She wasn’t finished. “You really don’t know what you did to Briony, do you? Or even how you did it?”
“Like I said, it doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, it matters, Flinx. It matters more than you can imagine. Not to me specifically, perhaps, but in the greater scheme of things. I know what you are about even if you don’t, because you and I are about many of the same things. I knew you were dangerous the moment I set eyes on you, years ago when you came to visit Conda Challis. I knew you were the only one who could really know me. And knowing me, I knew you would sooner or later present a problem if you weren’t dealt with.” She spread her hands and smiled engagingly. “This proves it.”
“Maybe,” he replied patiently, “if you wouldn’t be in such a hurry to kill me, I wouldn’t seem to pose such a threat to you.”
“Adept with wit as well as with the Other, too.” Her hands fell to her sides. “What now, Flinx? Are you going to try and shoot me? It will be an interesting experiment. What will you do if the inner me reacts to such a threat the same way the inner you does to threats against yourself?”
The pistol felt cold in his hand. “I ought to try. I have the right to.”
“But you won’t, will you?” Once again she flashed a smile sufficiently wicked to disarm all but the most decrepit of men, and most women. “First of all, you’re not sure that you can, and second, the will to kill is not a dynamic constituent of your mental makeup.”
“Don’t be too sure. I’ve killed before.” Flinx’s expression tightened. A familiar weight settled on him, and he glanced over to see Pip, cleaned up and renewed, resting once more against his shoulder. “I don’t enjoy it, but I can do it.” His expression warped ever so slightly. “Dynamic constituent of my mental makeup or not.”
“Yes.” She was eyeing him thoughtfully. Fear remained absent as ever from her countenance. “I see that you can. But you won’t try to kill me, Flinx.” The corrupt smile returned, wrenched out of shape like a length of dirty scrap wire, no longer sensuous but debased. “Not because you can’t. I have a feeling that you might be able to, in spite of everything I could do to prevent it. You won’t do it, because you wouldn’t kill your own sister.”
Chapter 16
Tight-lipped and tense, he met her unfathomable, dark-eyed gaze without lowering the pistol. On his shoulder, Pip stirred uneasily, confused by the emotions she was intuiting within her companion.
“You’re crazy. Not just homicidal, but crazy. I can’t kill my sister, because she’s already dead. It happened years ago, after you fled Ulru-Ujurr. You knew her well. Her name was Teleen auz Rudenuaman.” Memories came flooding back to him, unforced and unwanted. Of a confrontation on Ulru-Ujurr. Of revelations unsought. Of the memory of a terrible moment that could not be avoided. “Pip did it, defending me,” he whispered. “She had no choice. Teleen would have killed me.”
“Ah yes, the world of oversized furry freaks. I remember it all too well. I didn’t like the place, and I didn’t like the inhabitants.” She turned away from him, and he gripped the gun a little tighter. On his shoulder, Pip tensed. But Mahnahmi was only looking for a place to sit down.
“You’re so very much involved with yourself, Flinx. I sensed that years ago, and I see that it still dominates your life. Well, yours isn’t the only reality demanding of attention. Try comprehending someone else’s, for a few moments. Take a journey down a different avenue of life, Brother.”
“Stop calling me that,” he commanded her irritably.
She laughed. It was an uncommon laugh: inviting, musical, and yet foreboding. “Listen and I’ll tell you a story, Flinx. Not quite a bedtime story; not really a daytime story, either. You were always so deeply interested in your history. Put yours on pause for a moment, and listen to mine.
“I am wealthy. I actually control a number of companies, under various umbrella organizations. There is an intentional focus on biochemicals, gengineering, pharmaceuticals, and related products. Larnaca Nutrition is the group whose resources I employ when I want to devote time to items of personal interest.” The smile flattened slightly. “All tolerably innocuous, don’t you think?”
At the sound of discordant mutterings from behind him, Flinx turned to see the bound Qwarm struggling with her bonds. Confident that she was adequately secured, he returned his attention to Mahnahmi. “That’s hard to believe.”
