The Third Claw of God

19 XANA

Nothing seemed to happen after that, not for a long time; nothing except for me replaying those moments and remembering how and where but not why I’d died.

Even when things started happening, they didn’t amount to much.

I drifted in and out of consciousness for a while.

At one point I found myself floating, fetuslike, in a chamber filled with golden fluid. The walls were both curved and transparent, and the shapes moving in the drier chamber beyond were all distorted funhouse figures, their faces stretched into cylinders with only distant resemblance to the people I had known. One pressed a palm against the wall separating us and mouthed something. I considered reaching out to place my own hand against the other side, but could not seem to translate the impulse into action, and soon lost all interest. After a few seconds I closed my eyes and went back to sleep.

With little transition I found myself in another flotation chamber, in this case the blue nothingness of the AIsource virtual interface. I was annoyed. I didn’t want to be bothered by their shit right now. But the avatar just studied me and spoke a single sentence, one I was in no mood to register, much less heed. It’s not over, Counselor.

In between flashes of being wheeled somewhere on a gurney and lying on a bed with each of my hands being held and massaged by a watchful Porrinyard, I dreamed of my childhood on Bocai. I’d had such dreams before, of course, but most of them, too many of them, had been traumatic flashbacks to the night of the massacre. I was well used to sitting upright in cold sweats, still seeing images of bloodlust and loss. Less often I returned to the moments I remembered now: the idyll before the tragedy, the sunny skies, the laughing faces, the love of both my human and Bocaian families. In this particular flash I must have been about three or four years old. My mother and I were together in a park I remembered well, playing a lazy game with a ball at the end of a string and rules that I made up as I went along. I tripped over something and went down hard, exploding with sobs at the typical childhood inability to absorb the pain and shock adults deal with every day. My mother picked me up and told me it was okay, that I’d be all right, that she’d take care of the owie when we got home. She was bright-eyed and sympathetic, strong and wise—she knew the wound was really nothing, and knew the crisis needed to be felt in order to pass. As the dream, or memory, ended, Bocai’s sun glistened on her dark hair and I reached out, in innocent fascination, to touch it.

The blue room again.

Andrea Cort: You are not yet out of danger.

I thought you said you wouldn’t help me. That it was against your precious rules of engagement.

We’ve helped you more than you can know, Counselor. We are helping you now. The Bettelhines are using their local franchise of our medical enterprise to treat you.

AIsource Medical. This marked another time I owed them. What’s wrong with me?

You were exposed to pure vacuum for just under a minute. There was extensive damage to your lungs, your trachea, your nasal passages, your throat, and your eyes. You also suffered a number of disfiguring burst blood vessels on your chest and shoulders, and a significant cerebral event in your brain. You were, for several subsequent minutes, dead.

Oh, Juje. Am I going to be all right?

You would have not survived, at least not as a functional human being, had the Bettelhine medics not recognized the limitations of their capacities on site and sealed you in cryofoam for delivery to our emergency facility at Anchor Point. You should not worry. Your current confused state, which will be marked by periods of apathy, delirium, and malfunctioning short-term memory, is an expected condition of your recovery and should pass within the next forty-eight hours.

Swell. What about the others?

As you surmised when you took such a desperate measure, the immediate medical emergency involving an honored guest proved more pressing than the prior commands given by Vernon Wethers. Their conditioning overriden by the need to rescue you, the Bettelhine security forces were able to board the Royal Carriage and rescue the surviving passengers.

Surviving?

Alas, several casualties have been reported, among them Mr. Jeck, Ms. Wilson, Mr. Pearlman, and the Khaajiir. Xana’s mass media has reported that they were all killed at the moment of the violent emergency stop. None of the others saw any point in disputing the accuracy of this account.

I bristled at that, but then remembered what I’d told Philip at the onset of my investigation. This was not my jurisdiction. On the Royal Carriage I could overpower a few self-important Bettelhines by sheer force of personality; on a planet with a bureaucracy comprising thousands, I was so far beyond overpowered that it was wiser to recognize the value of walking away from a battle I couldn’t win. What else?

