Michael Kube-McDowell - The Quiet Pools

Realization began to light Christopher’s eyes. “You knew what he wanted already.”

“Of course. He wanted another Sharron. And that’s what I was. Or could appear to be.” She took his hand and held it tightly. “You see, in my mind, I didn’t agree to have William McCutcheon’s baby. I agreed to have Sharron’s. I did it for her, not for your father. That’s why I never wanted you to call me ‘Mother.’ Sharron had precedence. I was only finishing what she’d begun.”

He was quiet for a moment, and his face showed his struggle to grasp the meaning, the cascading implications, of what she had said. Deryn wanted to leave then and let the solvent of that revelation work at softening the bonds of his comfortably patterned thoughts. But when she stood, saying gently, “I have to leave,” he clutched at her presence like a skirt.

“ Did she begin it?” he asked. “Or was it all my father, like Lynn-Anne believes?”

“I wish I could answer that,” she said, her faint smile apologetic. “But I don’t know myself. Knowing him, I have to say he was probably capable of the theft. But I also believe she was capable of the gift. In the absence of proof, I chose to think the best.”

“Thinking the best where my father is concerned isn’t the easiest thing right now.”

“I know,” she said. “Christopher, I’m expected somewhere. I’ll come back when I can.”

“I’m sorry.” He joined her standing. “Can I ask what you do here?”

“I’m a storyteller. A kind of teacher.”

He smiled in a foolishly pleased way. “Do you tell them about Coyote?”

“But of course,” she said, smiling back. “The young ones seem to like the animal stories best. Heaven knows what they understand from them, though.”

“I wouldn’t mind hearing you tell them again,” he said. “Or would that only embarrass both of us?”

Touching his cheek lightly, she shook her head. “All a good story requires is a good listener. But I’m late now. Perhaps when your petition’s been heard you can join us in the grotto—”

The intrusion of reality dispelled the nostalgic haze for both of them, reminding them where they were and why, and there was an awkward distance in their good-bye. But as Deryn passed through the corridors on the way to her home, she found herself crying for William and Christopher both, and wishing she could find a way to cut the string that joined them.

Anna X heard Christopher’s petition in the morning. Deryn supported it, the Shelter supervisor opposed it, and in the end the council approved it, grudgingly, and with restrictions—a fifteen-day admission, no renewals. But Deryn won the one point that mattered to her—permission for Christopher to come to her quarters on Summer Corridor.

The other issue, of turning Sanctuary’s midwives to searching their records and Christopher’s cells for the Chi Sequence, was resolved in private between Deryn and Anna X. Here there was no compromise—the answer was an unequivocal no.

“What tools we may have are for our purposes,” Anna X said. “Your son’s problem neither concerns us nor serves us.”

She accepted the decision. Christopher’s narrow focus on mechanistic answers and deterministic choices was, it seemed to her, a final attempt to evade taking charge of his own life. The clockwork man, his future written in beads on a genetic string. Locus of control now internal—but unconscious. How can I be wrong if I’m only doing what I must ?

Anna X’s decision might actually be a blessing. Perhaps, Deryn thought, denied the midwives’ aid, he will be forced to find better tools with which to look within.

Christopher did not see it that way.

To Deryn’s surprise, Anna X allowed Christopher a chance to object in person. Deryn accompanied him to the Circle Room, though she made no attempt to either coach him or forewarn him.

“Deryn presented your case to me,” Anna X said, sitting back in her comfortable bowl-cushion chair. She had covered up for the occasion, her high-collared full-sleeved long robe hiding all but her face. Deryn could not remember when she had last seen her so armored with clothing. “We are not interested in whether Memphis leaves or stays, whom it carries away, or why they go. It is completely without relevance to us.”

“That’s not true,” Christopher said. “The Chi Sequence is relevant to the decisions your geneticists make. You can’t afford to ignore a script that powerful.”

“We know more of genetic scripts than you realize,” said Anna X. “Male genetic scripts rule the planet beneath us— scripts which program men for destructive competition with their kind and destructive oppression of my kind. The modern era’s ethics, politics, and economics are all shaped to acquisition and domination, the ultimate goal of which is control of women’s bodies. Testosterone provides more than enough explanation for Memphis . You are still pawing the ground and marking the trees.”

They might as well have been speaking Hindi and Urdu for all that they understood each other. He knew the words, but he could not grasp her context; she heard only her translations of his arguments. Deryn saw him growing frustrated, not only with his failure to persuade her, but also with their inability even to agree on the facts. But then, he had long had an unreasonable faith in the power of reason, and too little grasp of the power of emotions.

“So what you’re really saying is that you won’t help me because I’m the enemy,” he was saying, his tone sharp and impatient. “I’ve got an outie, not an innie, so anything that helps me must harm you. It must, or I wouldn’t want it, is that it?”

“No. Not the enemy,” Anna X said, ignoring the rest. “But your goals are not our goals, and we have the right to focus our resources on our own goals. Our midwives are busy enough with the work they have now. We accepted your presence here as a courtesy to Deryn. But this is our world, organized for our needs, guided by our choices. You cannot expect us to abandon that commitment to champion the cause of a visitor.”

And as quickly as that, it was over.

For the rest of the day, Deryn left Christopher alone in her home. She had obligations—a class in rhythmic language at the school, a meeting of the Code circle to set sentence in a minor case, a bit of healing work to which she had promised to lend her hands and energies.

But even if she had not been obliged to leave him, Deryn would have tried to find a reason to do so. So difficult, so difficult , she thought. The balance within as precarious as the balance without . There was great danger that he would fix on her as the new object of his emotional fealty. She could not allow him to think that her life had stopped when he appeared.

He was struggling to stand, burning from within. She could not catch him if he fell, nor protect him from the flames. She could not allow herself to treat him as her child, for he was all too ready to return to that comforting security. To love and say no is the hardest thing —

That night, he talked about his family for the first time since he arrived. They were sitting in Deryn’s teaching ring, a circle of cushions in a carpeted corner of her flex space. He had picked a spot where he could lean back against a wall; she sat cross-legged and straight-backed a third of the way around the circle. Between them was a low table bearing a woven basket of dried flowers and brown field grasses.

“This business about men and women—what Anna X said this morning,” he said. “Does everyone up here believe that?”

“There’s nothing that everyone up here believes,” said Deryn with a half-smile.