Cyteen: The Betrayal (43 page)

“Yes,” he said. Of course it was yes. But he was worried. He was working with Olders a lot. It was hard, and took a lot of time, and they kept insisting he take his Rec time, when he had rather be at his job.

He was already late a lot, and Andy frowned at him, and helped him more than he wanted.

He thought he ought to talk to the Super about all of it. But he made them happy when he worked hard. He could still do it, even if he was tired, even if he fell into his bunk at night and couldn’t even remember doing it.

The Instructor said he could go and he was late again. Andy told him the pigs didn’t understand his schedule and Andy had had to feed them.

“I’ll do the water,” he said, and did it for Andy’s too. That was fair. It made Andy happy.

It made Andy so happy Andy let him curry the Horse with him, and go with him to the special barn where they had the baby, which was a she, protected against everything and fed with a bucket you had to hold. He wasn’t big enough to do that yet. You had to shower and change your clothes and be very careful, because they were giving the baby treatments they got from the Horse. But she wasn’t sick. She played dodge with them and then she would smell of their fingers and play dodge again.

He had been terribly relieved when Andy told him that the horses were not for food. “What are they for?” he had asked then, afraid that there might be other bad answers.

“They’re Experimentals,” Andy had said. “I’m not sure. But they say they’re working animals.”

Pigs were sometimes working animals. Pigs were so good at smelling out native weeds that drifted in and rooted and they were so smart at not eating the stuff that there were azi who did nothing but walk them around, every day going over the pens and the fields with the pigs that nobody would ever make into

bacon, and zapping whatever had sneaked inside the fences. The machine-sniffers were good, but Andy said the pigs were better in some ways.

That was what they meant in the tapes, Florian thought, when they said one of the first Rules of all Rules was to find ways to be useful.

ii

Ari read the problem, thought into her tape-knowing, and asked maman: “Does it matter how many are boys and how many are girls?”

Maman thought a moment. “Actually it does. But you can work it as if it doesn’t.”

“Why?”

“Because, and this is important to know, certain things are less important in certain problems; and when you’re just learning how to work the problem, leaving out the things that don’t matter as much helps you to remember what things are the most important in figuring it. Everything in the world is important in that problem-boys and girls, the weather, whether or not they can get enough food, whether there are things that eat them-but right now just the genes are going to matter. When you can work all those problems, then they’ll tell you how to work in all the other things. One other thing. They’d hate to tell you you knew everything. There might be something else no one thought of. And if you thought they’d told you everything, that could trick you. So they start out simple and then start adding in whether they’re boys and girls. All right?”

“It does matter,” Ari said doggedly, “because the boy fish fight each other. But there’s going to be twenty-four blue ones if nobody gets eaten. But they will, because blue ones are easy to see, and they can’t hide. And if you put them with big fish there won’t be any blue fish at all.”

“Do you know whether a fish sees colors?”

“Do they?”

“Let’s leave that for a moment. What if the females like blue males better?”

“Why should they?”

“Just figure it. Carry it another generation.”

“How much better?”

“Twenty-five percent.”

“All those blue ones are just going to make the big fish latter and they’ll have lots of babies. This is getting complicated.”

Maman got this funny look like she was going to sneeze or laugh or get mad. And then she got a very funny look that was not funny at all. And gathered her up against her and hugged her.

Maman did that a lot lately. Ari thought that she ought to feel happier than she was. She had never had maman spend so much time with her. Ollie too.

But there was a danger-feeling. Maman wasn’t happy. Ollie wasn’t. Ollie was being azi as hard as he could, and maman and Ollie didn’t shout at each other anymore. Maman didn’t shout at anybody. Nelly just looked confused a lot of the time. Phaedra went around being azi too.

Ari was scared and she wanted to ask maman why, but she was afraid maman would cry. Maman always had that look lately. And it hurt when maman cried.

She just held on to maman.

Next morning she went to playschool. She was big enough to go by herself now. Maman hugged her at the door. Ollie came and hugged her too. He had not done that in a long time.

She looked back and the door was shut. She thought that was funny. But she went on to school.

iii.

