Valhai (The Ammonite Galaxy) (4 page)

Finally the moment he had been waiting for came. He was expecting the appearance of another door by this time, since he had seen the exercise room door appear and disappear as needed. He
moved warily through the paper thin door that appeared, unsure of what or who to expect on the other side.

“It
would
have to be you!”

“Ah, the long lost greeting ritual of the Coriolan meritocracy!” he said. “I might have known. I’m just as happy to see you as you are to see me!”

“I don’t know how you survived so long on Kwaide!” Diva said. “I’m surprised nobody killed you off at an early age.”

“Not for want of trying, I assure you,” Six said, “but if you are thrown out of the birth shelter into the badlands when you are four you develop a pretty sharp sense of survival.”

Diva raised her eyebrows. “Thrown out to fend for yourself at four? You must have done something terrible!”

He nodded. “Exist.”

“You’re kidding! Even barbarians like the Kwaidians wouldn’t throw an innocent child out into the badlands!”

“I wasn’t innocent. I was born guilty. That is what a no-name is.”

“Well that wouldn’t happen on Coriolis!”

“No. I suppose you come from the land of fairness and justice?”

She nodded categorically. “Of course I do. We would never treat orphans like that. I thought no-names had done something terrible to lose the right to a name.”

“You are right. We exist. That is the sin.”

“I don’t believe you, Kwaidian. You must have done something!”

“Or what? Your stupid prejudices would be wrong?”

“I am not prejudiced. How could you even suggest a thing like that? What do you know about anything? You’re just an uncivilized little nomus!”

“Whatever,” Six replied. “How many of us are there here, do you know?”

“Twelve, I think. Six from Kwaide and six from Coriolis. Except,” Diva looked sad, “except for the one who died.”

“Died?”

Diva explained what had happened on the spaceship. “The Sellite, Xenon, only seemed worried that it would set his dumb ‘program’ back.”

“They don’t seem very concerned about us. I’m just waiting for my bed to eat me!”

Diva held back a giggle. “ It does feel like that, doesn’t it? But I guess they won’t want to lose any more of us. He was very put out by what happened.” Tears came to her eyes. “I can’t seem to forget that poor boy’s face.”

“If you ask me he is better off than we are,” Six said bluntly. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure I can stand this for very long.” He pulled a long face. “I might just be able to put up with all the academic stuff, and the sports, but that dancing on those fiddly musical squares brings me out in hives!”

“I don’t mind the musical squares and the sports so much, but all this academic stuff is agonizing.”

“Do you know why we are here yet?”

She shook her head. “Not really, no. I know it’s a donor program, but not who or what donates. And Atheron spoke about prospective ‘investors’.”

“Atheron?” He was surprised. “Do you have the same teacher as me? Didn’t you have classes today?”

“Didn’t I just. All day, seemed like. Especially with the school work. He kept telling me how badly I was doing.”

“Same here. So how does he manage to be in two places at once? I had him all day too, only he was telling me how badly I was doing during the musical square dance bit and not the schoolwork bit.” He thought for a moment. “Is it the same specimen? Scrappy white halo of hair hanging down from a bald pate? Pretends to be your best friend and then tells you off with the same sickly smile?”

“Unmistakable.”

Six raised an eyebrow. “First mystery here, then. Is Atheron really Atherclone? Or is he an artificial intelligence they had duplicated so that we got one each?”

Diva frowned. “It is strange,” she agreed, then looked around the bubble. “Do you think we are being watched now?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me.”

She glanced around. “It makes me feel uncomfortable.”

“Well, at last something we have in common, Lady Divina,” he said.

Her eyebrows came together ferociously. “There is nothing,” she said, “nothing that we have in common, Kwaidian! . . . As if!”

He grinned. “You might rail against it Diva,” he said, “but the truth of the matter is that I am going to be the only person you speak to in the next two years. You might want to change your attitude a bit.”

“My attitude!” She gave a little stamp with one foot, a gesture which was spoilt because the orthogel absorbed any sound it might have made. “There isn’t a thing wrong with my attitude. It is you who will have to change, nomus!”

