Trickster

CHAPTER THREE

Harenn Mashib sat stiffly at the pilot's board of the Poltergeist. If she moved, even dared to blink, she would start clawing at the walls. Kendi had just called to tell her they had Bedj-ka and that she needed to make sure the ship was ready for take-off. Harenn wasn't a pilot, couldn't fly even a paper airplane, but she could switch everything on, prime the systems, and get take-off permission from the spaceport authorities. All this she had done. Now all she had left to do was wait.

Harenn felt like she had been waiting forever. She still remembered with excruciating clarity the day she had come home to find her baby missing and her husband gone. Initially Harenn had assumed Isaac had taken Bedj-ka and gone out, perhaps to the park or for a walk. She had enjoyed an hour of solitude, even taken a nap. But when evening came and Isaac didn't return, she became worried, then frantic. She called everyone she knew, everyone they both knew, but no one had seen them. Finally she called the Guardians, the police and legal force for the Children of Irfan. Late the next day a Guardian Inspector named Linus Gray informed her that a man matching Isaac Todd's description had been seen carrying a baby on board a slipship. Inspector Gray also told her that his partner had gotten hold of some contacts on other planets, contacts who were experts in the underground slave trade. They had heard of Isaac Todd.

"It seems your husband has been pulling this game for years," Gray told her. "He marries a woman, gets her pregnant, and then sells the child into slavery before vanishing to another planet and doing it all over again."

"But this is not true," Harenn protested. "Isaac loves me, and he loves Bedj-ka."

"According to my contacts," Gray continued softly, "he has unexpressed Silence-genetically Silent but unable to enter the Dream. His Silent genes, however, always breed true. All his children are Silent, and immensely valuable on the slave market. Ms. Mashib, your husband is a con artist of the worst kind. It's probably not much comfort, but you aren't the first woman he's fooled."

Gray continued to talk about how the Guardians would do everything in their power to find Isaac but now that he was off-planet, the odds were low and so on and on. Harenn barely heard. She was thinking about how insistent Isaac had been about having children, how fierce he had been about making love, how ecstatic he had been when she told him she was pregnant. Her cheeks burned with shame at her naivete and vulnerability.

After Gray left, Harenn barricaded herself in her tiny home, the one that was now only hers. The thought of going outdoors made her sick. Not only was there the crushing grief at the loss of her child, but also the fact that everyone was surely either laughing at her stupidity or clucking their tongues in sympathy. Which was worse? She couldn't tell, but there was no way she could face either one.

In the end, it was the memory of her mother's funeral that saved her. Harenn found herself sitting on her bed with the veil she had worn to the service, which had taken place six months before Harenn met Isaac Todd. The cloth was soft, flimsy, and opaque, like a secret. Harenn had hazy memories of a place with stone walls, dark-haired men, and veiled women, and she knew Mother had fled this place, but Mother had always refused to talk about it. Sometimes, when she was feeling insecure or unhappy, Mother would wear her veil for a few days, then remove it without comment. Mother's death had been a devastating blow in itself, and Harenn had decided to hide her own grief behind the impenetrable cloth, a shield between her and the rest of the world. Harenn looked down at the veil for a long time. Then, with grim determination, she slipped the hooks behind her ears to hide her shame and went out into the world to find her son.

Harenn was already a certified nurse with the Children of Irfan, but nurses with no other skills didn't go on slave rescue expeditions, so Harenn learned engineering and joined Mother Ara Rymar's crew of seekers. Everywhere she went, she looked for clues to her son, and always she came up empty. In the process, Harenn learned the arts of disguise and makeup, making her even more valuable to Mother Ara's expeditions. And always the veil stayed with her. Nine years later, Harenn helped smuggle a Silent street hustler named Sejal out of the Empire of Human Unity, and like a genie showing gratitude at being released from his bottle, Sejal had told her where to find her little Bedj-ka.

Now she sat in the pilot's chair of the Poltergeist and waited for his return, afraid to move for fear she would wake from a strange dream. What did Bedj-ka look like? How would he react when he saw her? How would she react? Harenn's imagination continued to portray Bedj-ka as a babe in arms, though she knew better. Kendi had said over the communicator only that Bedj-ka appeared healthy and uninjured and that they would be there in less than half an hour.

Out of the entire nine years she had waited, this half an hour was proving to be the longest. Even the busywork she had tried to create for herself among the engines had failed to occupy her mind. In the end, she merely sat and waited.

"Attention! Attention!" said the computer at long last. "Father Kendi has returned to the ship."

Harenn bolted from the bridge. She flew down the corridor to the airlock hatchway, veil fluttering in the breeze. In the entry bay, she skidded to a halt and covered the returning group in one swift glance. Kendi looked triumphant. Lucia wore her usual serene expression, though she was rubbing the small figure of Irfan she habitually wore around her neck. Ben was carrying Gretchen, whose face was pale with pain. And standing next to them, looking shy and uncertain, was a boy with dark hair and eyes. Harenn's breath caught. The resemblance to Isaac was so strong that if she had seen him at random on the street, she would have instantly recognized him as Isaac's son. Harenn tried to speak, but her throat closed up.

"Hi," the boy said to her.

"Bedj-ka?" she blurted.

"This is Jerry," Kendi said. "He says that's the name he's always had. Markovi only changed his last name."

Harenn found she couldn't move. Nine years she had dreamed of this moment, longed and yearned for it. Now it was here and she didn't know what to do.

"Ben, take Gretchen to medical," Kendi said. "We'll get her fixed up as soon as we can. Lucia, get to the bridge and get us the hell out of here before the cops show up."

The three of them left, leaving Harenn, Kendi, and Bedj-ka-Jerry? — alone. Kendi squatted, bringing his head down to Bedj-ka's level.

"Jerry," he said, "remember how I said there was someone on the ship who wanted to meet you?" At Bedj-ka's mystified nod, he continued, "Jerry, this is Harenn Mashib. She's your mother."

Harenn's throat thickened again. She wanted to sweep Bedj-ka into her arms and hold him close, but she still couldn't move.

"Mother?" Bedj-ka said, and for a moment Harenn thought he was talking to her. Then she realized he was only echoing Kendi. "She can't be my mother. My mother's dead."

Something broke and Harenn found she could speak. "Is that what they told you?" she said hoarsely. "That I was dead?"

"That's why we were slaves-all us kids at the Enclave," Bedj-ka said. "Our parents were dead, and the Enclave bought us and we had to pay them back by growing up and working in the Dream. Then that weird stuff happened and none of us could feel the Dream anymore, so they sold us. They said we were no longer blessed."

"I'm not dead," Harenn said. "You were taken from me and I've been looking for you ever-"

"Why are you wearing a veil?" Bedj-ka interrupted.

