‘I’ll bet you’re just awfully tired.’ She made her voice sound as soothing as she could muster. ‘It happens to a lot of guys.’
‘Shut up, will you?’
‘I was just trying to -’
‘Shut up!’
Vida sat up and found the other pillow lying on the floor. She fetched it and lay down again, tucking it under her head. Wan went on staring at the headboard as if he were memorizing the pattern in the synthiwood.
‘Do you want to just go to sleep?’ she said.
He glanced her way, then got up and turned his back on her. Lying down, lying still felt too good for her to argue when he picked up his underwear from the floor and put it on. Through half-closed eyes she watched him walk out, saw him stoop to pick up his smock and disappear into the gather. She could hear him pulling on clothes, though, she supposed, he wouldn’t be able to get the boots back on without help. In a few minutes she heard the suite door opening, then sliding shut.
‘I’ll have to figure something out,’ she said aloud. ‘He’s supposed to get me pregnant.’
She sat up, running her hands down her arms. The smell of his sweat clung to her. Briefly she thought of taking a shower, then pulled the sheet and blankets up and lay down again. She fell asleep before she could remember to tell the lamp to turn itself off.
* * *
The stun beam wore off some hours into the evening, as far as Kata could tell. His cell lay underground. It contained a bunk with no sheets or blankets, a toilet with no lid, three smooth green walls, a smooth grey floor, and in one corner at the high ceiling, the black eye of a surveillance camera. A forceshield made up the fourth wall. Through the transparent shield Kata saw a broad grey hallway and another wall, blue in this case. To wear they gave him a coverall in a fluorescent white that would show purple in certain kinds of light and the control collar, a smooth light bit of fabric embedded with circuits. It was so lightweight, so humane, that he could forget he was wearing it. Any jailor with the right transmit could make him spasm and writhe upon the floor. That they did not let him forget. They gave him food. They had a medic examine him to make sure the stun beam had caused him no permanent injury. They told him that first thing on the morrow morning a court-appointed attorney would come to defend him. They told him he had rights; they read off the list of them while he listened, his heart pounding in hatred. Then at last they left him alone. He lay upon the bunk with his arms crossed over his chest and hated. By that point he hated no particular person or species. He merely hated. He was hate, he breathed hate, hate became his blood and bone.
At some point he slept. He woke suddenly at the sound of sapients walking down the hall and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bunk. Two human guards appeared, striding fast. They stopped just at the far side of his cell. Behind them limped his brother, draped in grey mourning rags. Kata got up and walked over to the force-field just as a second pair of guards took up a place at the other side. He could hear quite clearly, though sounds and voices seemed distorted to a higher pitch.
‘Well, Molos,’ he said in Lepir. ‘I see you still have that limp I gave you.’
‘Speak to me in Gen,’ Molos said in that language. ‘That’s the bargain I made with your jailers.’
One of the guards raised his hand to show Kata the transmit he was holding. Kata spoke Gen.
‘I’m surprised you’d come to see me.’
‘So am I.’ Molos let his crest lift. ‘As for my unfortunate leg, yes, the med tech on Souk regenerated the bone, but the nerves presented a very difficult set of problems. You were quite thorough.’
‘Not thorough enough. I wanted to kill you. I wish I had.’
‘That was obvious at the time. I’d need to be rather obtuse to have missed your intentions. Let me see, how did that go? First you ran me over with a fivewheel, then you threw me into a lake to drown. I have trouble remembering the actual incident.’
Kata said nothing, remembering that ugly afternoon on Souk. Sheer bad luck, that was all sheer bad luck that someone had come along to pull Molos out of the lake again.
‘But that’s neither here nor there,’ Molos continued. ‘I’ve come on a fool’s errand. I’m asking you to turn state’s evidence.’
Kata let his crest rustle in answer.
‘I’m asking you for the good of our people,’ Molos went on. ‘Nothing you do will save your own life.’
‘Yeah? They’re going to have to prove the charges against me.’
‘No. There are quite a lot of old ones that will do very nicely. I heard from the Ri embassy as soon as your capture hit the vids. They want to extradite. You’d have an easier time of dying here.’
‘It’d be faster here, that’s for sure. What do you want? Information about Riva?’
