Unravel (13 page)

As she stopped, uncertain, he turned to see her, his arm still around the woman. His grin spread, shining as brightly as the floodlights. “There she is. Mom, Dad, you remember Elissa, don't you? Lissa, you remember my parents? Can you believe, they came over on my skybike?” He looked down at his mother. “After everything you said about safety issues . . .”

Elissa went forward as the woman laughed.
It's stupid to be shy. It's stupid. Cadan said, when he had that one interplanetary call back on Sanctuary, they're not mad with him for rebelling against the government—they don't blame him for ruining his career. And they were always nice to you when they met you before.

But before, she'd never had to meet them as Cadan's girlfriend. And . . .
I can't remember, how much did he tell them in that one phone call? Did he tell them that I lied to him to get on board the
Phoenix
? Did he tell them how much danger I put him in? That I only told him the truth after his ship had been attacked for the third time?

Elissa pushed the thoughts aside as best she could and smiled at Cadan's mother, remembering the angular lines of
the older woman's face, noticing for the first time how similar they were to Cadan's.

“Elissa.” Mrs. Greythorn slipped out of her son's arm and put both hands out toward Elissa. “My dear girl, I'm surprised if you can manage to remember
anything
after the time you've had.” Her hands, warm and smooth, closed around Elissa's. “You've been incredibly brave, I hope you know that? I hope
someone's
”—she gave her son a little sideways look—“made sure to tell you? We've only had the barest bones of the story so far, but what you managed to do . . .” She gave Elissa a smile, as warm as the feel of her hands. “Clement and I have been saying, if we, as a society, have managed to raise young people capable of doing what you—and Cadan—have done, then Sekoia really isn't in such dire straits as the news reports would have us believe.”

All at once the tears were back in Elissa's eyes. She'd never thought to expect that Cadan's parents might not just refuse to condemn, but
approve
of the actions she'd taken. Her own mother hadn't, and although her father had been kind, had acknowledged Lin was his daughter, he hadn't told her she was brave, hadn't said he was proud of her. Until this moment she hadn't realized she'd wanted him to.

“That's really kind,” she said, stumbling a little over the words. “I didn't—I mean, I didn't plan it, I didn't really mean to do it until it was happening. And I couldn't have done it without Cadan. He was amazing, Mrs. Greythorn—he saved us, like, a million times.”

Mrs. Greythorn laughed. “That many?” But it was kindness, not mockery, in her tone. “Let's get you back home with us, okay? And you can fill me in.”

“Home?” Her voice came out sharp with sudden panic.
“But . . . everyone's been saying the city's not safe?”

A shadow crept over Mrs. Greythorn's expression. “Everyone's right. When I say
home
, I mean the safe house whose exact location I'm not permitted to give you until you've been given security clearance.” There was a wry twist to her voice. “But we are allowed to take you there.”

“All of us? The crew, too?”

“All of you. I have to say”—she gave Cadan a teasing look—“my son showed great foresight in getting rid of most of his crew. I know there's room for an extra six at the safe house. We'd have struggled with an extra eighteen.”

“It was entirely deliberate, of course,” Cadan said drily. “Obviously I
like
flying a ship with a quarter of the crew it's supposed to have.”

“Oh, please,” said his mother. “It was a challenge, wasn't it? How many times have you said you wanted more challenges?”

Elissa laughed, charmed by the snapshot portrait of Cadan as seen through his mother's eyes, and Cadan gave her a wry look. “Don't go ganging up on me with my mother, now. I have enough of the female solidarity with you and Lin.”

Lin.
All at once Elissa realized that Lin was no longer by her side. As Elissa had gone forward to meet the Greythorns, Lin had backed away. Guilt shot through her. Enfolded in the warmth, the welcome, of Cadan's family, she hadn't remembered that Lin didn't know them at all, that to Lin they were just more people who'd had legal human status their whole lives, who might see her as a freaky full-body clone, something subhuman, something to be wiped out or gotten rid of or
used
.