Harenn tore the veil from her face and flung it aside. Kendi looked startled-it was the first time she had ever unveiled in his presence. The ship rumbled slightly beneath Harenn's feet as the Poltergeist took off. Bedj-ka looked at her face and Harenn felt naked. She could feel the tears standing in her eyes.

"What did you call me? Bed-kee?"

"Bedj-ka," Harenn said. She squatted in front of him. "It was the name I gave you when you were born."

"Where was I born?"

"On a planet called Bellerophon in a place called Treetown. It is a city built among trees that are so tall you cannot see the tops from the ground."

"Why didn't you come and get me before now?"

"I did not know where you were." The questions came rapid-fire, and they made Harenn feel like she was kneeling in some kind of strange dream. "I looked and I searched, but I couldn't find you. Until now."

"I'll leave you two alone," Kendi put in, rising. "Harenn, as soon as you feel up to it, I need you to go down to medical and look at Gretchen. Her foot was broken getting Jer-Bedj-ka out of Sunnytree." And he left.

"That was rigid!" Bedj-ka said. "The gates slammed shut behind the van and I thought they had chopped Gretchen's foot off but it was only broken and Lucia was great the way she got my shackles off even though she couldn't see because it was dark in the crate, but they didn't tell me the bomb in the shackles was a major problem until after it was all over. Are you really my mom?"

The sudden flood of words put Harenn off-balance and it took her a moment to realize Bedj-ka had asked her a question. "Yes," she said.

"I always wondered what my mom was like and so did the other kids I guess, but none of us thought we'd ever get to find out because they told us our parents were all dead, or at least that's what Matron told us. She was really strict but I think she liked us, though Ned hated her because she always punished him whenever he mouthed off to her or called her names. I could tell she was upset when Patron said that we'd all have to be sold now that we'd lost our Silent blessings and couldn't touch the Dream. Where's my dad?"

"Your father?" Harenn temporized. It was the one question she hadn't been sure how to answer. Harenn's knees were getting tired from squatting in front of Bedj-ka, so she simply sat on the floor of the entry bay. Bedj-ka sat next to her, a stream of chatter pouring from his mouth. Harenn noticed he mostly stared straight ahead at the wall opposite them, though every so often he stole a glance at her face. Harenn wanted to put her veil back on, hide behind it. It had become a part of her after so long and going without it was like appearing in public in her underwear. But she left the veil on the floor where she had dropped it.

"I have a dad, don't I?" Bedj-ka was saying. "Everyone has to have a dad. Is he dead then? Is that why you don't want to say?"

Harenn settled on the truth. He would find out eventually, anyway. "Your father's name is Isaac Todd. He was… he was the person who sold you into slavery when you were a baby."

"That's what happened to Ginny. She was the only one of us who knew something about her parents, but they sold her, though she didn't say why and I think she used to cry about it at night a lot. I could hear her because when we were real little they let all of us sleep in one big room but when we got older they put the boys and the girls in separate rooms. I thought it was really stupid but Matron said those were the rules. Was my dad mad at me? Was that why he sold me?"

"Your father was… a very sick man, Bedj-ka," Harenn said slowly. "He valued money more than human life. You were a beautiful baby who brought me joy in every moment, and I was devastated when Isaac took you from me. If I had known what he was going to do, I would have destroyed suns and planets to stop him." Every fiber in her ached to snatch this child into her arms, but she didn't know how he would respond, didn't want to frighten him. That was one of her great fears-that he would reject her or show anger at her. Hesitantly, with slow, trembling movements, she put one arm across his shoulders. The boy continued chattering.

"The only place I remember is the Enclave and Matron and Patron and the other kids. I didn't like being a slave, especially when I saw other kids who belonged to free parents who could go wherever they wanted and do whatever they wanted, but Matron told us we were Silent and that meant we were blessed and that we had to be protected so we could learn how to go into the Dream and do stuff in there for the Enclave. Matron told us stories about slaves who were beaten or starved or sold away from their families and she said we were lucky to be in the Enclave, but then they sold us anyway and I ended up at Sunnytree Farm and it was really hard work and I was scared of some of the other slaves there because they would look at me funny when I getting undressed every night but then that Gretchen lady came and I'd heard stories about the Children of Irfan so I knew it would be okay to go with her and now you're my mom? I've always wanted a mom. Besides Matron, I mean."

A jumble of emotions piled up inside Harenn. Apparently Bedj-ka hadn't been abused, had been with people who had taken good care of him, and the Children had taken him out of slavery before anyone had done anything terrible to him. For this she supposed she should be grateful. Instead she felt cheated. She had missed seeing him walk for the first time, say his first words, attend his first day of school. The tears that had been building in her eyes suddenly spilled over. Bedj-ka noticed them.

"Why are you sad?" he asked with sudden apprehension. "Did I make you cry? Don't send me back to the farm, I promise I won't make you cry again, I really promise."

This time Harenn gave in to her impulse and, for the first time in nine years, hugged her son tightly to her. "I would never, ever send you away, Bedj-ka," she whispered fiercely in his ear. "No matter what."

She held him for a moment longer, then released him and stood up. "Now I should go down to medical and see to Gretchen's foot. Come with me?"

"Are you a doctor?" Bedj-ka asked, getting to his feet. "I always wondered what my mom and dad were like and what they did for a living but I never thought about anyone being a doctor."

"I am not a doctor, but I am an experienced nurse and medical technician, so I can perform many straightforward procedures, including healing fractured bones. I am also the engineer for this ship."

"An engineer? Rigid!"

They were halfway down to the medical bay before Harenn remembered she had left her veil on the floor.

Kendi entered the quarters he shared with Ben and flung himself down on the sofa. The living room was dimly lit. With the Poltergeist in slipspace, the windows were darkened to block out the nauseating view of swirling, clashing colors. Ben sat cross-legged on the other end of the couch holding a black, star-shaped piece of computer equipment the size of a basketball.

"All life, what a day," Kendi said. "I'm wiped and wired at the same time. How's Gretchen?"

"Complaining as usual," Ben replied. "I suppose that's a good sign. Harenn cleaned her up, put her foot in a heal-splint, and gave her some painkillers. The heal-splint has an anti-grav unit on it so she can walk, but it'll take a week or so for the bone to heal completely."

"How are she and Bedj-ka doing?"

"They seem to be getting along okay, but I'm willing to bet they're both feeling overwhelmed."

"I know the feeling." Kendi rubbed his face.

Ben set the piece of equipment aside to run a hand down Kendi's arm, and Kendi scooted over so he could lean against him. Ben always felt so reassuringly solid, something he could cling to when the rest of the universe seemed to wash up and down like an angry ocean.

"When do we get to Drim?" Ben asked, draping an arm down over Kendi's shoulder and resting his hand on Kendi's stomach. He smelled like soap.