All the surviving Bettelhine employees have gone back to work. Dejah Shapiro has been visiting you regularly in between stops on her grand tour of Asgard in the company of Hans Bettelhine, Vernon Wethers, and the two Bocaian assassins who went after you on Layabout, and who have emerged from their catatonia and are now being questioned at length. Mr. Wethers, in particular, has been more helpful than he might have wanted to be, and has given up many of the names he’s compromised.

And?

The two Bocaian assassins have confirmed that Dejah Shapiro was indeed their main target on Layabout and that they did in fact lose interest in her when they spotted you. They’ve identified the third assassin in their team, their contact on the Bursteeni liner known as the Grace, as a Bursteeni named Neki Rom, who made it as far as Anchor Point but has been taken into custody. Rom has confessed to passing the second Claw of God to Arturo Mendez, who under strict orders passed it to Wethers on the Royal Carriage. There were no other weapons in Rom’s possession when he was captured. If you were correct about the Layabout team possessing three Claws of God, he has already managed to discard the third one or pass it on to yet another Confederate. But there have been many subsequent arrests, and it is considered just a matter of time before the rest of the conspirators are captured and the Bettelhines no longer require the increased security measures in effect at this time.

None of which should have had anything to do with me, now that I was out of it. Why would you say I’m not out of danger?

Just that. For as long as you remain here, you must not allow yourself the luxury of complacency. Even now, forces rally against you.

Why, dammit?

It is as we have said. You are not yet out of danger of assassination. And you are still facing the moment that will determine the shape the future takes. It is coming. Be ready.

Not long afterward I received a visit from the other side.

(( Andrea Cort * Do you know who we are? ))

It appeared inside my head, but it was not the voice of the AIsource. It was another, even less comfortable presence, one I’d only endured once before.

The Unseen Demons.

Get out of my head, you murderous bastards.

(( Your curses fail to shame us * we have explained before that everything we’ve done, we’ve done out of self-preservation * if it meant the deaths of your fellow humans on Bocai, they are neither the first or the last to be sacrificed for our survival * if it is murder, it is murder in the cause of preventing a greater crime, the destruction of a race that wants to survive ))

You’re still not welcome in my head, you pieces of shit.

(( Nor are we comfortable in a place so driven by pain * we visit now only because it is the only chance we have * the Rules of Engagement forbid us from telling you what to do * but you are not long from deciding the future of a species that never did you any harm, as well as the future of your own * you must know that the lies told by your AIsource masters dwarve any you’ve been told by us * your mistake, if you make one, will be tragic ))

Go to hell, I thought again. I don’t care what your excuses are. You killed my family. You made me a monster. I’ll see you dead.

They remained silent, though present, for what felt like several minutes.

And then they departed, with a gentle: (( Someday you’ll know you were wrong ))

More periods of waking.

One of the first visits I managed to understand took place sometime at night. The lights were dim and the sky I could see through a wall-length window to my right was black, dotted with stars. It was good to be awake at a time like that. The darkness soothed my eyes and made everything seem less frantic.

Dejah Shapiro sat beside my bed, clad in a shiny red gown designed to hug her perfect figure, its surface rippling in a manner that to my eyes resembled the wave motion on a small body of water. She wore baubles I would have called earrings had they depended on her ears for support; instead, they seemed to float unsupported beside her lobes. I realized that she’d just left another formal gathering of some kind, and in my semiconscious stupidity hoped that nobody had been murdered during it. I wasn’t up to solving the crime.

She’d been talking for a while, but I didn’t focus until she whispered, “Well, I now know what Hans Bettelhine wants from me.”

“What?”

She lowered her painted lips closer to my ear. “A merger. As I told you on the Royal Carriage, he’s scaling down the munitions business. He wants to retool and go into my line, habitat construction, with a specific focus on investing in and reclaiming shattered ecosystems, whether natural and manmade. Places like this world, Deriflys, that Jason lived on for a while. His proposals are sheer genius. There’d be a sharp loss at the beginning, but in a few years of working together we’d accomplish a great deal for humanity without any damage to our existing profit margins. We’d even make a little bit more. It would work, Andrea. It would.”

