Child of Venus (8 page)

Mahala's ears throbbed; her mouth was so dry that she could not swallow. It had happened long ago, Risa would say; it had nothing to do with her.

“I was in Chimene's house when Boaz was brought to her,” Lakshmi said. “We'd been hiding for days during the uprising, afraid to go outside. Chimene wept when she saw Boaz—she kept telling him how much she loved him. I still didn't quite understand what was happening. She was saying that she knew Boaz was plotting her death, that he'd been using her for his own ends, but that she would give him a chance to repent. She had to forgive him—I was certain she would, that it would all turn out to be a mistake. She was my sister in Ishtar, and he was my lover—it would all work out in the end.”

Lakshmi leaned across the table; her hand snaked out and closed around Mahala's
wrist. “Galina Kolek, one of Chimene's housemates, was with us. Galina was a physician.
She was the one who gave Boaz the drug, but it was at your mother's orders. She gave him
something that produces a kind of paralysis. The men who brought him to her had to hold him down
while Galina—”

“It isn't true!”

Lakshmi's fingers dug into her arm. “It's true. It took him a long
time to die. I don't know how long, because Galina gave me an injection to keep me
tranquilized, but I was still awake, I saw it all. Chimene kept talking to him while he struggled
for breath, while he lay there knowing that his lungs and heart would eventually fail him. Chimene
was telling him that she forgave him, that his death would bring him peace, that his child and hers
was already growing in an artificial womb, that—” Mahala screamed.

“Be quiet! You wanted to know the truth. I hated Chimene for tormenting him like that, for taking his life. Later, I came to hate him, too. Those were your parents, child. They were everything I loved, everything I thought was beautiful and fine, and they ruined me. It was all deception and lies, just an illusion, and when it was gone, I had nothing left. And your grandmother's gone on hiding what really happened with her own lies. I don't care what others believe, but you ought to know the truth.”

Mahala struggled to her feet. “You look like them,” Lakshmi whispered. “It's strange—you don't have any of their beauty, but I see them in you. It's as if you're a distorted image of your mother. You shouldn't be alive at all; Risa should never have chosen to bring you up. She should have let every part of them die. Then maybe all of those people your mother and her cult wounded so deeply could forget.”

Mahala ran from the house.

She came to the road and stumbled along it until Risa's house was in sight. The dome was growing darker; people in the nearby houses set back from the road were calling to children or greeting returning bondmates. Her grandmother and grandfather were probably inside their house with Dyami, assuming his airship had arrived on time and had not made any unscheduled stops. They would be sitting around and talking, as if everything was the same as before.

She could not go home, not now. Mahala turned toward the tunnel that led to the main dome.

She walked through the long lighted passageway. A knot of people had gathered near one wall to talk; others were hurrying home. A cart carrying two workers and tied-down stacked crates rolled slowly toward her; Mahala moved to the side. A woman's voice called out her name; she kept going, past a stretch of wall covered with graffiti written in Arabic and Anglaic, following the gentle upward slope at the end of the tunnel into the main dome.

She boarded the first passenger cart that rolled past, heedless of where she was headed until the entrance to the airship bay was in sight. The entrance, twenty meters wide and thirty meters high, was open, revealing two cranes and groups of workers hovering over consoles. Clusters of tents for new settlers sat in the small grassy space outside the bay. Oberg's main dome was more crowded than any of the other three, with large buildings that held laboratories in addition to the houses that nestled near the wooded park areas. There were so many houses on the flat land that stretched to the External Operations Center that Mahala could barely glimpse the distant lighted windows of the large three-story building.

The cart rolled to a stop to let off passengers near the new community greenhouse; a gray-haired woman lingered near Mahala. “Excuse me, child,” the woman said. “You look distressed. Is there anything I can do?”

“No. I'm fine.”

“I take this way home all the time, and I don't think I've seen you
before. Shouldn't you be—”

“I'm all right,” Mahala said.

The woman climbed down from the cart. People outside the tents were kneeling on prayer rugs; others moved toward the large, walled-in courtyard that served as Oberg's mosque as the call to prayer sounded from the mosque's minaret.