"Lucia says three days and two hours," Kendi said. "We spent three days getting Bedj-ka back, so that'll leave us with seven weeks and one day before we have to return the ship to the Children. Bellerophon is a week away from Drim, though, so we actually have only six weeks and a day to look for my family."

"Lucia's flying the ship right now?"

Kendi nodded. "I asked her if she wanted to drop out of slipspace once we were a safe distance from Klimkinnar and get some rest-she looked kind of tired-but she said she was good to go as long as you can relieve in her in a few hours. I can take over from you, and then we can get back to a more regular pilot schedule until we arrive." He puffed out his cheeks. "Then I should double-check our fake credentials, pop into the Dream long enough to make sure Sunnytree or L.L. Venus haven't decided to spend the money to set up an inter-planetary squawk using what few Silent can still get into the Dream, and-all life, how did Ara handle all this without going over the edge?"

Ben laughed, and the vibrations thrummed pleasantly in Kendi's back and chest. "You wanted this job. Keep saying that to yourself. You're doing pretty good, though. I haven't seen any problems on board."

"Yeah, well, this is an easy group to command."

"Even Gretchen?"

Kendi paused. "Okay, you've got me there."

Another laugh. Then they sat in silence for a while. Kendi drank in Ben's solid presence and decided that he'd be perfectly happy if he never got up from the couch again.

"Seriously, though," Ben said at last, "how are you holding up? About going to Drim, I mean."

"Honestly? I don't know. I made myself concentrate on getting Bedj-ka back for Harenn so I wouldn't think about my own family or how much time it might take to look for them. Sejal said two of them are on Drim, but I don't know which two. Mom and Dad? Martina and Utang? Mom and Martina? I have no idea and if I think about it too long, I want to run screaming up and down the hallways. Bad for crew morale."

"Aren't you worried it'll be another false lead?"

Kendi shook his head. "Sejal was right about Bedj-ka. I'm sure he's right about this. That's one thing I've never questioned." He sat up and gestured at the piece of equipment Ben had set on the end table. "What is that thing, anyway?"

"You don't recognize it?" Ben picked it up. Green lights winked quietly, and a flat screen said All systems operating within normal parameters.

"Nope. Looks old, though. Something you're refurbishing?"

"You might say that." Ben fell silent and stared down at his hands. Kendi recognized the signs. Ben had something important he wanted to say, but he was having a hard time forming the words. Kendi knew from experience that pushing was the wrong route to take, so he waited quietly, though he burned with curiosity. What could be so important about a junky old piece of computer equipment? Finally, after a long pause, Ben spoke again.

"We talked about having kids one day, remember?"

"Sure," Kendi said, a little surprised. "Adoption. Or one of us could hook up with a woman who'd be willing to donate eggs. Or we could order a cut-and-splice from a lab, have a kid that was biologically both of ours. But those two options would be pretty expensive, not in the least because we'd have to find a surrogate mother. Artificial wombs are fine for most people, but we're both Silent-"

"— and Silent babies die in artificial wombs," Ben said. "I know. There's another way." He held up the black star. "This way."

"What do you mean?"

"You know where I came from, right? Mom's team found a derelict ship that had been cleaned out, probably by pirates. But they missed something."

Realization dawned. "That's the cryo-unit Ara found?"

"Yeah." Ben's voice was low and husky.

"All life, Ben-how did you get it? I thought Ara gave it to Grandfather Melthine once she-oh."

"Yeah. After Grandfather Melthine died, I helped go through his things and it was still there. I sort of… kept it."

"All life," Kendi said again. "Let me see." Ben handed it to him and Kendi turned it over in his hands. The surface was smooth and cool, with tiny controls and switches in the center of the star near the viewscreen.

"The other eleven embryos are still alive," Ben said. "All Silent. There were twelve when Mom found it, and it was right at about the time she was wanting kids in a bad way. She had her doctor thaw one out at random and implant it. If the doctor had grabbed a different embryo, I'd still be in that thing."

"And I'd be a hell of a lonely guy," Kendi added, to which Ben gave a small smile. Kendi reached over and brushed red hair off Ben's forehead. "You want to raise one or two of these as our kids."

"I've known about them all my life," Ben said. "I always kind of thought of them as my brothers and sisters. When I was little I used to pretend they were just asleep. Eventually they'd wake up and I'd have someone to play with besides my stupid cousins." He took the cryo-unit back and held it up. "I want to take them out. All eleven of them."

A pang went through Kendi's stomach and his eyes widened. " Eleven kids? All at once?"

"No!" Ben laughed again. "One or maybe two at a time. We'll have to find surrogate mothers, but I'm sure we'll find someone. I was an only child, Kendi. Mom tried to set things up so my cousins would be a brother and sister to me, but they treated me like shit my whole life because I wasn't Silent-or everyone thought I wasn't. I've always thought about how wonderful it would be to have a big family, a whole houseful of people who didn't care if you were Silent or not."

"I loved you before you were Silent," Kendi said, putting an arm around Ben's shoulders. "So did your mom."

Another small smile. "I still want a big family."

"I knew that, but-eleven kids," Kendi said. "All life!"

"What… what do you think?" Ben asked.

Kendi took his arm back and chewed on a thumbnail without looking at Ben. He knew that if he looked into those blue eyes he would say "Let's do it," and damn the consequences. A year ago he would have said it anyway. The Despair and Ara's death, however, had made him more cautious. Kendi wanted children, he knew that. But eleven of them! How would they support so many? Would it be fair to the individual kids to have such a large group, spread parental love and resources that far? Ben would make a great father, Kendi was sure, but Kendi had doubts about his own parenting abilities. Was he old enough? Wise enough? Smart enough? Imagine having almost a dozen children all looking to him for help and advice and discipline and love. How would he manage all that, even with Ben there?

"I don't know," he said at last.

Ben drew away. "Okay."

"No, Ben." Kendi reached over, grabbed Ben's hand. "Ben, I love you more than anyone in the universe. I love you so much that sometimes it hurts. I would do anything to make you happy- anything-because if you're not happy, I'm not happy. That's why I can't answer you right now. I'm scared that I'd be saying let's do it because you want it and not because we both want it. I need time to think. I'm not saying no. I just can't say yes yet."

Ben seemed to consider. "All right," he said at last. "I can accept that. It's a big decision. And these little guys aren't going anywhere."

"Do you know anything about where they came from?"

"Not a clue. I only know that they're all Silent and they're all healthy. And we-all twelve of us-share enough DNA to make us brothers and sisters. Originally there were eighty-seven embryos, but only eleven-twelve, counting me-are still viable. The readout says they were put into this cryo-unit thirty-odd years ago, but that's not necessarily when the embryos themselves were… created."

"Shouldn't you get a newer cryo-unit?" Kendi said, suddenly worried.

"Not really. I've checked this one several times and it's perfectly sound."

