Perhaps it was because of Sigma Draconis' unrivaled reputation in the life sciences. Beowulf’s invention of the prolong process was only the most spectacular of its contributions to the health and longevity of the human race, which meant Dr. Harrington’s home world had produced a direct impact on every human being anywhere, second only to that of Old Earth herself, so perhaps it was inevitable that natives of Beowulf should somehow acquire larger-than-life status in the eyes of out-worlders. Which still didn't explain why everyone had fastened on the planets sexual practices instead of, say, Sigma Draconis' systemwide passion for grav-ski polo!

But whatever the reasons, Allison had known she would be entering another world, figuratively, as well as literally, when she fell in love with a scholarship student at Semmelweiss University named Alfred Harrington. Alfred had hardly been an untutored, gawking yokel, of course. The Star Kingdom had been one of the wealthiest, most technically advanced interstellar powers, certainly of those outside the Solarian League, for centuries, and its capital planet was probably as sophisticated as Beowulf itself. But Alfred wasn't from the planet of Manticore; he was from Sphinx, and Sphinx was undoubtedly the most straitlaced of the three habitable worlds of the Manticore Binary System. He'd been almost painfully earnest in explaining that to her, not because he wanted her to change to satisfy his home world's sometimes parochial standards, but because he was on a military scholarship that committed him to a minimum of fifteen years naval service. He would have no choice but to return to the Star Kingdom to fulfill that commitment, so if she accepted his proposal of marriage, she was going to find herself confronting the society from which he sprang.

If he'd been one bit less earnest, she would have smiled, patted him on the head, and assured him that she was all grown up. As it was, she'd been too touched by his concern to let her amusement show, and she'd assured him with admirable gravity that she appreciated his warning and that, yes, she believed she could survive in the boondocks if she truly had to.

And, of course, things hadn't proven nearly as onerous as one might have feared from his descriptions. The fact was that Beowulfans were no more "libertine" than anyone else; they simply declined to pass judgment or declare that any single lifestyle, regardless of who sanctioned it, was the one true way, and Allison would never have accepted Alfred’s proposal if she'd had any intention of pursuing a lifestyle which would distress him. Nor would she have accepted it if she'd believed he would expect her to squeeze herself into one which distressed her. That didn't prevent her from feeling that Sphinxians were much too sexually repressed, nor had it kept her from worrying, a lot, over Honors total lack of a sex life prior to Paul Tankersley, but she'd never felt any actual temptation to be anything but monogamous.

Not that she'd exactly gone out of the way to make that fact public. The mere fact that she was from, gasp!, Beowulf had been enough to earn her sidelong glances from the more puritanical of Sphinx's populace, and her mischievous streak had been totally unable to overlook the possibilities that offered. After almost seventy years honing her skills, she could play a prude like a Stradivarius, and she took a devilish delight in doing so. It was so much fun to play to their prejudices and stereotypes and come as close as she possibly could to the edge without ever quite stepping over it. Besides, as a physician, she owed it to her critics. A little apoplexy from time to time elevated the pulse and improved the circulatory system.

Of course, she wouldn't dream of doing anything to embarrass Honor, well, not seriously, anyway. A little embarrassment would probably be good for her. Following Paul's death and Honor's duel with Pavel Young, Allison had finally found out about the episode at the Academy which had done Honors self-image such crippling damage. She understood a lot of things which her own upbringing, and Honors reticence, had prevented her from seeing at the time, but her daughter still seemed far too serious and emotionally detached. Paul had been dead for over five T-years after all, and deeply as he and Honor had loved one another, it was time she got on with her life. So if she needed something to shake her up a little, well, it was a mothers duty to look out for her daughter, wasn't it?

And if Sphinx had looked at her askance for being from Beowulf, she could just imagine how Honor's Graysons were going to approach her! She was pleased that Miranda, at least, seemed comfortable around her, because she'd already realized how critical Miranda was, despite her official title of "maid", to the functioning of Harrington House and the entire steading. If someone that important to Honor hadn't been comfortable with her, Allison would have expended however much effort it took to put her at ease. As it was, she rather suspected she would find it easy to enlist Miranda as an ally and an accomplice when she began her assault on the rest of Grayson.

And, she thought almost dreamily, with Honor back in space, just think of all the time she'd have to do it right.

But that brought another point back to her mind, and she seated herself in the comfortable chair behind the desk and waved Miranda into the one facing her across the coffee table. Farragut flowed up into the Grayson woman's lap as soon as she was seated, and Allison smiled wryly.

"I remember when Honor first brought Nimitz home," she said. "You might not believe it to look at her now, but her growth spurt came late, and third-generation prolong slows things down even more. She was, oh, sixteen, I think, before she started shooting up, and when Nimitz first adopted her, he was almost as long as she was. But she insisted on carrying him everywhere. For a while, I thought his legs were going to atrophy completely!"