Valhai (The Ammonite Galaxy) (13 page)

“Never mind,” said Diva. “We’ll sort it out. Maybe Arcan will be able to help me, since he has a brain the size of Almagest.”

“That is possible.” Arcan agreed. “Though I will need a little time to prepare for it.”

“You will have at least two days,” said Six. “Brain like yours, should be heaps of time. It’s only a three-hundred page summary – child’s play for a superior creature such as yourself.”

“Indeed.”

“In fact,” Six went on, “you would probably benefit greatly from doing all our exams from now on. You know, just to check your progress!”

“Six!” warned Diva.

“We would be happy to help out, wouldn’t we Diva?” Six pressed on regardless. “Always good to help a friend, what?”

Grace bit back a giggle.

The lake darkened again. “I feel you are laughing at me,” Arcan said. “I find I do not like it.” and the lake swirled angrily.

“No no,” Six said hastily. “Just a suggestion.”

“Sneaky, Six,” said Diva. “Kwaide sneaky. I like it.”

“Thank you Diva. Always knew you would eventually come to appreciate me.”

“You wish.”

Arcan was getting impatient. “I cannot ‘do’ any exams at the moment. It is too soon.”

“Pity,” Six told him. “It would be very good for you. Show you the way we check our progress, how to solve problems. Only way, really to find out if you have understood correctly.”

“In that case,” Arcan said. “I will do these tests, but it must be in the future, not now. First I must develop more, and find a way to listen in directly to the classes.”

“Whatever.” Six shrugged. “Let me know when you’re ready and I will put you in touch with some tests. Anything for a friend!”

“I can help you too!” Added Diva.

“It would be better if only one of us coordinates his education, don’t you think?” asked Six hurriedly.

“I agree,” Arcan said.

“You little Kwaidian monster!” fumed Diva. “Just you wait . . .!”

“Looking forward to it!” signed Six cockily. “Bye!”

“Grrr!”

MOST SURPRISING! ATHERON had been sure the Coriolan girl, Divina, had somehow managed to cheat at the entry level. But in his hands he held the results of the repeated test, and all was well. He called Xenon up on the tridiscreen.

“What?” Xenon looked up, clearly annoyed to be disturbed.

“I have the results of the repeated entry test.”

“And?”

“The girl has passed with a grade of 76, within the parameters marked out for the length of time she has been here.”

“Then we have no problem, have we?”

“N . . . no.” Atheron was hesitant. “But she has failed the quantum mechanics test seven times. I . . . I can’t quite explain that.”

“How old is she now?” Xenon queried.

“Fifteen and a half.”

“Well, you look up the best sequences you have on her and I will use them to try to find a suitable investor for her first. That way we can utilize her soon, and you won’t have to struggle on when there seems to be little absorption.”

“As you wish. I have some very good music square sequences, and a prospective buyer may be seduced by those into overlooking certain academic failings. Her superior height may be a negotiable asset too.”

“We must realize our investment,” Xenon said. “We already lost one of the candidates. I really can’t allow the loss of another one with no return on investment.”

“But we normally begin sales at sixteen?” Atheron said.

“Well, can’t be helped. Sounds as if this girl has reached her limit, and we might as well make some profit on her. Strange case. Never happened before, has it?”

“Not according to the records. The test has always been a very efficient indicator of potential.”

“Can’t be helped. Get onto those videos, will you? Cutting the connexion.”

Xenon went back to his paperwork. Unfortunately his mind was not really on his work that day. His wife had been nagging him to do something about his mother. She seemed to think the best thing to do would be to have Cimma admitted to the hospital on Cesis; and that Grace should start a university career, like other Sellites.

“You can’t just leave them both unsupervised here on Valhai.” She had been most persuasive. “Cimma has become an unbalanced recluse, unfit to look after a teenage daughter, and Grace is running around doing exactly as she sees fit. It is time she settled down and decided on a career. You have been far too tolerant with both of them. People are talking!”

Xenon had frowned. He certainly didn’t want his new command to be criticized; it could make him look weak. Everybody knew he was the youngest head of house currently in position. He had to make more of an effort than the others if he wanted to be taken seriously.

“And you wouldn’t want Grace to be living here with the children,”

Amanita had continued. “She would be a terribly destabilizing factor. Bear in mind she is not genetically modified – I can’t imagine what your parents were thinking of incidentally – which means she seems to have no goals whatsoever in her life. Honestly, when I was her age, I had already been awarded six prizes in the field of house management! And here she is . . . fifteen already, and still hasn’t made up her mind what she wants to study! It just makes me
so
glad that we had our own children genetically modified, doesn’t it you?”

