two hands and pushed open her eyelids.
"Go away!" she demanded to the blurry form above her.
"No!" the person shouted at her.
Focus returned. The blurry form became the blood-smeared face of Sugai Mai. The blood and Mai's expression were enough to shock Zakiya into functional wakefulness.
"Mai! What?"
"I need you! Aylis is sick and I can't help her!"
"What's wrong with her?" Zakiya tried to sit up, tried to find reality and responsibility.
"I don't know! She's pregnant and exhausted, but so am I! I need her! I need rest! We have volunteers and trainees but someone needs to supervise. She's unresponsive and I think it's emotional. Please, see if you can help her!"
Zakiya was numb: a wall against her grief, however tenuous. It helped that she had wept for what seemed like hours. It helped that people tried to comfort her. She had lived too long, to have waited to experience such pain and loss.
= = =
"She fell off," Mai said, entering Aylis's office. "I had her on the couch."
Zakiya helped Mai pick Aylis off the floor. They put her back on the couch. She was limp but began to stir, once on the couch. Mai put her fingers on Aylis's chest and read her vitals. Mai grimaced and slapped Aylis lightly on the cheek.
"Aylis. Aylis! Zakiya is here. Tell us what's wrong."
Aylis opened her eyes. She slowly turned her head, her face a mask of pain, and when she saw Zakiya she curled herself into a fetal position and hid her face.
"I'm leaving," Mai said. "I'm sorry! Try to get her on her feet!"
Zakiya sat down by Aylis and put a hand on her shoulder, then absently started rubbing her back. The tension in Aylis's muscles would not release under her hand. It was several moments before Zakiya's beleaguered mind registered the fact. She tried to find some way to think clearly and to decide what to do about Aylis. All she could bring to mind was the fragment of memory she had just experienced before Mai woke her. Petros. Petros!
"What happened to Petros?" Zakiya asked herself, but Aylis must have heard the question as though addressed to her.
Aylis screamed and tried to roll away from Zakiya. She fell on the floor. Zakiya was shocked into a greater awareness of the situation, a clearer realization of the magnitude of Aylis's distress. She got down on the floor and tried to pull Aylis's hands and arms away from her breast, to help her rise, to at least get her to stop screaming. All she could do was shake her, then clamp her hand over Aylis's mouth to stop the screaming. Aylis finally opened her eyes again, just watery slits contorted by distress. Zakiya realized Aylis was trying to speak and she removed her hand from her mouth.
"I killed him! I killed Petros!" The words were almost lost under the obscuring emotional burden.
As she finally understood what Aylis said, Zakiya weakened her grip on Aylis's hands and Aylis snatched them back and began beating herself on the head, on her face. Her nose started to bleed.
The door opened and Direk stood there for a startled moment before moving to help Zakiya stop his mother from hurting herself. He and Zakiya picked her up, and when Aylis seemed to realize who Direk was, she clung to him and wept. He held her and looked at Zakiya questioningly.
"She said she killed Petros," Zakiya said dully, still not completely accepting reality and understanding its meaning.
/
Direk studied Zakiya for several moments, trying to decide what he should say and whether she should hear it. Exhaustion dulled his inhibitions and most of his other functions. He would get this over with now. It would hurt them badly when they were already suffering the loss of Sammy, but they would survive it and find peace that much sooner.
"Do you remember Petros?" he asked.
Zakiya was slow to respond. "My baby. My son. Aylis would never..."
"In a sense, she may have killed him."
"He's dead? My baby?"
"Perhaps not yet, but he is lost to us."
"Why? How?"
"She didn't tell you what he was going to do?" Direk now wished he could be as Essiin as he once was, but it was too difficult. It hurt him to even think the words he was about to speak. "Petros was going to infiltrate the Navy cadre of interlopers. He should have made contact with us before now, to receive the antidote. We've lost him."
He felt his mother hug him harder and tremble with the strain. He saw Zakiya drop onto the couch and hang her head, then cover her face.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I wish I had remembered sooner. I wish the other copy had remembered. I wish Mother had remembered."
"I did!" Aylis cried, her voice muffled against her son.
"What did you say, Mother?" Direk had not heard her clearly.
