Robert Reed: Mother Death

The boy nodded soberly, apparently believing the propaganda.

Using private channels, Xo offered more elaborate arguments—highly reasoned and much-practiced monologues that were supposed to create doubt in a young Chamberlain. That was the routine. Almost certainly, Ord wasn’t here. But then again, Ord could be anywhere. Everywhere. He could have arrived last night, undetected, and by chance, Xo was delivering the opening salvos of his well-planned assault.

The boy lifted his tail and hands again, and after saying, “Sir,” with the proper respect, he asked, “What can you tell me about this wonderful room, sir?”

More than a kilometer long, with a towering triangular ceiling fashioned from polished basalt, this was once a sacred place for the Sanchexes. But after laying empty for so long, it felt sad, cold despite the warm air, and forgotten.

Xo waited for a half-moment, letting his audience look about.

Then the boy answered his own question. “It was their dining hall, wasn’t it? This was where the Sanchexes held their ceremonial feasts.”

“Yes. That’s what it was.”

The blue-black eyes smiled. Turning to his mother, the boy said, “When they finished eating—meat or cold plasmas or whatever—they would clear away the furniture and hold contests. They would fight each other, mostly.”

The woman swished her tail nervously. “How do you know that, dear?”

“It’s in the histories,” he replied. “I read it somewhere.”

Xo accessed every word that the boy had read since immigrating, then consumed the entire library salvaged from the starship. Buried in that mass of information was a single article that mentioned that historic curiosity.

Faintly disgusted, the mother looked at the Nuyen and asked, “Is that true?”

But again, the boy answered first. “Grown-ups took the shape of giant animals, real or not, and they would stand at opposite ends of the room, then run at each other.” He pointed calmly at an odd little doorway, now sealed. “That’s where the blood was drained away. Fighters would weigh their fluids afterward, and the winner was whomever lost the least of himself, or herself.”

Outwardly calm, Xo kept monitoring the boy.

With an impressed voice, he told everyone, “It’s basically all true.”

The boy gave a little nod, happy with himself.

Those last details weren’t included in the article. But the boy could have overheard someone talking. Unlikely as it sounded, that was a much more reasonable explanation than having Ord himself sitting at the table, baiting him with this slender clue.

An impressed hush had fallen over the group. Every diamond knife and shield—Sanchex utensils authentic to their pyramid embossing— was laid neatly on the remains of their lunches. Keeping to the topic, Xo confessed, “This may have been the most aggressive Family. By temperament and by training, the people who were born in this house were capable of the most astonishing violence.”

The boy was staring through him, his face suddenly flat. Empty.

“If the Core hadn’t exploded,” Xo continued, “there still might have come a day when we would have disarmed and disarmored the Sanchexes. For everyone’s safety, including their own.”

Most of the guests nodded amiably.

It was another who took offense. Swimming the length of the room, unseen, she came as a sudden chill of the air and a vague electric sensation slithering beneath Xo’s false skin. Only he could hear her whispering into his deepest, most private ears.

“Fuck you,” said the familiar voice, followed by a long, dry laugh.

Xo was afraid. But more than that, he was amused, thinking how the Sanchexes weren’t like Chamberlains: They rose reliably to every little taunt.

“Hello, Ravleen,” he said with his own laughing whisper.

“Fuck you,” she repeated. Then as she pulled away, retreating into the depths of the pyramid, she said, “Get your assholes out of here! I want to be alone!”

He won’t send the whole of himself…

What we imagine is that we will first see just the affable tip of his tiniest finger… which, nonetheless, should be an awesome sight…

What with the compression of time after so much racing through space, it felt to Ord as if he hadn’t been away from home for more than a long afternoon.

Or a few decades, at most.

Yet something else inside him, persistent and bittersweet, felt the press of the ages. These beautiful mansions had stood empty on these sculpted peaks for a very long time, and the splendid forests and meadows had grown wild, and every extraordinary city on the Earth had swollen until there was only one megatropolis encircling the globe… and not only had Ord been gone for a long time, but in some ways, he had never been to this place before.

Perched on a comfortable seat inside the luxurious Family transport, he studied his surroundings with a thousand heightened senses. For the last seven months, he had done little else. And likewise, the Earth had never stopped studying him. He could feel every stare, every subtle touch, and coursing through the air were the whispered questions:

“Is he the one?”

“Or a decoy?” “Or a lesser criminal, maybe?

“Or nobody… perhaps…?”

And then, as always:

“But if it is Ord, when how where do we act…?”

Even in its heyday, the gray-gold Sanchex pyramid had a foreboding, almost angry appearance. As it fell away behind him, Ord gratefully turned his eyes by the dozens, more and more of him watching the Chamberlain mansion—an enormous cylinder of tailored white coral laid over pink granite bones. And again, Ord had that divided impression of never having left, and seeing nothing that was truly familiar.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” a voice inquired.

Xo’s voice.

Looking up, Ord conjured a smile and flipped his tail in an amiable fashion, answering the question with gestures, then saying, “This is very fun. Sir.”

The Nuyen dropped to his knees, touching a shoulder while a private voice remarked, “I know it’s you, Ord. I know.”

It felt like an ancient trick. A trick tried often and one that had never worked.

With his public voice, the boy said, “I don’t blame the Nuyens for what happened. To my home world, I mean. My parents have explained it—”

“We tried to help you,” Xo interjected.

“Your brother tried his very best. Absolutely.” It had been an enormous public relations disaster, not to mention a tragedy. Anti-Family forces had outmaneuvered a young Nuyen, and nearly a billion civilians died in the crossfire. “I’m just sorry that I can’t visit your home today,” Ord claimed. “I would so much want to thank each of you personally…

Xo nodded. He was wearing a smooth face and the body of a young adult and the bright cheerful eyes of an imbecile. It was all decoration, all a ruse. No one else inside the transport suspected that this wasn’t one of the Nuyens’ young children. He was a full adult, modified and enlarged, and for most of humanity, indecipherable.

This wasn’t a fearful and simple and clumsy Nuyen, and that was another sign—perhaps the most powerful yet—that Ord didn’t belong in this place.

With his private voice, Xo promised, “We absolutely don’t want to harm you. We only want to help you, Ord.”

Then came a seductive argument—intense and focused, full of promises of forgiveness for every crime, known and unknown—and while Xo’s secret voices begged with him to confess and surrender, his public voice was saying, “On the first day of the year, my Family opens its doors to the Earth. It’s a show of friendship. Anyone can join us through his universal window. And if you come, I’ll give you a tour of my house.”