That was true, too. Xenon had been very fond of his little sister, but she showed no signs of turning into a useful Sell citizen. She had always had all those airy-fairy ideas and ideals. All very well for a child, but that time was past.

“You wouldn’t want her to pass on her own indecision to your children, I hope?” his wife had insisted. “She
might
even try to set them against genetic modification!”

“Don’t be silly, Amanita!” Xenon was not going to let that one pass. “Grace is a quiet little thing. I don’t think she has any opinions of her own, and I can’t see her running around subverting others!”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” His wife glared back at him. “I am only thinking of the good of our family.”

“I know. But
I
am the head of that family, not you.”

She had softened immediately “Of course you are. I was only trying to save you work. Goodness knows, you have enough on your plate already without having to worry about all these extra things!”

That was true, too.

“I tell you what,” she had finished. “Why don’t
I
take at least that little worry away from you. Let me deal with everything for you, and you needn’t spend any of your own valuable time on it.”

Xenon had agreed, mollified. Now, he frowned. Amanita could be very persuasive. He hoped she wouldn’t do anything to cause a scandal. He didn’t really mind what solution she did find, as long as it was discreet, and other Sellites would see that the right thing had been done. It was really too much that all this should happen just when he was in the middle of the donor program. The year was crucial to the program. He really couldn’t afford the time to deal with his mother and Grace. He made up his mind. Let Amanita take care of it then. She would know just what to do.

At that moment Grace was expostulating with her mother. The girl had been on bare planet. She was making her way up in the back lift in her usual stealthy way, only she found her mother standing right outside the lift doors as they thinned. Grace gave a start.

“Where were you Grace?” Cimma demanded.

“Maestra! You startled me!”

“You were off floor. That is too dangerous!”

“I was just painting out on one of the terraces.”

“You aren’t carrying the catana. I told you, you mustn’t go off floor without the catana. Ever! They might get you! I promised your father . . . How could you do this to me? I promised your father.” Cimma looked around her in a dislocated way.

“I’m so sorry Matri, I will take the catana next time, I promise. I didn’t mean to worry you.” She gave her mother a fierce hug. “I didn’t think.”

“I’m watching guard over us here, but if you go somewhere else then I can’t protect you, surely you can see that?” Cimma moulded a strand of lank hair around her index finger again and again. She shook her head, overwhelmed. “It’s all too much. I can’t be everywhere at once!”

Grace regarded her mother’s finger moving over and over the strand of hair. Things weren’t getting any better, she knew. It was almost impossible to get Cimma to eat anything these days, she was getting thinner and thinner. And the obsession with safety also seemed to be getting stronger. She was still only sleeping in brief, disjointed spells, clearly not enough. She put her arm around her mother and tried to move her in the direction of the kitchen.

“Let’s call for some food and something hot to drink. I’m hungry!” she suggested.

Her mother looked at her slyly. “Only if you go and get the catana and promise to keep it with you at all times,” she blackmailed.

Grace gave in. “Of course. If you promise to eat something.”

Cimma avoided her daughter’s gaze. “Of course I will,” she mumbled.

Grace gave a radiant smile. “Great!”

DIVA WAS IN the middle of an advanced exercise on the music square when it happened. She had just performed one of the more difficult stretches, reaching over to go up one octave, when she found her head swimming, and struggled to catch her breath.

“Wh. . .?” But she couldn’t finish the word. The nerve gas they had released into the side chamber was very effective. She was unconscious before she had time to sink to the floor.

Atheron smiled from his central console. It had been easy to find an investor, as it turned out. Xenon had been very pleased.

The girl was removed remotely from the bubble and transported over to the surgical area. The client was waiting for her there, already dressed in the required green surgical robes, and accompanied by the surgeon he had brought with him. He peered down into the unconscious girl’s face, to check that she was the same individual he had decided to invest in.

“Yes. Undoubtedly this is the girl. You may proceed.” He took a few photographs as graphic proof, and then stood aside.

The Cesan surgeon moved in quickly. The procedure, which entailed cutting the girl open right down to the ovaries, was faultlessly performed. It was then a simple matter to extract all the desired material, and deposit it in the waiting cryopacks. The surgeon deftly sewed the girl back up.

“Is she going back to the bubbles?”

Xenon, present as the Sell representative, nodded. “Protocol will be followed as usual.”

