The Sardonyx Net Part 44

Christina said, "Who knows what Ferris knows? It appears so, sometimes.

Other times, clearly not." As he did not seem to know, Rhani thought, when he first discussed this subject with me.... She sighed, and laid the gla.s.s down.

She did not want any more wine. Why, she wondered, did that feel so long ago?

I could still marry, she thought. I could even marry Ferris Dur. Many corporate ent.i.ties are run by committee; it does not make them less efficient. I probably know everyone on the committee, and Ferris wouldn't care as long as I was kind to him and let him pretend to be important.

Sweet mother, she thought, with fearful empathy, what does he do with his time? How does he fill his days? Dreaming up elaborate strategies which will fit him into a world in which he knows he doesn't belong? Rearranging furniture?

Snapping his fingers at household slaves?

Inexplicably she found her eyes filling with tears. She rose.

"Rhani?" Christina leaped from her chair. "Rhani, I'm sorry, I had no idea this would distress you -- Rhani, come sit, please."

"No, Christina, I don't want to sit." Rhani wiped her eyes with her knuckles. Christina was gazing at her, worried and disturbed.

"Rhani," she said slowly, "I -- forgive me -- are you _fond_ of Ferris?"

Rhani laughed despite herself, and choked. She coughed, drank wine, and coughed again as the strong vintage burned her throat. "No, Christina, I'm not.

I just feel sad for him. What the h.e.l.l does he do all day?"

Christina said promptly, "He makes models."

"Models? Of what?" She had a bizarre vision of Ferris walking through a room filled with life-sized, lifeless dolls.

"Of houses," Christina said. "He makes them in the bas.e.m.e.nt. I'm surprised he hasn't taken you to see them, but maybe he was saving it for a treat. He's very good at it; he puts them all together with his hands, and he tries to find original materials. His ambition, he told me once, is to have a model of all Abanat in the bas.e.m.e.nt of that house. It _is_ sad. You're not going to marry him, are you, Rhani?"

"No," Rhani said. She went to the chair and sat, wis.h.i.+ng she were home on the estate, with Binkie sitting by the com-unit and Isis playing at her feet....

But Binkie was dead. "No, Christina, I'm not."

She saw Christina to the door. They embraced. The small woman's hands were steady on Rhani's cheeks. Kissing her, Christina said, "Get out of here, sweetheart. Abanat's bad for you." Rhani went to the window to watch her. She looked fragile as a child on the broad street.

She went upstairs. As she got to the bedroom, the thought of Ferris made her want to weep again. Mercifully the room was empty; she slid the door closed and locked it. The clothes she had worn to the Hyper district and then stripped off lay scattered around the big pink bed. Desultorily she piled pants, s.h.i.+rt, sandals on a chair. Suddenly, her knees gave way -- it felt as if the bones had jellied. She grabbed the chair arm and sat heavily on the heap of clothes. What the h.e.l.l was wrong with her? She felt her head. Her hair was hot.

A touch of the sun.... She leaned back. In a few moments, she told herself, she could go downstairs and drink something cold. Not fruit punch. Ice water. She let her head droop against the chair's back, thinking about what Christina had said. Poor Ferris -- and poor Domna Sam, realizing perhaps too late that her one and only son was not capable of succeeding her. Wearily, she plucked at the tie around her braid. It came loose, and she combed her hair out with her fingers. It wasn't fair, she thought. Our mothers had no luck with their sons. She felt disloyal, to think such a thing of Zed, but she knew -- few knew better -- how deeply wounded her brother was. Did my mother do that? she wondered. Or is there something in Chabad that transforms and destroys? Maybe A- Rae is right, maybe slavery is a moral disease, infecting us like that strange disease, that mutation they found at Sovka, what was its name -- hemophilia....

Not A-Rae. She rose from the chair and went to the com-unit. U-Ellen had told her A-Rae's true name: it was U-Anasi, or rather, had been U-Anasi until he turned eighteen. She punched in a request for Nialle to obtain all information possible on one Michel U-Anasi, who nine years back had been an Enchantean citizen. Most of the information, she knew, would have to come from Enchanter and obtaining it would take at least two Standard weeks.

Then she went to the washroom and ran cold water on her wrists until her heart subsided. I can't be sick, she thought. She checked her temperature with the gauge in the medikit. Normal. Because she was there, she felt in the medikit for the meter. She gazed into the bathroom's wall-sized mirror as she stuck the meter under her tongue. Dark crescents underscored her eyes, and she thought: Christina's right. Abanat is bad for me.