I tried to muster enthusiasm and failed. “What did you tell him?”

She took my hand and squeezed, the gesture friendly on the surface but painful in execution as she made sure to press the night’s long painted fingernails into the back of my hand. I winced and opened my mouth to protest, but she silenced me with a look, and spoke with a burning urgency greater than any I’d ever heard from her. “I said I’d bring the figures home to my people and get back to him with my decision. But that’s just an excuse to get the hell out of here as fast as I can. It’ll be great if he pushes through the change, and if he does I’ll do anything I can to help him. It’ll be the best news the poor human race has had for a long time. But these are the Bettelhines we’re talking about, Andrea. That sharp loss for the first few years won’t go over well with some parties. There’s going to be more blowback, and the rest of us all need to be out of range when it happens.”

She released my hand. I pulled it away from her and started massaging it with the other, as resentful as any child for the unwanted momentary pain. I was so groggy that I was more concerned about the pain at that moment than about anything she’d said.

She once again lowered her lips to my ear and murmured: “I’d take you with me if I could. I stayed this long, longer than was wise, just to warn you. I’d stay still longer if I didn’t think these people needed somebody to oppose them if the worst happens. But you need to get well as soon as you can. Prepare yourself. And don’t forget what the Porrinyards kept saying before they left. Remember who you are.”

But for a while the most I absorbed from that was: the Porrinyards left?

Part of me refused to believe it. I couldn’t countenance any condition where they’d ever hate me enough to abandon me to enemies. I could imagine them getting so sick of me that they sought more congenial fields elsewhere. Part of me had expected it for a long time, and remained astonished that they’d lasted this long But leave me? Helpless and injured and not at my best, among people who might want to hurt me? Why would they ever do that? What would ever make them want to do that?

I remembered every argument we’d ever had, every moment I’d betrayed my own cruelty and selfishness in their presence. None seemed bad enough to make them want to do this. None.

Remember who you are.

I remembered who I was. I was the little girl caught up in the madness of a community devouring itself in a spasm of horrific self-cannibalization, who went after the Bocaian she considered a second father and tore out his eyes. I was a war criminal considered the face of evil on Xana, a symbol of Mankind’s capacity for violence to a dozen other races, and a political liability to the Confederacy. I was a caustic bitch who had never loved anybody as an adult, not until the moment they came along, and even then not well.

Remember who you are?

I remembered who they were. And that remained, by far, the more pressing question. If it came down to life or death, they would not have abandoned anybody, not even the likes of Dina Pearlman. What could I have done, to make them hate me so much that they’d abandon me?

I slept some more, woke again in light, accepted more visitors, including a number who I’d never met but who seemed fascinated by my very existence.

I began to register the details of my room, by far the most luxurious hospital facility I had ever seen. It occurred to me, after a while, that it might not have been a hospital at all. The walls were like spun gold, the ceiling an arched vault bearing a chandelier of jeweled crystal. A portrait of some past Bettelhine patriarch, complete with ridiculous mustache and an expression that suggested he’d smelled something awful in his immediate vicinity, hung on one nearby wall, in a frame with a sufficient number of cornices and rills to support a courthouse. The freestanding wardrobe, polished to a high sheen, looked like it had cost more when new than I ever could have expected to earn in a year as representative to the Judge Advocate. The wall-length window I’d spotted off to my right was actually a wall-length sliding door, open to a vast balcony and a sky so bright and blue that it hurt my poor, suffering eyes to look upon it. I heard birdsong: not random tweets, but complex symphonies, from species accomplished for the breadth and depth of their compositions.

Every surface in sight was covered with flowers: a riotous rainbow of them, arranged in bouquets so rich in color and variety that they must have required thousands of man-hours just to cultivate, let alone arrange.

I remember thinking, This isn’t right. And then I drifted away again.

I received another visitor, Paakth-Doy, dressed in a sunny blouse that left her arms bare and revealed the recombinant tattoo of some kind of reptilian cat prowling up and down her arm in an animated simulation of ravenous hunger. She told me that I’d given everybody a tremendous scare, also that she considered me one of the bravest people she’d ever known. She said that she would always remember me and let me know that she’d brought me a message from my Dip. Corps superior Artis Bringen, which had been forwarded to the Royal Carriage and gone unnoticed until the vehicle was brought back down to Xana for inspection. She’d uploaded the data to this room’s hytex connection.