She pursed her lips. “Actually, I inherited quite a lot of it, so I had a firm financial base to build upon. As Conda Challis’s ‘adopted’ daughter, I came into legal possession after his death.” Unpleasantness danced in her eyes. “I’d been giving him advice and making many of his economic decisions for him for years without complaint. No one suspected that he was receiving monetary and commercial advice from a child. It’s a sham that I continue to find useful. I have square-jawed, deep-chested, testosterone-saturated males ‘running’ many of my enterprises, alternating positions with piercing-eyed, svelte, cool-voiced women. Tools and division managers, all of them. They ultimately all report to me. Surreptitiously, so that the other great companies and trading houses never know where or how the really important decisions are being made. I’ve done well; well enough to allow me some leisure time to personally follow up on intermittent items of individual interest.”
“Like Pyrassis,” he stated.
“Yes, like Pyrassis.”
“Conda Challis had no other relatives, no other heirs but you?”
“Oh, there were others.” Now she was not smiling at all, and something considerably more sinister finessed her emotions. Flinx felt it as a suppurating malignancy, an utter absence of mitigating humanity. “All of them were eventually persuaded to drop their respective claims. Several received monetary recompense in return for abjuring any title to that miserable man’s considerable holdings. Others had to be dealt with through legal channels. A couple,” she added as impassively as if referencing the loss of a pair of earrings, “had to be morbidized.” The smile returned, but this time there was no humor left in it whatsoever.
“You were of unexpected assistance, it seems. It was later that I learned that Teleen Rudenuaman had met a most welcome end on Ulru-Ujurr, but my sources could not tell me exactly how. Thank you for filling in that subsidiary but interesting detail. With her removed, the path to complete control of Challis’s businesses became considerably less bumpy.”
“That doesn’t make you a relative of mine.”
“Don’t think I enjoy acknowledging it, or that I’m proud to admit to it. I don’t like you, Philip Lynx. I didn’t like you from the instant I set eyes on you. You pose a danger, a threat, a risk to me. I don’t tolerate that.”
“So much hatred.” His voice was subdued, reassuring. “So much anger. It clings to you like a toxic cloud. If you’re truly an Adept like me, then you should be able to sense that I mean you no harm, that I’m no danger to you.”
She looked at him and frowned. “I can’t sense any such thing. It’s true that we’re both Adepts. But we’re different, you and I. Similar and yet dissimilar.” Her expression twisted into a sneer, and the bitterness that emanated from deep within her threatened to overwhelm him. “That’s what happens when you’re trying to develop and improve new kinds of ‘tools,’ isn’t it? Too bad if the tools themselves, like you and I, aren’t thrilled with the process. Nobody consults them, especially if it’s all highly illegal. As was, and is, anything having to do with the work of the Meliorares.”
There it was, at last. She had been leading him toward it from the beginning. Now there was no longer any need to question his original suppositions. If she was to be believed, the young woman standing before him was, like himself, a product of prohibited human gengineering. A eugenics offshoot propounded by a disgraced and outlawed society whose hope of giving humankind an artificial boost up the ladder of evolution had been met with outrage, approbation, and brutal censure. Anything having to do with the Meliorares lay buried under heavy Church Edict. Perusal of the Society’s
surviving records was forbidden to the public. Only authorized and meticulously screened researchers could gain access to the remaining material.
That was him, Flinx brooded. That was what he was—“remaining material.” Nothing could change that fact. It was the same with Mahnahmi, if she was to be believed. Still, he reassured himself, that did not make this malformed, immoral, beautiful woman his sister. A distant genetic relation via an ongoing lab procedure perhaps, but not his sister. He said as much.
Smirking gravely, she shook her head slowly as she continued to stare at him. “You’re brilliant enough in your own way, Flinx. But you drift through life encumbered by a clear conscience. Pockets of ignorance cling to you like barnacles to a sea ship. I labor under no such restrictions. Allow me to enlighten you.”
