Simon fidgeted in his chair, staring out the window from his computer terminal, trying without much success to find a way out of his dilemma. The familiar sounds of Nineveh Base—the roar of vehicles, the counted cadence and slapping feet of training marches, the distant crack of rifle fire from the practice ranges—were missing. Their absence left a strange hole in the air, filled only by silence. The unaccustomed hush distracted him.
At least Nineveh had survived POPPA's purge, which had shut down nearly every military base world-wide. Simon had tried to persuade Gifre Zeloc that deactivating ninety percent of Jefferson's army and air forces and closing practically every military installation on Jefferson was folly. The president's response had been scathing in the extreme.
"It's been five and a half years since the Deng invasion. If the Deng were going to hit us again, they'd have done it by now. And don't try to scare me with talk about a Melconian boogeyman on the other side of the Void. The Melconians don't give a wood rat's ass about us. If they did, they'd have been here by now. Frankly, Colonel, nobody cares a spit about us. Not even your precious Brigade. So take your protest, stuff it someplace interesting, and let me do my job. You might try doing yours, for a change, instead of drawing a fat paycheck for sitting on your ass."
Simon had dealt with rude officials before, but Gifre Zeloc won the prize.
Simon had not been in touch with him, since. The House of Law and Senate, naturally, had agreed with the president, exhibiting a delight that was almost obscene as they passed the legislation that officially destroyed Jefferson's military. He'd watched in cold, disapproving silence while field artillery guns by the hundreds—including the surviving mobile Hellbores General Hightower had used to defend Madison—were mothballed in armory yards scattered across Jefferson. Vast tonnages of other equipment had been cannibalized, melted down, or diverted to civilian use, leaving nothing but reserve units and Sonny to defend Jefferson if anything did go wrong.
What remained of Jefferson's high-tech weaponry was guarded by civilian police and from what Simon could tell, based on Sonny's taps into various security systems in weapons bunkers and ammunition stores, an appalling amount of equipment and ammunition was quietly disappearing. The money from black-market trading was doubtless falling into the pockets of officials in charge of a security force that was literally stealing the planet blind.
And every sorry-assed bit of it was driven by POPPA's political agenda. The party was absolutely correct when it said Jefferson couldn't afford to pay thousands of soldiers for sitting in barracks doing nothing. The policies already enacted by Vittori Santorini's elected minions were bankrupting Jefferson's government at a dizzying pace. The subsistence program alone couldn't be sustained, not even if it remained at its present enrollment, which it wouldn't do. Every new environmental regulation passed into law tightened the choke-hold on Jefferson's failing industries. Every new round of layoffs swelled the ranks of the unemployed forced to rely on subsistence payments. It was a downward spiral that was already out of control.
Since something had to be cut to pay for it, POPPA had chosen to close the military bases and disperse thousands of soldiers and their families back into the civilian population. It looked, on the surface, like a massive savings, which was exactly what POPPA was claiming. Unfortunately, that claim was a lie. Fewer than ten percent of the soldiers cut adrift had been able to find jobs. So they'd signed up for public subsistence allowances, which were—by Simon's calculation—costing the taxpayers twenty-eight percent more than it had cost to keep those soldiers on active military duty.
But subsistence payments were essentially invisible, wrapped into the already enormous expenditures for food and housing, while the cost of maintaining the bases and the soldiers was highly visible. Gifre Zeloc could point with pride to the millions saved by closing the bases, without ever needing to admit that the tax drain was now far worse. That kind of sleight-of-hand was POPPA's stock in trade.
When POPPA's upper echelons finally realized how much red ink they were bleeding—and how much more they would bleed as time marched inexorably forward—they would be forced to make cuts in the subsidy payments. And with millions of people accustomed to and dependent upon a free ride, there could be only one possible outcome.
Utter disaster.
Which brought his thoughts inexorably to Nineveh Base and the reason for its reprieve. It was being turned into a police academy. Not just any police, either, but an elite new unit of federal officers. Five thousand of them, to be exact, drawn from the ranks of POPPA's most loyal supporters. They would constitute a "politically safe" cadre of men and women who could be ordered to do pretty much anything and be relied upon to see that it was done. Vittori Santorini understood exactly how fanatical devotion to a cause could be harnessed and put to work.
Simon had gained access to the dossiers of the officers chosen for training, as well as the profiles of the new instructors. The first red-flag warning that had jumped out at him, setting Simon's teeth on edge, was the family history section of those dossiers. Not one of the five thousand officers was married. Not one had children from extramarital relationships. They had no close family ties to anyone. No particular reason for loyalty to anyone or anything but POPPA and its ideology. He didn't like the pattern that was forming. Didn't like the training program outlined. Didn't like the implications about POPPA's future plans. Frankly, in fact, the whole thing scared him pissless.
More disturbing—downright chilling, in fact—was the total lack of news reports on what was happening at Nineveh Base. Whatever POPPA was up to, they were being mighty secretive about it. And he genuinely hated the fact that his wife and daughter would be sharing the base with the kind of people about to become their new neighbors.
He and Kafari had quarreled again, last night. She still refused to leave Jefferson. He could tell she was scared, as scared as he was. Any sane person would have been. The damage being wrought was so insidious, so smoothly presented, so glibly rationalized, so skillfully obscured by flashy political rallies and spectacular public entertainment, it was difficult for the average person to realize just how much manipulation was occurring, much of it artfully subtle. POPPA was conducting the seizure of power with the same skillful distraction tactics employed by really talented pickpockets. The analogy was apt, since most Jeffersonians didn't even realize they were being robbed.