He just looked at her, and then raised both eyebrows together and made a face.

She stamped her foot again. “Don’t look at me like that!”

“I’ll look at you however I like. You’re not on Coriolis now. You can’t have me beaten.” Six glowered.

“I won’t talk to you.”

“Then it’s going to be a long two years.”

She gave him a haughty glare and looked deliberately away.

“Fine.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Up to you, your mulchiness. I’m not going anywhere. Not for a while.” He indicated the bubble with one hand. “I would try to escape, but if I did my sisters would die. So I’m sure to be available, if you should feel the urge for a chat.”

Diva looked quickly back at him. “What do you mean, your sisters would die?”

“I thought you weren’t speaking to me?”

“Tell me!”

“Well, you don’t think I came here willingly, do you?” Six raised his eyes skywards. “Trust a girl to think that!”

“
I
came willingly!”

“I know.” He gave a short laugh. “And you thought Kwaide was a backward planet!”

“It is a great honour!” Then Diva stopped. Just recently it didn’t feel so much of a great honour. Especially for the boy who died, unmourned, in space. It had occurred to her recently that Six might be right. But she wasn’t about to tell him that.

“Two years of some mouldy old Sellite stuffing our heads with a lot of useless information we don’t want to know?” Six said. “A real honour I don’t think!”

Diva found herself so much in agreement with him that she was glad she didn’t have to answer because the two doors reappeared in the bubble, each one leading back to a separate learning room. The time they had been allotted was obviously over.

They dutifully made their way back into their own spaces, with only a nod to each other. Neither was going to admit how important each had found those few minutes of contact. It looked as if they were going to be the only highlights of a very boring existence.

GRACE HAD MADE her way unenthusiastically to the voting room, almost in the centre of the eighty-one by fifty metre square area that made up the 48
^th
floor. As all voting rooms on Valhai, it was huge. A giant circumference with only the four high chairs, each situated at the four cardinal points of a circle. The highest of the four chairs nearly reached the ceiling, and the lowest, the daughter’s, raised its occupant about two metres off the floor. In the centre of the circle there was a tridiscreen, which was at that moment informing all the listening Sellites of the various points on the voting agenda of that day.

In the past, she had enjoyed the privilege of voting, making it into a ceremonious event. That had been when she had had a father to take his place in the highest chair, a normal mother to get into hers, which in its turn was lower than their father’s, and a brother living in the same space to scramble up into his own voting chair, mocking her because his was higher than hers.

Grace climbed up into the lowest chair. She didn’t feel as if her meager vote would count for anything at all, but attendance was obligatory. She settled into the chair, and positioned her right finger over the predis button so that it could be scanned and added to the list of attendant Sellites. She looked over momentarily at the other three chairs. Two years ago this voting chamber had emitted fifteen votes: eight for the house leader, three for his wife, and two each for the children over ten. Today it would emit only five votes. Her mother was already sitting in her own chair, looking around her and waving the large Xianthan dagger she couldn’t now be parted from.

Grace moved her fingers swiftly over a touchboard near the predis button. Current Sell votes were registered as a total of seven thousand, five hundred and forty-two so her two votes were not going to make much of a difference. Still, since the tridiscreen in the voting chambers was connected to all the skyrises, meaning that she could be seen by anybody who wanted to see her, she sat up straight and tried to look interested in the proceedings. Her mother was attending in the same grubby dressing gown she had worn for the last two months, and her hair was unbrushed and unwashed. Grace gave a deep sigh. She was doing her best to keep her mother on the right side of sane, but she couldn’t help feeling that she wasn’t having much success.

Since her walk on Valhai, Grace had lost all interest in the affairs of her acquaintances. So she was surprised when a flashing light indicated that she was being observed, and that the Sellite who was viewing her desired private communication.

Grace didn’t feel like talking to anybody, but it would have been very offensive to turn down a fellow Sell in a voting meeting, so she quickly moved her fingers again over the touchboard to agree to the connection.