‘Exactly. Nalet, think! If this group goes on committing acts of terrorism, the Peronida will never lift martial law. Bit by bit, every guild, every sect, every other race on this planet will turn against us. Millions of Leps who want nothing more than peace are going to suffer because -’
‘Let them,’ Kata broke in. ‘Can’t you see? Until they suffer they’ll never fight. They’ll never take back what’s theirs. And if they don’t take it back, no-one’s going to give it to them. You’re the one who needs to think. You know what’s happened here this past week? Riva’s lit a fire, a beacon, and it’s blazing in our people’s hearts and souls. What do you think I’m going to do? Piss on it and put it out?’
Molos spread out his hands and bowed his head. His crest hung flaccid.
‘No,’ Molos said at last. ‘No, I didn’t really think you’d do anything at all. But I had to ask. I had to give you that chance.’
Kata spat into the force-field. It crackled silver and hissed. Molos stood his ground.
‘What do you think is going to happen when they kill you?’ Molos said. ‘You’ll be a martyr? A hero to the Lep cause? A real Lep at last? That’s always been the core, hasn’t it, Nalet? I feel it too. I’ve come to terms with it, but I know what it means to be caught between two worlds, two cultures, two races. You’ve never felt that we, that you, belong to our own people. Well, you still don’t. Why do you think they call you the Outcast?’
‘Stop it! I don’t want to hear it.’
‘No, I won’t stop. No more diplomat. This is brother to brother. Yes, it was stupid of our mother to do what she did, stupid of her to raise us herself, to pretend that we were human children and fuss over us the way her human friends fussed over their children. She was a shallow little thing, yes, and yes, she was only doing it to be fashionable. She kept us out of the nests, kept us away from the
mabtis,
turned us both into outcasts among our own people. Don’t you think I know how it hurt? The other boys spat on me as much as they spat on you. But at the end, when our house fell out of favour, she sent us away to safety, and she chose to remain on Ri and die with our father. It was a brave thing on both accounts.’
‘Stop it!’ Kata screamed it out. ‘Shut your filthy mouth! I will not listen to this!’
When the guard raised his transmit, Molos turned to him. ‘That won’t be necessary. The force field’s all the protection I need.’
Kata began to shake. His hands dug the air beyond his power to stop them. It was the ultimate humiliation, that his brother was in the position to spare him humiliation. For a long moment Molos considered him.
‘I’m wearing these rags for her,’ Molos said. ‘Just in case you wondered. That’s why you wanted to kill me, isn’t it, Nalet? Because I know. I know how we were set apart, and I know how you hated it, being set apart.’
As slowly as he could manage, Kata turned away. He walked, also slowly, with his head held high and his traitor hands clasped to stop their digging, to the bunk and lay down. He rolled over with his back to Molos and stared at the wall until at last, he heard them all leave.
* * *
Just at dawn Rico staggered into the Cyberguild suite to find Nju awake and sitting in the gather. The Garang leapt to his feet and called out.
‘Se Hivel! He’s back.’
Rico supposed that he was about to get the lecture of his life. At the moment he felt too sick to care, nauseated, shaky, and his head throbbed with pain. He walked to a window and threw it open for the fresh air. Outside in a pink dawn green spores fell like rain.
‘Are you ill?’ Nju said.
‘Sort of. Not really.’
‘You smell of some peculiar beverage.’
‘That’s why I’m ill, okay?’
Nju raised plumed eyebrows to the heavens and walked out of the gather. Rico heard him speaking to Hi in the hall; then his uncle strode in.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ Hi snarled.
‘You really want to know? I picked up a cheap whore, and about Datechange I bought her a bottle of something, I don’t remember what, and we both drank it, on and off all night. I don’t think I ate anything all night. I don’t remember. And now I feel like hell. Okay? That enough details?’
Hi sighed in a long exhalation of disgust.
‘What have I done?’ Rico snapped. ‘Broken guild discipline?’
‘No. I was worried about you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s dangerous out there on the streets at night.’
‘Yeah? You’re the one who runs around without your bodyguard.’
‘I’m the one who used to. Think, kid! This bombing - these terrorists. You’d make a pretty good hostage. The guild would spend a lot to get you back.’
Rico sat down on the sofa and sprawled, stretching his legs out in front of him. The pain in his head was centring itself in the middle of his forehead.