Protocol required that the donor be held available for the period of two months after extraction, in case the investor needed any further tissue samples or tests after delivery had taken place. At the end of that time they were normally terminated. Diva would be returned to her bubble for only a limited respite before liquidation.

Xenon gave a shrug. It was not a part of his job that he liked. Sell policy was quite clear, however. No Non-Sellite may be released if in possession of information which could be used by a possible competitor to break the monopoly held by Sell. The First Valhai Voting had ordained policy for over two thousand years. He felt sorry for the girl, but he wasn’t about to change anything. Sell would hardly have maintained its market advantage if the Sellites had been loath to exercise their right of discretion.

Still, Xenon felt uncomfortable. He had always thought of himself as a good person. He could see it was inevitable, but he regretted the necessity. Clearly there was no other way. All the knowledge that these children had been gratuitously given would prove invaluable in other hands. They simply could not be allowed to leave. If they did, Sell would be bankrupt with a few hundred years! The good of Sell must of course be paramount. No question. His forebears had had this same duty and not shirked it. Xenon pulled himself up to his full height. He would live up to expectations. Many people had deposited their confidence in him. His father had drilled into him that being a Sellite came with a price tag. He could not be faint-hearted.

“For the good of Sell!” he muttered to himself.

Six woke up confused in the middle of a wonderful dream where he was running free again on Kwaide with his sisters laughing by his side. He was disoriented; it took him a moment to remember where he was. Something had woken him up. He gazed, bleary-eyed, around him.

Then he became aware of an insistent pressure against the palms of his hands, which were touching the sides of the bed, supporting him.

Quickly, he pressed both hands against the sides of the bed, letting the fingers perceive the message.

“. . . She is all bloody. I do not know what it is that has happened.”

“Arcan? What is it? What has happened?”

“Six, I do not know what it is that I must do. Diva is . . . she is lying on her bed, but she will not answer me, and there is red blood seeping out of her.”

“WHAT? Did she fall?”

The walls around Six darkened. “No. She was taken away and then brought back. Whatever has happened to her happened outside.”

“Is she breathing?”

There was a slight pause. Then “Yes.”

“And conscious?”

“What does that mean?”

Six explained, and Arcan checked. “No, she is not conscious.”

“I don’t see how we can help her. Unless you can somehow get me inside her bubble?” Six looked up hopefully.

“I think that it is too dangerous. One thing is to move a small test paper, and another to move a large, breathing person. In any case, she is probably being monitored, and we would all be discovered if you suddenly appeared in her bubble.”

“Then what on Sacras can we do?”

“I am sorry. I did not consider carefully enough. There is nothing we can do at the moment. I should not have woken you up.”

“No, I am glad you did. Perhaps she will wake up soon? Let’s keep trying to contact her. And don’t disappear, will you? At least that way we can see if she gets any worse. Can you contact Grace?”

Arcan signed a negative. “She must be sleeping, and there is no orthogel near her. I can only speak to her if she is in one of the lifts in her skyrise.”

Six told him about the “donation” of genetic material they were required to perform. “They must have carried out the operation on Diva. Though I thought that we had until we were sixteen.” His face brightened. “At least she will recover!”

“My friend . . .” Arcan said slowly. “I am afraid I have some bad news for you.” And he told Six about the other apprentices, still decomposing in their respective bubbles.

Six was silent for a long time. Inside he felt a huge rage welling up.

“They have been force feeding us all this information . . .” he said quietly. “Just to kill us?”

Arcan assented. “But it is not clear to me why,” he said.

Six nodded his head twice. “They don’t want us to walk away with their precious knowledge. Once they have found an investor, then they have no further use for us. We are sterile, useless for their purposes. So they get rid of us. I should have guessed.”

“What can be done now?”

Six pressed his fingers for a moment to his forehead to rest them, and to force his brain to think more effectively. He gave a wry smile. “What I’d
like
to do is send them all up to see the Xianthes without the lightning cage,” he said. “But being stuck in a bubble is a bit limiting, unfortunately. I don’t know what we can do.”

“Perhaps Grace will be able to help?”

“Perhaps Grace is part of the problem?” Six hazarded.

Arcan was quick to reply, “No. I am sure Grace is good. She will help if she can.”

“Then all we can do is wait. I guess they aren’t going to kill Diva straight away, because they are still pumping air into her bubble, right?”

“Right.”

“We had better wait until tomorrow, talk to Grace, and sketch out some sort of a plan of action.”

“Very well, Six. You go back to sleep. I will wait. I will watch.”