Simon had been duty-bound to file reports with Sector Command, but the likelihood that Sector would interfere was as remote as the likelihood that POPPA would voluntarily relinquish its increasingly strong grip. Sector had more serious fish to fry. The war front had shifted away from Jefferson, but only because there were no longer any human worlds beyond the Void in need of protection.
That there were no Deng worlds nearby, either, was of scant comfort. The three-way war had eradicated the populations of some seventeen star systems that were now vacant property. Much of that real estate had been burned to radioactive cinders, something Simon knew entirely too much about, first-hand. The Melconians weren't taking advantage of the situation, either, apparently because the fighting was so fierce elsewhere, they couldn't commit the resources necessary to move in with their colonies. Apparently, the Deng were fighting a losing battle just to hang onto their inner worlds.
Things were grim when one counted blessings in such negative terms.
That thought brought his gaze back to his computer, where the message he had been expecting had finally appeared. It had taken POPPA's leadership five and a half years to gain the nerve to take the step represented by that message, but they'd finally put together the same information Simon had about the shifting battle front beyond the Silurian Void. They had acted within hours of the realization that the war was no longer in their back yard.
Gifre Zeloc's message was short and to the point: "Deactivate your Bolo. Now."
Simon had no choice. That fact rankled bitterly. There was no possible justification he could offer for defying that order. He would not, however, obey it until Kafari had returned home. Sonny was a friend. An uneasy friend, with whom very few people could ever relax, but a friend nonetheless. For Simon, it was different. Shared experience of combat changed a man, changed the way he felt about a battle partner whose guns and war hull stood between his frail human self and the world-shaking roar of modern fields of slaughter. When death set the very wind ablaze, when life hung on the spider-silk thread of electronic reflexes, a man's fear of his Bolo burned to ash and scattered itself across the stars. What replaced it . . .
He was going to miss Sonny more than he had ever dreamed possible.
"Simon," the familiar voice jolted him out of his complex misery, "Kafari is on final approach. Her aircar will land at Yalena's daycare center in two minutes."
"Thanks," he said, voice stricken with emotion that choked the sound down to a whisper.
"I will only be sleeping," the Bolo said, his own voice strangely hushed.
In that single, excruciating moment, Simon wanted to put both arms around his friend and just hang onto him, for a moment or a lifetime. His arms were too small to hold the immensity of his feelings, let alone the vast and poignant honesty that was his friend. His only friend, besides Kafari. He closed his eyes against the pain, wishing for a moment that he could pour out the misery like last night's bath water, leaving himself empty and at peace.
"I know," he managed, inadequately.
He was still sitting there, eyes closed, when Kafari opened the door, bringing their child home from the Nineveh Base daycare center, which was closing as of next week. Simon was not looking forward to the evening, with its own battles to be fought. To say that he hated Yalena's daycare center was on a par with saying the Deng were irritating. What that daycare center was doing to Yalena would have constituted criminal abuse on most worlds. What would happen when she started school . . . Worst of all, there was absolutely nothing he could do about it, short of forcing his wife and child onto the next freighter bound for Vishnu.
He wasn't sure he could cope, tonight, with the hellion that his daughter had become. She was already shrieking at her mother.
"I wanna go back to play with my friends!"
The scathing emphasis on that final word demonstrated with piercing intensity that Yalena did not place her parents in that category. It appalled Simon that a five-year-old child could condense that much hatred in a single, simple word.
"You'll see your friends tomorrow, Yalena."
"I wanna see them now!"
"You can't have everything you want, Yalena."
"Oh, yes I can," she hissed. "The law says so!"
That brought Simon out of his chair. "Yalena!"
She whipped around, rage contorting a face that should have been pretty. "Don't shout at me! You're not allowed to shout at me! If you shout at me again, I'll tell Miss Finch how horrible you are! Then they'll put you in jail!"
She ran into her room—the size of which was federally mandated—and slammed the door so hard photographs on the wall jumped on their nails. The bolt-lock—also federally mandated—slammed into place with an audible snap. Kafari burst into tears. Simon didn't dare move for long, dangerous moments, aware with every atom in his body that if he took a single step in any direction, he wouldn't be able to contain the violence of his emotions. Or the actions that would follow.
Doing any of the things he needed to do—kicking down the door, warming Yalena's backside, shaking sense into her—would only precipitate disaster. And play right into the hands of Vittori Santorini and his minions. They were itching for an excuse to invade Simon's house and finish destroying his little family. If he laid so much as a finger on his child, the resultant feeding frenzy would culminate in POPPA seizing Yalena to "safeguard" her from violent and dangerous parents and give them grounds to demand that the Concordiat cashier and expel him from Jefferson. It was a measure of his anger—and his dark foreboding about the future—that any excuse for leaving Jefferson was attractive.
Kafari, voice breaking with misery, said, "She didn't really mean it, Simon."
"Oh, yes, she did." His voice came out flat and full of sand.
"She doesn't understand—"
"She understands too well," he bit out. "She understands so much, we're naked over a barrel and she knows it. And it's going to get worse. A lot worse."
Kafari bit her lower lip. Her glance at Yalena's bedroom door was full of misery and failure. "If we could just pull her out of daycare . . ."
