Steven Harper - Nightmare

Unfortunately, Ara had the chill feeling that the only way to get further information was wait for the killer to strike again and hope for more clues.

At least Ben would be safe. Not only was he male, he wasn’t Silent. At least, not in any way that counted. She looked at the hologram of Ben, taken at age ten, that sat on her desk. His blue eyes were merry, his smile a bit mischievous. He looked nothing like her, of course. Several years ago Ara and a team of Children had been exploring what they thought was a derelict pirate vessel found in orbit around a gas giant. It hadn’t been quite derelict, though the ship’s only inhabitants hadn’t been aware of much. They were a series of embryos frozen in a cryo-unit that had been missed or left behind for some other reason. The readout said the embryos were Silent.

Ara took them back to Bellerophon with her, indeed held the unit on her lap for most of the trip home. Twelve viable, motherless embryos found exactly at a time when Ara’s arms ached to hold a baby. Ara’s doctor chose one at random for implantation. That left the others still frozen, but Ara didn’t want more than one. Nine months later, Ben was born, and Ara thought she would burst with happiness. Even when he showed no awareness of the Dream by age ten, eleven, twelve, and onward, Ara still loved him. She couldn’t help but feel disappointment and not a little guilt, though. Was it her fault? Had she done something wrong during her pregnancy? Or during Ben’s early development? Or was it because he had spent over a decade in frozen limbo? No one could give her an answer.

Now, however, it was an advantage. She wouldn’t have to worry about him being killed.

The familiar sound of the front door opening came to her, followed by the equally familiar sound of Ben’s footsteps. She checked the clock. School was out already? She had been working longer than she’d thought. Definitely time for a break. Ara left her office and headed for the kitchen because that was the first room Ben usually hit after school these days.

She found him staring into the open refrigerator.

"Hey, Mom," he said distractedly. "There’s nothing to eat."

"Hey, yourself," she said. "Then close the door."

Ben obeyed and, with a put-upon sigh, began to rummage through the cupboards. His data pad peeked out from his back pocket, and Ara abruptly found that endearingly cute, a boyish gesture on someone who was all-too-rapidly becoming a man. When he turned around with a box of crackers, she swept him into a hug.

"Mom!" he protested. "Geez."

"Think of it as your room and board payment," she told him, stepping back. "How was school?"

"Fine." He crunched a handful of crackers. "You look tired. Something wrong?"

Ara hadn’t told him she was consulting with the Guardians, though she was pretty sure he’d heard about the murders. Almost everyone on Bellerophon had heard, despite the Guardians’ attempt to keep things quiet. She had been reluctant to mention it to him-no point in making him worry.

"I’m a little overworked," she admitted. "I need a break."

"So what are we doing for Festival tonight?" Ben asked.

"I thought the usual," she said. "Dinner here, then down to the games and the fireworks."

Ben made a face. "Does that mean you’ve invited them ?"

"Attention! Attention!" said the house computer. "Incoming call for Mother Araceil Rymar."

"Put it through to the office," Ara replied as always, and left Ben to his crackers. In her office, the wall screen showed Sister Bren, one of the teachers at the monastery.

"I hate to bother you so close to Festival," Bren said, "but I wanted to talk to you about Kendi. He slipped out of class half an hour early today, and one of the other teachers saw him climbing down from a talltree a while later. I’ve also noticed him daydreaming a great deal during lessons. I’m afraid he’s shaping up to be a difficult one. Freed slave syndrome, I expect."

Ara puffed out her cheeks in mute agreement. "He shows a lot of the signs, doesn’t he? Just this morning he climbed onto the dorm roof and broke a gutter. Considering what he went through, though, I’m surprised it’s not a lot worse."

"He doesn’t cause disruption in class," Bren agreed. "But he won’t pass history if he makes this a habit."

"He has a lesson with me in a few minutes. I’ll talk to him then," Ara promised. "He’s going to need counseling, I think, but you know how touchy suggesting it can be, especially at that age."

"Don’t I just. Look, I won’t write him up this time, but if he does it again, he’ll end up with extra work detail."

Ara signed off with a grimace. Well, she should have been expecting it. Ex-slaves, especially young ones, tended to run in one of two directions-acting in or acting out. The ones who acted in stayed very quiet, tiptoeing around the monastery as if they were afraid of being noticed and sold back into servitude. Willa struck Ara as one of these. The ones who acted out went in the other direction, taking out suppressed rage and hidden fears on their teachers and fellow students. Jeren Drew was clearly one of these, and now Kendi seemed to be joining him. A precious few seemed to come through slavery relatively unscathed. Kite looked to fall into this category, but it was too early to know for sure. Maybe his strange speech was a symptom of a deeper issue.

In any case, Kendi was Ara’s special problem, since he had been assigned to Ara-at her request-for one-on-one instruction, making her a surrogate parent in many ways. Jeren, Kite, and Willa had all been matched with other teachers. Although it was certainly possible to take on more than one student at a time, the monastery frowned on the practice, especially when it came to teaching ex-slaves. It often helped a slave’s damaged self-esteem to know that the current teacher was focused on him or her alone.

A now-familiar clanking issued from behind Ben’s closed door. Ara knocked, then poked her head inside. Ben was pressed into a chair, shoving at a stack of weights with his legs.

"Your aunt and uncle are coming over for dinner," she said. "We’ll be eating late."

"I figured," Ben grunted, face red with exertion. "Are the jerks coming too?"

Ara put her hands on her hips. "I wish you would try to get along with your cousins. You don’t have any brothers or sisters, and it would be nice if-"

"The hell it would." Clank. Clank.

"Watch your-oh, never mind." There were some battles not worth fighting. "Just wear something nice, and try to be polite. Clear?"

Ben shrugged, and Ara decided to take that for agreement.

"I have to go give a lesson," she continued. "I’ll be back in time to start supper."

Clank. The weights stopped, and Ben wiped his face with his shirt, revealing a flash of pale, flat stomach. "You’re not ordering out and telling everyone you made it? What happened-Maureen’s go out of business?"

"Ha ha. Just for that, wise guy, you can peel the shrimp for me."

Kendi Weaver made a sound of exasperation and got up from the couch. "It still doesn’t work."

"Kendi, meditation and breathing exercises are very important," Mother Ara explained patiently from her chair. Their voices were deadened by the soundproofed walls of the tiny, windowless meditation cubicle. "You have to ready both mind and body. Otherwise you’ll never enter the Dream."

"I’m not saying I shouldn’t meditate. I’m just saying I can’t do it lying down like that. It doesn’t feel right. I can’t concentrate."

"Well, some Silent prefer leaning back or even-"

"I made this today." Kendi reached under his couch and pulled out the short spear. He had skipped the rest of his morning classes to sand it, and the wood was smooth and solid in his hand. After helping the custodian repair the gutter, he had wheedled some red paint and a rubber tip out of her. The rubber was to cover the spear’s point.