Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 2, May 2013 (17 page)

She’s new. A disruption. That’ll change.

He glanced at me over her head, but sent nothing else. His look was enough. He didn’t believe they’d change, any more than Echea would.

“Have you behaved?” he asked softly.

She glanced at me. I nodded almost imperceptibly. She looked back at him. “I’ve tried,” she said.

He touched her then, his long delicate fingers tucking a strand of her pale hair behind her ear. She leaned into his fingers as if she’d been longing for touch.

She’s more like you
, he told me,
than any of your own girls.

I did not respond. Kally looked just like me, and Susan and Anne both favored me as well. There was nothing of me in Echea. Only a bond that had formed when I first saw her, all those weeks before.

Reassure her
, he sent.

I have been.

Do it again.

“Echea,” I said, and she started as if she had forgotten I was there. “Dr. Caro is telling you the truth. You’re just here for an examination. No matter how it turns out, you’ll still be coming home with me. Remember my promise?”

She nodded, eyes wide.

“I always keep my promises,” I said.

Do you?
Ronald asked. He was staring at me over Echea’s shoulder.

I shivered, wondering what promise I had forgotten.

Always
, I told him.

The edge of his lips turned up in a smile, but there was no mirth in it.

“Echea,” he said. “It’s my normal practice to work alone with my patient, but I’ll bet you want your mother to stay.”

She nodded. I could almost feel the desperation in the move.

“All right,” he said. “You’ll have to move to the couch.”

He scooted his chair toward it.

“It’s called a fainting couch,” he said. “Do you know why?”

She let go of my hand and stood. When he asked the question, she looked at me as if I would supply her with the answer. I shrugged.

“No,” she whispered. She followed him hesitantly, not the little girl I knew around the house.

“Because almost two hundred years ago when these were fashionable, women fainted a lot.”

“They did not,” Echea said.

“Oh, but they did,” Ronald said. “And do you know why?”

She shook her small head. With this idle chatter he had managed to ease her passage toward the couch.

“Because they wore undergarments so tight that they often couldn’t breathe right. And if a person can’t breathe right, she’ll faint.”

“That’s silly.”

“That’s right,” he said, as he patted the couch. “Ease yourself up there and see what it was like on one of those things.”

I knew his fainting couch wasn’t an antique. His had all sorts of diagnostic equipment built in. I wondered how many other people he had lured on it with his quaint stories.

Certainly not my daughters. They had known the answers to his questions before coming to the office.

“People do a lot of silly things,” he said. “Even now. Did you know most people on Earth are linked?”

As he explained the net and its uses, I ignored them. I did some leftover business, made my daily chess move, and tuned into their conversation on occasion.

“—and what’s really silly is that so many people refuse a link. It prevents them from functioning well in our society. From getting jobs, from communicating—”

Echea listened intently while she lay on the couch. And while he talked to her, I knew, he was examining her, seeing what parts of her brain responded to his questions.

“But doesn’t it hurt?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “Science makes such things easy. It’s like touching a strand of hair.”

And then I smiled. I understood why he had made the tender move earlier. So that he wouldn’t alarm her when he put in the first chip, the beginning of her own link.

“What if it goes wrong?” she asked. “Will everybody—die?”

He pulled back from her. Probably not enough so that she would notice. But I did. There was a slight frown between his eyes. At first I had thought he would shrug off the question, but it took him too long to answer.

“No,” he said as firmly as he could. “No one will die.”

Then I realized what he was doing. He was dealing with a child’s fear realistically. Sometimes I was too used to my husband’s rather casual attitude toward the girls. And I was used to the girls themselves. They were much more placid than my Echea.

With the flick of a finger, he turned on the overhead light.

“Do you have dreams, honey?” he asked as casually as he could.

She looked down at her hands. They were slightly scarred from experiences I knew nothing about. I had planned to ask her about each scar as I gained her trust. So far, I had asked about none.

“Not anymore,” she said.

This time, I moved back slightly. Everyone dreamed, didn’t they? Or were dreams only the product of a linked mind? That couldn’t be right. I’d seen the babies dream before we brought them here.

“When was the last time you dreamed?” he asked.

She shoved herself back on the lounge. Its base squealed from the force of her contact. She looked around, seemingly terrified. Then she looked at me. It seemed like her eyes were appealing for help.

This was why I wanted a link for her. I wanted her to be able to tell me, without speaking, without Ronald knowing, what she needed. I didn’t want to guess.

“It’s all right,” I said to her. “Dr. Caro won’t hurt you.”

She jutted out her chin, squeezed her eyes closed, as if she couldn’t face him when she spoke, and took a deep breath. Ronald waited, breathless.

I thought, not for the first time, that it was a shame he did not have children of his own.

“They shut me off,” she said.

“Who?” His voice held infinite patience.

Do you know what’s going on?
I sent him.

He did not respond. His full attention was on her.

“The Red Crescent,” she said softly.

“The Red Cross,” I said. “On the Moon. They were the ones in charge of the orphans—”

“Let Echea tell it,” he said, and I stopped, flushing. He had never rebuked me before. At least, not verbally.