“Fine. Thanks, Arcan.” And the boy lay back down on his bed.

Diva groaned as she came to her senses. She knew she could feel a throbbing pain, but it was unclear to her which part was
hurting
. She tried to sit up, and that mystery was resolved. A black wall clamped around her stomach and prevented her breathing. A brief examination rectified her ignorance. She had a scar under her stomach that was sealed with surgical stitches. The pain brought tears to her eyes. Angrily she tried to push them away with her hands.
I will never have children now.
More tears ran down her cheeks. She felt a different person. Diva had gone. Lost. This new person was . . . a long way away from the rest of the world. She closed her eyes, and let herself lie back down on the bed.

As soon as her fingers touched the bed again, she felt them begin to move. Six was insistent.

“Diva?”

“Go away!”

“Are you all right?”

He got nothing but silence back. Arcan told him that Diva was awake, that she was lying on her bed staring at the ceiling of the bubble, but neither of them could get her to answer. She was indifferent to their attempts to talk. She lay passively on her bed, and wanted nothing to do with either of them. In the end they gave up. She was awake and recuperating. That would have to be enough. They could do nothing further to help her. She wouldn’t let them.

Grace had spent two days trying to settle her mother into a more healthy routine, with mixed success. So she didn’t get into the lift again until she had a moment to make her way down onto bare planet, to visit Arcan at the lake.

“Grace. Hello.” The walls of the back lift welcomed her.

“Arcan.”

“We have been waiting for you. There is a problem.”

“What happened?”

Arcan filled her in with all the details. “Since then she won’t speak to either of us,” he finished sadly.

Grace told him that she was on her way down to the lake, and that she would contact him again as soon as she arrived there. She made her way out onto bare planet down the metal steps, but this time she got no joy out of the exercise. She barely noticed her surroundings because she was too busy thinking about what they could do.

They had to do something to save Diva. Grace knew that Arcan wouldn’t sit back this time as a passive observer. She, too, was determined to stop the donors being disposed of. But if anyone were to find out . . . Grace knew that the repercussions would be deadly.

They had to find a way that remained secret.

By the time she reached the lake she had a vague working plan, but it depended on Arcan’s progress. She slid down to the edge of the black substance, and waited, wondering if she was going to be treated to another display of colours.

When nothing happened, she laid her hands on the surface.

“Arcan?”

“I am here, Grace, as you see.”

“I think I have a plan.” The dark surface shimmered a little, a mark of hope. She explained her idea in detail. “Do you think you will have time to do it?”

“I will try,” Arcan said. “It is a good plan, Grace. But do you think you can arrange your part of it?”

Grace nodded. “I think my part will be the easiest,” she assured him. The question is whether you will be able to learn how to do it in time.”

“Oy. Chatting behind my back again?” Six broke in.

“You were in class,” Arcan said severely. “I checked.”

“Yeah, well, not any more. What’s going on?”

“Grace has a solution for Diva.”

“Great!”

“Except . . .” Grace had found a slight flaw in the plan. “How will you be able to let me know in time? What if it happens when I am asleep?”

Six interrupted, “Can I hear the plan first? Maybe I can help?”

Arcan began signing rapidly. “We are going to wait until they disconnect Diva’s air supply, and then I must transport her here to the edge of the lake. Grace will be waiting with a few of these mask packs she has to wear when she comes bare planet, and then she will take Diva back to her skyrise. She says she can hide her in one of the lower levels, without anybody finding out. Apparently nobody lives in them anymore, and there is a plentiful supply of oxygen.”

“Terrific!” Six signaled. “And they won’t even know that she has been saved. Can you do it Arcan? Move her to the edge?”

“I will try. I must learn much to do this. I hope that it will not be soon. I need very much time to learn all these new things.”

“You’ll do it.” Six was confident. “And Grace, I think I know how we can let you know . . . I just might be able to hack into the interscreen and reconfigure it to be able to speak to you . . .”

“Oh, might you?” Grace grinned. “I thought you seemed like a very resourceful person.”

“I try to please,” said Six modestly, “but we will have to practice, too. We need to be sure that it is going to work.”

“But Six . . .”

“What?”

“You will have to stay here. We can’t get you out without them finding out.”

“I know. Let’s just take things one step at a time, shall we? Cian and Valhai don’t go round Almagest in a minute, you know.”

“Fine. I will keep my interscreen with me at all times, but you may have to be discreet. We can’t risk anyone finding out, and the screen I’m using was lent to me by someone I don’t want to get into trouble.”