Valhai (The Ammonite Galaxy) (12 page)

FIRST THING THE next morning Amanita was on the tridiscreen, clearly agitated at the news that had somehow filtered up a floor to her.

“I thought I made it perfectly clear that any non-virtual visits had to be cleared with me first!” she said. “I hear Vion visited you yesterday, and I had to hear it from somebody else!”

“Who told you, Amanita?” Grace was curious. She hadn’t said anything, and she was pretty sure Vion would have kept the visit to himself too. It appeared Amanita had ways of checking up on the 48
^th
floor. She didn’t much like that idea.

“I have my ways,” said Amanita smugly, “which are nothing to do with you. How dare you disrespect me by allowing a man to visit without my express permission?”

“It wasn’t a man,” said Grace. “It was Vion.” Then she realized what she had said. “At least, it was a man, but he was there as a doctor.”

Amanita’s look sharpened. “For you or for your mother?”

Grace could have kicked herself. She’d fallen right into that one. Now there was nothing for it but to tell the truth. She was hopeless at lying to other people, they nearly always picked up on it. “For my mother,” she admitted.

“Now what has she done?”

“Nothing. She wasn’t feeling very well.”

“Is she still sleeping in her sarcophagus?”

“Not exactly. She likes to rest in it from time to time,” said Grace, choosing her words with care, a bit belatedly.

“How utterly macabre!” Amanita gave a delicate shudder. “No question. She must be stopped. What did Vion say?”

“He has prescribed some pills.”

“What is the prognosis?”

“I . . . err . . . I am sure she will get better very quickly.”

Amanita narrowed her eyes as she examined Grace’s face. “Yes,” she said. “Or she may not. I can see I shall have to contact Vion on the tridi. As female head of house I can’t think why he hasn’t already reported to me.”

“I’m sure he will do so today.”

“Protocol requires him to do so.” Amanita sniffed. “Though I for one never thought him a patch on his father. Now, there is a man who knows his protocol to the letter, if ever there was one.” Her tone was admiring.

“I’m sure,” said Grace politely.

“If she doesn’t get better . . .” Amanita mused, “she will have to go to hospital on Cesis.”

“I’m quite sure it won’t come to that. I can take care of her here,” said Grace hastily. She wasn’t going to let them put her mother in some cold and confining institution. Ridiculous!

“. . . And that would mean you would have to move up to our floor. You aren’t old enough to live on your own down there.”

They looked at each other, both aghast at the thought, though for very different reasons. Grace, because she would lose all her autonomy and would have to put up with her sister-in-law twenty-four hours a day. Amanita, because she regarded her sister-in-law as a disruptive influence on her children, a potential agitator against the severe discipline of the spirit of Sell. Grace was, in her opinion, a lazy dissenter who could be dangerous. She would not subject her children to such an influence.

“Of course, we would be delighted to have you,” Amanita said. “Although, naturally, a daughter’s place is with her mother. Well, let’s just hope that things don’t come to that.”

“I wouldn’t want to be a burden on you either, Amanita.”

That produced a censorious frown. “You would never be a burden on us, Grace. I hope we know what our duties as Sellites are. Of course, things might have been different if you had made up your mind about what university career you are going to choose, instead of waffling about in that irritating way of yours. Your father should have . . .” She broke off.

Grace nodded meekly, which caused her sister-in-law to regard her with suspicion.

“Anyway, Grace. We expect you to do your best. You can’t be forever loafing about the place now, not when your mother needs you so badly.”

Grace nodded again.

“I expect to be informed about her progress, then. Cutting the connexion.”

Grace breathed again. Her sister-in-law had forgotten all about the failure to ask permission for Vion’s visit! She had been lucky to get away without a severe censure point for that. She checked her watch, and gave a heartfelt sigh. It was time for Atheron’s lessons, which were a necessary evil in the day of any young Sellite. By Cian, how she wished she were old enough to be free of that burden! She turned a sad step in the direction of the Study Chamber where Atheron would be waiting for her on the interscreen.

After the class she took some food to Cimma, who needed coaxing to eat anything at all these days. Then Grace made her way down to the ground floor and out onto bare planet. Again she felt the terrific release of tension as soon as she was outside. She couldn’t help but laugh. All her life she had been furious with Cimma for not having had her genetically modified, like all of her peers had been. She had always wanted to stand out at something, as each of them was able to. And now she had! She must be the only Sellite who didn’t suffer from fear of the exterior; exophobia! She gave a little skip. At last. Good at something! Well, it was really only a very little thing, but not to quibble.

“I am the best on the planet!” she repeated to herself. “Finally!”

The best on the planet nearly asphyxiated herself by crowing with delight, forgetful of the mask pack she was wearing bare planet. She stopped to fiddle with the valves, and told herself off, “You have to concentrate more, Grace. Keep your mind on your work!”

