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Fathers' Honor (Fallowtide Sequence 4)

Fathers' Honor (Fallowtide Sequence 4)

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THREE HEADS ARE BETTER THAN ONE

When his favorite student invites him to immigrate to the world of the fabled Eldritch, Armin Palland brings his wife and mother-in-law and all the unresolved issues he's been avoiding. That he arrives to a planet without a university to employ him leaves him stranded with nothing to do but what he does best: turn his psychology degree and analytical powers on the plight of the natives... and one native in particular.

But it was never his intention to get involved with an Eldritch father, much less an Eldritch father AND a middle-aged intransigent Glaseah who won't let him crawl back into his comfortable shell. There's a road between Armin Palland and his life-altering epiphany, and it's going to take him straight through a hospital ward, several weeks of language lessons, and his first attempt at... wargaming?

And they say old dogs can't learn new tricks....

Old friends from the Dreamhealers series take center stage for this standalone Peltedverse novel, set during the Fallowtide period after the end of the Chatcaavan War.

Genre (setting): space opera (Pelted)
Tags: parenthood; space elves; multicultural; language; psychology; getting your groove back; midlife crises
Rating: PG for references to war and violence

Excerpt from Chapter 2

Armin double-checked the local time, shook his head, and headed down the hall. Reaching the right room, he leaned on the door frame and put a hand on his hip. “You realize morning office hours should have ended two hours ago, don’t you?”

Lafayette KindlesFlame dropped his stylus and rose from his chair. “Armin!”

His friend was not a physically demonstrative man, so the hug he received was surprising. Armin returned it, though, and liked what he felt. The last time he’d seen his colleague, Lafayette had been reducing himself to gaunt whipcord with anger and depression, but the body against his was healthy, and smelled of hospital astringent and faintly of coffee, not of alcohol and sweat. And of course, the embrace itself was rare and good. Armin leaned back. “Yes, I made it.”

“I’m glad,” Lafayette said. “I assume you’re here alone because Vasiht’h is too busy to bring you by, which doesn’t surprise me in the least given what he and Jahir are up to. I’m sure he’ll be sorry to have missed the chance to show you around, but I’m glad you’re not wasting any time because, Iley, do we need you here.”

“Oh, do you.” Armin eyed him. “What else is exploding, besides what I’ve already seen?”

That inspired a lifted brow. “Depends on what you’ve already seen?”

“Let’s talk,” Armin said. “In the cafeteria. I’m assuming they have one.”

“They do, and I could use refueling.”

The dining area for the hospital involved an inner courtyard with an open ceiling, and sitting in it Armin could have believed he was anywhere in the Alliance. He thought about that while sipping his tea, waiting for Lafayette to return with his meal… which he did, and it looked like a meal anyone might have eaten in a hospital like this. He glanced at it, then at his colleague, and said, “So whose good idea was all of this?”

“You sound like you want to rap their hands with a ruler.”

“Because I do, and you know it.” Armin shook his head. “It’s like they’ve transplanted pieces of the Alliance directly onto Eldritch soil. If the problems haven’t started happening yet, they’re about to.”

“Oh, they’ve started already.” Lafayette sat with his tray and set to with a good will. “It’s just that the problems the transplantations needed to address were so extreme no one felt there was any other choice.”

“What exactly did Vasiht’h get us into?”

The Tam-illee grinned. “Nothing we didn’t want, so don’t give me that look, Armin. Admit it, the challenge already has your brain working.”

“There were plenty of challenges back where we were before,” Armin said dryly.

“But they were challenges we were expecting, and what good is that?” Lafayette shook his head. “Admit it. We were getting stagnant.”

A pastiche of the life he’d lived for decades rushed past his eyes, of classrooms and consultation rooms and his small but beloved, cluttered office where he’d entertained so many students as they navigated their way through their educations, drinking tea from his motley collection of mugs. He’d loved that room… until one day he stopped being able to look at it, and refused to examine the reasons why.

Lafayette, who was far more adept at psychology than people would assume of a healer-surgeon, let him have that moment. Armin flicked his ears outward. “I was getting stagnant. Maybe. A little. You were avoiding stagnation by trying to find something else to do until you ran into a wall.”

“Fair. But I’ve stopped running into a wall, and you’re here now, so…”

“So I’ll see what I make of it,” Armin said. And chuckled. “It suits you, whatever they’ve got you doing.”

“It does.” Lafayette grinned. “Now, as long as you’re here…”

“You do know I literally just coasted in-system a few hours ago.”

“…I’d like your opinion on a patient.”

Armin laughed despite himself. “You’re incorrigible, you know that?”

“Yes? Besides, you’ve also already started psychoanalyzing the entire planet—don’t bother to deny it, I can tell by the look on your face.” At Armin’s obvious chagrin, Lafayette chuckled. “See? You can’t stop working either.”

“That’s not exactly something I’m proud of.”

“Nonsense, you love your work. What could be better? Besides, I bet you’ve been going crazy lately with nothing to do except detach yourself from the university and make this trip…”

“Fine, fine, I surrender. But I want to catch up at some point.”

Lafayette patted his lips with his napkin and pushed his tray aside. “We will… after you help me with my little conundrum. I’ve got what I believe to be a middle-aged man—”

“All right, stop right there.” Armin’s brows lifted. “What you believe to be? Why don’t you have an actual date?”