/
Aylis disengaged from the embrace of her son. She stood before him, wavering a little, with a hand on his chest to help keep her balance. Zakiya was behind her and she dared not turn to look at her. Aylis was exhausted. Her throat was raw with the ache of grief and the stress of screaming and weeping. Her head ached. Her eyes hurt and wouldn't stay focused. She wanted to die! But before she did, she must tell the truth, for Zakiya's sake, and for the sake of her own soul. She couldn't look at either Zakiya or her son. She coughed and tried to speak again.
"I knew who he was and I had to deny it! I had to! Until I made myself prove it. It was Petros! There is no doubt. And it was all I could think about, even as I was trying to help Mai treat the wounded. I hope I didn't hurt anyone! I don't remember anything, except the blood and the cries of pain. Then they brought Sammy in and... I couldn't go on! I can't believe he's dead!"
/
Aylis's knees began to shake and Direk grabbed her before she could fall. He sat her on the couch but she seemed determined to continue speaking, wiping her face and giving herself a moment to rest.
"Did you see him?" Direk asked. "Did you see Petros?"
/
Zakiya almost didn't want Aylis to go on. She didn't want her to suffer. She didn't want Aylis's unborn child to suffer. And she had a very bad feeling about what Aylis might say next.
"Yes, I saw him! I didn't know him immediately... I just knew... he wasn't Essiin. I did feel... feel something... special... about him. But I tried not to think about it! I was desperate to deny it! It could not be Petros who... who was doing this... this... unspeakable... thing... to me! I loved Petros! And I was hitting him and... screaming at him. And he was... And it hurt! He was hurting me! And I hated him! And I couldn't... couldn't make the... the right words... come out of my mouth! And I just gave up and... stopped thinking, stopped feeling. And it was suddenly over. And I just wished... wished he was dead, whoever he was!
"Then, afterward," she continued in a moment, determinedly, "there was Jamie. And I told myself that at least Zakiya had Jamie and I could forget about Petros. But I couldn't forget, no matter how hard I tried! I finally made myself examine the genetic code of my fetus. And it is... definitely... Zakiya's granddaughter!"
"Aylis!" Zakiya declared. "What are you saying? Who is Petros now?"
"I could have told Etrhnk the truth!" Aylis said with self-hate. "I could have told him who his mother is! I could have stopped him from raping me! But I only wanted to deny the truth and hate him. I refused to believe sweet Petros could have become Etrhnk!
"Even after he was done with me, I could have told him. He even gave me Rafael's portrait of Zakiya, and I could have said, 'This is a picture of your mother.' But I didn't. I had to hate him. And I took my payment and left him to die! I killed him! I loved him! I killed Petros!"
/
Zakiya waited for Aylis to finish speaking, then she waited a little longer. Full awareness of reality cruelly cleared her thoughts. She looked at Direk and saw how sad he was and how exhausted from his medical duties.
Admiral Etrhnk is... my son, Petros. Zakiya understood now. Her reaction to this startling and calamitous news was dulled in comparison to the loss of Sammy and by her concern for Aylis. She also now thought about Freddy and was worried that h
e had not come to her to share her grief. She was well aware of how Freddy felt about Sammy and she knew it could be very bad for his mental health, perhaps even fatal. She had never known Petros as a real person. But she had known Sammy, and loved him with all her heart. And she had known Freddy and loved him as a real and very special son. Etrhnk was not that important to her, not right now. Aylis was important. Freddy was important.
Zakiya needed Aylis and the ship needed her. The future would lose most of its meaning if Aylis did not travel to it with her as the good friend she was. She turned to Aylis and tried to grasp each of her hands. Aylis resisted for a moment, causing their hands to flutter about, until Aylis looked up at Zakiya and tried to understand what she wanted. Zakiya took Aylis's hands and pulled her close, then released her hands and embraced her.
= = =
The android was unwise to have twice let him live. He could have killed it either time. He should have. No. No logic in that, only an unethical urge. If it was an android, then it made little difference in the balance of his life's accounts. But this was a person in a bloodless body. No, only a stream of thoughts in a soulless feedback loop of consciousness.
Etrhnk was plagued by such mental reversals. It began the first moment his attention was stolen by Admiral Fidelity Demba. He should have killed her. He couldn't. It became worse when the musician Pan came into his personal presence. He should have killed him. He couldn't. Then came Aylis Mnro...
He stood in the presence of the android, waiting for Pan to arrive. It