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knew which direction to go. He slumped against a scarred wall, his knees trembling.

He felt dull and listless, unaware … and when the sharp-edged shadow fell over him from a

descending tendrilless scout ship, he leaped to his feet. He hadn’t even heard it coming! The

enemy had found him! Jommy was entirely exposed, out in the open. He looked around, but

could find no place to hide.

The tendrilless craft’s hot landing jets blasted up gravel in the debris-filled street. Jommy

began to run, but he overcompensated. He didn’t see a broken cinderblock at his feet and he

tripped, sprawling into the sharp shards. He got to his knees, crawled along, then lurched up

so he could run again. The tendrilless scout landed directly in front of him, blocking the street.

Jommy fell backward, turned about, and tried to scramble away in the other direction. The

scout ship had weapons mounted in its nose. He was surprised the pilot didn’t just open fire on

him. Panic yammered through him as he heard the door open. Someone stepped out.

“Jommy,” a woman’s voice called. “Jommy Cross. I know that’s you.”

He recognized something in the timbre, the tone, though he could feel nothing, pick up no

vibrations or thoughts. He turned to find a woman running down the ship’s ramp, rushing

toward him. Joanna Hillory.

When she reached him, her face was angry, relieved, anxious. “I’ve been looking for you! I

drove away that mob in the palace, but then I lost you. I was just thrilled to know you were

alive. I’ve been searching—”

He faced her, trying to look strong and brave. He thought he had already convinced her

that true slans did not have to be the mortal enemies of the tendrilless, but she had been

unable to stop the devastating attack. “What do you want, Joanna? Your tendrilless have

followed through on their threats. Look what they’ve done. Look at what’s happened to Earth.

Are you proud?”

“I didn’t want to be part of that, Jommy, and you know it.” She took his arm, helped him

forward. “I couldn’t stop the initial attack, but we can still do something. We can still work

together.”

“Good,” he said bitterly, bowing his head to show her the small bloody stumps on the back

of his skull. “Because I’m one of you now. I’m a tendrilless.”

*

*

*

She led him aboard her ship, where she cleaned and bandaged his wounds, gave him

metabolism enhancers, and applied healing ointments so he could recover. From her

expression and her movements, Jommy could tell that she was revolted by what the mob had

done to him. Though the tendrilless were perfectly happy to kill slans, this sort of abominable

torture was beyond her comprehension. “Jommy, I’m so sorry.”

He lay on the cot in the tiny medical alcove of her scout craft. “There’s nothing you can

do.” Her medical packs could not grow back his tendrils. “Why did you come here after me?

You should have stayed on Mars, stopped their plans.”

“The Tendrilless Authority sent me to search for you. They’re afraid of you, Jommy. They

say you’re the most dangerous man alive.”

“I don’t have any powers, not any more.”

“I was happy to accept the mission, Jommy. I knew I could track you down. I picked up a

tiny slan signal from the area. I wasn’t surprised that you came back to the ruins of the

palace—otherwise I would never have found you.”

“I should have stayed with my friends, helped the President.”

“Do you know what they’re planning? Kier Gray has requested a summit meeting, trying

to put an end to the hostilities.” She explained the message she had received en route. “The

Authority is going to send a representative, and it’s Jem Lorry. I don’t trust him. He’s going to

set a trap, somehow.”

“Lorry? I don’t trust him, either,” Jommy said.

Jommy sat up, deciding he had rested enough. Driving away the remnants of his shocked

sadness, he reached a brave conclusion and looked at Joanna, wondering if he could count on

her, if she would support his work. Even without his tendrils, he had his mind, he had his

physical strength, he had his “normal” senses.

“I am still a true slan—and I have work to do.”

«
^
»

With her link to Jommy brutally severed, Kathleen felt as if she had fallen into a black hole.

Grief was like tar all around her. Now she understood all too well how much pain and misery

Jommy must have gone through after
she’d
been shot, after he had spent years believing she

was dead.

Her whole body felt numb. She wasn’t cold: just empty, lifeless, as if someone had cut a

huge hole in her heart.

In Granny’s ranch house, she sat at the kitchen table, and her father took a chair across

from her, angry at what had happened, sympathizing with his daughter. With a clatter of

dishes, the old woman rummaged in her cupboards and brought out a small china plate

adorned with a goldenrod flower design. She scooped up a piece of the still-warm apple pie,

added a dollop of ice cream from her icebox, and presented it to Kathleen.

Despite the delicious smells, she looked up at Granny. “I’m not hungry.”

“Of course you’re not. But this pie is soooo good, Granny knows you’ll want to taste it. Be

the first, and tell us if it’s good enough to serve to those important dignitaries who are on their

way.”

“Jommy’s dead. A piece of pie isn’t going to solve my problems.”

The old woman cackled. “Good food often makes things seem a whole lot better. Just like

money does.” She grinned. Her teeth were crooked.

Petty lounged against the kitchen wall, completely unsympathetic. “We’re going to have to

do another load of laundry if that girl keeps going through handkerchiefs.” He sidled over, got

himself a plate from the cupboard, and moved to the freshly cut pie.

Granny yanked it away from him. “Don’t you dare.” She put the pie on a high shelf.