The face that appeared in front of her belonged to Vion, from the 367
^th
house of Sell.

“How are you, Grace?” he opened.

“Fine, Vion . . . you?”

Vion, heir to the healing house, had just finished his final studies of medicine. He had begun practice that same year, lightening the load on his father’s shoulders. He had a nice face, and expressive eyes. She wondered why he was contacting her now at such a personal level. It made her feel uncomfortable. She had been hoping to keep the doctors away from her mother, although she knew that this was getting more and more unlikely.

“I’m fine,” —he narrowed his eyes— “which is more than I can say for you. Are you sure you’re all right, Grace? You look a little bit under the weather to me.”

For some silly reason Grace’s voice clogged up. She wasn’t used to anybody worrying about her these days. It was an uncomfortable feeling. To her horror, she felt tears welling up in her eyes.

Vion smiled at her. “You look like you could do with a visit in person. I will be round tomorrow if that’s all right by you?”

“I . . . err . . . I’m not sure that would be a good idea, Vion.”

“It seems to me that you would benefit from a friend. How long is it since you had a non-virtual visitor?”

She had to think about that one. “I guess it must be about two months,” she found herself admitting.

“Far too long. Whatever is that sister-in-law of yours thinking about? She only lives one floor up, and it certainly wouldn’t kill her to come down twice a week on a non-virtual visit.”

“She and the children visit on the tridiscreen fairly regularly,” Grace pointed out.

“Sure they do. And I suppose they include you in their visits out to other skyrises?”

Grace was silent.

Vion nodded his head. “You have been left for too long on your own.” He sighed. “I can’t blame Xenon himself, I know he has spent the last six months off planet. But Amanita should definitely have been more attentive.”

“I haven’t felt . . .” Grace was quick to take the blame.

“Nonsense. Of course you haven’t felt like it. But your friends and family should have forced you to accept their visits. I will be there tomorrow and will accept no excuses.”

Grace tried to remonstrate, “I’m afraid I . . .”

Vion straightened up and put on his official face. “I should like to pay my respects to Xenon 48 in the tanato chamber, Grace. What time would be suitable for such a visit?”

She knew when she was beaten. “Eleven would be fine, Vion. You honour our house. Will you be bringing your father with you?”

“I will come alone,” he said curtly. “The voting is about to start. Cutting the connexion now.”

The following morning, though no change in light announced it, arrived all too soon. Grace was feeling rather nervous, because she had decided to ask a favour of Vion.

The hiss of the lift told her of the young doctor’s arrival. His family had never been particularly close friends of Xenon’s, nor indeed of her birth family, so it was strange to welcome him now as the first visitor the skyrise had seen in a couple of months.

He gave her the statutory greeting, “Almagest, Cian, Valhai - the perfect heavenly triangle; may their orbits remain stable.”

She bowed as protocol required. “And may the flares on Almagest remain quiescent.” And led him into the tanato chamber so that he could pay his last respects to the exquisitely worked magmite sarcophagus that contained the remains of Xenon 48.

Vion allowed one of his hands to run over the intricate carvings on the magmite. “Beautiful craftsmanship! . . . Xianthan?”

Grace nodded. “He told my mother exactly what he wanted soon after they married. Not that he expected it to happen so quickly, of course.”

“A terrible accident. I hope Xenon 49 is finding his adaptation easy?”

“I think so. Too easy, perhaps.” Then she wished she hadn’t said those words, for Vion was bound to understand the implications of what she had said.

“What’s the matter, Grace?” He sat down heavily in an upholstered chair next to the sarcophagus. “You know my job . . . As a doctor I am genetically modified to empathize with patients’ illnesses. You won’t find a better listener on the whole of Valhai.”

She hesitated for a moment, and then decided that he was right. So she began to tell him about the visit to the bare planet, what she had seen, and how deeply it had affected her.

When she had finished her listener gave a slow sigh. “You’re right. I guess all this genetic modification has stopped us questioning anything at all. It’s the first time I have even wondered if they come here willingly.”

