Michael Kube-McDowell - The Quiet Pools

“Asa had learned the most from Tetsu, and acceptance was the first of those lessons. ‘How shall we remember you?’ she asked.

“Tetsu smiled, and stole a tear from Cho’s cheek with a touch. ‘When I am in the Earth, I cannot hear your voices, for the air is too thin,’ she said. ‘I cannot know your thoughts, for they belong to you alone. I cannot use your gifts, for I am in all and of all, without form. Remember me with your lives.’

“ ‘You will forget us,’ cried Cho.

“ ‘I am in you and of you as much as the river and the cliff and the forest. I will not forget you.’

“ ‘Is there nothing we can give you?’ cried Cho, her heart breaking.

“Tetsu took the child in a mother’s embrace. ‘I will feel you walking in the world above my world, and hear your footsteps like the echoes of your heartbeats,’ she whispered. ‘And when you gather with light hearts in the circle and dance to the celebration songs, your feet will speak to me of your joy. That will be gift enough.’

“And so we dance. And so we dance .” Deryn smiled and spread her hands wide. “Blessed be. The tale is done.”

They applauded warmly, and several—among them the two youngest children and the oldest crone—came to thank her with a hug. Anna X waited calmly until Deryn was free and then led her by the elbow toward White Corridor.

“Next time, I’ll have to come in time to hear the whole story,” said Anna X. “You hold them in your hand, seven or seventy. It’s a gift.”

“You have it wrong,” said Deryn. “They hold me. I’m never tired, because they send back to me as much as I give them.”

“Never tired? If you ever decide to conduct a workshop on that bit of magic, put my name down first.”

Deryn smiled. “Did you come to listen, then?”

“I came to tell you that you have a petitioner in the Shelter.”

A look of surprise crossed Deryn’s face, and her steps slowed. “Claiming as what?”

“Claiming as your son.” Studying Deryn’s expression, Anna X added, “You don’t have to see him, of course.”

Deryn closed her eyes, the better to see a memory.

“ Have you a son?” Anna prompted.

“No,” said Deryn. “But I will see him.”

In contrast to the open-door policies on Horizon and New Star, but in keeping with its own founding purpose, Sanctuary was a virtually closed society. Long at or over its design population, Sanctuary accepted only a handful of new immigrants a year—all women. Only Hanif discriminated so openly (against non-Moslems), though Takara and the Soviet colony-sat, Lukyan, were in their individual ways nearly as effectively closed.

But the isolation of Sanctuary went even further. It and Takara were the only satlands which did not cater in some way to tourists, and Takara had Diaspora traffic to replace the lost revenue. Sanctuary restricted visitors of either sex to a portion of the inner ring of the old-fashioned wheelworld, called Entry by residents and “Mama’s doorstep” by annoyed shuttle pilots.

The Shelter was part of Entry. Its forty small one-a-beds, clustered adjacent to the docking spar, were a buffer between Sanctuary and the outside world. For the wounded who needed only a place to hide and heal, the three-by-five compartments were cocoons. For the hopefuls who had reached the final stage of scrutiny by Anna X and the Council, they were way stations. And for petitioners hoping to visit women who had already crossed through Shelter, they made passably comfortable prisons. The Shelter guide met Deryn as she entered the Sanctuary side of the warren. “Your petitioner gives his name as Christopher McCutcheon and claims you as his mother,” she said. “But the indexes don’t support a blood relation. Did you have an unreported male child?”

“After a fashion,” said Deryn. “Where is he?”

“In 24. You can talk to him from the guide room—this way.”

“Thank you,” Deryn said. “I’ll see him in person.”

The guide flashed a grimace of distaste. “As you wish. We’ll monitor.”

“That’s not necessary,” she said, giving the woman’s hand a reassuring squeeze. “He is no danger to me.”

Beside the door to Shelter 24, a small screen showed Christopher sitting quietly near the far end of the compartment, keeping company with his thoughts. Deryn paused before the screen, trying to clear the image of him at fifteen from her mind and replace it with the image before her—a young man, but a man in full maturity.

The darkness cast in his features seemed now more of knowledge than of fear. The softness in his face had been chiseled down to something harder—and perhaps because of it, he was a measure more handsome in flower than she had expected. His spark of alertness was as bright as ever, even in repose. But the joyful innocence was missing, or hidden behind the mask of—what? Sadness? Behind the mask of the purpose that had brought him there.

He looked up as she entered, and his eyes seemed to brighten when he saw her. Showing an uncertain smile, he rose from the seat. He tried to say “Hello,” but the word came out as a noise lost deep in his throat.

Smiling back, Deryn opened her arms, and he came to her. He was the taller by nearly ten centimeters, but he let himself be small in her embrace. There were no words, but something words could not have captured passed between them. She felt great turmoil, great pain, and great relief swirling inside him.

“You always did give the best hugs,” she said, drawing back a step at last.

“I’ve missed you.”

“My memories of you are full of love,” she said. “Why did you come, Christopher?”

He seemed disconcerted by her directness. “Do you follow the news from Earth?”

“No,” she said. “I find it’s never about me.”

“Consider yourself lucky, then,” he said, but did not elaborate. “Deryn, my father’s dead.”

Deryn heard the news with both surprise and understanding. The surprise was the strength of the wave of regret and loss. She was caught for a moment in a time and a place she had renounced, and the breath she drew to quiet her center was quavery.

“I’m sorry,” she said, squeezing the hand she had never released. “Will you tell me about it?”

“I have to,” he said.

They perched on the edge of the settee-bed, and he began, marrying fact and supposition in his narrative. The story he told went further than Deryn could have guessed, and its quiet drama and horror awakened her protectiveness.

But Deryn kept that emotion contained. A father’s death and a son’s grief, however immediate at that moment in that room, were dwarfed by the other dimensions of the account. Deryn began to hope the Shelter guide had ignored her wishes and monitored the conversation, for there were parts of it that Anna X would need to hear.

She tried to listen as though she did not know him, to hear him as Anna would. But Deryn could not forget whom she was listening to, and wondered at how the child she had borne—this child of such promise, now a man of such paradox—had become a witness and a victim and now a player in such a tale.

Toward the end, Christopher became careful about his words. Deryn understood that he was not yet ready to ask what he had come to ask of her, that he was not yet sure of her. But she was ready to be asked, and gently stole the torch from him when the chance came.

“You’re here to do more than tell me William is dead.”

He nodded. “I thought you should know. But that isn’t the whole of it.”

“And the rest is—”

“I came here to find out what you can tell me about Sharron.”

She cocked her head and studied him. “And?”

“And what your geneticists can tell me about myself. I’ll pay for information, people’s time, any testing—whatever.”