“Because I haven’t made sense of the calendar, no one will tell me when the patient was born, including the patient, and their damned messed-up biology makes it nearly impossible to tell. I can’t even use arthritis as a marker because they don’t accrue arthritic damage at the rate they should… but their bodies don’t fix it either, because my coworker has knee problems. I’m sure he’s older than the patient. I think.”

“Why would they bother keeping their ages secret?” When the Tam-illee shot him a sardonic look, Armin shook his head. “I mean that, Lafayette. It was one thing when they were trying to stay mysterious, but this hospital represents consent to a level of medical intrusiveness they weren’t willing to accept before. That they built it means something. Unless they’re completely uneducated about the realities of modern medicine?”

“Some of them are.” Lafayette waved dismissively. “But I’m guessing it’s a combination of that and old habits dying hard. But anyway. To get back to my clinical portrait here. A middle-aged male, who had severe injuries and paralysis from a crushed pelvis, which we fixed. But he won’t walk.”

Won’t,” Armin repeated. “Not can’t.”

“I’m not pulling verbs out of thin air. I mean ‘won’t.’ He won’t even start the physical therapy. Those limbs will work now, but if he doesn’t start using them, he never will, and I can’t figure out why he won’t try.”

“That’s odd for you…? You usually have a good grasp of psychology. For a bonesaw.”

Lafayette’s grin was decidedly crooked. “I can’t wait to see you trying to adapt your treatment paradigms to this culture. Once you figure out the necessary adjustments, enlighten me. Anyway, as much as I want to coddle the patient, I don’t have the time with all the other things they need me to do. I could use advice.”

“You know I know even less about the culture than you do? You’re the one who had the Eldritch as a mentee.”

“Yes, but you’re the one trained in psychology, and I’m the impatient one that wants to do surgery on the world and get it to stop malingering.” Lafayette’s smirk faded. “But it’s important. This patient in particular, because he’s the most spectacular of the successes we’ve had so far, and as a demonstration of why we want the Eldritch to embrace medicine, ‘man who couldn’t walk becomes man who still can’t walk’ isn’t very compelling.”

“And?” Armin eyed him. “There’s an ‘and’ there.”

“Because…”

“Because you haven’t stopped tapping your finger on something since you started talking about this. First it was the fork, now it’s the handle of your cup.”

“Figures.” The Tam-illee had a sip, continued. “He’s the imperial heir’s father. That would be the imperial heir who’s married to Jahir who’s partnered with Vasiht’h. So both our students would like it if we fixed this problem for them.”

“And both of them are too personally involved to feel comfortable tackling it themselves?” Armin sighed. “All right. I can see that. And since there doesn’t appear to be a university yet for me to work at… is there?”

“Not even a blueprint for a building.”

“Then I might as well keep busy in some other way.”

Lafayette snorted. “Careful who you say that around. You might end up in some other line of work entirely by the time they endow the university.”

“If it’s work I like… that’ll be fine,” Armin replied, and was surprised to discover he meant it. Lafayette wasn’t wrong about their need to confront unexpected challenges. Particularly when the groove of early middle age was beginning to look more like a rut. Flexibility was key, both physically and mentally, if they wanted to enjoy their forthcoming years rather than endure them… and really, he didn’t need a mug collection, and he didn’t miss the one he’d put in storage to make this trip. Mostly. “So now do I get to hear how Lafayette KindlesFlame is doing?”

His friend chuckled. “Lafayette KindlesFlame is having the time of his life. Is that an awful thing to confess?”

Armin thought of the horrors of the war. “We can’t stay in mourning forever. Life goes on after trauma. You know that.”

“I do, yes.” The Tam-illee traced the handle of the mug with a finger, but from the pace of the gesture that was thinking energy, not agitation. “And I do mean it. I like it here. I like the people, both native and immigrant. I like the energy of it. I like the knotted up politics and cultural issues, because when you’ve got issues, you’re alive. Only corpses are problem-free.” He smiled crookedly. “It’s a place that needs people and work, and a lot of both. It’s been a while since any of the problems we’ve faced have been as urgent as the ones these people have. That makes a difference. To me, anyway.”

It would, Armin reflected. The same impulses would have driven the younger Lafayette into surgery: that urge to fix things, and the satisfaction and confidence that led him to privilege emergencies over routine maintenance. Maturity had taught his friend to value the mundane problems that filled most people’s lives, but this opportunity to dive headlong into immediate and urgent issues must be reminding him of his heady first days in medicine, when he’d been a practicing surgeon. No wonder he was enjoying himself! He was literally revisiting an earlier mental model, the one associated with the beginning of his career, with his whole life awaiting him.

Not bad medicine, that. The life his friend had been facing had been so painful that restarting would give him a chance to move on… and moving on would give him the distance he needed to process.

“I’ve yet to see many of them,” Armin said. “The Eldritch. A few now that I’ve gotten here, but all at a distance. I trust they exist.”

“They do, yes. Shall I take you to meet your patient?”

“Don’t even start with me, arii. He’s not a patient until he’s consented to therapy, and even if he did consent to therapy I can’t take him on as a client. I’m a psychologist, not a therapist.”

Lafayette glanced at him. “But you will see him?”

He wanted to say ‘no’, or ‘if he’ll agree to see me’ but that flash of worry in Lafayette’s eyes troubled him. “All right. But we’ll do this my way.”

“I won’t joggle your elbow.”

Armin grinned. “And I’ll keep out of your surgery. Give me a day or so to settle in, then I’ll stop by.”

“And in the meantime…” The Tam-illee rose and pushed in his chair. “Let me show you around. It’s a jewel box of a hospital but they didn’t skimp on anything.”

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