‘We can talk about it later,’ Hi said. ‘You need to sleep all day. But Palace is never going to be the same, you know. Kata’s going to die, but Riva’s won this round. People are never going to feel safe again. And you know something? They shouldn’t.’
* * *
Under the dome of her private office Aleen stood next to the crystal globe of Palace and rested one hand upon it. Vida paused just inside the door and looked around at the holosculptures in their niches. She’d loved this room as a child, with all the treasures displayed on its walls and the programmable dome. When she glanced up, she saw images of blue sky, just touched here and there with clouds.
‘So you’ve come back?’ Aleen said. ‘It’s good to see you, but I’m rather surprised.’
‘Well, it’s safe now,’ Vida said. ‘I wanted to see everyone. I wanted to see you.’
Aleen allowed herself a small smile.
‘You look good,’ she announced. ‘I like that suit. It’s an excellent cut for your figure.’
‘Thanks.’
Vida realized that for the first time in her life, she’d forgotten something. She’d written a little speech that morning, but the words had disappeared from her mind. Aleen gestured at a formfit, then sat in her datachair and smoothed her long blue dress over her lap. Vida sat opposite her and tried to remember exactly how that clever opening had gone, while Aleen considered her, neither coldly nor fondly. Finally Vida could stand the silence no longer.
‘Mama, did you love my father?’
Aleen opened her mouth and made a startled little noise - not exactly a gasp, more a stifled curse.
‘How the hell did you find out?’ she said at last.
‘Well, a friend of mine is Cyberguild - Se Hivel’s nephew, Rico. And he found out that someone had put those false files in the Protectors’ databanks. I figured out that it was Molos.’
Aleen laughed with a rueful shake of her head.
‘I always knew you were bright,’ Aleen said. ‘Not bad, sweetheart. Not bad at all. I couldn’t tell you. Do you realize that? I would have told you if I could have, but you were just a child, and you might have blurted something out at the wrong time. Sure, maybe no-one would have cared if a cull had a little cull of her own, but I couldn’t risk it.’
‘I do understand, yeah. You were right, weren’t you? As soon as someone did find out, I was in big trouble. That’s one reason I wanted to come here now, to tell you that.’
Aleen leaned back in her chair and considered the far wall.
‘As for your question, no, I didn’t love Orin L’Var.’ She was back to the self Vida knew: business-like and self-contained. ‘I admired him, though. In fact, it was almost hero-worship. He affected people that way. He wasn’t a saint or anything, but he was such a good man, so concerned, so decent, so determined to change Palace for the better. He wanted to abolish the laws that keep people in Pleasure Sect, Vida. He wanted to set us all free. He knew he could never abolish the Sect itself, mind. I don’t suppose he even wanted to. That’s what I mean about him. He had a hard-nosed practical side. He just wanted people to be able to choose to stay or go.’
‘That’s all we’d ask, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. And that’s why I had his child when he asked me to. You were going to be a kind of oh, how to put it? One day, when he had the votes he needed, he was going to bring you forward and say, see, this is my daughter. She was born in Pleasure, and I love her no less for it. And he was betting that the people in Palace would vote to let us all go.’
Vida’s eyes filled with tears. Aleen pulled a handkerchief from her skirt pocket and tossed it over.
‘Actually,’ Aleen went on. ‘It was pretty damn cold of him, if you think about it, raising a child like some kind of sacrificial animal. That’s what I mean. I couldn’t love him. He wasn’t the kind of man you did love.’
‘But did Roha know why my father wanted me?’
‘Of course not! And don’t you ever let it slip! I tried to warn you about Roha. Don’t get too close to him. Now you know why.’
‘All right. I won’t.’
‘Good. You can trust Hi Jons, though.’
‘I kind of thought so. He’s been awfully nice to me.’
‘I’m glad to hear that. I’ll have to thank him.’ Aleen looked away again. ‘He’s the only man I’ve ever given a damn about. If I were ever stupid enough to actually fall in love with anyone, I’d have to say it was him.’
‘But you’d never be that stupid, right?’
‘Don’t get smart with me, Vida. No matter what else, I’m still your-’ All at once Aleen smiled. ‘I’m still your mother.’
It was close to the eighteens when Vida returned to Government House and the East Tower. When she walked into her suite, she found Samante gone on her day off and a message from Leni waiting on the view screen. She started it playing, took off her jacket, then stood staring at the screen with the jacket dangling forgotten from her hand.