"The only way to do that is to leave." He didn't need to add, And you won't do that. They'd already fought that fight, more than once. His voice came out weary and bitter. "Kafari, you have no idea how much worse things are about to get. I've been ordered to shut Sonny down. Without him, I can't possibly stay on top of what POPPA is planning and they know it. I can only see what they're doing through his taps into security cameras. I can't read fast enough to scan the entire datanet, much less track what's on the computers connected to it. I can't hear what's being said through telephones, wireless voice transmissions, or computer microphones, not without Sonny. The minute he goes into inactive standby, I lose all of that.
"I'm the only check-and-balance still operating on this world and that's changing, as of today. I can't interfere unless I have direct evidence of activity that violates the treaty with the Concordiat. I can't provide evidence if I don't have the technical ability to look for it."
She sat down abruptly, eyes glazed as the shock of it settled in. "You can't refuse?"
"No."
She lifted a stricken gaze to meet his. "I'm so sorry, Simon. It must be like losing your best friend."
Her words took him completely by surprise. Quite suddenly his eyes stung. "Yes," he said hoarsely. He blinked rapidly a few times. Said in a low voice, "You know I love you more than life, Kafari. But Sonny was with me . . ."
"I know," she said in a whisper, when he couldn't finish.
He just nodded. It was impossible to convey what combat was like to anyone who hadn't been through it. Kafari had. She knew. Understood the reason for his rough silence. She hadn't been on Etaine; but then he hadn't been through combat between a Bolo and Yavacs without a Bolo's warhull between him and the enemy. It was a different way of experiencing war, a different kind of terror, but the damage to the soul was the same. So was the deeper understanding that sometimes, the horror and shock if it were utterly necessary.
That she realized this, that she understood what it was doing to him, to lose the one companion who knew what had happened on that far-away world, left him humbled. She had chosen to love and live with him. And now . . . Jaw muscles tightened down against bone. Now they had new problems. New fears. A new kind of battle. And an enemy that twisted reality around to suit its aims and poisoned innocent minds to accomplish them. POPPA was on the verge of shattering everything that was—or had been—good and beautiful about this world. The question that slipped into his mind like silent misery had no answer that Simon could find.
What are we going to do?
He was a soldier. An officer. There was only one thing to do. Sometimes, duty was a bitch.
Yalena hated school.
She hadn't wanted to leave the nursery class on Nineveh Base. She had loved playing with other children whose parents were soldiers, too. But there weren't any soldiers any more, just police who didn't have children, and she was old enough, at six, to have to go to a real school in Madison.
"There'll be all kinds of wonderful things to do and learn," her mother had told her, the first day.
Her mother was right. There were wonderful, fun things to do and learn. But only for other kids. Yalena didn't get to do any of them. And everybody hated her. It had started the first, horrible day, when Mrs. Gould, the kindergarten teacher, called out everybody's name and made them stand up and tell the class who they were and who their parents were.
"Yalena Khrustinova," Mrs. Gould had said, with something in her voice that made Yalena's flesh creep, like the teacher had said a naughty word or maybe stepped in something smelly.
She stood up, slowly, while everybody stared. She didn't know any of the other kids. When the soldiers had left Nineveh Base, they'd all gone home and none of them had lived in Madison. Not this part, anyway. So she stood there, with everybody looking at her, and said in a shaky little voice. "My mommy is Kafari Khrustinova. She works at the spaceport. She makes computers do things. My daddy is Simon Khrustinov. He's a soldier."
"What kind of soldier?" Mrs. Gould asked, staring down at her through narrow little eyes like a lizard's.
"He talks to the Bolo. And tells it to shoot its guns."
"Did all of you hear that?" the teacher asked. "Yalena's father is responsible for telling a huge, dangerous machine to shoot people. That machine shot millions and millions of people on a world far away from here. Does anyone know how many people it takes to make a million? There are ten million people on our whole planet. Seventeen million people died, on that other world. To kill seventeen million people, that machine would have to kill every man, every woman, and every baby on Jefferson. And then it would have to kill almost that many more. The Bolo is a terrible, evil machine. And Yalena's father tells it to kill."
"B-but—" she tried to say.
Mrs. Gould slammed both fists on her desk. "Don't you dare talk back to me! Sit down this instant! No recess for a week!"
Yalena sat down. Her knees were shaking. Her eyes were hot.
Somebody hissed, "Lookit the crybaby!" and the whole class started jeering and laughing at her. That was the first day. Every day since then had been worse. A whole year of horrible, awful, worse days. During class, everything she said was wrong. Even if somebody else said the same thing, somehow it was wrong when she said it. If she tried not to talk at all, Mrs. Gould made her stand in a corner all by herself, for being secretive, dangerous, and sly.
Every morning, when her mother dropped her off for school, Yalena threw up in the bushes outside. At lunch, nobody would sit near her. At recess . . . The teachers wouldn't let anybody actually hurt her, not badly enough to need the school nurse, but she usually came back into class with scraped knees, bruised shins, or mud in her hair. She hated recess more than she hated any other part of school.
And now it was time to start all over, again. The first day of first grade. And all the same kids who hated her and tripped her and shoved her off the swings and threw mudballs at the back of her head and spilled paint on her favorite clothes . . .
The only things that were different were the room and the teacher.
The room, at least, was nothing like Mrs. Gould's kindergarten. The walls were a sunny yellow that lifted the spirits, just walking in through the door. There were wonderful pictures everywhere, pictures of places and animals and things Yalena wasn't even sure had names, let alone what they might be used for. There were other pictures, too, that somebody had painted, rather than photographs of things, and they were all as sunny and cheerful as the yellow walls. It was a room Yalena wanted to love, at first sight, a room that made her want to cry, because she was going to spend a whole year being miserable and alone in it.