Grace suddenly realized something. “You must treat them . . . the donor program apprentices . . . if they get ill?”

“That doesn’t happen often, but if it does then we are the ones they call in. Of course it is forty years since the previous intake. Even my father wasn’t in practice then; it would have been my grandfather.”

“And this intake? Have you had to treat any of them? Did they all arrive safely? Do they get sick from being shut up in the bubbles?”

He looked down. “I believe one died in transit, most unfortunately, but the rest arrived safely, and as far as I know, only one of them has shown the signs of claustrophobia. My father mentioned having been called in once.”

“Then they are all right? It’s just that the boy I saw was struggling so much with everything, trying so hard to get away.”

“I think so,” Vion said.

“Do they know the purpose of the program?”

Vion shook his head. “That they will be used to engender new radiation-free hybrids with the people from Cesis and Xiantha? No.”

“What do we do with them after they donate?” She felt a cold shiver travel down her spine. “Do we kill them?”

“Grace!” Vion was vehement. “Whatever else we are, we wouldn’t kill defenceless children!”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I . . .” Vion hesitated. “Well, now that you come to mention it, I never heard of any of the donors living outside the bubbles,” he said slowly. “That is strange. You would think that we would have met one or two of them if they were released here on Valhai.”

“They could have been sent to Xiantha or Cesis,” said Grace doubtfully.

“That would make sense, but I must say I never heard of any of them there, either. Perhaps they are sent back to their planets of origin?”

Grace shook her head. “They surely wouldn’t be allowed to go. After two years of solid studying here they would know more than anybody else on their planets. Both Coriolis and Kwaide are at least a thousand years behind us.”

Vion was puzzled. “It is odd,” he agreed. “Though I can’t believe that they are not living their lives out happily in some planet or other.”

“I’d like to think so. But I feel I ought to learn more about all this.” She paused, and then went on in a rush. “The trouble is, if I look it up on our records, then Xenon will find out. It will look as though I don’t trust him with his new responsibilities . . .”

“I will send you over a portable interscreen that will be uploaded to my skyrise. Since I started to practice my father has separated the house information channels, so I now have my own channel. That means only I will know what you have been looking at.”

“Thank you.”

Vion stood up, and touched his fingertips to hers. “I am happy to be able to help you. Oh . . .”

“Yes?”

“If you are going to make a habit of going walkabout on bare planet you might think about taking me along too. It is against all regulations, let alone common sense, for you to go out on your own.”

Grace smiled. “We’ll see. Thank you for your help.”

“I mean it, Grace.” The good humour momentarily showed a hint of steel underneath. “Do not go out alone. You could get into trouble.”

Grace lifted her own chin. “I am grown up now, Vion, and I shall take my own decisions.”

“Probably get yourself killed,” he grumbled. “Well. Just make sure you don’t leave it another two months before you have your next non-virtual visit!”

“Now that I
will
promise!”

He put his head slightly to one side. “And now,” he said. “don’t you think you ought to take me to see Cimma?”

“My mother? I . . . err . . . I am not quite sure where . . .” Grace looked around vaguely.

He laughed. “Good try, Grace, but I am not going to take no for an answer. I’m glad to see you want to take care of your mother, and I know that you don’t want some intrusive doctor to interfere, but I really think I should see her. From what I saw on the voting tridi, she has got herself into a bit of a mess.”

“Oh very well,” she said crossly. She was unprepared for the surge of relief that she felt at those words. She had been more worried than she thought. She led the way past the voting and exercise chambers into the private family rooms. As she had expected, her mother was sitting on the sofa there.

“Grace, can I go back to the tanato chamber now? Has he gone?” Then she spotted Vion. “Oh. What are you doing still here?” And she lifted the knife out from her body, pointing it at the doctor threateningly.

Vion pretended that he hadn’t seen the knife. “Good morning, Cimma!” he said, moving forward and presenting his fingers in the stretched out position for the standard greeting.