She was alone. Oberg's night, its darktime, had come; a disk of silvery light glowed far overhead. Mahala had always felt secure inside Oberg's domes, protected from the dangers of the planet's surface. Now she felt trapped, unable to escape the past.

You shouldn't be alive, Lakshmi had told her. It was all very clear now, the whispers, the silences, the secrets that had been kept. Ishtar's followers had made prisoners of many, even of Dyami, but Mahala had always believed that her mother must have been misled by those around her, that she had not known what some of her followers were doing. Maybe that was just another lie. No wonder Dyami had never moved back to Oberg, even though Mahala knew that Risa and Sef wanted him there. He probably saw her the same way Lakshmi did, as part of everything he wanted to forget.

Mahala stood up; the cart halted to let her off. She was near a grove of slender trees; in the shadows, she could make out the memorial pillars that honored Oberg's dead. Several globes of light had been set in the nearby trees to illuminate the area; two mourners knelt near one pillar to lay down a wreath. She did not want to go there, where a holo image of her mother's beautiful face gazed out from the top of one pillar. There was no image of Boaz. There was no memorial to him because he had not wanted one; Risa had told her that lie, too. Now she was certain that no one had wanted her father, the traitor, commemorated.

She hurried through the trees until she came to the monument honoring her great-grandmother, then froze. A man nearly as tall and broad-shouldered as Sef stood there, a duffel at his feet. He turned his head; before she could conceal herself, he had seen her.

“Mahala! It is you, isn't it?”

The light from one of the lanterns hanging from a branch overhead had given her away. She wandered toward her uncle, her eyes down.

“Greetings, Dyami,” she said. A lump rose in her throat; she had kept from crying ever since leaving Lakshmi's house, but tears were threatening to come.

“What are you doing here so late?” Dyami asked. “Did Risa send you to meet me? I didn't tell her I'd stop at Iris's monument, but she must have guessed that I would.”

“I thought—” She swallowed hard as Dyami knelt next to her. “I
thought you'd be at the house already.”

“The airship needed repairs at the last minute. I got a message to Risa and Sef saying that I'd be late, but when did you ever know an airship to be right on time?” He touched her hand lightly. “Do they know you're here?”

“No.”

“Didn't you tell them where you were going?”

“No.”

“Then Risa will be worried sick. She'll be calling friends and asking who might have seen you, even putting a message on the public channels about you.”

“A woman told me all about my parents. She said Chimene was a murderer and Boaz was a traitor. She told me everything about them. Risa lied to me.”

Dyami drew her to him. “Who told you this?”

“Her name's Lakshmi—Lakshmi Tiris. She said she used to live with my mother. She told me I shouldn't even be alive.”

He scowled. “That's a hateful thing to say.”

“My mother killed my father—that's what she said. She hates them and she hates me. You were a prisoner—maybe you hate me, too.”

“No, Mahala—you mustn't think that.” He held her more tightly. “Please believe this—without you, everything would have been much harder for Risa and Sef. Risa thought for a long time about what she should do, but she's never regretted choosing to bring you home. My parents love you, and if they didn't tell you everything they knew about your parents, it was only because they were trying to protect you.”

A sob wrenched itself from her, and then she was crying as she clung to him. Dyami held her until her sobs subsided. “Mahala.” He wiped her face with his sleeve. “Let me ask you a question. What woman does this monument honor?”

“That's silly.” She sniffed and rubbed at her eyes. “My great-grandmother, of course.”

“Your great-grandmother. Iris Angharads. You should remember that, Mahala. There's something of her in you, too.” He sat down and draped an arm over one knee. “Some people in our line are admirable, and others did shameful things, and that only makes you very much like everyone else. You can take pride in some of your people and feel ashamed of others, but in the end you have to make your own life. What your ancestors did may cast a shadow, but you can choose to move into the light.”

“Dyami?” She looked up at him. “Why didn't you ever move back to Oberg?”

