“But you never did found such a place, did you, sir?”
“No.”
“I am glad to hear it.”
“Why? Because it allows you to have a higher opinion of me than you would otherwise have?” he said, a strong note of derision in his voice. “I assure you, your opinion of me can be quite as low as you like, despite my not having become a purveyor of electronic fantasies. I have done nothing to earn any special regard.”
“Finish your tale, and let me judge for myself afterward,” I said quietly.
“As I say, we had our plans, but they were derailed in the most commonplace manner imaginable. I discovered she had a second—shall we say—business partner who was eager to fill each of my several roles in her life. Naturally, I had to sever the connection immediately. I must say, to do so gave me a profound relief on many fronts, and I resolved to be a little more wary before I pledged my heart—or my bank account—to anyone in the future.”
“A wise decision,” I said, for the pause in his speech seemed to require a comment from me. “But none of this comes any closer to explaining Ameletta’s presence in your life.”
“I must first explain Coletta before I can explain Ameletta.”
“Coletta?”
“The name of my erstwhile companion. Shortly after she and I parted ways, she sent me a message telling me she was pregnant with my child. This was not something she had wanted, mind you, and it was not something she expected to grant her a further hold over my heart. It was merely something she passed along in the way of information.”
“And you replied?”
“Well, first I asked her what she intended to do about it. On Corbramb, while there are millions of doctors who will perform an abortion for an insignificant fee, there are also hundreds of institutions where a woman can take her unborn fetus and submit herself to operations of a different sort. And those institutions will pay you, instead of the other way around. And Coletta, in case you had not guessed, was a very avaricious woman.”
“She took her baby in to be harvested,” I said calmly, though I did not feel calm at all. I felt hot, and flushed with rage, and covered in prickles of hatred.
“Exactly. In case I might have some interest in the child’s well-being, she told me where she had deposited her little burden. To her credit, she had chosen one of the institutions that will grow a baby to full term and then sell it to an individual desperate for a child. She did not go the less ethical route and leave the fetus with one of the organizations that merely is interested in blood cells and tissues.”
He spoke dispassionately, but it was hard to believe he could feel no emotion. As for myself, I was almost faint with it. “What did you do then?” I asked. It was an effort to raise my voice above a whisper.
“I went to the clinic, paid an exorbitant fee to claim the child as mine—though I was not positive, not by any means, that I was the biological father—and I waited until she was harvested. Then I engaged a nurse, installed the two of them in a small home, and went on about my life for the next few years as if I had no daughter or ward or any claim at all upon my life.”
I swallowed twice before I was able to choke down the lump that had formed inside my throat. “But—you could have easily had that checked, you know,” I said. “Her DNA against your own—”
He nodded. “I know. And that was my original thought, when I went to the clinic to investigate. Why should I support some other man’s mistress’s child if she had not the smallest claim on my time, resources, or affection? And yet, as I stood in that sterile, unfriendly room, surrounded by indifferent personnel, I could not help but sympathize with that tiny, still almost invisible life. I knew what it was like to be pushed to the brink of abandonment by someone who ought to have had your best interests at heart. I knew what it was like to be rejected by family, turned away because you did not fit in with a social or financial scheme. I had never done a good thing in my life, not that I could think of at that moment. But this would be a good thing. I would claim that tiny life, give it my name, accord it status of citizen, and keep it as safe as a negligent nature could do. So I determined, and so I have done, in my careless way. Eventually, when this property came into my hands, I moved her here, as being a less corrupt environment for a child. But I am still reconsidering that. It is a moral place, but a lonely one.”
“It would not be so lonely for her if you were around more,” I ventured. “She is very fond of you.”
“Yes, but I am not so fond of young girls and mindless chatter! I do my best, but I have a finite patience with constant exclamations and artless questions.”
He shuddered elaborately and I smiled. “That makes me hesitate to ask my own questions,” I said.
“Ask away! Your conversation, whatever else I might call it, is hardly artless. What would you like to know?”
“First, is she in fact your daughter?”
He gave me a crooked smile. “I never had the tests done. She is my ward, and in some sense my heir, and because of me she will always be a full citizen of the Allegiance—but I do not know if she is flesh of my weak flesh and bone of my wretched bone. By your own standards, that should not matter at all. By your way of thinking, we are related whether we are the same bloodline or merely the same species.”
Very true; that was what I believed; and yet it made his actions in adopting her just the slightest bit chivalrous. “Second, does she know her own history?”
“No, and Mrs. Farraday and Miss Ayerson know very little. Merely that I had a connection with her mother at one time and in that way came into possession of the daughter. Unlike you, they do not like to interrogate me, and my demeanor can be forbidding when I choose.”
So saying, he turned a most unnerving scowl on me, which would have quite cowed me to silence had we not already had this most revealing of conversations. As it was, I could not hold back a smile, and his own grin returned.
“And is that your final question, Miss Starborn? For I believe I see a small white dot emerging from the manor door, and I am certain it signals the return of my ward dressed in her best finery. All confidences will perforce come to a sudden end.”