She wanted to sit in the farthest corner in the back, but there were cards folded like tents on each desk, with names on them. Yalena was the first person to arrive, not because she wanted to be there early, but because it would be less awful to sit down in a nearly empty room and watch everyone come in than it would be to arrive in a room full of people who hated her, glaring with every step she took trying to get to her desk. She looked at each desk and finally found her name, in the middle of the room.
It said Yalena.
But not Khrustinova. Nobody's card had a last name on it. There were three Ann name cards, but they didn't have last names, either, just Ann with a single initial: Ann T., Ann J., and Ann W. That was definitely different from Mrs. Gould's class, where the boys were "Mr. Timmons" and "Mr. Johansen" and the girls were "Miss Miles" and "Miss Khrustinova," which always came out sounding like somebody gargling with vinegar.
There was no sign of a teacher anywhere.
Puzzled by that strangeness, Yalena made her way to her new desk, carrying her book bag like a magic shield that would guard her until she was forced to put it down to start studying. Classmates she remembered arrived in noisy clusters, laughing and talking about things they had done together over the summer. Yalena had spent the summer on Nineveh Base with her father. It had not had been a fun summer. They had gone to some interesting places, like the museum in Madison and her grandparents' and great-grandparents' farm and fishing in lakes up in the mountains, a few times, but she didn't like the farms very much. They were hot and smelled strange and the animals on them were huge and didn't like little girls poking at them.
Nobody from school had called her to ask if she wanted to come over for a pool party or a sleep-over or anything else. So she had stayed in her room, mostly, reading her books and playing on the computer, which didn't care who your father was or whether your mother was a jomo or any of the other reasons kids found to hate her. It was difficult, watching the others come into the classroom, laughing and having a wonderful time, and harder to watch them give her sneering looks and scoot their chairs as far away from hers as possible.
She opened her book bag and pretended to read the first-grade primer her father had bought for her, along with all her supplies. She was still pretending when a very pretty woman in the prettiest dress Yalena had ever seen sailed into the classroom, with a smile as bright as sunlight and a scent like the summer roses on her grandmother's front porch, which was the only spot on the whole farm Yalena thought was pretty.
"Bon jour, bon jour, ma petites," she said in a language Yalena had never heard, then she laughed and said in perfectly ordinary words, "Good morning my little ones, how lovely to see everyone!"
She sat down on the edge of the desk at the front of the room, rather than in the chair or standing over them like somebody's mean dog. "I am Cadence Peverell, your teacher. I want everyone to call me Cadence. Does anyone know what Cadence means?"
Nobody did.
"A 'cadence' is a rhythm, like when you clap your hands and sing." She clapped and sang a little song, also in words that Yalena couldn't understand, although nobody else seemed to, either. Then Miss Peverell laughed. "That is a French song, of course, with French words, because a long time ago, my ancestors were French, back on Terra where humanity was born. Everyone's name means something. Did you know that?"
Yalena certainly didn't. Other kids were shaking their heads, too.
"Ah, but you shall see! Douglas," she said, looking at a boy in the front row, "your name means 'the boy who lives by the dark stream.' And Wendell," she pointed to a long, lanky boy who had spent kindergarten trying to climb over the play-yard fences, "means someone who wanders."
Laughter broke out as Wendell grinned.
"And Frieda," she addressed a girl in the back row, "means 'peaceful.' But you know," the teacher said with a sound like warm butter and a gentle smile, "there is one name in this classroom that is the loveliest name I have ever heard."
Miss Peverell was looking right at Yalena.
"Do you know what your name means, Yalena?"
The entire classroom went utterly silent.
She shook her head, waiting for the teacher to say something horrible.
"Yalena," Miss Peverell said, "is a Russian name. It's the Russian way of saying the name 'Helen' and that name means 'light.' Beautiful, clear light, like the sun in the sky."
The silence continued. Yalena was staring at her teacher, confused and so scared she wanted to start crying. And strangely, the teacher seemed to understand. She slid down off the desk, crouched down at the end of the aisle, and said, "Would you come to see me, Yalena?"
She was holding out both arms, like she really wanted to give Yalena a hug.
Yalena stood up slowly, having to put down the book bag that was her only shield. She couldn't walk very fast. Miss Peverell smiled at her, with warm encouragement, then did, in fact, give her a warm and wonderful hug.
"There, now, let's sit on the desk together."
She picked Yalena up, perched on the edge of the desk again, held Yalena on her knees, with one arm around her. "You children are so lucky to have Yalena in the class with you."
Everybody was staring, mouths open.
"Yalena is a very brave little girl. It is not easy to be the daughter of a soldier."
Yalena went rigid, knowing that it was coming.
Miss Peverell brushed her hair back from her face, gently. "Every day, a soldier may have to go and fight a war. It can be very hard, very scary, to be a soldier or a soldier's child. And every day, when Yalena goes home, there is a huge machine in her back yard, a very dangerous machine."
Yalena wanted to crawl away and hide . . .
"Now this machine, this Bolo, can do very good things, too. It made the Deng go away, many years ago, before you were even born. And that was a very good thing, indeed. But these machines, they are alive, in a way, and it is no easy thing to live in a house with a machine that is alive, waiting in case a war starts. Every day, Yalena is brave enough to go home and trust that the machine won't have to fight a war, that night. I think that is the bravest thing I have ever seen a little girl do."
The other girls in the class were looking at one another. Some of them looked angry, as if they wanted to be braver than the horrible killer's daughter. Others looked surprised and others looked interested. Even the boys looked surprised and interested.
