Part 44 (1/2)

Christina said, ”Who knows what Ferris knows? It appears so, sometimes.

Other times, clearly not.” As he did not seem to know, Rhani thought, when he first discussed this subject with me.... She sighed, and laid the gla.s.s down.

She did not want any more wine. Why, she wondered, did that feel so long ago?

I could still marry, she thought. I could even marry Ferris Dur. Many corporate ent.i.ties are run by committee; it does not make them less efficient. I probably know everyone on the committee, and Ferris wouldn't care as long as I was kind to him and let him pretend to be important.

Sweet mother, she thought, with fearful empathy, what does he do with his time? How does he fill his days? Dreaming up elaborate strategies which will fit him into a world in which he knows he doesn't belong? Rearranging furniture?

Snapping his fingers at household slaves?

Inexplicably she found her eyes filling with tears. She rose.

”Rhani?” Christina leaped from her chair. ”Rhani, I'm sorry, I had no idea this would distress you -- Rhani, come sit, please.”

”No, Christina, I don't want to sit.” Rhani wiped her eyes with her knuckles. Christina was gazing at her, worried and disturbed.

”Rhani,” she said slowly, ”I -- forgive me -- are you _fond_ of Ferris?”

Rhani laughed despite herself, and choked. She coughed, drank wine, and coughed again as the strong vintage burned her throat. ”No, Christina, I'm not.

I just feel sad for him. What the h.e.l.l does he do all day?”

Christina said promptly, ”He makes models.”

”Models? Of what?” She had a bizarre vision of Ferris walking through a room filled with life-sized, lifeless dolls.

”Of houses,” Christina said. ”He makes them in the bas.e.m.e.nt. I'm surprised he hasn't taken you to see them, but maybe he was saving it for a treat. He's very good at it; he puts them all together with his hands, and he tries to find original materials. His ambition, he told me once, is to have a model of all Abanat in the bas.e.m.e.nt of that house. It _is_ sad. You're not going to marry him, are you, Rhani?”

”No,” Rhani said. She went to the chair and sat, wis.h.i.+ng she were home on the estate, with Binkie sitting by the com-unit and Isis playing at her feet....

But Binkie was dead. ”No, Christina, I'm not.”

She saw Christina to the door. They embraced. The small woman's hands were steady on Rhani's cheeks. Kissing her, Christina said, ”Get out of here, sweetheart. Abanat's bad for you.” Rhani went to the window to watch her. She looked fragile as a child on the broad street.

She went upstairs. As she got to the bedroom, the thought of Ferris made her want to weep again. Mercifully the room was empty; she slid the door closed and locked it. The clothes she had worn to the Hyper district and then stripped off lay scattered around the big pink bed. Desultorily she piled pants, s.h.i.+rt, sandals on a chair. Suddenly, her knees gave way -- it felt as if the bones had jellied. She grabbed the chair arm and sat heavily on the heap of clothes. What the h.e.l.l was wrong with her? She felt her head. Her hair was hot.

A touch of the sun.... She leaned back. In a few moments, she told herself, she could go downstairs and drink something cold. Not fruit punch. Ice water. She let her head droop against the chair's back, thinking about what Christina had said. Poor Ferris -- and poor Domna Sam, realizing perhaps too late that her one and only son was not capable of succeeding her. Wearily, she plucked at the tie around her braid. It came loose, and she combed her hair out with her fingers. It wasn't fair, she thought. Our mothers had no luck with their sons. She felt disloyal, to think such a thing of Zed, but she knew -- few knew better -- how deeply wounded her brother was. Did my mother do that? she wondered. Or is there something in Chabad that transforms and destroys? Maybe A- Rae is right, maybe slavery is a moral disease, infecting us like that strange disease, that mutation they found at Sovka, what was its name -- hemophilia....

Not A-Rae. She rose from the chair and went to the com-unit. U-Ellen had told her A-Rae's true name: it was U-Anasi, or rather, had been U-Anasi until he turned eighteen. She punched in a request for Nialle to obtain all information possible on one Michel U-Anasi, who nine years back had been an Enchantean citizen. Most of the information, she knew, would have to come from Enchanter and obtaining it would take at least two Standard weeks.

Then she went to the washroom and ran cold water on her wrists until her heart subsided. I can't be sick, she thought. She checked her temperature with the gauge in the medikit. Normal. Because she was there, she felt in the medikit for the meter. She gazed into the bathroom's wall-sized mirror as she stuck the meter under her tongue. Dark crescents underscored her eyes, and she thought: Christina's right. Abanat is bad for me.