"Okay." Kendi stretched restlessly. "I should take a nap, especially if I'm going to do a pilot shift later, but I'm still wired. Pulling a con always revs me up. Fooling Markovi like that, yanking Bedj-ka out right from under the bastard's nose. All life, it's almost better than sex."

"Yeah?" Ben set the cryo-unit back on the table and ran light fingers down the back of Kendi's neck. Kendi shivered deliciously at the sensation. Then Ben kissed him.

"I did say almost better," Kendi pointed out several moments later.

"Let me show you the exact difference."

Four days later, Father Kendi Weaver leaned against the railing on the roof of the Varsis Building and stared out across the city of Felice. The Varsis was the tallest building in town, and Felice's thin skyscrapers and artificial spires moved out to the horizon in all directions beneath him. Ground traffic oozed over streets so far below that Kendi couldn't hear the sounds. Like Klimkinnar, Drim also put severe restrictions on air traffic, so no aircars buzzed between the buildings. Up here was just the sun and the wind and the quiet voices of the other sightseers who had come up for the view.

Kendi looked down at the dizzying drop. The talltrees on Bellerophon had nothing on the Varsis Building, but height wasn't everything. Bellerophon was a city among the trees, built to merge with the treescape and blend with the beauty. Felice grew from the ground like a glassy cancer.

And somewhere out there were two members of his family.

It seemed to Kendi that he should be able to see them from up here, get their attention if he shouted loud enough. The old longings came back, more powerful than ever. His last memory of his sister, brother, and father had been of them weeping as he and his mother were led away by Giselle Blanc. He could still hear punishing electricity crackle, smell the ozone in the air as Rhys Weaver reached out to touch his wife's hand one more time.

They were the last words Kendi had heard his father utter. And three years later when Kendi had been sold away from his mother, he had vowed to obey them. Despite many hours spent with counselors and therapists, consuming fury still snarled inside him like a rabid dingo whenever he thought about what the slavers had done to him and his family. He wept and worried about them, too, sometimes in Ben's arms and sometimes curled up by himself. And still he searched. How many false leads had he come across over the years? Now, at long last, he had a solid one.

It was a lead he had almost lost, too. During the Despair, the twisted children of Padric Sufur had pushed almost every person in the universe out the Dream. Without the subconscious connection provided by the Dream, all empathy and caring vanished. Some sentients had fallen into a deep depression. Others had been driven insane. All of them showed a total disregard for the lives and feelings of other sentients. If Ben hadn't freed Kendi from a self-imposed Dream prison, if Kendi hadn't managed to delay the twisted children in their attempt to destroy the Dream, if Vidya and Prasad Vajhur hadn't managed to put the children's solid-world bodies into cryo-chambers-if any of these things hadn't happened, the Dream would have been destroyed forever and all sentient life in the universe would have ended within a single generation. The thought still made Kendi sweat.

After the Despair, Bellerophon had been thrown into turmoil along with the rest of the universe. The Children of Irfan had responded to the crisis by falling back and retrenching. All field teams and operatives were to return to the monastery immediately. Some of the teams returned on their own, but many of them didn't, meaning someone had to go out and find them. Kendi, newly appointed to a command position despite the fact that he had only achieved the rank of Father, had run himself and his team ragged tracking down Child after Child. Some were assigned on planets or on stations. Others were members of teams like Kendi's and had ships of their own. The findings of Kendi's team hadn't always been pretty. Losing touch with the Dream had affected the Silent more strongly than other sentients, and several Silent plunged into homicidal rage or suicidal despair. Twelve Children with long-term off-planet positions had killed themselves, and twice Kendi's team had found empty ships floating in space, the crew's dessicated corpses floating in corridors and quarters. Through it all, however, Kendi couldn't stop thinking about what Sejal had told him just after the Despair. Every word was burned into his mind:

After six months of scrambling around the galaxy retrieving other Children and relaying emergency messages through the Dream, Kendi had finally had enough of waiting. What if someone sold his family? What if they escaped and vanished into the post-Despair chaos? What if they died? Every day brought a greater chance that this precious lead would dry up. Eventually, Kendi had gone to the Council of Irfan. They had been reluctant to loan him a ship, despite the fact that most of the missing field teams were accounted for and most of the Children, bereft of their Silence, had little or nothing to do.

"Everything is too chaotic," replied Grandmother Adept Pyori. "Governments and economies are collapsing. We need all our people close to home in case something happens."

"That makes this the best time for me to go," Kendi shot back. "It takes a lot of time for galactic governments and mega-corporations to collapse. I need to get out there before everything falls apart completely and my family vanishes forever."

The blank faces of the Council, however, said they were still unconvinced, and in the end Kendi fell back on emotional blackmail.

"I saved the lives of every single person in this room," he said. "I saved the lives of your family, your friends, and every living creature in this universe. All I want in return is a single ship and a crew to go with her. How can that be too much to ask?"

The Council had agreed, but with limitations. When they laid down the time limit, Kendi wondered what he would have had to do to get a ship for longer than two months. Create a new universe from scratch?

"We are not doing this to be difficult, Father Kendi," Grandmother Adept Pyori said, as if reading his mind. "Every Silent who can still reach the Dream is precious beyond measure. Have you considered what will happen to us in the next fifty or sixty years? The danger we are in?"

"I don't understand, Grandmother," Kendi replied.

"No new Silent are entering the Dream," she said solemnly. "And one day the remaining Silent who can enter it will die."

A cold chill slid over Kendi's body at her words. He had been so busy over the last six months that this hadn't occurred to him. The Children of Irfan was an organization that existed only because of the Dream and the communication it provided. If no Silent could enter the Dream, the Children would disappear, swallowed by history.

The breeze from the top of the Varsis Building continued to wash over Kendi. He felt bold and alive, filled with optimism despite his problems. He would find his two family members on Drim, and perhaps they would know something about the others. Then together they could keep looking. Kendi was also looking forward to introducing them to Ben and telling them about- " Father? "

Kendi tapped his earpiece. "I'm here, Lucia. What's going on?"

" Ben's found something on the newsnets that you'll want to see. Can you come down to the suite? "

"Is it something you can upload to my implant?" Kendi asked, already heading for the elevator doors at the other end of the observation deck.

Pause. " Not really."

Kendi's stomach tensed as he entered the lift and told it he wanted the eighteenth floor, one of eight floors that made up a hotel within the Varsis Building. The lift obediently dropped. Was the news good or bad? Had to be bad. Otherwise Lucia would have told him something about it.

