“The Food Processor won’t know how to cook it,” Tedra said softly, kissing his neck, his bare chest.

She didn’t see the couple who came in from the balcony at that point, but Challen did. What Tedra saw was her barbarian looking suddenly ill at ease, extremely so.

“Before this becomes more embarrassing than it is, best we make ourselves known.”

Tedra turned with a start, but then she thought she understood what was wrong with her warrior. She’d blown it but good.

“I didn’t know we had an audience,” she said. “Maybe I should apologize for pushing you over.”

“No,” he choked out.

“For screaming at you, then?”

“No.”

Now she frowned. “Then what are you disconcerted about? That’s just your uncle. Do you think he doesn’t know what we do in here?”

He merely groaned in answer this time, and Tedra turned to glare at Lowden and the woman with him. The woman was smiling. Lowden was for once not looking disapproving. Tedra could have sworn, in fact, he was trying not to laugh.

“Haven’t we seen enough of each other this week, Lowden uncle? Much as I enjoyed it, I’ve got other things to-”

Challen’s hand cut that off, plastered flat to her mouth. “Woman, that is not my uncle. Those are my parents!” he hissed in her ear before letting her go.

“But he’s identical to Lowden,” Tedra pointed out, as if Challen couldn’t see that. “You do cloning here and never bothered to mention it?”

“Lowden is my twin brother,” Chadar Ly-San-Ter interrupted at that point. “And may I make known to you Haleste, the mother of my children. We welcome you to our family, daughter.”

“Thanks, but I don’t need parents at this late date.”

The older couple laughed, but the woman said, “She speaks very strangely, Challen.”

“It is a long story, mother.”

“Mother?” Tedra cut in, startled. “She’s your mother? An actual mother?” And then to Haleste: “Oh, you poor woman.”

“Challen?” Haleste, asked, confused.

“A long story, mother,” Challen repeated, thought about putting his hand over Tedra’s mouth again, but tried jarring her memory first. “Parents? Relatives? You remember when you first met my uncle and we spoke of this?”

“I’ve made the connection, babe. I just forgot for a while that that kind of stuff goes on down here.”

“Stuff?”

“Women having babies. It’s-”

“What you will do as the mother of my children,” Challen finished for her.

“The wha- Oh, no.” She shook her head, wide-eyed. “Women don’t do that where I come from.”

Three pairs of eyes looked at her as if she’d gone off the deep end. “Then who does?” Challen finally got out. “Your men?”

“Real cute,” Tedra snorted. “No one does, of course.”

“Then how can your race survive?”

She finally realized where they were coming from. “Don’t get me wrong. We have children, we just don’t have to bear them.”

“Challen, where does this woman come from that this can be so?” his father wanted to know.

But Haleste replied, taking his arm and leading him toward the door. “It indeed must be a long story, Chadar, as he has said, and we will hear it soon enough. Best we leave them alone now to decide the matter of our grandchildren.”

Challen hardly noticed their going. He had about lost his patience, but not the topic under discussion. “Woman, you contradict yourself. You cannot have children without bearing them.”

“We can,” Tedra said smugly now that they were alone. “An adult female can produce two or even a dozen babies a year, depending on how many are needed-Population Control is strictly monitored. All she has to do is donate the cells when she’s asked and then has nothing more to do with it.”

“Have you done this?”

“No. Only cells from the most intelligent females are requested. I don’t fall into that category.”

“I will not believe you lack intelligence.”

“Thanks, but when I said most intelligent, I was talking certified geniuses. It doesn’t guarantee a child genius. It just betters the odds.”

“But how-who, then, bears the child?”

“Not who, what. If we can make a perfect simulation of a man or woman in android form, don’t you think we can simulate a perfect womb? Babies are the jurisdiction of Population Control. They go through gestation in an artificial womb we still call a tube, where their growth and development are under constant surveillance. Their education is begun even before they are ‘born’ from this, and continues in the Child Centers until they are old enough to have their interests and talents established and matched, between the ages of three and five. This is when they are sent to the appropriate schools for training in their life-careers.”

“This is how you were raised, in these centers and schools?”

“Certainly. It’s how every Kystrani is raised.”

“It is not how our children will be raised.”

She knew that this-is-the-end-of-the-discussion look. “All right, if it’s so important to you, when we get to Kystran we can donate our gene cells together. It’s never been done before, but I’m sure something can be worked out so the child can be turned over to you when it’s ready.”

“You would not want it?”

“What for? I told you, Population Control raises babies, donators don’t.”

“No,” he said flatly. “It will not be done this way. It will be done as it is meant to be done. You will carry my child inside you. You will bear it. You will be its mother.”

“Are you nuts? I’m supposed to be the first Kystrani in centuries to bear a child? I’m not dumb, you know. The reason we stopped doing it that way was not just because it’s dangerous, it also hurts like hell.”

“So you took away a little pain, but you also took away a child’s right to know its parents’ love.”

What she had always felt the lack of, love, any kind of love. Tedra sat down, feeling suddenly confused. “I-I need to think about this, Challen.”

“This you may do, certainly, but the matter is decided.” He drew her gently back into his arms to hold her before he told her, “You already carry my child, chemar. ”

Chapter Forty-two

Challen was exploring the ship. That ought to keep him busy for hours, or so Tedra hoped, and keep Martha busy, too. They’d Transferred up together. He’d have it no other way. Sometimes she got the feeling the barbarian didn’t trust her. Maybe he had good reason.

Tedra locked herself in Medical and stared at the meditech unit, which would give her the answers she needed-no, not answers, just one. She’d already figured out how she might have got pregnant, but not the technicalities of it. Like so many other things she was learning she’d always taken for granted, birth control was just one more. On an automated world, however, such things weren’t left to chance. Birth control was administered to everyone whether they wanted it or not. It was in the food, in everything Kystrani consumed. But Tedra hadn’t been eating Kystrani food lately, not since she’d met up with the barbarian. And if she was supposed to have been taking some other sort of precaution while she was off ship, that must have been a subject her World Discovery class hadn’t got to before she changed careers.

She could be pregnant. Challen was certain that she was. And he based his belief on the fact that he’d stopped taking birth control, too. Talk about your double whammy. But she’d found out a lot of new things in the past few days since he’d dropped that bomb on her. Barbarians’ birth control was in their dhaya wine, something only warriors drank, so only warriors controlled it. But there was a reason behind that, since once a warrior chose the mother for his children, they were hooked up for life, and that was the meaning behind those words that had sounded so formal to her when he told her his life was hers. They were formal. Challen had married her barbarian-style, and she hadn’t even known it!