And wouldn’t I like to have a credit point for every time Atheron had told me that! She thought to herself. Not that it had done much good. She had never been top of the class at anything, and in the end he had given up on her, and concentrated on other, more qualified, genetically enhanced students. These days their classes were undertaken in a mood of mutual antipathy, tempered on Atheron’s side with a heavy dose of derisive ridicule.

The light seemed much stronger today, and she realized that Sacras was now visible well above the horizon. With the current conjunction of Cian and Sacras in the sky above Valhai, the change in the quality of the light was very noticeable. Sacras bathed the twilight zone in a distant, but golden immersion of light, making the landscape less tetric, more enticing.

She ran down the last few steps to the lake, and nearly fell in when her shoes failed to grip on the sand on the edge of the dark substance. The lake heaved a little, and then a fountain of black raised itself out of the rest, a few metres in front of her. It twisted and spun in the sunbeams from Sacras, shimmering and iridescent.

“Arcan?” She put both hands on the black surface once the welcoming fountain had subsided.

“I am here, Grace.”

“I have a question for you.”

“Ask.”

“You told me that you can move your own cells around inside you.”

“It is so.”

“Could you move something much bigger?”

There was a pause. “How much bigger?” The surface her hands were touching hummed.

“Like this package.” And Grace pulled out the pack she had prepared before coming out. It was a watertight cylinder, firmly closed at both ends.

“Put in on the surface.” Arcan instructed. “It is very big – my cells are millions of times smaller than this!”

“I know. I just wondered if the same principle would work with macroscopic things.”

“Where is it to go?”

“It is a copy of the test paper that they will ask Diva to complete. With the answers. I downloaded it this morning from my brother’s interscreen.”

“And why should your brother have a copy?” Arcan asked.

Grace looked down at her feet. “My brother’s name is Xenon,” she admitted.

The lake swirled in front of her and went even blacker than usual. Grace moved quietly back a few paces, in case Arcan would find it impossible to dominate his anger. For a moment, it seemed as if the lake would engulf her, then it subsided. She put her hands back on the surface after a prudent wait.

“You should have told me before.” Arcan was staccato in his words. Again the lake swirled.

“I know. When you told me about the apprentices who died. I thought straight away that I should tell you. But I was scared of what you would say, what you would do.”

“That is not an honourable way to act, Grace.”

She hung her head. “I know.”

“I do not understand you, but I see that the decision was truly difficult for you. You owe me.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I forgive you, so one day you will forgive me.”

Her brow cleared. “Oh, all right. I won’t forget. I owe you!”

“Very well. Now. You want me to move this package to Diva?”

“Yes, but only if Atheron is not monitoring her at that moment.”

Arcan gave a shimmer. “I think we can arrange some . . .” and all the lake seemed to glitter. “interference.” Slowly the packet disappeared, engulfed by the dark lake. Grace watched it as it got smaller and smaller and then disappeared altogether. She had to wait quite a long time before Arcan communicated again with her.

“It is there,” he said.

“Great! Can you let me speak to Diva?”

Arcan patched her through. The Coriolan girl was excited. “What is this? A packet just appeared through the walls of my bubble!”

“I am Grace. Please make sure Atheron never catches sight of the packet.”

“The interscreen blinked out a few moments ago.”

“I know, but that won’t last for long. You will have to hide the package somewhere – it is the test they will give you when you are better, with the answers.”

“Grace!” The girl was overwhelmed. “Thank you! But how did you . . .”

Grace bit her lip. “I am Xenon’s sister,” she admitted.

“Cool!”

That was not the reaction she had expected. She bent her head to one side. “Are you not cross?”

“No. It is terrific news. How else would you have been able to get the test?”

“Diva, you are really strange,” Grace told her.

“I know. Everybody tells me that. But thank you.”

“You will be expected to get three of the eighty questions wrong. If you don’t, they will suspect something. Your original score was seventy but they will expect a ten percent increase in the original score because of the time you have spent here. No less than seventy five and no more than seventy seven. You will have to decide which questions would be the most difficult ones for you personally.”

“Sure; no sweat.”

“Please destroy the test as soon as you have memorized it,” Grace told her. “If Atheron were to find it, and it were traced back to me, I would be considered guilty of treason to Sell.”

“Understood,” Diva said. “But how can I get rid of it?”

Arcan intervened. “Just post it through the wall,” he said. “I will ensure that it is never found again.

Grace remembered to thank Arcan. “You are marvelous,” she told him.

“Naturally. I am unique.”

Grace nodded. “You certainly are. I have studied up to U level, and I never heard of anything like you anywhere.”

The lake scintillated. “I didn’t think there could be.”

“Hey, hello?” A rather cross-sounding Six interrupted. “Could I know what is going on, or is it private?”

The two girls filled him in quickly.

“That’s great,” he said, “but it isn’t going to help her pass the quantum mechanics exam, is it?”

Grace pursed her lips. True. But one thing at a time. “I will see what I can do,” she said doubtfully. “But I haven’t got to quantum mechanics myself. And Atheron would never keep exams on the interscreen, even if we could get into it. He’ll have them under lock and key somewhere.”