Betista, who had been laughing at one of my stories, instantly grew more serious. “She has been sick for four or five months now, though it is only in the past few weeks that her condition has grown so bad. At first it seemed to be nothing that could not be handled by the PhysiChamber, though she made frequent visits there. But when she got no better, she called in live doctors, who ordered all sorts of tests. In the beginning they thought there was a problem with her heart, so they replaced that, and then they thought it was her blood, so they did a transfusionâtook out all her own blood, put new blood in. The most amazing thing. But that did no good either. It seems to be something that cannot be fixed. She is just dying. I do not think it will be very much longer now.”
“And Jerret? What has he said?”
She grew even more grave. “He has said nothing. We are not even sure he is aware of her illness. We have sent messages by courier and stel-route to all his last several addresses, but he has not replied. The lawyer has posted announcements on all the legal channels, and embedded notices in the mail systems of the StellarNet which should pop up on his screen when he logs on under his own name, but he has not responded. We believe he is still alive, for money from his account continues to be spentâbut if he is, he has shown no interest in his mother's fate. I cannot tell you how sad it makes me, that a son should treat his mother so poorly.”
“And a mother who loved him so well,” I added. “But tell me, when was the last time you saw Jerret? How was he then?”
Betista thought a moment. “Three or four years ago, I believe. Oh, he was a fine-looking, dashing young man then! Wearing the most incredible clothesâthough I believe they were the height of fashionâall bright colors and swirling patterns and tight-fitting garments that Iâwell, I hated to look at too closely for how revealing they were. He came to visit one day completely without notice, and turned the house upside down, and borrowed a good deal of money from his mother, and was gone the next day without waiting to attend the dinner party she had thrown together in his honor. I think it broke her heart. I think that was when she began to get sick and could not get better.”
“So Jerret has not turned out well, I take it.”
She shook her head. “Nasty, ill-tempered, greedy, idle. And he has been in more kinds of troubleâ! There was the half-cit girl who claimed he'd fathered her child, though no one believed her, of course, and I have no idea whatever happened to her. But then there was a level-three citizenâa good eight years older than Jerretâwho claimed the same thing a year later, and she had the money and the tests to prove it. Then there have been the scandals over debts and strange illegal deals and I don't know what all. I don't hear the half of it, and I wouldn't want to repeat it if I did. He's been a terrible disappointment to his mother, is all I can say, and now she'll die and he doesn't even care. It's broken her heart, and I swear some days it will break mine.”
“She loved him too much,” I said softly.
“She loved him
wrong,”
Betista said flatly. “Never taught him right from wrong, good from bad. Never taught him to be a good man.”
“Does one have to be taught that, I wonder?” I mused. “Are we not born knowing good and evilâand knowing to run toward the one and hide from the other?”
“Maybeâsome of us, at any rate,” Betista said, watching me closely. “You, for instance. You seemed to have had it all sorted out pretty clearly in your head, and no one was showing you the true path from the false.”
I reached out a hand to lay it affectionately on her forearm. “You,” I said.
She made a small noise, composed half of satisfaction and half of dissent. “You had those things in your heart, for I didn't have the time to show you much,” she said. “Never met anyone with a stronger sense of justice in my life. Whatever happens to you, you won't make foolish mistakes and pretend you didn't know the difference. You'll choose wisely, and you'll choose honestly, and no amount of persuasion will change your mind.”
I liked to think that was so; I had always believed it. But these days I was beginning to wonder. “So if they cannot find Jerret,” I said, reverting to the original topic, “what happens to all of Aunt Rentley's property ? Will it be auctioned off?”
“It's my belief that the minute the notice of her death is posted on the StellarNet, Jerret will be knocking at the door claiming his rights,” Betista said darkly. “I shouldn't know what's in her will, but I do. If Jerret's not found within a year, all her property goes to that baby I told you about. The citizen's girl. She has the next legal claim.”
I did not even ask if there was a bequest for me. Aunt Rentley loved Jerret too much, even Jerret's unclaimed offspring, to put him aside for me or anyone else. Besides, as a half-cit, I could not inherit property. Some small monetary gift she could leave me, if she had a mind to, but I was not expecting this either. With my visit here, we were canceling all spiritual debts between us; nothing more solid would change hands.