RESEUNE ONE left the runway and Jane clenched her hands on the leather arms of the seat. And did not look out the window. She did not want to see Reseune dwindle away. She bit her lips and shut her eyes and felt the leakage down her face while the gentle acceleration pressed her into the seat.

She turned her face toward Ollie when they reached cruising altitude. “Ollie, get me a drink. A double.”

“Yes, sera,” Ollie said, and unbelted and went to see to it.

Phaedra, sitting in front of them, had turned her chair around to face her across the little table. “Can I do something for you, sera?”

God, she needs to, doesn’t she? Phaedra’s scared. “I want you to make out a shopping list. Things you think we’ll need on-ship. You’ll have to place some orders when we make station. There’s an orientation booklet in the outside pocket. It’ll review you on procedures.”

“Yes, sera.”

That put a patch on Phaedra’s problems. Ollie was walking wounded. He had asked her for tape. He-had asked her for tape, azi to Supervisor; and she had refused him.

“Ollie,” she had said. “You’re too much a CIT. I need you to be. Do you understand what I’m, saying?”

“Yes,” he had said. And held up better than she had.

“One for yourself too,” she yelled at him, over the engine noise; and he looked around and nodded understanding. “And Phaedra!”

Peggy came up to Ollie’s side at the bar, wobbled as the plane hit a little chop and then ducked down and took out a pair of glasses.

For Julia. Back in the back. Julia and Gloria.

“You’ve ruined my life!” Julia had screamed at her in the terminal. Right in front of Denys, the azi, and the Family that had come to see them off. While poor Gloria stood there with her chin quivering and her eyes running over. Not a bad kid. A kid who had had too much of most things, too little of what mattered, and who stared at the grandmother she had hardly ever seen and probably looked for signs of ultimate evil about her person. Gloria had no idea in the world what she was going to. No idea in the world what ship discipline meant, or the closed steel world of a working station.

“Hello, Gloria,” she had said, nerving herself, trying not-God, not ever-to compare the kid against An-against Ari, who might hear a plane take off and might look up and realize it was RESEUNE ONE. Nothing more than that.

Gloria had run over to her mother. Who was about to hyperventilate. Who managed, atop it all, to impart a sense of the ridiculous to their departure. It was probably just as well they were traveling with Reseune Security. There was no trusting Julia not to bolt and run in Novgorod.

Irrationally afraid of the shuttle, the void, the jumps, all the things that involved a physics Julia had never troubled herself to learn and now decided she could not personally rely on.

Too bad, kid. I wish I could make a bubble for you where things work the way you want. I’m sorry it all overwhelms you.

It did from the moment you were born. Sorry, daughter. I’m really sorry about that.

Sorry you’re going with me.

Ollie brought back the drinks. He was pale, but he was doing quite well, considering. She managed to smile at him when he handed her hers, and he looked at her again when he sat down with his own drink in hand.

She had taken half of hers down without noticing it. “I’ll be all right,” she said, and lifted the glass. “Skoal, Ollie. Back where I came from. Going home, finally.”

And on her second double: “It feels like I was twenty again, Ollie, like nothing of Reseune ever happened.”

Or she had gotten that part of her numb for a while.

iv.

Phaedra was not at the playschool. Nelly was. Nelly was easy to get around. Sam could push her in the swing really high. Nelly worried, but Nelly wasn’t going to stop them, because she would be mad at Nelly and Nelly didn’t like that.

So Sam pushed her and she pushed Sam. And they climbed on the puzzlebars.

Finally Jan came after Sam and Nelly was walking her home when uncle Denys met them in the hall.

“Nelly,” Denys said, “Security wants to talk to you.”

“Why?” Ari asked. Of a sudden she was afraid again. Security and Nelly were as far apart as you could think of. It was like everything else recently. It was a thing that didn’t belong.

“Nelly,” Denys said. “Do what I say.”

“Yes, ser,” Nelly said.

And Denys, big as he was, got down on one knee and took Ari’s hands while Nelly was going. “Ari,” he said, “something serious has happened. Your maman has to go take care of it. She’s had to leave.”

“Where’s she going?”

