Nimisha's Ship

Jon, looking abashed, scratched his head before he met her irate gaze.

"It might not be Doc's fault, luv. There are twins in almost every generation in my family. In fact, I'm one. I have a twin sister."

"You never mentioned her."

"It's not a fact that Fleet needed to record."

"Is it in your sister's file?" Nimisha demanded.

"She went into law," he said, still chagrined.

"Why, I'm no better than the Sh'im."

"I'd say you were not quite as good as the Sh'im, my dear," Doc remarked at his driest, "since the majority of their multiple births are triplets."

"That is small consolation." Her tone was acid as she slipped off the couch and waddled toward Cater, requesting a snack. She turned back for one more angry shot at the AI. "No wonder I eat more than Tim does." She whirled on Jon as she heard him trying to smother a laugh. "You watch out, Captain!" She waggled a finger at him.

"Whatever is wrong with having twins, dear heart?" Jon queried, striding ahead of her to collect the ordered snack and bring it back to the table. His agility only emphasised her own uncomfortable condition.

"How am I going to cope?" She turned around in her chair and shook a fist at the med unit. "And if you remind me that I have two breasts, I'll-I'll-reprogram you!"

"Not until after I've assisted your delivery," Doc said, totally unrepentant.

Nimisha snorted but was far too peckish to bother to reply as she picked up the leg of poultry she had ordered along with the vegetable salad and the baked potato that was served with other indigenous roots to which she had taken a particular liking.

She concentrated on eating as an excuse not to look at Jon, but he could outwait her petulance. He sat with folded arms, tipping his chair on its back legs, to wait until her temper improved. She finished her meal without a single word, but Jon, quite familiar now with his lover's moods, knew that she had regained a normal perspective.

"What are they, Doc? Boys? Girls?" Jon asked.

"Boy and girl. So if Nimisha will deign to accept the fact that I did not interfere in any way except to ensure the healthy development of both foetuses, I will feel less threatened."

"Well," Nimisha began, though Jon could see she was not quite convinced of Doc's innocence, "you could have warned me earlier. You've known a long time, Doc. I'm sure of that."

"Yes, I've known, but considering your speech when Hope was born, I kept my counsel. There was always the chance that one twin would dominate and absorb the other, or it would spontaneously abort."

Nimisha clutched at her belly in unconscious rejection of those possibilities. Then she allowed a penitent smile to spread across her face.

"Boy and girl, huh? Then we'll be able to use both names, won't we, Jon?"

He leaned across the table and kissed her with the tenderness that he had displayed toward her throughout her pregnancy. She stroked his cheek and allowed the kiss to continue.

"The Sh'im females will approve," she said when they parted.

"There's that," Jon blithely agreed.

Nimisha went into labour with both Jon and Syrona assisting Doc. As the medic had predicted, she had less trouble delivering the twins than she had had with Cuiva.

"But then, you've kept fit and you're a multipara," Doc said. "Second delivery," he explained.

The Sh'im were overjoyed to see that the humans could follow what they considered the best way to increase population. If Nimisha had worried about how to feed twins, she found herself overwhelmed with offers of assistance. The Sh'im suckled their offspring until teeth appeared, after which they chewed food into pulp and fed it to their young. But many continued to lactate. Since Nimisha was unable to feed the lusty twins for more than six weeks, Cater supplied formula milk, increasing its strength as the babies grew. There was always someone quite willing to feed Perria and Sven their bottles. Jon proved as devoted and affectionate a father to them as she could have wished: far superior to Rhidian, or any other man of her acquaintance.

Nimisha was as glad to be freed up from heavy maternity duties as there was so much to be done: organising improvements in all the Sh'im settlements, teaching those who were now past producing young and wished to take on new duties, and using her own engineering skills to develop useful tools. Often she thought fondly of Lord Tionel and the "toys" he had given her to assemble and disassemble. Those designs and that experience were proving to be incredibly useful now. The one disappointment, the anxiety that nagged at the back of her mind when she was falling asleep at night, was when would they hear news from home? The beacon seemed to absorb the updates Helm sent, but he reported no incoming pulses.

When Syrona had twins, Nimisha's suspicions about Doc's interference, however well intentioned, surfaced. Though there were no multiple births in either of Syrona's and Casper's families, Doc insisted that he had not interfered. Good food, proper rest, perhaps some unknown factor in the planet itself had caused Syrona's ovaries to release two eggs at once. Even the small grazers, called boks in deference to the old-Earth-type antelope they resembled, were having multiple births.