Her thoughts spiraled again. Maybe it isn't Abanat. Maybe it's Chabad.

The heat saps our strength.... But she knew that was nonsense. There were other worlds among the Living Worlds whose conditions were inimical to human life, and they, too, had been colonized and settled. Dana -- her Starcaptain, she thought with sudden tenderness -- Dana would know their names, and what they looked, tasted, smelled like, and if their children had been hurt as Chabad's children were hurt.... She pulled the meter from her mouth and stared at it.

The indicator bulb had turned from a negative pink to a resplendent, positive orange.

*Chapter Nineteen*

Dropping into the estate hangar, Rhani thought, was like a bird homing to its nest, if the bubble could be said to be a bird, if Chabad had had birds.

Dana cut the power. She swung from the bubble not even trying to conceal her grin of relief. It was good to be home. She stretched her arms to the sky. ”I feel as if I've been gone months,” she said to Dana. The hangar roof closed like two hands joining. They walked into the sunlight. Immeld, Cara, and Timithos stood on the front steps. Cara looked sour. Rhani thought of Amri, and of Binkie.

The steward stepped forward to kiss her cheek. She smelled of soap.

”Welcome back, Rhani-ka.” Immeld echoed the greeting. Timithos trotted toward the hangar to unload the luggage from the bubble. Three dragoncats swung around the corner of the house, tails waving, and she stood quite still and held out her hands for them to sniff. Recognizing her scent, they rubbed their heads against her hips. One of them -- Thoth, she thought it was -- licked her left palm.

”Where's my brother?” she said.

Cara looked at Immeld. ”In the garden,” Cara said, ”with _her_.”

Rhani bit her lip. She had deliberately put the image of the girl on the platform out of her mind. She wondered if she should wait, and let Zed come to find her -- no. ”Tell Dana to come find me when he is through in the hangar,”

she said. She went into the house. It was little changed, she thought -- she amended that as she pa.s.sed the dining alcove. The cus.h.i.+ons on the floor looked comfortable. Resisting the impulse to go to her bedroom, she walked through the kitchen and out the back door to meet her brother and Darien Riis.

She found them under the bitter-pear. Zed lay with his head in the girl's lap. She stroked his forehead. He was saying something about the Net; his hands formed and reformed a circle in the air. His eyes were closed against the sunlight which came spattering through the bitter-pear's leaves.

The girl saw her first and said a soft, swift word to Zed. He turned his head and then rolled to his feet. ”Rhani-ka,” he said. Darien Riis rose, and he gripped her hand. Rhani waited for Zed to come to her, to hug her. He didn't move. The girl watched them, an expression of bland interest on her uncanny face.

”How did the meeting with U-Ellen go?” he said.

Rhani said, ”It went well.”

”You can speak in front of Darien,” Zed said. He smiled at the girl, a loving, gentle look. ”Was he of any use whatsoever?”

”Some,” Rhani said.

”Good,” Zed said. He smiled again. ”Wonderful.” His hair was loose and tangled; he ran his fingers through it. A dried leaf dropped to the gra.s.s.

Rhani said, ”He wants to sell me a part interest in the dorazine trade.”

”Are you going to buy?”

”I don't know.” She waited for him to ask the questions she expected -- what does U-Ellen know about the dorazine business? Who owns it? How much does he want? She waited for him to say: Have they found Michel A-Rae?

He asked none of these things; he said nothing. He was not even looking at her. As a starving man watches food, he was watching Darien.

Something had happened; she did not understand it. She felt as if the ground beneath her feet had turned to sand and was changing, s.h.i.+fting, blowing across the lawn. Dana called her name and she turned toward him with relief.

”I'm here!” she called.

He appeared around a flower bed. He had put on a clean s.h.i.+rt; he looked st.u.r.dy, solid, unchanged. He came to stand beside her -- and then Rhani saw his face whiten. She glanced at her brother. Zed's eyes were wide and smoky, and his free hand was curling, long fingers crooking into claws.

He took a step toward Dana, and was checked by Darien's grip on his wrist. Rhani whirled on Dana. ”Go to the house,” she commanded. Dana backed and ran. Zed relaxed. Darien disengaged her hand from his and flexed her fingers, smiling at nothing. He reached up and caressed her cheek, as if Dana had never appeared.