“One more question,” I said, “though this I suppose I could learn from Mrs. Farraday, if she were more inclined to gossip. How did you come into possession of your family’s property? For this was once your father’s holding, was it not?”
The grim look was back on his face. “Indeed it was. My father’s holding, this one and various others on scattered worlds, and destined to be split between my two brothers upon my father’s death. But greed, as I mentioned, runs in the Ravenbeck family. As my father lay quite ill, during the last months of his life, my oldest brother began reviewing the advantages to being sole heir to the several holdings. I am not sure whether or not he hastened my father’s death, but he secretly arranged for my other brother’s murder. And, being not nearly as clever as he was covetous, he was almost instantly found out. Accused, tried, convicted, and incarcerated. And, by the way, stripped of his citizenship. With my father expired, my one brother murdered, and my other brother dead to society, I became the single inheritor. For all property reverted to me in the unlikely event that I was the only family member to survive.” He threw his hands wide, figuratively embracing the whole vast expanse of Thorrastone Park. “And see how happy such a fortune has made me! What a place to call my own!”
Before I could demur at his irony, the tumbling little ball of ivory and gold that had grown gradually larger in the past five minutes resolved itself into the panting, glowing figure of Ameletta. “Mr. Ravenbeck! See, I am all ready now! Don’t you like this dress? Doesn’t it make me look pretty?”
“You always look pretty, chiya,” he said, chucking her under the chin with an easy affection that made her squeal. “Are you ready? Shall we be on our way?”
“Yes, please, I am very ready. Miss Starborn, are you sure you will not accompany us?”
I came to her side and gave her
a very tight hug, for the story of her life had filled me with a fierce desire to protect and love her. She looked up at me in astonishment but willingly returned the embrace. “Yes, Ameletta, I am sure. I have the two new Arkady maintenance supplements to read, and I would like to get to them before the day ends. Besides, I want you to have a special day with your guardian. You can come to my room when you get home and tell me all about it. Will that be good enough?”
“Yes, that will make me very happy,” she said, disentangling herself with no more ado. “Shall we go, Mr. Ravenbeck? Shall we go?”
He gave her a lazy smile, but I was able to read into it goodness and sentiment and affection. He helped her into the aircar, then climbed in himself. They waved good-bye to me and sped off toward the airlock, and within minutes were out of my sight. But I stared off into the distance where they had disappeared and I thought, as I had thought the first day I met him, There is a rare and complex and intriguing man indeed.
The next two days, we again saw almost nothing of Mr. Ravenbeck. I was busy with routine maintenance and the implementation of the Arkady upgrades, so naturally I had no time to wonder about his absence. However, if I chose to rise early or go to bed late, I did catch glimpses of the estate hovercraft making its way toward the mining compound, or his larger Vandeventer returning from the direction of the airlock. Mrs. Farraday claimed not to know what his business was, though I was very grateful to Ameletta for posing the questions I would not bring myself to ask.
“Oh, where is Mr. Ravenbeck today? And why does he stay away so long?” My thoughts exactly, but no one could answer.
Nothing of any note happened during that time until late in the afternoon of the second day. I was making my customary rounds of the incandescent fencing when I encountered that strange woman Gilda Parenon hurrying across the lawn, a look of anxiety on her face. I changed my route to intercept her and called her name rather sharply.
“Is something wrong?” I asked. “You appear distressed.”
She gave me one quick, assessing, and somewhat apprehensive look. “No—nothing wrong. What should be wrong?”
“I merely inquired. If I can offer you assistance—”
“You’d not be the one I’d ask for help in this matter.”
“Then there is something wrong?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. Good day, Miss Starborn,” she said, and hurried off without a backward glance. I looked after her thoughtfully, to see if she exhibited any erratic behavior, but though I distrusted her, I could not see that she did anything amiss.
Dinner was the usual counterpoint of calm feminine conversation, intermittent wails from Ameletta asking after Mr. Ravenbeck, and clinking of china and silver. Miss Ayerson excused herself early and dragged a complaining Ameletta away, I think to send her to bed merely to quiet her protesting. Mrs. Farraday and I retired to the library to read a while in companionable silence, and then I too went up to my room. I updated my journal and went to sleep.
A few hours later I woke from a strange, depressing dream to a sense of utter terror. My heart was pounding, my head felt like it was wrapped in terrific pressure, and I was gasping for breath as if my lungs had filled with fluid. For a moment I thought I was developing a malevolent virus, and then I felt the mattress under me seem to sway and swell.
The air-filled mattress, more comfortable than any I had ever slept on. Expanding rapidly as the confining weight of atmospheric pressure bled away.
The reactor! Failing in the middle of the night! I forced myself to my feet, for light-headedness was making me lethargic, and threw on a robe over my thin sleep-dress. All the rooms of the house were equipped with small portable oxygen tanks for just such an emergency, and I snatched mine up and clipped the mask over my face. Immediately I felt a return to my normal alertness, the oxygen no doubt aided by a spurt of panic-driven adrenaline.