Her thoughts spiraled again. Maybe it isn't Abanat. Maybe it's Chabad.

The heat saps our strength.... But she knew that was nonsense. There were other worlds among the Living Worlds whose conditions were inimical to human life, and they, too, had been colonized and settled. Dana -- her Starcaptain, she thought with sudden tenderness -- Dana would know their names, and what they looked, tasted, smelled like, and if their children had been hurt as Chabad's children were hurt.... She pulled the meter from her mouth and stared at it.

The indicator bulb had turned from a negative pink to a resplendent, positive orange.

*Chapter Nineteen*

Dropping into the estate hangar, Rhani thought, was like a bird homing to its nest, if the bubble could be said to be a bird, if Chabad had had birds.

Dana cut the power. She swung from the bubble not even trying to conceal her grin of relief. It was good to be home. She stretched her arms to the sky. "I feel as if I've been gone months," she said to Dana. The hangar roof closed like two hands joining. They walked into the sunlight. Immeld, Cara, and Timithos stood on the front steps. Cara looked sour. Rhani thought of Amri, and of Binkie.

The steward stepped forward to kiss her cheek. She smelled of soap.

"Welcome back, Rhani-ka." Immeld echoed the greeting. Timithos trotted toward the hangar to unload the luggage from the bubble. Three dragoncats swung around the corner of the house, tails waving, and she stood quite still and held out her hands for them to sniff. Recognizing her scent, they rubbed their heads against her hips. One of them -- Thoth, she thought it was -- licked her left palm.

"Where's my brother?" she said.

Cara looked at Immeld. "In the garden," Cara said, "with _her_."

Rhani bit her lip. She had deliberately put the image of the girl on the platform out of her mind. She wondered if she should wait, and let Zed come to find her -- no. "Tell Dana to come find me when he is through in the hangar,"

she said. She went into the house. It was little changed, she thought -- she amended that as she pa.s.sed the dining alcove. The cus.h.i.+ons on the floor looked comfortable. Resisting the impulse to go to her bedroom, she walked through the kitchen and out the back door to meet her brother and Darien Riis.

She found them under the bitter-pear. Zed lay with his head in the girl's lap. She stroked his forehead. He was saying something about the Net; his hands formed and reformed a circle in the air. His eyes were closed against the sunlight which came spattering through the bitter-pear's leaves.

The girl saw her first and said a soft, swift word to Zed. He turned his head and then rolled to his feet. "Rhani-ka," he said. Darien Riis rose, and he gripped her hand. Rhani waited for Zed to come to her, to hug her. He didn't move. The girl watched them, an expression of bland interest on her uncanny face.

"How did the meeting with U-Ellen go?" he said.

Rhani said, "It went well."

"You can speak in front of Darien," Zed said. He smiled at the girl, a loving, gentle look. "Was he of any use whatsoever?"

"Some," Rhani said.

"Good," Zed said. He smiled again. "Wonderful." His hair was loose and tangled; he ran his fingers through it. A dried leaf dropped to the gra.s.s.

Rhani said, "He wants to sell me a part interest in the dorazine trade."

"Are you going to buy?"

"I don't know." She waited for him to ask the questions she expected -- what does U-Ellen know about the dorazine business? Who owns it? How much does he want? She waited for him to say: Have they found Michel A-Rae?

He asked none of these things; he said nothing. He was not even looking at her. As a starving man watches food, he was watching Darien.

Something had happened; she did not understand it. She felt as if the ground beneath her feet had turned to sand and was changing, s.h.i.+fting, blowing across the lawn. Dana called her name and she turned toward him with relief.

"I'm here!" she called.

He appeared around a flower bed. He had put on a clean s.h.i.+rt; he looked st.u.r.dy, solid, unchanged. He came to stand beside her -- and then Rhani saw his face whiten. She glanced at her brother. Zed's eyes were wide and smoky, and his free hand was curling, long fingers crooking into claws.

He took a step toward Dana, and was checked by Darien's grip on his wrist. Rhani whirled on Dana. "Go to the house," she commanded. Dana backed and ran. Zed relaxed. Darien disengaged her hand from his and flexed her fingers, smiling at nothing. He reached up and caressed her cheek, as if Dana had never appeared.

He said, "Rhani, I'm leaving Chabad."

Dry-mouthed, she answered, "Are you?"