Because her father was also a slan, even without tendrils, Kathleen could sense his thoughts

and his presence, but the connection was not the same as what she’d shared with Jommy.

“I know how you feel, Kathleen. I lost my wife—your mother,” he said. “Though we kept

our relationship a secret. There’s so much you don’t know about me.”

She blinked at him. “But you raised me. I know all about you. I’ve read your biography.”

“That was just a manufactured biography. President Kier Gray had to have a completely

clean slate, an untarnished reputation. The truth about me was the most classified secret in my

government. I had to make sure people like
him
,” he jabbed an elbow in the direction of Petty,

“would never discover who you really were. If they used that information against me,

everything I was secretly working toward would fail.”

“If you were so good at covering up embarrassing details, Mr. Slan President, how come

you didn’t just hide your brat?” Petty said.

Gray ignored him, focusing only on Kathleen. He reached out to wipe the tears from her

face. “I was born without tendrils, though my parents explained my heritage. I knew about the

tendrilless, knew what they were, and they prepared me for the future. They taught me how to

have an absolutely impenetrable mind shield. Not even another tendrilless could sense me,

unless I wanted them to.

“But when I was thirteen, my mother and father disappeared—I assumed they’d been

caught, so I ran. I changed my identity and made a new life for myself … exactly as they had

taught me to do.

“Years later, when I was a young man, I met your mother. It was an accident, but for slans

there are no real accidents. I’d spent my life covering up my identity, and so had your mother.

She was a true slan, with many ways of using wigs and hats and scarves. The old days of

shaved heads and the Human Purity League were far behind us, and slans could get away with

it now.”

“Obviously we’ve grown too lax,” Petty said.

“I met her in a flower shop. Your mother loved flowers. Her name was Rose.” He smiled

wistfully. “She worked there, taking care of the blossoms, removing the wilted ones, watering

the plants on the shelves, using a mister on the ferns. I came in to get some flowers … tulips, I

think, or maybe daffodils. It was springtime, and I wanted to cheer up the old widow who

lived in an apartment down the hall from me.”

“How sweet,” Granny said.

“Fortunately, there were no other customers. When I walked in through the door and the

bell jangled, your mother looked up at me. It was like an electric current passed between us.

She didn’t have her mind shields in place, expecting nothing. I must have been careless, too.

We …
clicked
.”

“Love at first sight?” Though she didn’t realize what she was doing, Kathleen took a bite of

the apple pie, letting the spicy sweetness fill her mouth.

“More than that. You know what it was like when you first encountered Jommy. Even

though I was normal in all external appearances, a slan can know another unshielded

slan—even a tendrilless one—instantly and instinctively. Your mother and I recognized each

other for what we were. I don’t think either of us breathed for a full minute. She came around

the counter, setting down the flowers she’d been arranging in a vase. She went to the door of

the shop, turned the lock, and drew the shade.” He took a long breath. “We were married two

days later.”

Slans rarely needed to go through a long courtship process; they clicked like a key in a lock.

“Jommy and I should have gotten married,” Kathleen said.

“Rose and I lived quietly together for several years, drawing no attention to ourselves. We

taught each other many things, but we didn’t have other slans to interact with. We were just by

ourselves. She worked in her flower shop, and I took a position in the information archives in

the Ministry of Communication.

“Those were the happiest times of my life. When Rose finally got pregnant with you, we

were content and satisfied. Unfortunately, because we were both slans, we couldn’t risk

seeking medical attention. I could pass for a normal human, but not Rose. If she went to a

doctor during her pregnancy, they might run some kind of test. They might discover that the

baby had tendrils. They might find out that Rose was a slan.”

“So you did it all yourselves?” Kathleen asked.

“These days, home delivery using a midwife is as common as a hospital birth, especially out

in the country. Because my Rose was strong, we were sure we could handle it. We read

everything we could. We were ready.”

His shoulders slumped. “What I didn’t know, though, was that my poor Rose had terminal

cancer. In retrospect, I now see a thousand little signs that I should have noticed, but we were

too focused on her pregnancy. She gave birth to you, a perfectly healthy little girl, but the

delivery was difficult for Rose. She barely recovered, and that was when I realized something

else was terribly wrong with her. But she wouldn’t let me take her to a doctor. I tended her at

home, and I took care of you.”

“You must have been exhausted,” Kathleen said.

“I needed every ounce of my slan strength. Poor Rose lasted longer than any human would

have, considering the severity of the cancer. I knew from my own diagnosis and some medical

equipment that I purchased through anonymous sources that her tumors were growing and

that they were inoperable. Even bringing her to a hospital would have done no good at that

point. Rose would have been exposed, and surgeons aren’t inclined to do their best work with

a slan patient—unless they’re curious and wanted to do a few experiments.” Bitterness edged

his tone.

“You were eighteen months old by the time your mother was near death. I begged Rose to

let me take her to the hospital. There had to be some chance, though I knew in my heart there

wasn’t anything we could do. Finally when the pain became unbearable, she acquiesced—but

she forced me into a bargain first. I dropped her off at night in the emergency room. I never

gave my name or hers. She was just a ‘Jane Doe.’ You weren’t even with me, Kathleen. They

had no reason to suspect that we had a little girl.

“Over the years, Rose and I had met many kind and wonderful humans. I prayed now that