Amidst a Crowd of Stars Read Free Page B

kept the sand from their eyes and water pouches that kept their beverages cold were welcomed and coveted. So long as the Homesteaders kept to their own sections of the planet, the Lujawedi didn’t care what the newcomers did with it.
    And amazingly, Lujawed remained amicably split between its nomadic natives and the newcomers who’d come seeking a better life. Unlike many of the other homesteaded planets, Lujawed had been settled without war. Marrin could take pride in being one of the original colonists. Every rotation they honored her at a city council dinner—but it had been several rotations since she’d been asked to sit upon the council.
    That was the way it went, she supposed, turning from the window where she’d been staring. Out with the old and in with the new. Only she didn’t feel old, damn it. On a planet that rotated twice as fast around its central sun, her years were doubled, but not her lifespan. She was a grandmother who felt like she ought to still be that young mother digging in the sand.
    It was largely due to Keane, who aged so slowly he seemed not to. Now Marrin watched him at his meditation in front of the small burning candle. The scent of the powder he burned tickled her nose, and she sneezed. He opened his eyes with a smile, unfolded himself from the floor and came toward her with long strides.
    â€œTime for bed,” he said.
    She turned to lean back against him, and his arms came around to hold her close. He put his cheek to hers as they both looked out the window to the land that seemed only yesterday to have been barren and brown and now shone with soft green grass and vibrant desert flowers.
    â€œSo much has changed.” Marrin sighed. “Keane, where has the time gone?”
    He turned her in the circle of his arms and kissed her forehead. “Time goes. It’s what happens to it. What’s wrong?”
    She tilted her head back to look up at him. “Nothing’s wrong. We have a grandson.”
    â€œWe do.” Keane smiled and brushed the hair from her forehead with his thumb, then let his hand come down to caress her cheek. “And look at all you’ve accomplished.”
    â€œAll we’ve accomplished,” she corrected. “I’d never have made this estate what it is today if not for your help. I’d never have been able to manage the irrigation systems that let us grow that first crop of udeji melons. And now look at us. Landowners. Largest supplier of fresh udeji melon in the entire colony.”
    He smiled again and kissed her, letting his lips linger on hers. “You should think about retiring, Marrin. You’ve worked hard. Take some time to enjoy your new grandson.”
    She laughed and squeezed his bum. “You just want me to sit around here with you, getting fat and lazy.”
    â€œI beg your pardon.” Keane made a show of sounding affronted. “Lazy I’ll give you, but am I fat?”
    She ran her hands over his hips, then up his taut belly and firm chest to link her fingers behind his neck. “Most definitely not.”
    Keane reached down and swept her up into his arms. He walked her to the bed and laid her down, stretching out along her body. “Not too heavy for you?”
    She laughed and pulled him down on top of her. “No. Never.”
    Then he began kissing her, and she didn’t think about melons or the desert or anything else but his hands on her. He lifted the hem of her gown to her thighs, then higher to expose her belly. Keane kissed the scars there. Her badges of honor, he’d called them, the signs of her pregnancies. They’d always made her feel self-conscious before him, but to Keane they represented something so miraculous and glorious he never failed to make her find them as beautiful as he did.
    Seveerans didn’t reproduce with their own bodies any longer. Science had replaced childbirth. Seveerans procreated solely via artificially inseminated