"Yes. Darien and I are going to Nexus. Darien's never been there. You don't need me -- Jo can command the Net for you. She'll make a better commander than I was. Nivas is easily competent to be the chief medic. We'll leave -- " he shrugged, and touched the girl's red hair -- "I don't know. In a while."

Rhani's legs felt unsteady, as if she had just climbed a mountain. She licked her lips. This isn't real, she thought, this is an illusion.... Summoning up her energies, she stretched her hand out. "Twin!" she said. Zed was looking at Darien. He had not even heard her. The girl murmured to him, soft words that Rhani could not catch. She swallowed back sickness and left them together beneath the bitter-pear tree.

Dana was in her bedroom. He rose when she came in. Walking to him, she slid her hands beneath his s.h.i.+rt and they clung together. His heart thudded and finally steadied. Her own was racing.... She tugged at the s.h.i.+rt. "Take this off," she said. He drew it off and she held him, pressing herself into his warmth, fingers moving over his skin.

Finally she let him go. Dana pushed her into the wing chair. He pulled the footstool across the room and sat on it, holding her hands. "Do you want to talk?" he said.

She pressed his fingers to her forehead. "No. Yes." She drew a deep breath. "I don't know what to say. He's leaving Chabad, he and Darien. He's taking her to Nexus." She gazed around the room; it was smaller than her memory of it. "He said, '_You don't need me_.'"

Dana said, "He needs to believe that."

"Don't be glib!" she snapped. "How can you know what's happening in his mind?"

Dana's mouth crooked. "I know him pretty well," he said. "Not the way you do, though. Differently." He freed his hands from hers. Deliberately he rose and walked a few paces from her, toward the terrace doors. "I think he's crazy, Rhani."

"Don't say that." She clenched her fists on her thighs. "Insanity is a clinical, chemical disorder, detectable by blood test. Zed's a medic. They'd know if he were crazy."

"I'm no medic," Dana said, "but I know that blood chemistry changes in reaction to environmental conditions. The entropic imbalance between s.p.a.ce-time normal and the Hype drove the early hypers.p.a.ce explorers nuts. Zed's been commander of the Net for how long? A long time. Test his blood. He's crazy."

Rhani said, "No. I won't accept that."

Dana shrugged. "There they are." Rhani went to him. Through the terrace doors, she saw Zed and Darien walking across the lawn. Their hands were linked, and they were laughing.

"No," she heard herself saying. Whirling from the sight, she sat in the wing chair, chin on her fists. Zed was not mad. Something -- had changed in him, that was all. He had found a lover, for one thing, an event neither he nor she had thought was possible. She thought: I should be happy for him.

She said, "The sight of you seems to trigger him to violence."

Dana exhaled. "Yes. It has to go somewhere."

"What does that mean?"

Dana said, "He's a violent man. He's had years to create patterns for himself -- " he hesitated, and then went on, "s.a.d.i.s.tic patterns around s.e.xual acts. That girl looks so like you -- and he would never hurt you, Rhani. He won't hurt her either. But the sadism is in him now, and it has to go somewhere."

Her breath jammed in her throat. "Could he know -- "

"That we're lovers?" Dana finished. "I hope not. Oh, stars, I hope not, Rhani."

She heard footsteps on the stairs, and a woman's laughter echoed through the corridor. "I don't see how he could," she said. "All the same, you'd better keep well out of his way."

The house fissioned. Zed and Darien spent a lot of time in Zed's room.

They ate in the dining alcove; they walked in the gardens. Except for momentary glimpses from the terrace, Rhani rarely saw them. She heard their laughter on the stairs, though, and sometimes in the night, through walls which had unaccountably thinned to paper, she heard their lovemaking. Finally, she admitted to herself that she was listening. She spent most of her time in her bedroom. She ate there. Though he slept in the slaves' hall, Dana stayed with her during the day. When he left her side, he went warily; he would stand at the door of the room, waiting, and she realized that he, too, was listening. He went to great trouble to avoid Zed. Once, he came into the bedroom trembling. She went to him. "Are you hurt?" He shook his head. "What happened?" He would not talk about it. She felt as if she were living in a puzzle, like the toys the Abanat street vendors hawked. She was the little ball scuttling and bouncing through the shaken plastic maze.

Dana spoke to Darien when they met on the stairs or in the kitchen, the rare times she appeared without Zed. Rhani asked what they said to each other.

Dana shrugged. "Not much. She comments on the weather. Sometimes she asks how you are, and doesn't seem very concerned with the answers."

"Can you tell what she's like?"

He spread his hands. "She looks like you. Sounds like you."