The Varsis Hotel hallways were plushly carpeted and thickly wallpapered, hushing every sound. A holographic waterfall rushed over stones at an intersection, filling the air with the sound of gushing water. It even smelled of moss. The hotel was on the expensive side, but Kendi saw no reason not to get comfortable digs. Ara would have told everyone to live on the ship, but Kendi found it annoying to go through the spaceport every time he wanted to do something in the city, and had decided the Children could pay for a hotel. He was glad to have insisted on a huge purse of hard-currency freemarks from the exchequer. Without Silent to handle the transactions in the post-Despair galaxy, very little interplanetary banking was taking place, and the population of a fair number of planets, including Drim, was in the middle of a "don't trust the banks" frame of mind. There was also a very real dread that some currencies would collapse. Many financial institutions had closed their doors, fearing bank runs. As a result, physical money had quickly become the norm again. Kendi liked that. It used to be that the decent hotels and restaurants looked askance at anyone offering hard cash instead of electronic transfer, meaning undercover Children either had to set up electronic accounts under false names-risky-or patronize the sort of places that didn't care how you paid as long as you paid-distasteful. Nowadays, Kendi could pay hard freemarks to the fanciest place in town and be just another cautious socialite.

Kendi passed the waterfall and thumbed open the double door to the suite he had rented. The place was bright and airy, with a large outer sitting room, two well-appointed bathrooms, and four bedrooms. Enormous windows looked out over the cityscape. Although the suite sported its own holographic generator which allowed guests to add artwork or chunks of outdoor scenes, no one had been able to agree on a decoration scheme and Kendi had finally shut the system off entirely. As a result, the place was rather plain, done in simple greens and browns.

Ben had appropriated part of the sitting room as a work area, and he had hooked up his own computer to the hotel's network. The man himself was hunched over the keyboard, clothes rumpled, red hair tousled. In other words, looking perfectly normal. Lucia stood behind Ben's chair, one hand on the Irfan figurine around her neck. The holographic display above the desk showed text and pictures.

"What's going on?" Kendi demanded without preamble.

Ben hesitated. Lucia looked perfectly calm, but Kendi felt his whole insides screw up with tension. Bad news, that's what it was all right. Otherwise they'd come right out and say it.

"Well?" He strode to the desk. "Just tell me. Or do I have to read it for myself?"

"It's bad," Ben said finally.

"I'll go see what Gretchen is up to," Lucia murmured, and quietly withdrew into the room the two of them shared. Kendi's legs went weak.

"Ben, what is it?" Kendi asked. "I can't handle suspense. Just say it. Did you find them? Are they… are they dead?"

"I don't know," Ben replied. He reached up and took Kendi's hand. "Ken, I found a series of news stories. A firm called DrimCom-the Com is short for Communication — encountered a… loss. It used to own twenty-odd Silent slaves, but only two of them came through the Despair with their Silence intact. One's a man, the other's a woman."

"My family?" Kendi asked.

"Yeah. I have their holos. Want to see?"

Kendi leaned forward despite his fear. "You know the answer to that."

Ben tapped a key and the text vanished. The head of a woman in her mid-twenties appeared. She was beautiful, with large brown eyes, skin darker than Kendi's, and sharply-defined features that included a firm chin. Kendi touched his own chin when he saw her. "Martina," he breathed.

Another hologram appeared beside the first, one of a man in his thirties. The resemblance to Kendi was unmistakable, except for the striking blue eyes. Sejal had similar eyes, and Kendi had once suspected Sejal-wrongly-of being Utang's son. Kendi's throat thickened. The last time he had seen his brother and sister they had been fifteen and ten, respectively. Now they were adults.

"I managed to break into their medical records, including their DNA scans," Ben said. "I ran a comparison. All three of you have the same mitochondrial DNA, which means you're siblings. It's definitely them."

Kendi's heart was racing and he tightened his grip on Ben's hand. "You said there's bad news."

"Yeah." Ben ran his free hand through his hair. "Ken, they've both disappeared."

For a moment Kendi could only focus on the fact that Ben was calling him Ken, a nickname he didn't allow anyone else to use and one Ben used only rarely. Then he said, "Disappeared?"

"Kidnapped. Someone broke into the slave quarters and snatched them both away. No clues, according to the news reports. They're gone."

Kendi's knees turned to water and the room darkened. Eventually he became aware that he was sitting on the floor with his head between his knees. Ben knelt next to him, an arm around his shoulder. Kendi felt like he was spinning.

"Just breathe," Ben said. "Slow and steady. You'll be okay."

"What is wrong?" came Harenn's voice. "Is he injured?"

"He almost fainted," Ben told her. "The news was a shock."

Kendi looked up and the room swayed. Harenn's unveiled face- All life, it still looks strange to see her, he thought incongruously-was looking down with concern. She was rather pretty, with rounded cheeks and care lines around her mouth. Although she had stopped wearing the veil, she continued to cover her hair with a translucent scarf.

"When?" Kendi asked hoarsely.

"When what?" Ben asked.

"When did it happen? When were they kidnapped?"

"Two days ago. The day before we got to Drim."

Harenn looked abruptly stricken. She backed away, her skin gone pale. "Oh god."

Kendi closed his eyes.

"What's the matter?" Ben demanded. "Harenn, don't you faint, too. What the hell is wrong?"

"Two days ago," Harenn whispered. "They vanished two days ago. If we had first come to Drim instead of going to Klimkinnar to get Bedj-ka, we might have arrived before… " She trailed off.

"Oh," Ben said.

Kendi opened his eyes. "Harenn, don't you feel guilty. I need you to be yourself right now. It was my-" he swallowed "-my decision to go to Klimkinnar, not yours. It's my fault."

"Hey!" Ben grabbed Kendi's hand again. "It's not your fault, Ken. You had no way of knowing. The people who kidnapped your brother and sister-it's their fault. The people who enslaved them in the first place-it's their fault. Not yours, not Harenn's. Mom would pitch a fit if she knew you were thinking that way."

Mom. Mother Ara. All life, she would have known what to do. Kendi felt like he was floundering, drowning in a frothy sea. What was the next step? What should he do? He had no idea. And then for a moment it felt like Ara was standing over him.

"Yes, Mother," he muttered.

"What?" Ben said.

"Nothing. Help me up. Then get Gretchen and Lucia in here. We have a kidnapping to solve."

"Look, I've gone through this with the police twice already," complained the woman. She was dressed in scarlet from head to foot, with a scarf twisted through night-black hair. The small hologram hovering near her collar gave her name as Linda Tellman and her title as First Manager. She had an artificial sort of beauty that told Kendi's practiced eye she had been to a fresh-up at least once.

"I know, ma'am," Kendi said, slipping the fake police ID back into his pocket. "But you know how this sort of thing works. Every time you go over it, you may remember some detail you left out before."

"Well, you cop-guys are thorough, I'll give you that," Tellman muttered. She gestured at a chair near her desk. "Have a seat, Detective."

"Actually, I haven't seen the crime scene yet," Kendi said. "Could you go through what happened while we walk down there?"

Tellman sighed. "Somewhere in here I do have work to get done, but it can wait, right?"