Her intention raised no objection. Enlightenment was what he had spent his life seeking.
“And keep a mental hand on that little winged demon of yours. I don’t want it in my face just because I happen to show some hostility. As you may have noticed, that’s something I do quite frequently.”
“So long as you don’t threaten me directly, Pip won’t attack.”
“I’ll remember that. You remember Conda Challis?”
Flinx thought back to his confrontations with the merchant in question. An unimpressive package of pulpy flesh and suspicion but possessing a sharp mind, Challis had been a successful merchant and trafficker in all manner of goods, both raw and manufactured. His hands were stained with conduct that skirted, and sometimes crept over, the line of law. An unpleasant, apprehensive, suspicious personality to whom Flinx would not have trusted the care of a potted plant.
Now that, he mused, given the alienness of his present situation and the exoticism of his current surroundings, was an odd analogy to use. He had no time to ponder on it.
“Yes, I remember him. And the business of the Janus jewels.”
“Forget the Janus jewels. What is important in all this are people, not petty objects.” As she looked away from him he could see her reflecting, remembering a past around which her emotions boiled with agitation. “Some memories are hard to resurrect. Some chronicles are difficult to reconstitute. Having the resources of large commercial concerns at one’s disposal is a considerable help, but it does not guarantee success.” She turned back to him, and for a brief moment she projected a little less undiluted rage, a little less fury at a historical narrative over which she had never had any control, and in which she had merely been one of many participants. “Pay attention now, Flinx, because it’s a little hard to follow, and a lot harder to understand.
“The only emotions that deviant Conda Challis ever felt involved his own pleasure and preservation. To the best of my knowledge, he never married. That doesn’t mean he lacked for female companionship. In addition to the usual sort of transient relationships, he bought and paid for a succession of mistresses. Objectively, I can understand why a woman might resort to such an occupation. Emotionally, I cannot.” She made a gesture more difficult to interpret than those of the AAnn. “Maybe I’m not old enough. Intellect isn’t everything.
“One of the women he leased in this fashion was a beautiful but impoverished fem named Rud Anasage. Terranglo slang is a fluid, constantly shifting medium of expression.” She was watching him carefully. “You know that one of the things people call such a woman is a ‘lynx,’ after a particularly wild and slinky Terran feline.”
“I know my mother’s name,” he informed her flatly. “I extracted it years ago from the main Denpasar archives.”
She nodded tolerantly. “How adept of you. Did you also extract the knowledge that this destitute woman Anasage brought two daughters from a previous marriage into the business relationship she struck with Challis?”
“I know she gave birth to two children, but they were a boy and girl: Teleen and myself.”
“How the hell would you know who is whom? You don’t even know the numbers!” Mahnahmi’s violence was all the more threatening for being held under tight restraint. “She had three children altogether: you, Teleen, and myself. I knew of your existence because when I was small she sometimes spoke of a middle child, a son, who had been taken away from her before I was born.”
“That’s quite a tale. You’ve built up an interesting mythology.” He waited to hear what she had to say next.
“All myths have a basis in fact, Flinx. My mother—Anasage—also had an elder sister, Rashalleila by name, who had become a successful merchantwoman on her own thanks to a start given her by Anasage’s since-deceased ex-husband. It was the husband’s death that led directly to Anasage’s impoverishment. There had apparently never been any love lost between the two sisters, despite the help and assistance Anasage’s husband had provided to the elder sister. That was one of the things that compelled Anasage to strike her bargain with Conda Challis.
“Following Anasage’s death, this Rashalleila was contacted. She was, after all, the only traceable next-of-kin. It amused Rashalleila to take charge of and assume partial responsibility for Anasage’s eldest, the girl Teleen. Not only didn’t Challis object to this arrangement, he was delighted with it. He had no use for the older girl.” Once more a slightly deranged smirk consumed Mahnahmi’s expression. “As you know from having met her, while not unattractive, Teleen was not exactly a fount of sensuousness, and Challis did have his pervert’s standards.