Our conversation was pleasant enough until I asked her what she was going to do.

Her eyes went dark, and she said, “We have all received a great deal of attention since the disaster. It has resulted in lucrative job offers. I myself have been given the opportunity to become a personal companion to one of the Bettelhine aunts. She likes my exotic accent, you see.”

Oh, Juje. They’d gotten to her. Somehow they’d gotten to her and made her want to give up everything she was. I seized her by the wrist. “Doy—you don’t have to do that. I’ve promised to take you away. There are always positions available in the Dip Corps…”

She pulled her hand away. When she answered me, her heavy Riirgaan accent was so pronounced it was as if she’d decided to embrace it, eschewing the part of her that identified with the species of her birth. “This is my idea, Counselor. I know what ‘personal companion’ is likely to mean. I know how the job will change who I am. I have, after all, worked with Colette Wilson. And while I make this decision I am in full command of my will.”

“Then why—”

“Because to me it will not matter. Because I am not Riirgaan nor fully human and I am tired of not knowing how to live. And because I have been assured by my new employer that when the changes take effect I will always be happy, even if made to commit acts that would revolt me now.” She wiped moisture away from her eyes, and forced another counterfeit smile. “How can anybody ever say no to happiness, Counselor? How is it less real if it is imposed?”

By the time I thought of anything I could say to that, Paakth-Doy was gone.

A nurse came in and gave me a breakfast of mashed fruit, unfamiliar to my palate but sweet in a way that reminded me of the candies I’d loved from a confectionary back on New London. It was tart enough to sting my raw tissues, but for the first time since the Royal Carriage I found myself ravenous. I ate the entire bowl and asked for a second serving.

After I ate I accessed the room’s hytex and found the message from Bringen. It was a late delivery of the answers to the questions I’d sent him before boarding the Royal Carriage. Most of what I’d asked him had either come up in the subsequent investigation or no longer mattered, but I paused when I passed a section with information about the missing debt arbitrator, Bard Daiken.

I opened the holo and knew where I’d seen Daiken. He’d been living a content if quiet existence, warming up food in the galley of the Bettelhine Royal Carriage.

His name at the time had been Loyal Jeck.

What a joke. Loyal.

The Bettelhine he’d offended must have been having a great time at his expense.

I awoke again to find my bladder full and the ceiling striped with lengthening shadows. I sat up, fought off a wave of dizziness that almost made me want to lie down again, winced even after it cleared from the sensation of a peculiar heaviness to my head, and swung my legs (clad, I noticed now, in silky pink pajamas just loose enough to caress the skin with every move I made), over the side of the bed. The tile floor felt warm, in a manner that suggested subsurface heating elements. But the texture of the lining was just sensual enough to make me appreciate the decadence anyway.

The lights came on the instant I carried my own weight. However long I’d been drifting in and out, there had not been any extensive muscular atrophy. Still, just to be sure, I closed my eyes and spun en pointe, just once, to make sure I still had some coordination. I did. That was good. If I had to fight for my life anytime soon, I wouldn’t be stumbling around like a drunk.

My head felt heavier than it should have been. I didn’t realize why until soft hair longer than mine was supposed to be brushed both sides of my face. It was shoulder-length now, and fuller than it had ever been. What the hell?

The bathroom was a few steps away, complete with a sunken tub bigger than some swimming pools I’d known and a gold-trimmed vanity surrounded by a selection of creams, perfumes, lotions, and topical euphorics even more extensive than the one that had so impressed the Porrinyards in our suite on the Royal Carriage. I was more bothered by what I saw in the mirror at their center, but waited until I could find the solid gold toilet and achieve blessed release before returning to lower myself into the plush chair at the vanity and stare, with a mixture of horror and wonder, at the stranger gaping back at me.

