Part 8 (1/2)

”Well?” Talia asked. Apparently he'd been studying them too long, and he'd been too quiet about it.

”I never expected to see them,” he said because he didn't know how else to respond. He wasn't sure how he was feeling. His stomach was knotted, his heart was pounding, and he had to remind himself to breathe.

Beneath all that, he was furious at Rhonda for doing this to him. For denying him not one child, but six. He had told her before they married that he wanted a family. They'd planned on two children, but six would have been fine.

Or one.

”We could meet them,” Talia said.

He glanced at her. Her face seemed different from theirs. He wanted to believe that it was the twenty-nine months' difference, or the baby fat, or the expression, but it was none of those things. Talia had become more than the sum of her features. She had become more than her looks, more than her creation, more than her inheritance. She was her own person and would be forever, at least to him. ”You know we can't.” He tried to keep the disappointment from his voice. All of that conversation earlier, and Talia still suggested this? Hadn't she understood the stakes?

”I don't mean now,” she said, a bit defensively. ”I mean when you think it's safe. Like when they're twenty-one or something.”

He blinked, turning away from his daughter-the only daughter he would probably ever be able to acknowledge-and took a moment to catch his breath.

”I'm not sure it would ever be wise to see them,” he said. ”We don't know-”

”We can't always be cautious,” Talia said.

”Yes, we can,” he said.

”But it's not fair to them,” she said.

”To them?” he asked. ”Do they really need to know what happened here on Armstrong? Aren't you saying it's not fair to you?”

That generous mouth, the one he hadn't really noticed before, thinned. She pressed her lips together, as if she wanted to yell at him, and then she finally rubbed her chin.

She had never used that gesture before. She had picked it up from him in just the past few months. ”Maybe I am saying it's not fair to me,” she said after a moment. ”But what if they want to know where they came from?”

”That's not up to us,” he said.

She made a disgusted noise. ”Can't you at least humor me? Can't you say, 'Tal, we'll revisit this when you're twenty-one,' or something like that?”

Her comments suddenly made him calmer. She planned to stay with him. She wanted him to make plans for her twenty-first year. She expected them to stay together.

The very idea, expressed so casually, pleased him more than he could say. Until that moment, he wasn't sure whether Talia wanted to remain near him for the next six months, let alone the next eight years. ”We can talk about it then,” he said, hoping she would forget he said that. He had a hunch she wouldn't. It was too important to her.

”Promise?”

”I promise we'll talk about it,” he said.

She sighed. Eight years had to seem like an eternity to her. Eight years ago, she had been five, and living with Rhonda, without the father who had ”abandoned” them.

She squared her shoulders and faced the images before her. ”Did I make a lot of mistakes?” ”We can cover your tracks,” he said. ”I've already covered a lot.”

”Good.”

He looked at the images. He understood Talia's desire to meet these girls. He felt something similar. He'd downloaded information about their families and had to stop himself from reading with great interest.

All he knew was that Gita Havos's parents were the ones still working for Aleyd. Kahlila El Alamen's had quit to become some kind of artists.

Kahlila's parents lived on Earth-Talia had been going to see them when she had been stopped. Gita's lived in a small Aleyd-owned community on Mars.

”It's addicting, isn't it?” Talia asked him.

He made himself look away. With a touch of the finger, he made both images disappear. ”It's all about the possibilities,” he said.

She frowned at him. ”What do you mean?”

”Right now, all five of the others are possibilities, to both of us. Different versions of the baby I lost. Different versions of yourself for you.”

”I don't think of them as me,” she said.

”I understand that,” he said. ”I phrased it wrong. They're living a 'what-if' for you. What if you hadn't been raised by your mother? What if you'd been adopted by one of these two families? Would you have turned out exactly like Gita and Kahlila? Or would you have been different yet again?”

”You think I'd've been the same?” The question was hesitant. He thought he heard fear in her voice. ”No,” he said. ”I think we're the sum of our actions. Yours would have been different from theirs from the beginning.”

”Because I'm younger,” she said. ”Because you're you.”

She looked at him sideways. ”We're exactly the same. The five of them and me. We're just-what did you say? Parts of the baby you lost.”

”None of you are the child I lost,” he said. ”She was very different. She probably talked at a different age, and found different things interesting. She spent most of her time interacting with me. None of you had met me. Your interactions with me are very different than they would have been if I had raised you.”

”But Mom was there for me.”

”Your mom was,” he said. ”But not for Emmeline. She barely knew your mother.”

”That's just environmental.”

”Maybe,” Flint said. ”One thing I know for certain. All six of you do not share Emmeline's consciousness. You don't even share each other's. You have different thoughts, different desires, and different interests. By definition that makes you different people. You didn't even know the others existed until the Recovery Man told you, right?”

”How could I?” she asked.

”Some twins describe the feeling of being 'connected' to each other. They know what the other is feeling even if they're several kilometers apart. Did you ever have that feeling?”

Talia shook her head. ”Maybe because we're clones,” she said bitterly.

”Maybe,” he agreed. ”But not because you're inferior. But because you had no knowledge of each other. Identical twins share a womb. They spend nine months together even if they're adopted out to different families. The twins know on a subconscious level that there's another person out there, a person they were once close to. You weren't close to the other five. You never met them, not even before you could remember. I don't think they have any knowledge of you, either. Or of each other.”

She brightened at that. ”You think that's true? Or are you trying to make me feel better?” He sighed and ran a hand through his curls, the curls all of his daughters-all six of them-had in one degree or another.

”One thing I can promise you,” he said. ”I will never lie just to make you feel better. I might have to in order to protect you, but I won't do it casually. I will always do my best to tell you the truth.” ”Even if it hurts?” she asked. That needy tone was in her voice again. Rhonda hadn't told Talia any hurtful truths. Rhonda had left that to her lawyers and her adversaries and her ex-husband.

And Talia was bright enough to know that.

”Even if it hurts,” he said. ”It's better to get it out of the way than it is to protect your feelings.” ”Why?” she asked.