Star Wars_ I, Jedi - Michael A. Stackpole [2]
Mirax decided she wanted children.
I have nothing against kids—as long as they go home with their parents at the end of the day. Expressing this opinion in those terms to Mirax was not the smartest thing I had ever done and, in fact, proved to be one of the more painful ones. The hurt and pain in her eyes haunted me for a long time. Deep down, I knew there would be no dissuading her, and I wasn’t even sure, in the end, I wanted to.
I did try, however, and employed most of the standard arguments to do so. The “this is an unsettled time in the galaxy” ploy lost out to the fact that our parents had faced a similar choice and we’d turned out pretty well. The “uncertainty of my job” argument wilted beneath the logic of my life insurance and then withered away when Mirax gave me a glimpse at the accounts files—the real ones—for her import/export business. She pointed out that she could easily support the three or four of us and I’d not have to work a single second, outside of caring for the children. And, she noted, that carrying a child for nine full months meant she would already have 3.11 years of forty-hour weeks of child-care logged and that I would owe her.
Over and above all that, she said I’d make a great father. She noted that my father had done a great job with me. Having learned from him the skills of being a father, she just knew I’d be wonderful with kids. In using that argument, she turned the love and respect I had for my father around on me. She made it seem as if I was dishonoring his memory by not bringing children into the world. It was a most persuasive argument, as she knew it would be, and hammered me pretty hard.
In retrospect, I should have given up at the start and saved the two of us a great deal of grief. She makes her living—a very good living, it turns out—convincing all sorts of folks that junk no one else wants is absolutely vital to them. While she engaged me in logical discussions—focusing my defenses on that avenue of attack—she slipped past my guard on a purely emotional level. Little comments about what kind of child our genetic lottery would produce got me investing brainsweat in solving that puzzle. That went straight to the detective training in me—the training that wouldn’t let me drop a case until I had an answer.
Which, in this case, meant a child.
She also managed to flick on the HoloNet monitors when some event featuring news about Leia Organa Solo’s three-year-old twins was being shown. The children were frighteningly cute and their very existence had been blamed for a baby-binge in the New Republic. I knew Mirax was not so shallow as to be wanting a child out of envy or to be trendy, but she did note that she was Leia’s age, and that it was a good time to have a child or two.
And that cuteness factor really can get under your skin. The New Republic media avoided showing the twins drooling and dripping the way children do, and they really maximized the appealing things about the toddlers. It got so that when I did remember dreams, they were of me cradling a sleeping child in my arms. Oddly enough, I stopped thinking of those dreams as nightmares pretty quickly and did my best to preserve them in my mind.
Realizing I was lost, I began to bargain for time. Mirax flat refused to accept fixed time dates, mainly because I was thinking in years, so I made things conditional. I told her once the Invids were taken care of, we’d make a final decision. She accepted my decision a bit better than I expected, which started preying on me, and making me feel guilty. I would have thought that was a tactic she’d decided to use, but she thought guilt was a hammer and she’s definitely a vibroblade fan.
I exhaled slowly again. “Whistler, remind me when we get home, Mirax and I need to make a decision on this baby thing, now, not later. Tavira’s not going to dictate my life.”
Whistler’s happy high staccato sailed down into a low warning tone.
I glanced at