“Most of the people I was imprisoned with live in Turing. We have other settlers, of course, but they're the ones I'm closest to. I'll be honest—I feel easier around such people. I trust them, because I know what they are, how they behaved when we were prisoners. They had some courage. You can't say the same about some of the people here. A lot of them may be sorry for what happened, but they didn't stand against it at the time.”

“You don't live in Turing because of me?”

“No, Mahala. I'll admit that, in the beginning, I wanted nothing to do with any child of my sister's. Everything in me seemed dead after I was freed—maybe you'll understand why someday, when you're old enough to view the records of the hearings held after the Revolt I felt little after learning that Chimene and Boaz were dead, only relief that they would no longer trouble us, and then Sef told me about the child they had stored, who was gestating. I was bitter about that, angry that Risa and Sef would even consider bringing such a child into their household. Risa waited before having you brought to term because she was afraid that, if she took you in, she would lose me.” He sat up and slipped an arm over her shoulders. “That bitterness left me when I first saw you. That was when I knew that Risa had done the right thing.”

They were silent for a while. At last Dyami nudged her. “It would be good to sit here all night and settle everything, but if I don't get you home right away, Risa will be even angrier with me man with you.”

“Dyami, are you sure—”

“That you're my favorite niece?”

“I'm your only niece.”

“You're also my favorite child, which is why I absolutely insist that you visit me as soon as you have time off from school. That's one of the things I came here to discuss with Sef and Risa.”

He picked up his duffel, took her hand, and led her away from the monument.

 

4

Mahala expected to be punished, not only for being late but also, somehow, for what she had learned while being late. Risa, after greeting Dyami, gazed at her for a long time in silence. The rest of the household, all of them gathered in the common room, seemed subdued. Mahala felt then that she had become someone else.

“I know where you went after school,” Risa murmured. “When you didn't come home, I called some friends and found out you had been seen near Lakshmi Tiris's house.”

“I'm sorry. I know I wasn't supposed to, but—”

“It's all right, Mahala. I'm not going to punish you. I know what was said, and Lakshmi won't bother you again. Let's set this matter aside.”

Kolya and Barika brought out the food as the others settled on the cushions around the table. Mahala poked at her fish and vegetables, unable to eat, still feeling like a stranger. Dyami had made her feel a little better on the way home, but now the truth was pressing in on her again. The truth! Maybe she would find out that almost nothing she believed was true.

“I'll tell you what I've heard,” Grazie said. “It
isn't on her record, but they say that Lakshmi Tiris had her tour of Bat duty cut short
because so few people wanted to work with her. They say she was needlessly reckless, a danger
to—”

Risa shot the other woman a warning glance. Grazie tucked a loose strand of graying hair behind her ear, then turned her attention to her food.

Kolya was the next to speak. “Saw Andy Dinel today,” he said to Risa.
“He hinted that he wants to talk to you about getting his record straightened out.”

Risa lifted her brows. “What is it this time?”

“I'm not sure.” Kolya reached for the bread and tore off a piece. “He probably got another witness willing to affirm that Andy was actually on the side of the resistance to Ishtar all along.”

Paul shook his head. “I haven't forgotten how well he was doing with Ishtar, how much whiskey he was selling and sometimes even giving away to members of their patrol. Does he really think people will believe some public statement made by people he probably bribed?”

“Some will believe it,” Risa said, “and what's said might even
be true. Andy's just the sort to have whispered to some resisters that he was sympathizing
with them even while he was profiting from Ishtar.”

“And if he can clear his record,” Paul said, “he'd have a better chance of winning if he ran for the Council.”

Mahala had heard talk of problems with records ever since she could remember. Some people claimed that they had been falsely accused of betraying others during Venus's time of troubles, others that they had been blackmailed or were only trying to protect their families. Whenever any of these complaints became, as they occasionally did, the subject of a public hearing, people often ended up more confused than ever. A highly respected Cytherian might find his name on a recently uncovered list of those trusted by the traitors; someone known to have served on Ishtar's patrols might suddenly be revealed as a secret resister. Many people had become obsessed with cleansing their records of any black marks dating from those times.