"There is something else I want to say to everyone," Miss Peverell said, still holding Yalena. "Does everyone know what POPPA is? No? Ah, POPPA is a group of people, just like you, just like me, who believe that everyone should be treated just the same way, so that no one has to be poor or have people hurt them or be hated for things that aren't their fault. This is one of the most important things POPPA teaches us. Everyone has the right to be treated well, to be respected."
Miss Peverell looked very sad as she said, "A child who does not respect other children is a bully and that is a very bad thing to be. POPPA wants all children to be happy and healthy and have a wonderful time, both at home and at school. It's very hard to have a wonderful time at home, when you have a machine like that in your back yard and you never know what it's going to do and maybe your daddy will have to go away and fight a war and you might never see him again. Soldiers are very brave and Yalena's father is one of the bravest soldiers on our whole world.
"But it is very hard to be happy when you're afraid that a war might come. So it is most important that Yalena is happy when she comes to school. POPPA wants all of us to be nice to everyone. POPPA wants all of us to be happy. POPPA wants all of us to treat each other with kindness. I know that all of you are good children who want to do these important things and help others do them, too. So I'm very happy that all of you have the chance to make Yalena feel special and happy and welcome, every day."
Yalena started to cry, but nobody called her a crybaby this time. Miss Peverell kissed her hair and said, "Welcome to my class, Yalena. All right, you can go back to your seat now."
The rest of the morning was strange and wonderful. Nobody quite had the nerve to talk to her at recess, but everyone stared and whispered when Miss Peverell came over to where Yalena was sitting by herself and started teaching her the song she'd sung at the beginning of the class. It was a pretty song, a cheerful song, even if Yalena didn't know what the words meant. By the end of recess, Yalena knew every word by heart and Miss Peverell had taught her what the words meant, too. It was a wonderful song, about growing oats and peas and barley and beans and it was all about farmers who sang and danced and played all day and all night, without ever doing any work at all, while the oats and things grew green in the sunlight. And at lunch, nobody left an empty seat between themselves and Yalena.
She went home that night almost happy. She was afraid to hope, but the day she had dreaded all summer had been wonderful, instead. A magical day. She was terrified that it would all end the next day, but it didn't. It was just as good the day after that and the next one, too. At recess on the last day of the week, one of the shy girls in her class, who didn't play a lot of games with anybody else, came over to where Yalena was swinging. For a long moment, Yalena expected her to push her off the swing or say something nasty.
Then she smiled. "Hi. My name's Ami-Lynn."
"Hello."
"Would you teach me that song? The one in French? It's awfully pretty."
Yalena's eyes widened. For a minute, she couldn't say anything. Then she smiled. "Yes, I'd love to teach you."
Ami-Lynn's eyes started shining like stars. "Thank you!"
They spent the whole recess singing the funny, wonderful words. Ami-Lynn had a pretty voice, but she had so much trouble saying the words, they both started giggling and couldn't stop, even when the bell rang and the teachers called them inside. Miss Peverell, who insisted that everyone call her Cadence, just as though she were their best friend, not a stuffy teacher, saw them and smiled.
That was the day Yalena started to love school.
And when she went to bed that night, she hugged herself for joy and whispered, "Thank you, POPPA! Thank you for bringing me a friend!" She didn't know who or what, exactly, POPPA was, except that it must be full of very wonderful people, if they cared enough to want her to be so happy. She knew her parents didn't like POPPA very much, because she'd heard them say so, when talking to each other. I don't care what they think, she told herself fiercely. Ami-Lynn likes me. Cadence likes me. POPPA likes me. And I don't care about anything or anybody else!
She was finally happy. And nobody—not even her parents—was ever going to take that away from her again.
"I won't go!"
"Yes," Kafari said through gritted teeth, "you will."
"It's my birthday! I want to spend it with my friends!"
Give me patience . . . "You see your friends every day. Your grandparents and great-grandparents haven't seen you in a year. So get into the aircar right now or you will be grounded for the next full week."
Her daughter glared at her. "You wouldn't dare!"
"Oh, yes I would. Or have you forgotten what happened when you refused to leave the school playground last month?"
The amount of malevolence a ten-year-old could fling across a room would, if properly harnessed, run a steam-powered electrical generating plant for a month of nonstop operation. When they'd locked wills over the playground, Yalena had threatened dire vengeance, but had discovered to her consternation that when Kafari said "do it or you lose datachat privileges for a week" you either did it, or you didn't talk to your friends outside of school for seven days.
Yalena, who should have been pretty in her frilly birthday dress and fancy glow-spark shoes, contrived to look like an enraged rhinoceros about to charge an ogre. Kafari, cast in the part of the ogre, pointed imperiously to the front door.
Her daughter, stiff with outrage and hatred, stalked past her, pointedly slamming the door into the wall on her way out. Kafari pulled it closed, setting the voice-print lock that would, with any luck, deter their nearest neighbors from helping themselves to the contents of their home—the so-called "POPPA Squads" training on Nineveh Base had the lightest and stickiest fingers Kafari had ever seen—then followed her offspring out to the landing pad. Simon was already strapping her into the back seat of the aircar.
"I hate you," she growled at her father.
"The feeling," her father growled right back, "is mutual."
"You can't hate me! It's not allowed!"
"Young lady," Simon told her in an icy tone of voice, "the right to detest someone is a sword that cuts both ways. You have the manners of an illiterate fishwife. And if you don't want to spend the next year without datachat privileges, you will speak in a civil tone and use polite language. The choice is entirely up to you."