“I always hated Jerret, and I never liked my aunt much, but for her sake I wish he would appear here a day or so before she dies,” I commented. “For I think it would ease her journey into that other world to have him at her bedside.”
“She would be overjoyed to see him, but it is you who have made her easy, Jenna,” Betista said. “You have done a great good deed by coming here. You are the one she has wanted to see the most.”
“Yes, but I still don't know why. If she had something to tell me, she has forgotten what it is, or cannot say the words.”
“It is you who must say the words, Jenna, and you know what they are.”
I smiled a little and nodded, for I did indeed know. “I forgive you, Aunt Rentley,” I said. And Betista nodded, and patted my arm as if I were again a child and had learned the most difficult lesson of all.
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T
wo days later, my aunt died. I was sleeping in her room, as I had promised her I would, and I was roused from sleep by one great cry. I leaped to my feet and was instantly at her side, to see her eyes wide, terrified, fixed on some visitor imperceptible to my eye.
“Jenna!” she cried, clutching at my arm with a strength I could not believe she still possessed.
“Yes, Aunt, I am here.”
“Jenna, they want you!”
“No one wants me, Aunt. I am quite safe.”
“They do, they do, they asked me for you, but I would not give you over to them,” she said, moving her head imperiously on her pillow. “Oh, Jenna, I am so sorry! I have treated you so badly! But you were so hard to loveâso hard, and dark, and small, and I wanted something soft and beautiful. Why could you not have been soft and beautiful?”
It is no easy thing to be called unlovable even by someone as pitiable as my aunt, and I felt a small part of my sympathy leak away. “I am who I am, born that way, and will die that way,” I said, though I was instantly sorry to have brought up the topic of death. “It does not matter now that you could not love me then. I do not hold it against you anymore. I have made my own life, and I am stronger for it, and I forgive you for any sins you think you may have committed.”
Her grip on my arm grew even fiercer to the point where I almost could not tolerate it. “You forgive me? All of it?”
“Every slur,” I said, smiling. “Every crime.”
“But I-I should haveâ”
“Yes, but it does not matter now. Go in peace.”
She opened her mouth as if to speak again, but the words eluded her. Again, she tossed her head on the pillow; her eyes pinched shut and she seemed to be concentrating now on interior visions. I waited for her to speak again, but she did not. Her grip on my arm loosened, and she seemed to sigh. A long time later, she sighed again. I realized she had not breathed once between those intervals.
Two more sighs, after long, long intermissions, and she took in no more breath. Her hand was still curved over mine, but its desperate pressure was relieved. Her whole body seemed caught in one moment of apprehension, the shoulders hunched forward to ward off blows, the knees slightly updrawn to protect the abdomen. But there were no more blows to fall, no more damage to be done. The PhysIV began a small, steady keening, so soft I would not have heard it if I had not been so close. The sound was so plaintive that I thought to myself,
The machine is grieving.
I was glad that something in the room, in the house, in the universe, would make the effort.
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I
had planned to leave the very day my aunt died, but the following morning, I discovered there was too much to do in the house for me to reasonably leave it all to Betista. So I agreed to stay two more days, but no longer, and I booked my return passage on an outbound cruiser. Then I joined with the housekeeper and the lawyer in tying up the details that even the tidiest soul leaves undone.
It was on the afternoon of this second day that I thought to check my stel-mail, which I had neglected for the whole of my visit. I never received a great volume of correspondence, it was true, so the fact that I had overlooked it for the better part of a week was not a particular sin. And it might not have occurred to me even now had I not been working on my aunt's computer, trying once more to find Jerret and send him the sad news. But terminals could be used for more than seeking out negligent sons, and I logged onto my own account to see what messages might have accumulated during my period of inattention.
In fact, there was only one post directed at meâbut this one held a world's worth of shock and woe. It came from Mrs. Farraday and was dreadful indeed.
“Oh, Jenna, I do wish you were here,” it began without preamble. “Janet Ayerson has run off with Joseph Luxton.”