Kendi didn't answer. He merely followed her through a series of corridors and down two flights of stairs. The DrimCom building, located on the outskirts of Felice, was low and sprawling, with lots of steel and blue-tinted reflective windows. Many of the offices they passed were empty, recent indications of DrimCom's recent loss of revenue.

As if reading Kendi's mind, Tellman said, "If we can't get these two back, the company's going to go under. There isn't much of it left as it is. We had twenty-six Silent-"

"All slaves?" Kendi interrupted.

Tellman nodded. "But after the Despair, only two of them were able to enter the Dream. We held on to the others as long as we could, hoping their Silence would come back, but eventually we had to sell them. We raised our communication rates for the two Silent we had left, just like everyone else is doing, but then this happened. Our only source of revenue-gone. DrimCom's dying on the vine now."

"You don't seem overly upset," Kendi observed.

"I've got my savings-unlike a lot of people around here," Tellman said. "And I have prospects. My uncle works for Sufur Enterprises, and he says they have positions open, if you know who to talk to."

They reached an area that reminded Kendi of the Varsis Hotel. Numbered doors faced a quiet hallway lit with yellow lamps. Tellman selected one of the doors and thumbed the lock. It clicked open for her.

"These are our slave quarters," she said, entering ahead of Kendi. "The woman's name was Violet. This was her room."

Kendi stepped into the room. It was plainly furnished but bright, with yellow walls and a beige carpet. A light smell of perfumed body powder hung on the air. Several pictures-pen-and-ink drawings, not holograms-hung on the walls. Kendi almost gasped as he recognized Outback landscapes. Unable to help himself, he moved closer to one. A falcon skimmed high above a rocky cliff. At the base of the cliff wall sat a kangaroo. It was leaning back on its tail and staring up at the sky. In the bottom corner, the name "Martina" had been worked into the roots of a bush. Kendi's throat closed. This indeed belonged to his sister. She had eaten and slept and held onto her name in this very room. Her scent still lingered. With a trembling hand, he reached out to touch the glass of the frame.

"Is there something about her drawings?" Tellman asked behind him. "A clue?"

Kendi pulled his hand back and swallowed hard to get his voice under control. "Maybe. Why don't you tell me what happened and I'll look over the room."

"Like I told the other cop-guys, there isn't much to tell. The housekeeper was bringing Violet and Brad-that was the other one's name-their breakfasts and found the rooms empty. The doors were unlocked. The housekeeper tried to check with the security computer, but it had been taken off-line. A virus, we later found out. I was the Manager on duty, so the housekeeper called me next. I checked Brad's room, and he was gone, too. The moment they left their rooms, their shackles should have set off the alarms and shocked them unconscious, but that whole program was off-line. What with the recent cutbacks, we only have one tech left, and he only comes in every other day. Security was also reduced, but we didn't think it would be that big a deal. In retrospect, we probably should have been expecting this. Functioning Silent are a hell of a lot more valuable than they used to be."

"Was there a guard on duty that night?" Kendi asked, still unable to take his eyes off the landscapes. He had no idea Martina could draw like that. And they had given Utang the name "Brad."

"The guard was found unconscious at his post. Hit with a brain taser. He doesn't remember anything from the past three days. The doctor said that's normal."

"Was anything taken?"

"Besides the slaves? No. They didn't even take their clothes or any possessions. That's why we're treating it as a theft instead of an escape, even though there were no signs of a struggle. My guess is they-Violet and Brad-were hit with the same brain taser that took out the guard."

Kendi looked through Martina's closet. Judging from her clothes, she was a head shorter than he was, and either she liked the color blue or that was all DrimCom provided for her. As he searched, he kept up a running series of questions to Tellman and gleaned a few more facts. The surveillance cameras had been shorted out just before the guard had been tasered, so there were no video or holographic clues. The security files for the entire night had also been erased. A police search of both rooms had turned up no blood and no evidence of weapons discharge.

"What about Brad's room?" Kendi asked.

"Same thing," Tellman said. "No struggle, nothing missing but him. It must have been really weird for him."

"What do you mean?"

"We bought Brad only one day before the Despair hit. We thought we were lucky to have grabbed him. But he was depressed and despondent after the Despair. I don't think he and Violet even met. He refused to come out of his room. We were just about to start a more aggressive treatment program on him-"

"— and then this happened. He arrives here, then leaves again. Weird for him. But if he's Silent, he must have been genegineered, so he'll probably adapt. Comes with not being entirely human."

Kendi wanted to hit her, had even clenched a fist, when another woman poked her head into the room.

"Manager Tellman?" she said. "There's a police detective here who wants to interview you."

"Another one?" Tellman said.

"Lena Halfson," replied the woman.

"That's her. Why don't you go down and get her, Manager Tallman, while I finish up in here?"

Tallman left, grumbling to herself about her position being reduced from manager to errand girl. The other woman followed. The moment they were out of sight, Kendi eased out of the room and sauntered swiftly down the hallway in the opposite direction. Then he paused, dashed back to the room, snatched the Outback landscape from the wall, and rushed back out. A bit of searching turned up a back exit. Kendi hurried out of the building to his rented groundcar, kept his back to the police vehicle parked only four spaces over, and drove quickly away, Martina's landscape on the seat beside him.

"How'd it go?" Ben asked when he arrived back at the hotel. "Any good news?"

"You tell me," Kendi replied, and quickly summarized what he had learned. "It sounds like someone snatched them up because they're functional Silent. The question is, who? And how do we find out?"

"Sounds like we need to do a lot of record-checking," Gretchen said, scratching her foot where the heal-splint had recently come off. She and Lucia were perched on chairs by the window while Harenn sat with her son on the sofa. The boy insisted on being called Bedj-ka and wouldn't answer to Jerry. He seemed to be adjusting well to his new situation. Harenn was the one who looked continually bewildered.

"I agree," said Lucia. "We can find out which ships have left Drim since then, see if any of them might be worth following up on. With Irfan's guidance, we might turn up something there."

"We can also check with other companies on Drim that employ-or own-Silent," Harenn pointed out. "Perhaps one of them has lost Silent as well. Or unexpectedly gained them."

"I can get into the Dream and see if anyone's heard from them," Ben offered. "Now that we have current names and the name of the firm that owned them."

Kendi sat down on a love seat, the drawing on his lap. "Thanks, guys. We'll keep trying, I guess." No one mentioned the fact that if Martina and Utang had been taken off-planet, the chances of finding them were slim. There was no way to track a slipship's course if the captain and pilot logged a false destination with the authorities. It was an advantage that both the Children and the slavers often used when they needed to make a fast getaway. The irony was rarely lost on Kendi.

"Who drew that?" Bedj-ka asked, pointing to the sketch.

"My sister." Kendi held it up so everyone could see. "She's pretty good. I didn't… I didn't know she could draw. I think it's her hobby."

