Michael Kube-McDowell - The Quiet Pools

“Don’t rush to judgment on that,” she said. “Deryn was wrong. She was told a lie and passed it right along. All part of the plan.” She shook her head. “He started working on you as soon as you could talk. I finally left because I couldn’t stop it and I couldn’t stand to stay around and watch it anymore.”

“Working on me?”

“Pushing, pulling, twisting, programming. The sculptor at work, creating a self-portrait.” She studied him with a critical gaze. “For a piece of statuary, you actually do a fair imitation of a person.”

So sharp the scalpel, so deep the wound. She was an artist. He gaped, amazed. “Why do you want to hurt me?”

“Why do you care what I think?” She pulled a yellow-wrapped cigarette from a sleeve pocket and lit it. “I was eight when Mom died. You notice things at eight that you wouldn’t notice at five, even if you don’t understand them.” A deep, breathy drag. “They had a fight, the night before, and then she came and held me.”

“I remember you telling me.”

“She knew I didn’t like it when he yelled at her. Usually, I was the one crying. This time she was. She said, ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. So sorry. I won’t make the same mistake again.’ It was the last time I saw her.”

“It happened in the lab the next day,” he supplied.

She smiled faintly. “Yes. The toxicity lab. A lovely irony. Grandmom Anne came and got me from the city school, took me to the hospital. I remember how pale she was, how frightened. By the time we got there, my mother was dead. William was arguing with the doctors and barely noticed us. So Anne took me in to say good-bye.”

Lynn-Anne’s eyes were unfocused and bright with tears. “I touched her hand, and it felt so wrong that I ran out of the room crying that it wasn’t her. I didn’t know until later that it was the hand where she’d injected herself.” She looked hard at him. “You know she did it on purpose, don’t you? You don’t still believe it was an accident.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I still wonder why she would do it. A moment of weakness, because they had a fight? That doesn’t explain it. There were better choices. If she was unhappy, she could have left, moved out, even divorced him.”

Lynn-Anne was shaking her head in dissent. “You don’t leave William McCutcheon until he’s ready to let you go. Sharron Aldritch was a very bright woman, but not a very strong one,” she said. “She killed herself in a moment of clarity and strength, because she knew that it was the only way that she could escape him—the only way she could deny him. I’m as sure of it as I am of anything in this world. And I hate him for it.”

Tight-lipped, Christopher nodded. “I guess if I believed that, I would have to hate him, too. But I don’t see him that way.”

“You can’t,” she said with a sad smile. “Please don’t pretend on my account.”

“I’m serious. Sharron gave me something precious—a piece of herself. I love her for that, even though I never knew her.”

“She gave you nothing,” his sister said harshly.

“I am what I am partly because of her—”

“What makes you think she wanted you born?”

He stared. “They harvested her eggs when they knew she was dying—she wanted—”

“No,” Lynn-Anne said sharply. “I saw them take her to surgery. I remember, because I thought it meant she might be okay. They harvested the eggs after she was dead.”

A deep frown creased Christopher’s face. “So I was confused,” he said. “It doesn’t matter whether it was before or after. The point is the same. She gave us a gift—”

“What makes you think that she knew?”

“Deryn told me—” He stopped short. “Was that the lie? Is that what you meant?”

Lynn-Anne showed a smugly satisfied smile. “The light dawns. Yes, that was the lie. The fight was about you, Christopher.”

Though he heard the words, the meaning eluded him. “What are you saying?”

She laughed at his puzzlement. “Think about it. You’ll figure it out eventually. You see, you’re just like your father, Christopher. You’re just not as good at it.”

The screen went white.

And though he tried for more than an hour, she accepted no more calls from him that night.

The memorial convocation for Malena Graham was nearly over when Mikhail Dryke returned to the auditorium. Sasaki was at the podium, a slender but powerful figure in her wide-sashed black and red kimono. Rather than create a distraction by returning to his seat in the front row, Dryke found a spot along the back wall and stood there.

Dryke had resisted Sasaki’s plans to address the convocation in person, just as he had resisted the decision to hold the Block 1 pioneers over for two days at all three centers. Both actions seemed foolishly defiant, a challenge and invitation to any fanatics who might have been inspired by Evan Silverman’s example. Neither Sasaki’s movements nor the Project’s internal schedules were made public, but Dryke was under no illusions that he could ensure either remained a secret.

The gathering made a lovely target, and Sasaki’s presence vastly sweetened the prize. When com services could easily place her “in” the auditorium with an Oration hololink, it seemed to Dryke a foolish risk for her to leave the controlled environment of Prainha for the urban front lines of Houston. When Sasaki dismissed his objection without discussion, Dryke could not help but read it as confirmation that she had lost confidence in him.

But he had been wrong—wrong about the decision, and perhaps wrong about the meaning. Because of his everyday access to her, Dryke realized, he had lost sight of the power of Sasaki’s mystique, the calming influence of her quiet leadership. Since the word began to spread that she was coming to Houston, and especially since her arrival three hours ago, Sasaki had worked a transformation on the mood of the center more profound than that managed in three days by the center’s army of counselors.

And now, with the closing words of her panegyric, she was sealing the change.

“There have been many rumors—many more, no doubt, than have reached my ears,” Sasaki was saying. “I have heard that Malena Graham’s place on the ship’s roster will be filled by her sister. That her body will be carried on Memphis for burial in space. That she anticipated her death and recorded in her diary a hope that she would be interred on a world of Tau Ceti.

“I must tell you, perhaps to your disappointment, that these rumors are false.

“Malena Graham’s diary was filled with anticipation of her life on Memphis , with reflections of the dream and the goal that we all share, with the private thoughts of the heart and the spirit. She had no inkling of what was to come.

“Malena Graham’s family has requested that her body be returned to them for burial near Franklin, in Virginia. The coroner’s office of the Texas State Police has already complied with their request. Her body was never in our custody. Nor would the police have recognized any claim to it we might have made.

“And I have decided that Malena Graham’s place on Memphis will be filled by a random draw from the qualified alternates— which is the usual process by which vacancies are filled.”

Despite the inhibiting solemnity of the event, a scattering of voices was raised in unhappy protest. Dryke was shocked, but Sasaki remained unperturbed, holding up her hand to ask for silence.

“I know that Dr. Oker’s office has received several hundred messages urging that Malena’s place be left vacant, as a memorial,” she said. “I sympathize with the sentiment. But I cannot believe that Malena would want us to deny to another, in the name of honoring her, the gift that she had been so grateful to receive herself.”