They were welcoming Elissa, but it didn't mean Lin knew
they'd welcome her. And although Mrs. Greythorn was being kind enough that Elissa
thought
she would, she'd gotten it wrong before, had underestimated how people would react when faced with a Spare. The words of Cadan's former copilot, Stewart, came back to her. . . .
the freak double you stole. Your twin? It's not even a real word.

Lin was standing near the shuttlebug entrance. Her shoulders were a little hunched, her hands locked together, the pale fingers tight against one another. She was looking at Elissa, and the expression on her face was as if she stood on some last remaining edge of rock, watching as everything around her fell away beneath her feet.

“Lin.”
Elissa ducked out from under Cadan's mother's arm and hurried across to her sister. She'd been going to say something calm, something that would reassure Lin with its ordinariness, its assumption that of
course
no one was trying to leave her out, that she wasn't losing Elissa. But when Lin's eyes met hers, when she saw the desolation in them, all the ordinary words went out of her head.

“Don't,” she said. “Don't look like that. I'm not leaving you behind. I'm not leaving you out.”

Lin's hands twined tighter around each other. “I forgot . . . coming back here, I forgot. You had a whole life. You . . . fitted in.”

“You know what my life was like here,” Elissa said. “And anyway, Cadan's parents weren't part of that—not really. I only knew them 'cause of Bruce in the first place, and I haven't seen them properly for years. I didn't fit in with
them
.”

Lin's eyes fixed on hers, huge and dark. “You fit now. I . . . I can see. It's okay—you should. You
should
fit in. I just . . . I wasn't expecting . . . I'd forgotten . . .”

“Lin.”
Elissa took her sister's cold hands in hers. “They're being really nice. They'll be nice to you, too. I don't know them well, they're not my family. It's just”—she hesitated, lowering her voice, not wanting anyone to hear—“it's
Cadan's
family. I thought they might be angry with me. His SFI career—they were so completely proud of him when he got in, of how well he was doing. I thought they'd blame me, maybe. So now his mother's saying she's impressed at what we managed, and she's just . . . being nice, ordinary, like we didn't—
I
didn't—turn the whole world upside down.”

She looked at Lin anxiously, willing her to understand. “I thought they'd be angry,” she said again. “And it's
Cadan
, and I . . .”

Lin nodded. Her fingers relaxed in Elissa's grasp. “You want them to like you?”

Elissa hesitated. It was more complicated than that, a whole mix of wanting some kind of outside sign that, despite everything, she was good enough for Cadan, that it wasn't just luck they'd ended up together. And wanting that approval and acceptance she hadn't gotten from her own family. And . . . oh, after weeks of having to be responsible for herself,
and
for Lin, of having to be an adult when she'd never even had a proper chance at being a normal teenager, it was such a relief to be with
real
adults, proper grown-up parent types who'd know all the right decisions to make so she wouldn't have to keep guessing and second-guessing.

“Yeah,” she said. “I do. I want them to like me. And I want them to like you.”

Lin grinned, in one of her disconcertingly sudden changes of mood. “Well, we're here to fix the world. What's not to like?”

Elissa laughed, in relief as warm as the ground beneath her feet. “I'm not sure they've a
hundred
percent grasped that's what we're here for yet. Here.” A whole lot more confident this time, she tucked her hand through Lin's arm and pulled her to where Cadan's parents stood. Cadan, she noticed, had walked over to speak to the
Phoenix
's crew.

“Mr. Greythorn, Mrs. Greythorn, this is my sister, Lin.” She didn't quite mean it to, but “sister” came out with an edge of emphasis, almost defiance.
I do want them to like me, I do, but if they react to Lin the way Stewart did—the way my mother did—it doesn't matter that they're Cadan's family, I don't care, they have to treat her like a proper human. . . .

Mrs. Greythorn's smile was as warm as the one with which she'd welcomed Elissa. “How lovely to meet you, Lin. I think Cadan said you and Elissa chose that name for you?”

