Read Online Cauldron of Ghosts by David Weber, Eric Flint - Free Book Online Page B

separate from the legal requirements for marriage. That was to protect the children. You might not be formally married to the mother or father of your child, but you were still legally responsible for the children themselves.
    All of which was well and good, and Yuri understood the dynamic on an intellectual level. The fact remained that he was a Havenite, not a Beowulfer, and like most people from Haven his basic emotional attitudes were conservative and old-fashioned. The years he’d spent as a State Security officer during the Pierre and Saint-Just period compounded the problem. Early on, he’d developed sharp differences with their policies. Given the nature of their regime, he’d had to hide his real opinions and keep an emotional distance from everybody. The end result had been a man who was innately friendly and sociable transformed into a lonely soul.
    Dammit, he wanted to get married.
    But he was almost certain that Sharon would refuse and he’d learned long ago that if you thought the answer to a question was going to be “no,” it was better not to ask the question at all. Once stated openly, “no” tended to get locked in place.
    So, partly out of frustration and partly out of a sense of duty, he rose from the bed, put on some clothes and headed for the kitchen. “Want some coffee?”
    “Akh!” Sharon rose hurriedly from the bed and grabbed a robe. “Yes—but I’ll make it, thank you very much. You’ll break the coffeemaker.”
    “Don’t be silly.”
    She brushed past him, putting on the robe and moving quickly. “Fine. You’ll break the coffee.”
    “That’s ridiculous. You can’t—”
    “ You can.” Sharon started working at the controls of a machine that, to Radamacher’s way of thinking, bore a closer resemblance to a computer terminal than a simple device to brew a drink that the human race had been enjoying for millennia. “I love you dearly, Yuri, but you make the worst coffee this side of a Navy mess hall.”
    “That’s where I learned to make coffee in the first place.”
    “I know.” She pushed buttons that did mysterious things. “For years, I had a secret belief that the reason we had such a hard time fighting the Manticorans was because of the Navy’s coffee. The deterioration that crap must have produced in the brains of our officers and ratings didn’t bear thinking about.”
    The button-pushing ended with a triumphant glissando of flying fingers. Yuri had no idea what she was doing. Programming the heat death of the universe? It was a coffee maker , for God’s sake. What was wrong with letting the gadget’s own computer handle the business?
    “And since I got here,” she continued, “my suspicion has been confirmed. I’ve talked to any number of Erewhonese who’ve had Manticoran Navy coffee, and they all swear it’s terrific.”
    Her ritual apparently done, Sharon finished tying up her robe and sat down at the kitchen table. “Oh, stop pouting—and have a seat, will you? The coffee will take a few minutes.”
    Yuri was tempted to respond my coffee gets done in no time at all but wisely restrained himself. As a friend who shared his own insouciant attitude toward making coffee had once said, “Gourmets are subtle and quick to anger.”
    He pulled up a chair and changed the subject. “Speaking of the Erewhonese, I suppose you should bring me up to date. Seeing as how I’m Haven’s ambassador to Torch and—hold your breath, this takes a while—‘high commissioner and envoy extraordinary’ to Erewhon. In the moments I can spare from being your sex toy.”
    Sharon smiled. “ ‘Sex toy,’ is it? I’ll remember that.” The smile was replaced by a slight frown. “I assume the reason you didn’t replace Guthrie as the ambassador to Erewhon also is because the Erewhonese made it clear they were not too happy with us.”
    “Yeah, they’re still mad that Haven restarted the war with Manticore before the ink on our mutual defense treaty had barely