Страница 72 из 90
"Come on, Konstantin," P?ts said. "It's over."
"This time," his son-in-law said, echoing Gleb.
"Yes, this time," P?ts agreed. "Russians." Back on Earth, they had outweighted Estonia a hundred to one, and used their weight to hold the land down whether the Estonians liked it or not. Here in the Talli
"I'll live," Laidoner answered drily. "They didn't have a chance to do much to me. Thank you, father of my wife. And speaking of Sarah, I'd sooner not tell her of this. I don't want her to worry, especially not now."
"All right," P?ts said. Konstantin was right; if Sarah was pregnant, she needed to take things easy. If Sarah is pregnant, you're going to be a grandfather. Somehow that thought had taken this long to catch up with him.
After dealing with the pigs and the cheeses (the women had gathered the eggs), P?ts and his son-in-law went back to the house for food; working in the cold left a man with a land gator's appetite. Even before he opened the door, P?ts smelled the creamy richness of soup on the kettle. Saliva flooded into his mouth.
He sighed with pleasure as he went inside and walked over to the fireplace to warm his hands. Konstantin stood beside him, soaking up heat like a tamerlane basking on a rock. The kettle hung over the fire. P?ts peered down into it, smiled at what he saw: barely, carrots, and pork shanks all bubbling together. "It's almost ready," his wife Eva called from the kitchen.
"Good," he boomed. "I'm starved."
Eva came bustling in: a small, fine-boned woman gracefully going from gold hair toward silver. She tilted up her face so P?ts could kiss her, but she was more concerned with the soup. She dipped in a hand-carved wooden spoon, tasted, frowned. She went back to the kitchen, returned with salt. When she tasted again, she nodded. "Sarah! Ana! Blow out the candles in there and put away your knitting. It's ready."
P?ts' daughters hurried into the front room. They were younger versions of their mother, and reminded him of now lovely she'd been when he won her. Was Sarah a touch paler than usual? In the ruddy firelight, it was hard to tell.
Eva ladled soup into bowls. "Let's eat here by the fire," P?ts said. "Too cold to go back to the kitchen." No one argued with him. When they had all sat down, they bent their heads as he said grace. Sometimes he wondered why he should thank God for marooning them on Haven. It was, he supposed, preferable to the bullet in the back of the neck he might have earned for what the CoDominium called attempted subversion of the state.
"This soup is wonderful, mother of my wife," Konstantin Laidoner mumbled around a pork bone. He tossed the bone into his bowl, went back to the kettle to fill the bowl once more. When he sat down again, he said, "You should eat more, Sarah, put strength on yourself." Eva nodded vigorously. She knew, then.
Sara said, "I try to eat, Konstantin, truly I do. But I Have no appetite. I-" She broke off abruptly and ran for the front door. P?ts heard her retching outside. Eva had been sick too, all the way through both pregnancies.
When Sarah came back in, she was shamefaced and white as a ghost. P?ts got up and enfolded her in a bearhug. "Don't you worry, my little girl. Soon enough all this will be done and we will have a new child in the house. Everything will be fine." If Talli
Ana said, "Let me put on some water to make you herb tea, Sarah. It will help settle your stomach." She made a face at her sister. "You're going to have everyone waiting on you now. I'm jealous. Maybe I should-" Without finishing, she went into the kitchen for a pot, then outside to get the water.
Maybe I should-what? P?ts wondered. Get pregnant, too? He was sure Sergei Izvekov would be happy to help her. If Ana could halfway talk about it, she might want him to help her. P?ts scowled. Before he let that happen, he would break the Russian over his knee like a stick.
"Why so glum, Anton?" Eva said. "You should be happy-you don't learn of the coming of your first grandchild every day."
"It's nothing," P?ts said. Eva looked at him shrewdly. It was not nothing, and she knew it. He knew she knew, too. After they'd lived with each other for more than twenty T-years, keeping secrets was next to impossible. But she did not press him. Sooner or later, it would come out, and he knew she also knew that.
Maybe, he thought, the trouble with the Russians would blow over. It had before, more than once. Then he would not have to tell Eva anything. But he did not believe it. The Russians hadn't tried beating up Estonians for the sport of it before. From there to fires and murders and civil war in the valley was only a short step.
He yawned. Whatever the Russians were going to do, he hoped they wouldn't do until he'd had another sleep. By the time he woke up, Byers' Star should be in the sky. Things never looked as bad in daylight as they did toward the end of the long dark.
"I'm going to bed," he a
But she said, "I'm not sleepy yet. I was the last one up. There are always things to do, too, light or no light."
Living on a world with patterns of light and dark so different from those of Earth made people take wildly differing sleep patterns. As he rather grumpily tramped toward the bedroom, P?ts hoped he and Eva could come back into synch before too lone. Sarah and Konstantin never seemed to have any trouble with that, but then, they hadn't been married long. He chuckled to himself. Once the baby came, they'd spend less time in bed.
He pulled off his boots and cap, buried himself in covers. Aside from saving space and making a house easier to build for people who hadn't been carpenters till they were forced to be, the major advantage of a communal bed on Haven was that the people in it kept one another warm. Now he was by himself, and chilly as well as lonely.
Konstantin came in just as he was dropping off. The youngster wasn't the person with whom he'd hoped to share the bed, but warmth was never unwelcome, not here. The two men snuggled close together and slept.
Sunlight stealing through gaps in the shutters woke P?ts. It was not the brilliant sunlight he remembered from his younger days on Earth, not with Byers' Star so far away. But it was incomparably brighter than lamps or candles. P?ts found himself smiling as he got out of bed. Just leaving the house and being sure where one was going had a bracing effect on a man.
The soup was still in the kettle. P?ts fed the fire to heat it up, had himself a bowl as big as the one he'd enjoyed before he slept. As he did every so often, as he doubtless would till the day the minister prayed over his grave, he wished for a cup of coffee to get him moving quicker. They imported such luxuries in the Shangri-La Valley, but the Shangri-La Valley was a quarter of a way around the moon. BuReloc transportees in the hinterlands made do with what they could turn out for themselves.
As he ate the last few spoonsful of soup, he thought about what he would have to do once he got outside. The pigs first, he decided. Pretty soon he would have to decide which of this latest litter to keep for breeding and which to turn into hams and bacon and pork roasts and pickled pigs' feet and . . . Just thinking about it made him hungry again.
He pulled his cap down over his ears. Byers' Star was still low on the horizon, and would not yet have brought any warming to speak of. For that matter, speaking of warmth and Haven in the same breath was a waste of a good breath.