"It's pretty rigid," Bedj-ka said. "Is there a clue in the picture? That's how it always works in stories and stuff-the artist leaves a clue in a painting or a poem or something that tells the good guys where they were taken, right? That's why you took the drawing, right? All we need to do is find the clue and then we could go in and rescue them and-"

"Real life," Harenn interrupted, "is rarely so easy."

"And I already looked for clues in the picture," Kendi said with small smile. "I figured it was worth a shot. There wasn't anything in it, though. Sorry." He set the picture aside, and suddenly he couldn't stand the idea of being in a roomful of people for another second. Anger flared. He wanted to knock something off the desk and rush from the room, but he didn't. Instead he forced himself to stand up with a calm face. "I need some time alone, guys. I'll be in my room if something turns up."

He knew before he got the bedroom door open that Ben was coming up behind him. He turned, caught Ben's eye, and shook his head. "I'm going into the Dream for a while." Then he firmly shut the door.

Harenn Mashib felt the guilt drag at her like a wet, heavy cloak. The sky above Felice was overcast today, blunting the worst of the usual humid heat but still leaving the busy city uncomfortably warm. Harenn's feet ached, her stomach was empty, and she had a headache, but the guilt kept her moving.

"Your pardon," she said, and held up the holos to the next person on the sidewalk. "Have you seen either of these people?"

The man glanced at the hologram of Kendi's siblings and shook his head. Harenn moved on. This was the third straight day she had been at it. Even Bedj-ka had abandoned her, preferring to stay in the hotel and swim or read or play on the virtual reality networks. She had only allowed him to stay behind after extracting heavy promises from Ben that someone would always, always have an eye on him. And Harenn kept at it, shoving the holograms in the faces of random passers-by, hoping for a flicker of recognition.

It was a ploy of desperation. She knew it. Kendi knew it. But in the past week, all other clues had been followed, all other avenues had been exhausted. Martina and Utang had simply vanished. It made Harenn's heart twist inside her whenever she saw Kendi's ashen face. Although he had repeatedly assured her that he didn't hold her responsible, she couldn't help but feel that she was. Every night when she looked down at Bedj-ka's sleeping face, she couldn't help but feel that way.

It filled Harenn with joy beyond imagining to have Bedj-ka back. After their first embrace, she had given him another, and then another, and several more, until at last he began to protest. He was a stranger to her, but she was getting to know him, was growing used to his chatter and how much he lived in his imagination. She had finally set a limit on the number of hours he spent on the game networks, insisting he get fresh air and exercise in the real world. He had become angry and she had almost given in to his demands. What if he ran away from her? What if he stopped speaking to her? What if he hated her for doing this to him? More than anything else, Harenn wanted to live in peace and love with her son. But then she had decided that spoiling him would not, in the end, be best for either of them. The anger and pouting that followed had been difficult, but eventually Bedj-ka's bright nature had returned and he had asked to go swimming. Harenn was beginning to feel like a mother again, even if she barely knew her child.

It was a feeling that had come at great cost to Kendi.

So now Harenn searched the streets. The work was no doubt futile, but it made her feel as if she were doing something, and it kept her away from the sight of Kendi's haunted eyes.

Another fruitless hour passed. Harenn's headache intensified along with the hunger, but still she kept moving, asking, looking. After a while, Lucia emerged from the crowd.

"Here you are," she said. "What did you do, switch off your earpiece? I've been worried. You've been gone for so long, and Bedj-ka was wondering what was going on."

Another twinge of guilt. "I have lost track of time."

"Any luck?"

"None."

"Let's go back to the suite. Father Kendi ordered room service. He said he doesn't much feel like going out. I think he's about to give up and leave."

Harenn shook her head as they moved along the sidewalk toward the Varsis Building. "That would be a mistake. We are so very close to them."

A familiar scent wafted by. Spicy grilled sausage sizzled on a cart tended by a man wearing a disposable white cap. Harenn wrinkled her nose. Grilled sausage had been one of Isaac Todd's favorite foods, and every time she smelled the stuff, it brought back harsh memories.

"We don't know if we're close to them or not," Lucia said. "That's the problem. We don't have a single-"

A customer turned away from the cart, raising a sausage in a bun to his mouth. A pang shot through Harenn's stomach. She dropped the holo-unit and grabbed the man by the lapels of his shirt. With a strength that surprised even herself, she shoved him into an alley and up against the hard stone wall. The sausage went flying. The man grunted and his eyes widened with shock and surprise as the tip of the large knife Harenn always carried pricked his throat. Lucia gaped.

"Harenn, what-?" she began.

"Do you remember me?" Harenn hissed. " Do you? "

"Who the fuck are you, lady?" the man yelped. His eyes were saucer-wide beneath straw-blond hair.

"You don't remember, then." Ignoring Lucia's startled questions, Harenn shoved her face closer to the man's. The big knife blade, sharp and unmoving, pressed against his jugular. "I am unsure if that makes me simply angry or absolutely furious. In either case it does not bode well for you."

"Harenn!" Lucia protested. "What's going on?"

"Tell the woman who you are," Harenn growled.

"Lady, I don't-"

"Tell her!" She pressed the edge of the blade into his skin until a drop of blood oozed down the edge. The man cringed. "Tell her your name!"

"I'm… it's Marlin Silver."

Harenn pressed harder. "Liar! Tell the truth, or I will slice you open here and now."

"Todd!" the man howled. "My name is Isaac Todd!"

"Where did you say you found him?" Kendi demanded.

"Not far from the spaceport," Harenn said grimly. "I was showing the holograms of your brother and sister around and I saw him. Lucia and I dragged him back to the ship, then we called you."

"She almost killed him-" Lucia began.

"I still may," Harenn said.

"— but I convinced her that he might be a good source of underworld information."

"Hey, there's no need for violence." Isaac Todd raised both his hands in supplication. A silver slave band, fitted by Lucia, encircled one wrist to ensure he wouldn't attack anyone. The man was attractive enough. Square jaw, blond hair, well-molded physique, blue eyes. Bedj-ka was lucky that way, Kendi decided. The boy had his father's features and his mother's coloring. He was going to break hearts in a dozen solar systems when he got older.

"What are you doing here, Isaac?" Harenn demanded. "Does it have anything to do with the slaves who were kidnapped from DrimCom?"

"I don't have to talk to you," Todd replied tightly.

"You fail to understand, my husband," Harenn purred. She leaned forward, pushing her bare face into his. "You will talk to us and you will tell us everything we need to know. I have in this medical bay a wide variety of drugs that will make you reveal everything that ever happened in your filthy life. Some of those drugs have very interesting side-effects. You will talk, Isaac, and then I will check the veracity of your answers with my collection of chemicals. The only question is how miserable I will make you in the process. How miserable do you want to be?"