Lightning seethed in Yalena's eyes, but she kept her acid tongue silent. She had learned, after losing several key battles, that when her father spoke to her in that particular tone, discretion was by far the wiser choice. Kafari took her seat and fastened her harness in place. Simon did the same, then touched controls and lifted into the cloudless sky. It was a beautiful day, with honey pouring across the rose-toned shoulders of the Damisi Mountains, to spill its way down across the Adero floodplain in golden ripples. The flight was a silent one, with only the rush of wind past the aircar's canopy to break the chill.
The crowding elbows of Maze Gap flashed past, then they were headed down Klameth Canyon, following the twisting route to Chakula Ranch, which her parents had finally managed to rebuild. The house was in a different place, but the ponds were functional again and the Malinese miners were buying pearls by the hundred-weight, as the war had sent Mali's economy into a boom that apparently had no end in sight. Jefferson, on the other hand . . .
Some things, Kafari didn't want to think about too deeply.
The ruination of Jefferson's economy was one of them.
Simon brought them down in a neat and skilled landing, killing the engine and popping the hatches. Kafari unhooked herself and waited while Yalena ripped loose the catches on her own harness. She slammed her way out of the aircar and glared at the crowd of grandparents, aunt, uncles, and cousins who'd streamed across the yard to greet her. She wrinkled her nose and curled her upper lip.
"Ew, it stinks. Like pigs crapped everywhere." She was glaring, not at the farm buildings, but directly at her relatives.
"Yalena!" Simon glowered. "That is not language fit for polite company. Do it again and you'll lose a solid month of chat."
Smiles of welcome had frozen in place. Kafari clenched her teeth and said, "Yalena, say hello to your family. Politely."
A swift glare of defiance shifted into sullen disgust. "Hello," she muttered.
Kafari's mother, expression stricken with uncertainty and dismay, said, "Happy Birthday, Yalena. We're very glad you could be with us, today."
"I'm not!"
"Well, child," Kafari's father said with a jovial grin that managed to convey a rather feral threat, "you're more than welcome to walk home again. Of course, it might take you quite a while, in those shoes."
Yalena's mouth fell open. "Walk? All the way to Nineveh? Are you like totally stupid?"
"No, but you're totally rude." He brushed past his grandchild to give Kafari a warm hug. "It's good to see you, honey." She didn't miss the emphasis. From the look on Yalena's face, neither had she. Kafari knew a moment of stinging guilt. Her father clasped Simon's hand, shaking it firmly. "Don't see enough of you, son. Come and see us more often."
"I may just do that," Simon said quietly.
"You can leave that," he gestured dismissively at his gaping granddaughter, "where you found it, unless it learns to speak with a little more respect. Come inside, folks, come inside, there's plenty of time to catch up on the news without standing out here all day."
He drew Kafari's arm through his, smiling down at her, and literally ignored his granddaughter, whose special day this was supposed to be. Kafari's eyes stung with swift tears as guilt and remorse tore through her heart, witnessing the confused hurt in her daughter's eyes. Yalena was just a child. A beautiful and intelligent little girl, who had no real chance against the determined, incessant onslaught of propaganda hurled at her by teachers, entertainers, and so-called news reporters who wouldn't have known how to report honestly if their immortal souls had depended on it.
She and Simon had tried to undo the ongoing damage. Had tried again and again. Were still trying. And nothing worked. Nothing. Nor would it, not when every other significant adult in her life was telling her—over and over—that she could demand anything and get it; that she could rat out her parents or anyone else for an entire laundry list of suspicious behaviors or beliefs and be rewarded lavishly; and that she held an inalienable right to do whatever she chose, whenever she chose and somebody else would dutifully have to pay for it. Kafari knew only too well that Yalena received extra social conditioning simply because she was their child. It suited POPPA to plant a snake inside their home, to use as a threat and a spy, and it enraged Kafari endlessly that they did so without a single moment's remorse over the damage they inflicted daily on a little girl.
Kafari's father gave her arm a gentle squeeze and a slight shake of his head, trying to convey without words that none of this mess was her fault. It helped. A little. She was grateful for that much. She glanced back long enough to reassure herself that Simon was keeping an eye on their daughter, who was glaring at her cousins. They regarded her with cold hostility and open disgust. That the feelings were mutual was painfully obvious. Her mother, who had coped with more heartaches that Kafari would ever be able to claim, waded in like a soldier going into battle, taking charge of the ghastly situation with brisk efficiency.
"Everybody goes to the house. Come on, you mangy lot, there's punch and cookies waiting and plenty of games to play before lunch."
Yalena stalked with regal disdain past her cousins, as though wading through a pile of something putrid. Her cousins, falling in behind her, lost no time in mocking the birthday girl behind her back, pointing their noses at the sky, marching with exaggerated mimicry. If Yalena turned around, she'd get a nice dose of unpleasant reality. If Kafari knew her nieces and nephews, Yalena would get several doses of reality before it was time to leave, all of them painful.
Watching the ugly dynamics, Kafari hated POPPA with a violence that scared her. The sole comfort she derived from the situation was the realization that POPPA wasn't succeeding in totally indoctrinating all of Jefferson's children. Yalena's cousins might be trapped in a POPPA-run school all day, but living—and working—on a farm provided its own strong and daily antidote to idiocy. When it came to milking cows, gathering eggs from nest boxes, or any of the thousand other chores necessary to keeping a farm operational, platitudes like "no child should be forced to do anything he or she doesn't want to do" earned exactly what they merited: derisive contempt.