I rushed out of my room and down the stairs helter-skelter, not pausing to wake any of the other residents. We would have a few hours of barely sufficient air left, for the fact that I was alive at all indicated a slow leak, not a catastrophic one, and I was better off to attend to the equipment than rouse the house. So I was thinking as I leaped down the second flight of stairs ... to see Mr. Ravenbeck’s crumpled body lying half in and half out of the doorway.
My sob could not have been more theatrical had I been Ameletta. I threw myself down the final few steps and flung myself to my knees beside him. “Mr. Ravenbeck! Mr. Ravenbeck!” I cried through the muffling medium of my mask. I shook his shoulder but he did not respond; his face was ashen. Oxygen deprivation—no doubt the atmosphere outside was even thinner than that inside the shielded house, and he had fainted just before he could make it to safety.
I ripped the mask from my face and held it over his nose and mouth, letting him breathe the oxygen until I myself was in danger of fainting. Then I held the apparatus to my mouth, took a few more breaths, then held the device again to his face. He stirred on the floor and his eyelids fluttered. I saw him try to speak through the mask.
I shook my head, and gave myself another breath before returning the mask to him again. “Don’t move. Don’t speak. I’ll get you a tank but I need to take this with me. I’ll be back momentarily.”
I snatched away the mask and saw his lips form a word: who or what, I could not be sure. I did not wait to find out, but ran as fast as I could to the nearest room, the library, and grabbed the tank installed there. When I returned to Mr. Ravenbeck’s side, he had fainted again. I attached the lines securely to his face, made sure he was breathing, then left him there and ran headlong to my basement workroom.
I was expecting a fouled fuel line, a meltdown in one of the cores, or any number of small emergencies that should have been signaled by an alarm bell that would have roused the house. What I found was sabotage. I stood in the doorway, frozen and appalled, staring. The damage had been crudely done, an instrument panel crushed in, an electrical wiring system ripped from its connector and the alarms themselves smashed in. The reactors had not been touched, but it would take some time to render the whole system operable again.
But who would do such a thing? And why? It was not only homicidal, it was suicidal, for anyone who stayed in this house unprotected would die.
No time to solve that puzzle. I hurried forward and began the task of rerouting the electrical circuits to the secondary generators, which could easily supply enough power to fill our needs, at least for a few days. It was not long before I could feel the eerie pressure on my chest subside as the forcefield reasserted itself and the voracious vacuum of space was forced back outward again.
I was so absorbed in my task that I did not hear Mr. Ravenbeck come in, and only when I had turned to go did I realize he was standing in the lab, watching me. I started, but did not scream. He had laid aside his mask and tank, though he leaned against the door frame like a drunkard and his color still was not good. He was watching me with a great and analytical intensity.
“Will we live?” he asked. There was an undertone of sarcasm to his voice that let me know he was not really afraid of the answer, but I was not in a mood just now to banter.
“I believe so, though I would like to check on the others,” I said sharply. “And I think you or someone should call out to the mining compound to make sure all is well there.”
“They are independent systems,” he said. “Theirs will not fail just because ours has.”
“It will if its failure is triggered by the same event.”
“Which would be what?”
I gestured at the smashed instrument panel. “Willful destruction. Someone took a hammer to the board and slashed through the wiring. The intent was clearly to disrupt the forcefield, and, I must assume, to kill us all.”
He stared at me in sheer incredulity. “Unbelievable! That would be an act of madness. Whoever would do such a thing would have to expect to die as well.”
I shrugged. “Take a look for yourself. I assure you, such destruction
does not spontaneously occur even on the most ill-maintained machinery.”
But his eye had followed my first gesture, and a look of grim comprehension was tightening his features. “I see. Yes . . . you must be right. But—then—the awful question arises—”
“As to the identity of the vandal,” I said, somewhat eagerly, “I believe I may have a clue. In fact, I think I encountered her this afternoon, acting strangely out on the lawn.”
“You saw her! Impossible! Whom did you see?”
I thought his tone of voice a bit extreme even for the situation, for he seemed almost thunderstruck at the notion that I might be able to identify the culprit. “A woman named Gilda Parenon. She claims to be a tech support worker in the dubronium mine compound.”
“Ah,” he said, on a low, thoughtful tone, and his whole body seemed to relax. “Gilda Parenon is the one you saw. Well. I see. It is true she is subject to fits of—strangeness—but I hardly think this is her handiwork.”
“I think you should go investigate, sir,” I said urgently. “For if not Gilda Parenon, then who? And if Gilda Parenon, then why? I think you cannot trust her to stay in your employ—not when Ameletta and so many others are depending on you to keep them safe.”
“Gilda is well enough. You do not have to fear for her,” he said somewhat absently. Completely ignoring my advice to go look for answers, he strolled deeper into the room, his gaze running over the jury-rigged equipment and the merrily flashing lights on the instrument panels. “But why were we not alerted to danger? Is there not an alarm that should have woken us all before our lives began to ebb away?”