Amidst a Crowd of Stars Read Free Page A

his familiar beauty. He reached out a hand, and she took it.
    â€œShe’ll be fine,” he told her. “She has the best medica. The best care. And she’s stronger than you think, Marrin.”
    Marrin linked her fingers in his. “She’s been in labor for more than a day. If she doesn’t have the baby soon—”
    â€œThey will take care of her,” he soothed. “And Sarn is with her. He will let us know when something happens.”
    Marrin nodded, knowing Keane was right. She gave him a grateful smile. “Now is the time when you remind me it’s time for me to let go. Again.”
    He pulled her into his embrace with a gentle laugh and nuzzled her neck. “Aliya is with her husband, doing what mothers have done for hundreds of rotations. What you did, without benefit of such fine facilities, I might add. And you survived it.”
    Marrin looked around at the pale blue walls, the soothing art, the soft and comfortable furniture meant to cradle those waiting for news of their loved ones. “I gave birth to Hadassah in my own bed with the vadid howling in my ears and Raluti telling me the wind meant good fortune for births. What she really meant was it was fortunate for those outside the hut because they wouldn’t have to listen to me screaming.”
    â€œBut you did it,” he reminded. “In a place you didn’t know, with people who weren’t yours.”
    She squeezed his hand. “So much has changed since then. There were no medicas. No town, really. No paved roads.”
    He nodded and smiled and hugged her closer against him. “Aliya will be fine. She’ll have this baby in a few more hours, and you’ll be a grandmother.”
    Marrin made a small groan. “I don’t know if I’m ready to be a grandmother.”
    â€œWell, I’m ready to be a grandfather.” Keane ran his hands down her back. “I look forward to cradling a small one.”
    Marrin tightened her arms around him. “Are you sorry you never had any of your own?”
    â€œI have three of my own. Just because they didn’t spring from my seed makes them no less mine.”
    She tilted her head to look at him. How lucky she had been the day he walked off the freighter with her letter in his hand.
    â€œI love you.”
    He kissed her forehead. “I love you too.”
    The hours passed. The baby was brought forth. The mother and father were congratulated and the infant admired, the family expanded by one.
    Marrin held her tiny newborn grandson in her arms and sought signs of Aliya’s father Seth in the tiny boy’s face. She found it in the crinkle of his forehead as he frowned, and she wept, kissing the spot and wetting his little face with her tears.
    At home, when they had left the new parents to rest, Marrin stayed quiet. Thinking. Lujawed had rotated past its sun a multitude of times since she’d arrived, a young woman with two small daughters and an idealistic, unrealistic husband set on changing their lives.
    Their lives had changed all right. Seth had found the plot of land granted them by the Interstellar Homestead Act didn’t quite live up to the photos in the brochure he’d shown her. If they wanted green grass and a tidy little cottage, they’d have to work on it. Work hard.
    Lujawed in those days was habitable only by sweat and effort. By hauling water up from wells dug so deep they needed to be lined with lliwrock to keep them from collapsing. By erecting buildings that could stand up to the vadid , the ever-present desert wind that howled and bit and ground away at the surface of everything, leaving it pitted and scarred.
    They’d had help from the natives, grateful to trade their labor for the luxuries brought in on the Homestead Freighters. Nomads, the Lujawedi had no use for permanent dwellings. They didn’t understand the need for roads, for sanitation facilities, for hospitals. Goggles that