The face was still mine, even if the complexion was milkier than it had been even in a while; I’d always retained a light tan with minimal exposure to UV, even in environments limited to artificial light. I supposed I could have lost a little color during my time in recovery. But the hair was a revolution. The tint was closer to dark brown than to my habitual jet-black; and my usual close-cropped style, chosen for practicality, and providing the only concession to personality with one errant lock that I allowed to grow longer, was now rich and silky and tickling my shoulders on both sides. Shiny bangs descended to eyebrow altitude. The unknown cosmetician had also applied a touch of eyeliner: not much, just enough to add to my own growing alarm.

All my adult life I’d been surprised when people called me beautiful. I’d never seen it before, and had to admit it now. They’d made me a stunner. But this was not a look I’d ever sought for myself. It made me look soft, feminine in a manner that had never been among my personal affectations.

Could this be what Hans Bettelhine wanted?

It seemed insane. Were he in the market for more empty-headed concubines, he had plenty of obliging choices on this planet, with or without artificial inducement.

And why would the Porrinyards ever have abandoned me to this?

I returned to the bedroom, where my first stop was the wardrobe. I hoped against hope to find my satchel or one of my black suits in there. No such luck: there were sequined things I might have been expected to wear to a formal dinner, patterned blouses and skirts more suitable for everyday wear, and even some pullovers and trousers I could imagine walking around in, but there was nothing that communicated my preferred cold, iron armor of authority. The shoes included everything from slippers to vertiginous high heels. I left the wardrobe behind, considered a straight escape through what appeared to be the front door, decided that it was probably guarded, then focused on the scarlet mountains on the horizon and ran out to the balcony, in the vain hope that I’d find sense out there when there was none available in here.

The balcony was large enough to contain its own garden, with speckled plants that flowered in spirals and a tiny water wheel that spun in perpetuity from the gentle influence of a crystal stream spouting from a channel in the wall above. There was enough space for a narrow path marked by tiled flagstones and leading to a hovering swing large enough for two. A wide-eyed, flexible animal of some kind, with snow-white fur and an expression of intense interest, watched me and then indicated acceptance with a languid collapse against one of the embroidered cushions.

There was also a sculpted stone table surrounded by a circular stone bench. The Khaajiir’s staff stood propped against a salmon-colored planter sprouting an orgy of fronds. When I reached the waist-high wall at the end of the balcony and peered over, I winced at the sight of a drop that, between three stories of building and another great wall of rusty scrub-covered cliffside, must have totaled four hundred meters straight down. There was a sparkling lake down there, aglow with the light of the setting sun, and empty at the moment but for a single pleasure boat under sail. Many kilometers away, angular red mountains backlit by the light of a sun so close to disappearing over that horizon that I was able to stare at that distant swollen circle without feeling the need to blink.

A bird flew by. It was unlike any flying creature I’d ever seen, a scarlet flaming thing with a face like a dagger and a head crest that resembled a paper fan, reaching almost all the way back to its brilliant, blue-tipped tail. It performed a little swoop, blinking at me with clear intelligence before performing the avian equivalent of a shrug and spiraling with a defiant caw.

I was just beginning to consider ways to climb down when a familiar voice behind me said, “That’s a dekarsi. It’s an imported Tchi species, one of my favorites. Their intelligence is that of a human five-year-old.”

I whirled.

It was Jelaine Bettelhine, dressed in riding pants, boots, and a tight leather vest over a checkered shirt. Her hair was tied back, and looked windblown. Her fair complexion had freckled from sun. She was shiny and smiling.

I punched her in the mouth.

I don’t know whether she could have stopped me. Probably. My experience with my own linked pair had long ago established that the enhancement provides a superhuman reaction time. Neither Oscin nor Skye would have been caught off-guard by an attack like that. But Jelaine allowed my blow to strike home and knock her down. She lay on the floor, blinking at me, the pain doing nothing to dilute the damnable affection in her eyes. “Why did you do that, Andrea? Just to see if you still could?”

I rubbed my knuckles. “Something like that.”

“I thought you needed the reassurance, which is why I let you get away with it. Don’t worry. Your mind is still your own, and will remain your own. We wouldn’t dream of dragging you this far, and putting you through so much, only to vandalize such a finely tuned instrument.” She used her knuckles to wipe blood from her lips. “May I get up?”