I looked up from the screen and tried to assimilate the words.
Impossible. No one would be that foolish! Perhaps I had read the words wrong.
My mind still in a state of incomprehension, I struggled through the rest of the missive.
The whole party was scheduled to break up three days ago, and they all planned one last outing to town. Janet told me privately she would stay late, for she had some shopping to do, so I was not worried when she did not return with the others. And I thought nothing of it when Mr. Ravenbeck told me Mr. Luxton had stayed on to confer with his bankers! But the last shuttle came in, and neither of them was on it, and his friends began to ask for him at dinner. No one but me knew that Janet was missing also.
“Perhaps something's gone amiss in town,” Mr. Ravenbeck said as they finished up their meal. “A fire or some disaster. I'll take the Vandeventer in and see. Anyone care to join me?” Bianca Ingersoll immediately volunteered, but then her mother claimed to need her help on some project back in her room, and I had a chance to get Mr. Ravenbeck alone.
“Janet is still in town as well,” I whispered to him. “Look for her tooâI am afraid something dreadful has happened to her.”
He looked thunderstruck. “Janet Ayerson and Joseph Luxton both missing!” he exclaimed. “Then it is even more dreadful than I supposed.”
“Surely there can be no connection between their absences,” I said, for it had not even crossed my mind. “Unless they both have been caught in an accident.”
“Oh, it is no accident that has befallen them,” he said so grimly that I trembled. “Damnation! I have worked so hard to avert this!”
I was still bewildered and tried to question him, but he strode away from me, into his study where the terminal is always turned on. I followed him, for I did not know what else to do. He quickly called up his messages, and sure enough, there was a new one posted that very afternoon from Mr. Luxton. He had taken his personal cruiser and fled with Janet. He did not say where they were going or when they might returnâor anythingâand Jenna, Mr. Ravenbeck was in such a rage that I almost forgot my own sadness and horror.
“Mrs. Farraday, we must not breathe a word of this to anyone,” he said to me without even looking in my direction. “No one must hear of it, do you understand? If we can retrieve her, we may yet save her reputation. If we can discover where they have gone, I can go after her. She will be safe here, as she will be safe few places.”
“Oh, but Mr. Ravenbeck, what does he intend?” I cried. “Janet is a good, moral girlâsurely she would not have left with him if he had not promised marriage and citizenship!”
“He may have promised it, but he will not perform,” the master said, still in that deadly calm voice. “This is not the first half-cit girl he has charmed from a decent situation, then cast off when he grew bored. I dare not think what may happen to her, on some strange planet, with no friends, no funds, no referencesâno hopes. We must find them somehowâand we must keep her secret.”
As you can imagine, I was happy enough to promise the latter, though I had no idea how to help with the former. He bade me tell the others that he had received a message from Mr. Luxton, saying he had been called home on urgent business, and he settled himself in at the monitor like a man with great purpose. I believe he was trying to contact the central control tower to find if Mr. Luxton had filed a flight plan, and he may have been attempting other methods to follow the cruiser. I did not stayâI do not understand computer tactics. I went to the library to pass on the false story.
But I should have saved my effort. Mr. Luxton had also sent a message to Mr. Fulsome, who had shared its contents with the rest of the company. They were speaking of it excitedly even as I entered. Oh, the awful things they said about poor Janet! Their cruel comments about greedy half-cit girls and foolish wealthy men! Mrs. Ingersoll declared that the whole thing was Mr. Ravenbeck's fault for allowing his staff to mingle with his guests; she declared that the classes should be constantly and irrevocably separated to prevent such misalliances. And they all condemned our dear Janet, every one. Not a one of them realized that her life was ruined, that she was a lost girl nowârealized nor cared.
They all left the very next day, and I at least was relieved to see them go. Mr. Ravenbeck left with them, apparently off on the hunt to find the runaways. He says he will be back, no matter what he discovers, but I have not heard from him since. The household has fallen into stark disarray. I am completely incapable of functioning, and Ameletta roams the grounds at will, frightened and unsupervised.
Oh, Jenna, come back to us! We need you so desperately.
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Antoinette Farraday