If you didn't milk a cow, pretty soon you had no milk. And if you weren't careful, no cow, either. There was literally nothing in Yalena's world to give her that kind of perspective. Kafari thought seriously about turning Yalena over to her parents this summer. If not for Simon's position, she'd have plunked Yalena down on the farm already, come hell or high water.
Kafari's father, reading much of what was in her heart, murmured, "Hold onto your hope, Kafari. And do what you can to let her know you care. One of these days she'll wake up and that will mean something to her."
Kafari stumbled on the way up the porch steps. "Thanks," she managed, blinking hard.
He squeezed her arm gently, then they were inside and people were swarming past, most of them jabbering excitedly, with the little ones swirling around their ankles like the tide coming in at Merton Beach. Kafari snagged punch and cookies and handed a cup and plate to Yalena while dredging up the best smile she could muster. Yalena, scowling in deep suspicion, sniffed the punch, pulled a face, then condescended to taste it. She shrugged, as though indifferent, but drank every bit as much as her exuberant cousins. She fought for her share of the cookies, too, which were piled high and dusted with sugar, or smeared with frosting of various flavors, or drenched in a honey-and-nut coating that Kafari had forgotten tasted so heavenly. Simon went for the honey-nut ones too, managing a brilliant smile for Kafari as he snagged seconds.
Yalena's cousin Anastasia, who was only six months younger than Yalena, took the bull by the horns, as it were, and walked up to stare at her older cousin. "That's a nice dress," she said, in the manner of someone who will be polite no matter the personal cost. "Where did you find it?"
"Madison," Yalena answered with withering disdain.
"Huh. In that case, you paid too much for it."
Yalena's mouth fell open. Anastasia grinned, then said in a cuttingly impolite tone, "Those shoes are the stupidest things I've ever seen. You couldn't outrun a hog in those things, let alone a jaglitch."
"And why," Yalena demanded in a scathing tone that bent the steel window frames, "would I want to outrun a jaglitch?"
"So it wouldn't eat you, stupid."
Anastasia rolled her eyes and simply stalked off. Her cousins, watching with preternatural interest, erupted into howling laughter. Yalena went red. Then white. Her fists tightened down, crunching the cookie in one hand and squashing the paper cup of punch in the other. Then her chin went up, in a heartbreaking mimicry of a gesture that Kafari knew only too well, in herself.
"Enough!" Kafari's mother snapped, eyes crackling with dangerous anger. "I will not condone nasty manners in this house. Do I make myself clear? Yalena isn't used to living where wild predators can snatch a grown man, let alone a child. Conduct yourselves with courtesy and respect. Or do you like living down to city standards?"
Silence fell, chilly and sullen.
Yalena, alone in the center of the room, stared from one to another of her cousins. Her chin quivered just once. Then she said coldly, "Don't bother to try. I didn't expect anything better of pig farmers." She stalked out of the room, slamming doors on her way to somewhere—anywhere—else. When Kafari moved to follow, her father's hand tightened down around her arm.
"No, let her go. That's a young'un who needs to be alone for a few minutes. Minau, why don't you follow her—discreetly—and make sure she doesn't wander too far? It's springtime and there are jaglitch out there, looking for a snack."
Kafari started to shake. Simon wiped sweat off his forehead and gulped an entire cupful of punch as though wishing for something considerably stronger. Aunt Min just nodded, heading through the same door Yalena had taken during her exodus. Kafari leaned back into the couch cushions as a feeling of momentary relief settled across her. She had forgotten what it was like, having other capable adults around to share the burden of childcare. Anastasia, attempting to regain Iva Camar's good graces, was busy cleaning up the spilled punch and cookie crumbs. Kafari's mother ruffled the girl's hair, then sat down beside Kafari on the sofa, speaking low enough the sound reached only her ears.
"You didn't say how bad it was, honey."
Kafari shook her head. "Would you have believed me?"
A sigh gusted loose. "No. I don't think I realized just how serious things are in town, these days."
Simon joined them on the couch. "It's worse than that," he nodded toward the door Yalena and Aunt Min had disappeared through. "Much worse, I'm afraid. Unlike these kids," he nodded toward Yalena's cousins, the younger ones entertaining themselves while the older ones listened intently to the adult discussion underway, "Yalena spends her after-school hours involved in town-style activities. Things like the Eco-Action Club, the Equality for Infants Discussion Group—no, I'm not making that up, I swear to God—and the ever-popular Children's Rights Research Society, which spends its time studying bogus sociological hogwash churned out by Alva Mahault, the new Chair of Sociological Studies at Riverside University. Then they dream up new schemes to implement the sociology research's 'facts' in ways beneficial to legal minors. This involves, for the most part, suggesting things like mandatory vacations off-world for every child, to be paid for by taxes, naturally, mandatory personal allowances and federal requirements for providing in-home snacks for every child. The 'best' ideas are presented to the Senate and House of Law for consideration as new legislation, most of which is immediately hailed as groundbreaking social brilliance and passed into law."
Shocked silence greeted his bitter assessment. Kafari's father spoke in a thoughtful, droll tone, "You have a gift, Simon, for stating things with great clarity. Ever think of running for president?"