I didn’t say yes. “Where am I?”

Jelaine sat up, shaking her head in comical reaction to the force of my blow. “One of the smaller guest suites of my private estate in the northeastern region of Asgard. That’s the prettier continent, the one restricted to Inner Family and support staff. We had you transferred here under high security once you were deemed well enough to travel.”

“How long have I been here?”

“On Xana? About a week. Here? About three days. You’re a fast healer. Oh, Andrea, I know you haven’t had the best visit so far, but this is silly. May I please get up so we may speak face to face?”

Her sweet deference, a sharp contrast to the power she held over me, grated. I wanted to kick her. But I could think of no reason I should and a multitude of pressing reasons why I should not. So I nodded.

She stood, used a hand to pat down her hair, and gestured toward the stone table.

We sat down, facing each other across a frieze of winged serpents flying en masse over a landscape of snow-capped mountains. The stone of the bench felt cool through my sheer pajamas, in sensuous contrast to the pleasant warmth of the breeze. I don’t like outdoor environments and I still felt energized by this one, in a manner I immediately attributed to an oxygen mix higher than the usual formula on places like New London. Leave it to the Bettelhines. They even gave themselves superior air.

She said, “I know this is difficult. A mind as sharp as yours must have trouble dealing with short-term memory loss. Please understand that the worst has passed, that we don’t expect any further problems with retention, and that everything I now need to explain to you a second time has already been accepted and embraced by you in the recent past.”

Just because I bought her explanations when not in my right mind—and I had only her word for that—was no guarantee that I’d feel the same way when capable of reason. “I refuse to believe that the Porrinyards abandoned me.”

She reached out and touched the back of my hand. “They haven’t. They stayed with you, or nearby, throughout the most difficult stages of your recovery. I was awed by their devotion.”

“Then where are they now?”

“In orbit, staying aboard your personal transport, which is still docked at Layabout. I assured them that they could remain here as personal guests, and they said they didn’t want to pressure you in any of the difficult decisions you’re going to have to make. That was how they put it, at least. Nobody’s keeping you from speaking to them, or even leaving with them if that’s what you want.”

This still felt wrong. Oscin and Skye were my partners. There were no difficult personal decisions I’d keep from them, or any they’d expect me to. I grabbed a lock of my luxurious new hair and said, “What about this? I have trouble accepting that it’s one week’s natural growth.”

She grinned. “What about it? It’s gorgeous.”

“It’s also disturbing. What gave you the right?”

Her smile never wavered. “You did. My father asked to see what you’d look like with shoulder-length hair, you said it was all right with you, so we applied some nanostimulants to your follicles and had one of our stylists sculpt the results. You can cut it short again, if you like. Though I’d consider that a genuine shame.”

I was growing more and more frustrated by this private joke I was failing to get. “I’m not your father’s doll to dress up. What is this? Is he infatuated with me or something?”

Jelaine winced. “Oh, Juje, no.”

“Then what the hell difference would it make to him what my hair looked like? Whether it was long, short, braided, absent, purple, glowing like Colette’s, or replaced with scales?”

The animal I’d spotted sleeping on the swing now leaped up on the table before her, inviting attention. Jelaine scratched the fuzzy head and made it purr. She said, “He just needed to see what you would look like with shoulder-length brown hair. Come on, Andrea. Think. I’ve already seen you astonish my father by anticipating the explanation for all this. I’m sure you can put it all together a second time if you try.”

Now irritated beyond all measure by her teasing ways, I rolled my eyes and this time found myself focusing on the Khaajiir’s staff, still propped up against the planter like any other design element in this fussy little garden.

Why was it here? Had I been using it before?

I remembered Skye’s words: “If I ever withhold anything from you it’s either because, by my considered judgment, it’s none of your business or nothing you need to know at the moment.”

She’d said that on the Royal Carriage, while giving me a tour of the Khaajiir’s database. She’d indicated her intension to leave out issues unrelated to the current problem, issues that I might have to deal with later. It was the only way to keep me on track.