“Very far away, Ari. I don’t know that she can come back. You’re going to come home with me. You and Nelly. Nelly’s going to stay with you, but she’s got to go take some tape that will make her feel better about it.”

“Maman can too come back!”

“I don’t think so, Ari. Your maman is an important woman. She has something to do. She’s going-well, far as a ship can take her. She knew you’d be upset. She didn’t want to worry you. So she said I should tell you goodbye for her. She said you should come home with me now and live in my apartment.”

“No!” Goodbye. Goodbye was nothing maman would ever say. Everything was wrong. She pulled away from Denys’ hands and ran, ran as hard as she could, down the halls, through the doors, into their own hall. Denys couldn’t catch her. No one could. She ran until she got to her door, her place; and she unclipped her keycard from her blouse and she put it in the slot.

The door opened.

“Maman! Ollie!”

She ran through the rooms. She hunted everywhere, but she knew maman and Ollie would never hide from her.

Maman and Ollie would never leave her either. Something bad had happened to them. Something terrible had happened to them and uncle Denys was lying to her.

Maman’s and Ollie’s things were all off the dresser and the clothes from the closet.

Her toys were all gone. Even Poo-thing and Valery’s star.

She was breathing hard. She felt like there was not enough air. She heard the door open again and ran for the living room.

“Maman! Ollie!”

But it was a Security woman who had come in; she was tall and she wore black and she had got in and she shouldn’t have.

Ari just stood there and stared at her. The woman stared back. The uniformed woman, in her living room, who wasn’t going to leave.

“Minder,” Ari said, trying to be brave and grown-up, “call maman’s office.”

The Minder did not answer.

“Minder? It’s Ari. Call maman’s office!”

“The Minder is disconnected,” the Security woman said. And it was true. The Minder hadn’t said a thing when she had come in. Everything was wrong.

“Where’s my mother?” she asked.

“Dr. Strassen has left. Your guardian is Dr. Nye. Please be calm, young sera. Dr. Nye is on his way.”

“I don’t want him!”

But the door opened and uncle Denys was there, out of breath and white-faced. In maman’s apartment.

“It’s all right,” Denys panted. “Ari. Please.”

“Get out!” she yelled at uncle Denys. “Get out, get out, get out!”

“Ari. Ari, I’m sorry. I’m terribly sorry. Listen to me.”

“No, you’re not sorry! I want maman! I want Ollie! Where are they?”

Denys came and tried to take hold of her. She ran for the kitchen. There were knives there. But the Security woman dived around the couch and caught her, and picked her up while she kicked and screamed.

“Careful with her!” Denys said. “Be careful. Put her down.”

The woman set her feet back on the floor. Denys came and took her from the woman and held her against his shoulder.

“Cry, Ari. It’s all right. Get your breath and cry.”

She gasped and gasped and finally she could breathe.

“I’m going to take you home now,” Denys said gently, and patted her face and her shoulders. “Are you all right, Ari? I can’t carry you. Do you want the officer to? She won’t hurt you. No one’s going to hurt you. Or I can call the meds. Do you feel like you want me to do that?”

Take you home was not her home anymore. Something had happened to everyone.

Denys took her hand and she walked. She was too tired to do anything else. She was hardly able to do that.

Uncle Denys took her all the way to his apartment, and he set her down on his couch and he had his azi Seely get her a soft drink.

She drank it and she could hardly hold the glass without spilling it, she was shaking so.

“Nelly is staying here,” uncle Denys said to her, sitting down on the other side of the table. “Nelly will be your very own.”

“Where’s Ollie?” she asked, clenching the glass in her lap. “With your maman. She needed him.”

Ari gulped air. It was a good thing, she thought, if maman had to go somewhere, maman and Ollie ought to be together.

“Phaedra’s gone with them,” Denys said.

“I don’t care about Phaedra!”

“You want Nelly, don’t you? Maman left you Nelly. She wanted Nelly to go on taking care of you.”

She nodded. There was a large knot in her throat. Her heart was ten times too big for her chest. Her eyes stung.

“Ari, I don’t know much about taking care of a little girl. Neither does Seely. But your maman sent all your things here. You’ll have your very own suite, you and Nelly, right in there, do you want to go see where your room is?”