In the corner, Ben shifted with obvious discomfort. Kendi, however, paid him scant attention. Isaac Todd was an illegal slaver found on the same planet in the same city at the same time his brother and sister had been kidnapped. The coincidence was simply too much to ignore, and every instinct Kendi had said that Todd knew something about Utang and Martina. The only question was how much he knew.

"I have rights," Todd said. "You can't do this to me."

"To whom will you complain, husband?" Harenn asked. "The police? Perhaps we should call them right now and see what they say when I tell them we have a man who is wanted on many planets for kidnapping and illegal slave trafficking."

"Who do you work for?" Kendi asked.

Todd remained silent. After a moment, Harenn reached for an instrument tray and came up with a hypodermic needle long and thick enough to puncture bone. It glittered in the harsh overhead light.

"That's not a dermospray," Todd yelped, pushing himself backward on the bed until his back was against the wall.

"How observant you are," Harenn said. "I do have dermosprays, but I am not inclined to use them."

"Harenn," Kendi warned. "The Children have rules about this kind of thing. We don't torture people."

"I am not a Child," Harenn pointed out.

"But you work for us and you do have to operate by our rules," Kendi said.

"Thank you," Todd sighed. But his eyes never left the needle. His face was pale, and a thin sheen of sweat had broken out on his face. Phobic? Certainly seemed to be.

"However, Mr. Todd," Kendi continued, "Harenn is the only one qualified to administer interrogatives. If, in her considered opinion, the best way to give one to you is by a needle, I can't say I'm qualified to counter what she says."

Harenn touched the hypodermic to Todd's arm and he jumped as if she had touched him with a hot iron. "For subjects who aren't cooperative," she said, "the needle is unfortunately the best method of delivery. It ensures the drug gets into the bloodstream instead of pooling beneath the skin."

"I'll talk!" Todd shouted. "Just get that thing away from me."

"Who do you work for?" Kendi repeated. "Keep in mind that we're going to check what you say, and Harenn won't be happy if you're caught in a lie."

Todd licked his lips. "I work for Silent Acquisitions."

Lucia raised her eyebrows and Kendi clenched a fist. Silent Acquisitions was a megacorporation that dealt in Silence in all its forms-communication, research, genegineering, and slaves. They were known galaxy-wide as being worse than ruthless. Kendi and Ara had between them stolen away more than a dozen slaves from them and their subsidiaries over the years, and he had no doubt that both of them were high on the corp's most wanted list, though Ara was now beyond such considerations.

"What do you do for them?" Kendi said.

"I'm a scout for the Collection."

"And what's the Collection?"

Todd shifted nervously on the bed. "Look, if anyone finds out I'm talking to you, I'm dead meat, all right? I've already told you enough to earn me five years in the corp's waste pits."

"And you have kept silent about enough to earn you five stabs with my knife," Harenn growled.

"You may as well keep on going," Kendi said, taking on the part of good cop to Harenn's bad. "You've gone this far, and we're going to get it out of you either way with the drugs. We won't tell anyone where we got the information. What's the Collection?"

Todd hesitated. "I have your word you'll keep where you found out to yourself?"

"Absolutely," Kendi said, tapping his amulet and raising his right hand. "I swear by Irfan herself."

Still Todd hesitated. Kendi suppressed an urge to wrap his hands around the man's neck and throttle the information out of him. Finally Todd cleared his throat.

"After the Despair," he said, "functioning Silent suddenly became really rare and valuable, right? Everyone at Silent Acquisitions is pretty worried about that. I mean, the few Silent we have left will die eventually, and we won't have anything at all. Silent Acquisitions will eventually disappear."

"SA has people working on that problem," Todd said, "but until they solve it, the company need a short-term solution, and that's the Collection. Right now, SA will go pretty far to get its hands on new Silent. We need Dream access and genetic material and all that to stay afloat while we look for a solution."

"Genetic material," Kendi repeated, barely keeping the distaste for this man out of his voice. "Right. So?"

"So the company decided we have to be a little more… aggressive."

"Don't be cute," Kendi told him. "Be specific. What do you mean by aggressive? Kidnapping? Murder? Theft? What?"

"All of the above," Todd said. "Once I find functional Silent, the acquisition team is authorized to use whatever methods necessary to acquire them. The team takes them back to SA station for indoctrination. The goal is to make them into loyal workers for Silent Acquisitions."

"Brainwashing?" Lucia said.

"Hey, I never hurt anyone, I swear. I'm not part of any of the acquisition or indoctrination teams. I just scout out potential personnel."

Harenn made a low, cold sound in her throat and Kendi was seized with sudden fury at Todd. Forgetting his role as good cop, he grabbed the front of Todd's shirt and shook him once. "Did you 'scout out' my brother and sister?"

"I don't know," Todd squeaked. "Who are they?"

"They were both enslaved by DrimCom," Kendi snarled, twisting Todd's collar. "Was it your Collection that took them away?"

"I can't… breathe," Todd choked. "I can't… "

"Ken," Ben said from the corner. "His lips are turning blue."

Kendi released Todd so fast the man fell backward onto the examination bed. Ben pursed his lips. Todd sucked in great gulps of air and massaged his throat.

"Prep him, Harenn," Kendi said. "I want him coked to the gills and ready to talk fluidly and easily by the time I get back. I'm going for a walk. Maybe in the Dream."

"With great pleasure, Father," Harenn said, raising her hypodermic.

"You said no needles if I talked," Todd cried, trying to push himself away. His back was already against the wall, however, and he had nowhere to go.

"Dermospray, Harenn," Kendi said over his shoulder as he left the medical bay. "But use whatever drug you like."

The doors snapped shut behind him, cutting off Todd's protest. Kendi started to stride away but halted when a familiar voice called out behind him. Ben put a hand on Kendi's shoulder.

"Not right now, Ben," Kendi said tightly. "I'm too pissed off to be rational."

"I was scared you'd let Harenn torture him," Ben admitted. "I'm glad you're better than that."

"Have to set an example, right?" Kendi almost snarled. He turned and abruptly strode up the hallway. "He's filth, Ben. He bred his own kids for slavery and arranged for Utang and Martina to be kidnapped, but I'm supposed to be nice to him."

"You're getting what you want," Ben pointed out. "That's all that matters."

"That's what Ara always said."

"Actually I think it's a quote from Irfan's writings," Ben said. "In any case, it's true. We'll find out what he knows and we'll find your brother and sister."

"I know where they are," Kendi growled. "They're being held by one of the most ruthless megacorps in the galaxy in what I imagine is one of the highest security areas of one of the biggest stations in human space. The trouble won't be finding them. The trouble will be getting them out."

"You're going to take on Silent Acquisitions?" Ben asked.

"I have a choice?"

Ben paused. "I'm not sure whether to talk you out of it or egg you on," he said finally.

"Doesn't matter," Kendi told him. "I'm doing it. I just need some time to come up with a plan."