As Lin nodded, half-shy, half-eager, and began to explain how they'd come up with the name, Mr. Greythorn looked across at Elissa. “The safe house isn't far,” he said, and she realized that, overwhelmed by meeting Cadan's mother, she hadn't yet spoken to his father. “You look tired, all of you.”

“Yes.” She smiled at him, shy—
ridiculously
—all over again. “The base we were at got attacked.”

“We heard.” Grimness showed in his face, and frustration. “It's not as if we didn't know people's capability to resort to violence. But this . . . It's not coming from the known criminal element, or from what you'd normally think of as people who are criminally predisposed—it's not even coming from a distinct level of society. This is coming from ordinary citizens—throughout every level. All the planet had to do—
all
it had to do—was comply with IPL, and instead the riots, the attacks, plain vandalism . . . they got worse and worse until
IPL had no choice but to institute full military law.”

Cadan's father was—had been?—on the city police force, Elissa remembered now. The same as her father, but whereas her father had been high up in the tech-crime unit, Mr. Greythorn had been an ordinary police officer, lower grade and unspecialized.

“
Full
military law?” Cadan said, walking back to them accompanied by the three crew members.

“Yes, believe it or not. On our planet.” Mr. Greythorn gave a frustrated shake of his head. “I should be past being shocked by people, I know. But for God's sake, safe houses being needed for
teenagers
?” He looked at Felicia. “Ms. Ambra, isn't it? I have a message from your mother.”

Relief relaxed every line on Felicia's face. She put out her hand for the myGadget Mr. Greythorn offered her. “Mr. Greythorn, thank you so much.”

He made a courteous, dismissive gesture. “I'm only sorry none of your family were permitted to come with us. We asked, but the security forces are desperately overstretched. They did agree that the
Phoenix
's crew members needed the same level of protection as Cadan, but that was as far as they were willing to go.”

Felicia tore her gaze from the myGadget screen to look up at him. “I understand. Please—it's enough to know they're safe.”

Cadan made introductions, then, and there was a wave of conversation that seemed to wash over and around Elissa without touching her. She was horribly tired, she realized. She wasn't wearing her watch, which meant she'd probably left it back on the
Phoenix
, but it couldn't be earlier than midnight—and it was probably a lot later. She must have been
keeping awake on adrenaline born of tension, and now that the need for tension had gone, she was crashing fast.

Cadan came over and put an arm around her. She leaned her head against his shoulder, breathing in the familiar scent of his jacket.

Clement Greythorn glanced toward where they stood. For an instant his gaze seemed to catch, then he spoke to his wife. “Emily, we're keeping the cars waiting. Let's get these kids—and the others—home, okay?”

Emily Greythorn turned, a friendly hand on Lin's arm. “Yes indeed. Elissa, there are three IPL-approved beetle-cars just the other side of the passenger shelter—” For a moment her gaze, too, snagged on where Elissa's head rested on Cadan's shoulder, then she raised her eyes to meet Elissa's and smiled. “You poor girl, you look exhausted. Cadan, don't let her fall asleep on the way to the car, all right?”

They moved away across the concrete landing ground to the shelter Cadan's mother had pointed out. Elissa eased away from Cadan a little. The approval in his mother's face had been too welcome for her to be willing to lose it by looking like some kind of clingy-vine girlfriend.

Wait. Hang on. He did
tell
them I was his girlfriend, didn't he? When he talked to them before . . . or when he introduced me just now?
She couldn't remember. The different bits of conversation were blurring together, filming over with exhaustion like the wrecked ships back at the practice base had filmed over with soot and dust.

As Emily Greythorn had said, there were three beetle-cars waiting behind the shelter, their squat shapes familiar, propeller blades folded away in the shiny domes of their roofs. Clement Greythorn motioned Elissa toward the nearest.
“Why don't you and Lin take that one? And would you like someone else with you?”

Cadan,
thought Elissa, then caught back the selfish thought. His parents hadn't seen him for over a month, and they must have worried. The beetle-cars would hold only three passengers each—if Cadan should travel with anyone, it should be his parents.