Someone chuckled and the ghastly tension in the room ebbed away, allowing an abrupt and lively discussion about the best ways to counter such arrant nonsense. Kafari, who worked ten-hour days in a spaceport populated largely by rabid believers in anything and everything POPPA suggested, found it both refreshing and marvelously relaxing to listen to intelligent people who understood the basic way in which the universe works and weren't afraid—yet—to say so. She was content, for now, to simply listen and bask in the warmth of feeling completely at home for the first time in many long months. When she drained the last of the punch from her cup, she caught Simon's eye and nodded toward the door Yalena had gone through. She indicated with a gesture that he should remain where he was, then went in search of her daughter.
She found Aunt Min on the back porch, seated in a rocking chair, with a hunting rifle laid comfortably across her lap. Her aunt nodded past the well house. Kafari's parents had installed a big bench-style swing that hung from the spreading branches of a genuine Terran oak. Kafari remembered the tree, which had supported a swing of one kind or another for as long as she could remember. In her childhood, it had been a big tractor tire. Kafari suspected her parents enjoyed the bench swing, particularly on warm summer evenings. Yalena was sitting on one end of the swing, staring across the nearest of the ponds, chin resting on tucked-up knees, swinging slowly by herself.
"She's not having a very happy birthday," Kafari said, sighing and keeping her voice low.
"No," Aunt Min agreed, "but that's largely her own doing."
"I know. But it's hard to see her hurting, like that, all the same. I wish . . ." She didn't finish the thought. Wishes were for children. Kafari had reality to cope with, one agonizing day at a time. She stepped off the porch, heading for the swing. "Mind if I join you?" she asked, keeping her voice easy and casual.
Yalena shrugged.
Kafari perched on the other end. "Your cousins were very rude."
Yalena looked up, surprise coloring her eyes, which were so achingly like Simon's, it hurt, sometimes, looking into them. "Yes," she said, voice quavering a little. "They were."
Kafari held her peace for three or four more swings, then said, "You were very brave, in there. I was really proud of you, Yalena. You do realize, of course," she smiled wryly, "that you missed a chance to demonstrate better manners than they have? But it took guts to stand up to them that way."
Quick tears shone in her daughter's eyes. "Thanks," she said, all but inaudibly.
"Would you like to see the pearl sheds?"
Yalena shrugged again.
"Later, maybe." Kafari was determined to be patience, itself, today, even if it killed her. "I'll bet, though, that you'll be the only girl in school who's ever seen a real pearl hatchery. Your grandparents helped perfect the technique that allows pearl growers to seed, grow, and harvest the pearls without injuring the oysters. It's a very gentle process. And it gives the Klameth Canyon pearl growers a big advantage in the off-world marketplace. We can produce crop after crop without having to grow new oysters, as well as new pearls. Klameth Canyon produces more pearls of higher quality than any star system in the Sector."
"I didn't know any of that," Yalena admitted, sounding intrigued. "Did you grow pearls?"
"Oh, yes. I was pretty good at it, too."
"What did you like best?"
Kafari smiled, remembering the intensity of her interest when she'd been just Yalena's age. "I liked producing the special colors, more than anything else. The pinks are awfully pretty, but I liked the black pearls best, I think. Although they're not really black. They're more of a deep violet with an indigo-jade sheen. Your great-grandmother invented the process that produces that color. She engineered a bacteria that's harmless to the oyster, but causes a biochemical reaction that lets the oyster pull minerals from a special solution in the ponds and deposit them in the nacre that forms the pearl. Chakula Ranch holds the patent on it. I would be willing to bet," she added with a smile, "that you will be the only girl in school with a Chakula black-pearl necklace."
Yalena looked up. "But I don't have any black pearls."
"Ah, but it's your birthday, isn't it?"
Surprise left her eyes wide. Then a glow blazed to life, born of hope and delight and a sudden realization that her mother was not just a person she did battle with daily, but someone who understood—and cared—that Yalena still encountered some nasty hazing from school mates who knew that Kafari was a Granger and that Simon was an off-world soldier whose name was mud in any household that supported POPPA.
"D'you mean that? Really and truly?"
"Your father and I talked it over with your grandmother and grandfather. We'll even let you pick the pearls."
Her daughter's eyes shone. "Oh, Mom! Not even Katrina has a pearl necklace! And she's got the prettiest jewelry in school. And Ami-Lynn will just die of delight, watching the look on Katrina's face when she sees it!"
Ami-Lynn had long been Yalena's best friend in the universe, while Katrina was a girl that everyone, apparently, had good reason to detest. It would be quite a coup, to outdo one's worst enemy when said enemy had the prettiest jewelry in school. Kafari grinned and gave her daughter a conspiratorial wink. "Sure you don't want to see the pearl sheds?"
"Will any of them," she jerked her head toward the house, voice harsh with pain and anger, "be there?"
Kafari winced, but shook her head. "Nope. Just you and me. If anyone tries to butt in, I'll heave 'em into the nearest pond."
A smile stole its way across Yalena's face. A crafty smile, but Kafari understood the impulse. It wasn't easy, celebrating one's birthday with a bunch of strangers who'd been hideously rude, whatever the provocation might have been.
"C'mon, let's go see if we can find some pearls good enough to ruin Katrina's whole year. We'll pick them out and then take them to a jeweler to have a necklace made."
Yalena started to slide down from the swing, then paused long enough to whisper, "Thanks, Mom." There was a world of emotion—of thanks and apology and gratitude—rolled up in those two simple little words. She laid those words and emotions in Kafari's hands, blinking rapidly and hoping that her overture wouldn't be rejected.
"You're welcome, Yalena. Happy birthday, sugarplum."
Yalena smiled again, sweetly this time, and slipped her hand into Kafari's. They set out together for the pearl sheds.