But her briefing had seemed pretty complete anyway. Hadn’t it been?

She’d even allowed me to hold on to the staff myself, providing me direct access to the data she’d judged pertinent as she guided me through everything Oscin had found.

How could she have hidden anything from me then?

I thought back and realized.

No. She hadn’t let me hold the staff throughout that briefing.

Near the end, she’d taken it away before sharing her findings.

She’d done it with such casual skill, such a lack of apology, that I hadn’t seen anything suspicious.

But now I remembered that she’d taken the staff away while covering the only subject she claimed she hadn’t learned everything about. Her answers on that subject had been fragmentary at best, containing no information relevant to me. When that subject proved irrelevant to the identity of the murderer aboard the Royal Carriage, I’d allowed her to put the issue aside.

What issue had she been talking about then?

What was so big it might have hurt my ability to resolve this crisis threatening all our lives?

I found myself thinking of other moments, all the way to the beginning of this whole sorry business.

The AIsource had said, We hope you’ll survive the shock.

Jelaine had told me, “You need to stay.”

She’d also said, “We have more in common that you can possibly know.” Later on, when I’d figured out the true extent of the connection between her and Jason, I’d imagined that she was just talking about cylinking. But that was something she had in common with the Porrinyards, not with me.

She’d spoken to me with affection and looked at me with undisguised love.

They’d both looked at me with undisguised love.

The Bettelhines had made me not a personal guest, but honored guest.

And then there’s what the Dip Corps had done to me, their pet war criminal.

Antrecz Pescziuwicz had seen it right away. “The Dip Corps could have changed your name, maybe your hair color and a couple of other cosmetic things about you, given you a new ID file and a false history, and nobody but your bosses would have known that you were the same kid. Instead, they put you to work as Andrea Cort, child war criminal grown up, and willingly ate all the seven hundred flavors of crap they had to swallow because of the propaganda weapon they handed all the alien governments who want to paint humanity as a bunch of homicidal bastards who let their own get away with murder. Why would they put themselves through that? Why would they put you through that?”

The AIsource had given me part of the answer. Any conspiracies that have been around you since unformed childhood must have had less to do with manipulating you than using you as a tool to manipulate others.

But who could I have been used to manipulate, when still a child?

Jelaine had said, “A changed man can change his family, and what his family stands for. Even, I daresay, how the family sees its obligations toward its own.”

Too many other offhand comments to list, all now making a terrible kind of sense. I could think of a dozen more without even trying hard.

Among them, the AIsource assuring me that the tragedy on Bocai was the last thing any Bettelhine would have wanted.

Wethers, at the end, acting like he recognized me for the first time. Saying, “I’ve…been stupid. Didn’t see what was in front of me. Didn’t see what I should have known.”

And them, finally: when I struck Colette in anger, when I searched for the limitations of her inability to say no, Skye had looked at me as if just then discovering who I was for the very first time. She already knew, from what she’d read in the Khaajiir’s files. But how must it have felt for her, to see it demonstrated with such awful clarity?

I watched myself, as if from a distance, rising from the bench and approaching that planter, and as my right hand closed around the Khaajiir’s staff and as I thought a woman’s name.

The image that formed in my mind portrayed her the way she’d looked when she lived on Xana. She was a bright-eyed, wistful young woman with shoulder-length brown hair and the kind of face that makes light shine on any world where she chooses to walk.

I’d known her years later when she wore a different name and when that hair was cut short but still sleek enough to shine beneath the glow of a Bocaian sun.

Dejah had said, “You’d be surprised how many outcast Bettelhines live in other systems under assumed names.”

Lillian Jane Bettelhine.

Younger sister of Hans.

Aunt of Jason, Jelaine, and Philip.

Exiled idealist.

Name changed to Veronica Cort.

Resident of a doomed experimental Utopian community on Bocai.

Participant in the auto-genocide that community inflicted upon itself.

Loving wife of the late Bernard Cort.

Loving mother to my late brother and sister.

Loving mother to—

I dropped the Khaajiir’s staff and fell to my knees, crying a word I had not spoken in decades.

“Mommy…!”