"Does she -- does she care for him? Really?"

"How the h.e.l.l do I know?" Dana said. "She seems to."

It makes no sense, Rhani thought, no sense. How can he care for her and shut me out? She listened, but they were in the garden, and she couldn't hear them.

She had intended, once she was settled in the estate, to call the proper agency and engage a secretary, maybe two. But she did not. The first few days in the house, she did nothing but sit at the com-unit. Her fingers regained their keyboard speed and skills. The load of work was soothing; it meant she did not have to think about anything else. Dana screened the mail for her. She read the PINsheets: the referendum seemed certain to fail, they said. The pet.i.tions were still gaining signatures only on Belle.

She spoke with Imre and with Theo Levos by com-line. In conference, they agreed that the Upper House of the Council could rest easy for a time. The dorazine shortage remained critical. Rhani wished that she could talk about Loras U-Ellen's offer with Zed. After several nights of pouring over her financial records, she ascertained that, a.s.suming no emergency drain occurred on Family Yago funds, she could just come up with fifteen million credits. It was somewhat sobering to realize that The Pharmacy probably spent that much money every Standard month.

The fourth day, the mail bubble arrived at the estate. In the bag was a letter from Loras U-Ellen, reminding her that she had seventeen more days to make up her mind. Scowling, Rhani tossed it in the disposal. The knowledge that she was pregnant seemed to make every decision difficult. Rising to think, to pace, she heard laughter from the garden, and clapped her hands to her ears to shut out the sound.

She wondered, lying alone at night, if she should arrange to miscarry.

She did not want to; she had gone to such trouble to conceive -- and besides, in the small hours of the morning she would wake to see a small, heart-shaped face in the darkness, a face with wheat-colored hair and topaz eyes. Sometimes the child's eyes were black. She thought about Dana. She should free him now, she knew.

But if she freed him he would leave, and then she would be wholly alone.

She looked up Cat Graeme in the com-net. Catriona Graeme, born in Foralie on d.i.c.kson's World, age thirty-eight, trained as a soldier -- which, Rhani discovered, was an ancient Terran word that seemed to mean both a mercenary and a police officer -- took part in four major actions including the one on China III, three children, one grown and commanding his own unit -- what, she wondered, was a unit? Reading about this woman, whose life was so different from her own, made her realize how many of the Living Worlds she had never heard of, dreamed of.

A second reminder from Loras U-Ellen drove her from her lethargy. She wrote a letter to Tak Rafael at the Yago Bank. In it she informed him that Family Yago was about to embark upon a new manufacturing endeavor, product unspecified, and that for it she would need investment capital of fifteen million credits. She sealed it and gave it to Dana to put in the mail bag.

Sitting at the com-unit, he was reading the PINsheets.

"What do they say?" she asked.

He shook his head, knowing what she wanted them to say. "Nothing about Cat Graeme."

"Nothing about Michel A-Rae?"

"Only that the Abanat police haven't located him yet."

"They're all fools," Rhani said. She rose, strolled to the terrace doors, and back again. Zed and Darien were in the garden, and Dana could see her trying to look elsewhere, anywhere but out.... She was rigid with tension -- had been for over a Standard week. After eight days in close proximity to her, Dana felt as if the webbing of his nervous system had frayed.

In thirteen days, he knew, she would respond to Loras U-Ellen, one way or another. And in ten days, he would be off Chabad. He had put the message -- directed to Russell O'Neill and in navigator's coding -- into the com-unit two days back. His princ.i.p.al fear was now that Zed would catch him in the hall or in the garden and do something, Dana did not know what, which would keep him from ever getting off Chabad. He had begun to dream of the Net, which did not make the situation any easier. Once, he had walked into the kitchen and interrupted Zed and Darien with their arms around each other. The look Zed had turned on him -- horrifying, feral anger -- was like nothing he had experienced on this or any other earth.

Ten days, he told himself. You can stand ten more days of this. He wondered if Rhani could. It would pain her, he knew, when he left. But he had to go, he had to take the opportunity -- what if she would not free him, as she had sworn she would? What if Zed and Darien did not leave for Nexus?

"File this under 'R,'" she told him, pa.s.sing him a report. Automatically he glanced at it to see what it was. Its contents were none of his business but she did not seem to notice or, if she noticed, she didn't care. It was the report from the Barracks, detailing the number of slaves sold at Auction that year, the number sold after the Auction to dealers, money spent on drugs, food, and staff expenses, money taken in, profits made.