“Teleen adopted a redaction of her aunt’s name and threw herself into learning everything she could about her new guardian’s various business enterprises. She was very good at it—though not quite good enough. Ultimately, all her accumulated knowledge and experience couldn’t save her from the one thing she could never have expected to have to confront. You—her half-brother.”
Flinx considered carefully before replying, simultaneously storing information while seeking the flaws in her assertions. “So if what you’re telling me has any basis in fact, then we three were all related. If that’s the case, how come I never detected anything out of the ordinary about Teleen?”
“Because her genesis had nothing to do with the work of the Meliorare Society. Her father was Anasage’s first husband, the one who died young and left his wife insolvent. Our elder half-sibling was the obnoxious product of a natural union. Unlike you and me,” she concluded relentlessly. “How do you think Anasage, our mother, survived after her husband died and left her with massive debts and no credit?” When Flinx could offer no reply, the fair, feral girl explained triumphantly.
“She went to work for the Meliorares! Since her jealous, hateful older sister Rashalleila refused to help her, she had few choices. Plus, she was angry. We can only theorize about the nature of her work with the Meliorares—and the options on offer aren’t pleasant.”
Horrified realization crept into Flinx’s mind like invading parasites. “Then . . . the second child who was mentioned in the records I accessed years ago wasn’t Teleen. It was . . . you.”
The lissome girl-woman favored him with an ironic bow. “At your service, Brother.”
He gestured with the pistol. “Proof. I need more proof than your words.”
“You’re an Adept, Flinx. I’m an Adept. You’re special; I’m special. Tell me—how many ‘special’ others have you encountered in your searchings?”
“That’s not enough. Congruity of aptitude doesn’t establish an incontestable blood relationship.”
With a sigh and a roll of her eyes upward, she proceeded to recite additional details of her personal history. “Lynx, Mahna . . . true name . . . born 539 a.a., 2939 Old Calendar in the suburb of Sarnath, Greater Urban Allahabad, India Province, Terra. Notes Additional: Mother aged 28 . . . Name: Anasage . . . Grandparents: unknown.” Pausing, she eyed him intently. “There’s more. Want to hear it?”
When he nodded slowly, she proceeded to repeat back to him the same information he had garnered years earlier from the files at Science Central, in distant Denpasar. “Infant normal—high R-wave readings—mother normal,??
? and so on. Only, he knew that the infant did not turn out to be normal.
“I can see what you’re thinking—and without employing any ‘talent,’ ” she told him. “The Meliorares disguised their activities very thoroughly. Do you really think they would have allowed one of their ‘experiments’ to be accurately monitored by an independent, outside pediatrics authority? At the same time, they saw to it that you, and I, and others, were given a veneer of respectability.”
“Our father. What about our father?”
“What?” Annoyed, she strained to hear him.
He hadn’t realized he had lowered his voice. More forcefully he repeated, “Our father. Anasage’s name was given. I couldn’t find out anything about the father—although I have some ideas.”
She responded with a snort of disgust. “You mean the sperm donor?” Seeing him wrought with tension, she grinned. “Well now, Brother. Maybe I have some ideas myself—and maybe I don’t. It’s a complex matter, this business of a ceremonial sire. Maybe I know something—and maybe I don’t. If you kill me, you’ll never find out.”
“You’re the one who keeps speaking of killing—not me.” He peered deep into her eyes, trying to fathom the fury that emanated so palpably from the mind beyond. “All right. For the moment—just for the moment, mind—I accept that you may be another sister of mine. But in the absence of the recognized commonality of a correlative father, only a half-sister, like Teleen. Whether you’re my full sister is still open to question. A few simple biological tests ought to answer that question.”
“You think so?” she challenged him. “You really don’t know very much about the Meliorares, do you?”
“As much as you or anyone else,” he bluffed. “At least now I understand the antipathy you and Teleen showed for one another.”
“Just because she was a selfish, uncaring bitch who didn’t give a damn what happened to me, why would you think I showed any antipathy toward her?”