“Was it on the Moon?” he asked her.

“They wouldn’t let me come otherwise.”

“Has anyone touched it since?” he asked.

She shook her head slowly. Somewhere in their discussion, her eyes had opened. She was watching Ronald with that mixture of fear and longing that she had first used with me.

“May I see?” he asked.

She clapped a hand to the side of her head. “If it comes on, they’ll make me leave.”

“Did they tell you that?” he asked.

She shook her head again.

“Then there’s nothing to worry about.” He put a hand on her shoulder and eased her back on the lounge. I watched, back stiff. It seemed like I had missed a part of the conversation, but I knew I hadn’t. They were discussing something I had never heard of, something the government had neglected to tell us. My stomach turned. This was exactly the kind of excuse my husband would use to get rid of her.

She was laying rigidly on the lounge. Ronald was smiling at her, talking softly, his hand on the lounge’s controls. He got the read-outs directly through his link. Most everything in the office worked that way, with a back-up download on the office’s equivalent of House. He would send us a file copy later. It was something my husband insisted on, since he did not like coming to these appointments. I doubted he read the files, but he might this time. With Echea.

Ronald’s frown grew. “No more dreams?” he asked.

“No,” Echea said again. She sounded terrified.

I could keep silent no longer.
Our family’s had night terrors since she arrived,
I sent him.

He glanced at me, whether with irritation or speculation, I could not tell.

They’re similar,
I sent.
The dreams are all about a death on the Moon. My husband thinks—

I don’t care what he thinks.
Ronald’s message was intended as harsh. I had never seen him like this before. At least, I didn’t think so. A dim memory rose and fell, a sense memory. I had heard him use a harsh tone with me, but I could not remember when.

“Have you tried to link with her?” he asked me directly.

“How could I?” I asked. “She’s not linked.”

“Have your daughters?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Do you know if anyone’s tried?” he asked her.

Echea shook her head.

“Has she been doing any computer work at all?” he asked.

“Listening to House,” I said. “I insisted. I wanted to see if—”

“House,” he said. “Your home system.”

“Yes.” Something was very wrong. I could feel it. It was in his tone, in his face, in his casual movements, designed to disguise his worry from his patients.

“Did House bother you?” he asked Echea.

“At first,” she said. Then she glanced at me. Again, the need for reassurance. “But now I like it.”

“Even though it’s painful,” he said.

“No, it’s not,” she said, but she averted her eyes from mine.

My mouth went dry. “It hurts you to use House?” I asked. “And you didn’t say anything?”

She didn’t want to risk losing the first home she ever had
, Ronald sent.
Don’t be so harsh
.

I wasn’t the one being harsh. He was. And I didn’t like it.

“It doesn’t really hurt,” she said.

Tell me what’s happening,
I sent him.
What’s wrong with her?

“Echea,” he said, putting his hand alongside her head one more time. “I’d like to talk with your mother alone. Would it be all right if we sent you back to the play area?”

She shook her head.

“How about if we leave the door open? You’ll always be able to see her.”

She bit her lower lip.

Can’t you tell me this way?
I sent.

I need all the verbal tools,
he sent back.
Trust me.

I did trust him. And because I did, a fear had settled in the pit of my stomach.

“That’s okay,” she said. Then she looked at me. “Can I come back in when I want?”

“If it looks like we’re done,” I said.

“You won’t leave me here,” she said again. When would I gain her complete trust?

“Never,” I said.

She stood then and walked out the door without looking back. She seemed so much like the little girl I’d first met that my heart went out to her. All that bravado the first day had been just that, a cover for sheer terror.

She went to the play area and sat on a cushioned block. She folded her hands in her lap, and stared at me. Ronald’s assistant tried to interest her in a doll, but she shook him off.

“What is it?” I asked.

Ronald sighed, and scooted his stool closer to me. He stopped near the edge of the lounge, not close enough to touch, but close enough that I could smell the scent of him mingled with his specially blended soap.

“The children being sent down from the Moon were rescued,” he said softly.

“I know.” I had read all the literature they sent when we first applied for Echea.

“No, you don’t,” he said. “They weren’t just rescued from a miserable life like you and the other adoptive parents believe. They were rescued from a program that was started in Colony Europe about fifteen years ago. Most of the children involved died.”

“Are you saying she has some horrible disease?”

“No,” he said. “Hear me out. She has an implant—”

“A link?”

“No,” he said. “Sarah, please.”

Sarah. The name startled me. No one called me that anymore. Ronald had not used it in all the years of our reacquaintance.

The name no longer felt like mine.

“Remember how devastating the Moon Wars were? They were using projectile weapons and shattering the colonies themselves, opening them to space. A single bomb would destroy generations of work. Then some of the colonists went underground—”

“And started attacking from there, yes, I know. But that was decades ago. What has that to do with Echea?”

“Colony London, Colony Europe, Colony Russia, and Colony New Delhi signed the peace treaty—”

“—vowing not to use any more destructive weapons. I remember this, Ronald—”

“Because if they did, no more supply ships would be sent.”