“I don’t need Meliorare gengineered abilities to tell me that, Brother dear. I can see it in your face, read it in your posture. And I don’t need a mental ‘lens’ in the form of an Alaspinian minidrag to focus or amplify what abilities I do have.”
He could not, did not try to hide his shock. “How did you know about that?” At the stir of emotion, Pip had stirred slightly on his shoulder.
“As I said, my abilities are different from yours. Stronger in some ways, in others weaker. Different. Isn’t that a consequence typical of distinct experiments? With you, the Meliorares achieved one kind of result. With me, another. From what I have been able to discover, from the records that have been sealed and not destroyed, I get the impression our makers were not especially pleased and more than a little confused by both of us. Of course, we’ll never really know what they had in mind, what particular paradigms you and I were supposed to fill.” Her laughter was tinged with just a hint of hysteria.
“The experimenters are all gone—dead or selectively mindwiped. Only a couple of the ongoing experiments remain.” The smile vanished. “Even though I’ve done my best to terminate one of them.”
He ignored the self-evident. She wasn’t the first one who had tried to have him killed. “You knew our mother. I did not. What was Anasage like?” Did he really want to know? he found himself wondering even as he asked the question. What if the poor, dead woman turned out to be a disappointment, or worse? “I was sold on Moth, a hinterland world far from Earth. How did she lose custody of me?”
“I don’t know anything about any of that.” Mahnahmi’s certitude was crushing. “The first I knew of you beyond vague mentions by her was when you showed up that day to speak to Conda Challis. If you recall, I was more than a little shocked. As for Anasage—” The young woman hesitated before resuming her reply in an entirely different tone of voice. “—I remember a strong, beautiful, intelligent, but deeply disturbed woman—with red hair, interestingly. You got her hair; I got everything else on that side of the genetic pool. She was caring—when she had the time. She was maternal enough—when she wasn’t busy with something else. Insofar as I could tell, given my age, her relationship with Challis was strictly business. She had no feelings of warmth or affection for him whatsoever. To this day I don’t know if that made me hate her more or less.” She blinked, as if dragging herself back to the present. “She perished of a disease of many syllables. It was mercifully quick.”
“Did she ever mention anything about your father—my father?”
Turning her exquisite profile to him, Mahnahmi deposited a gob of sputum on the floor. “Your father, my father, was an injection in a Meliorare laboratory. It’s hard to develop feelings for tubes of glass and composite. Anasage never said anything about a biological begetter.”
Another dead end. Flinx lurched onward. “Why did Conda Challis continue to look after you and not Teleen when Anasage died?”
“I don’t know where you’ve been or what you’ve seen since the last time I tried to have you killed, Flinx, but despite your obvious intelligence it’s clear that certain areas of your education have been neglected. I was a lot younger and a lot prettier than Teleen. Challis . . . Conda Challis was a bipedal life-form raised up from primordial slime, with habits and vices to match his internal, intestinal, mental, and moral composition. He truly liked children, Brother dear. He especially liked little girls. And I . . . I had the ill luck to be his very favorite.”
Rage poured out of her in a flood of ravaged emotion, an endless river of empathetic bruises. For the first time, Flinx understood a little of what prompted her to seethe at the entire universe. Years ago, he had not been experienced enough or knowledgeable enough to suspect the depths of Challis’s depravity. Foulness that he was, the merchant was abusing the daughter of his own mistress while simultaneously claiming the child as his adopted own. Mahnahmi’s developing years must have been a continuous and incomprehensible hell. At the same time, she had to look on while her older half-sister Teleen was taken in hand, taught, and patronized by their aunt Rashalleila.
“I’m sorry,” was all he could think of to say. On his shoulder, Pip stirred.
“What for? You had nothing to do with it. Consider yourself fortunate. Challis liked little boys, too.”
“I didn’t exactly have an easy childhood myself.” He proceeded to fill her in on selected fragments of his own personal history.
She responded to his revelations with a derisive laugh. “You had freedom, of a kind, and an adoptive parent who cared about you. While my innocence and my childhood were being treated like toilet paper, you were having adventures and exploring the worlds of the Arm.” Her voice fell even as the intensity of her anger multiplied. “Don’t speak to me of sufferings no greater than childish ineptitude. I could tell you stories that would knot your guts like a wet rag.”
“Well then, at least I can say that I’m sorry I was forced, that day on Ulru-Ujurr, to watch Pip kill our half-sister.”
“Teleen?” The young woman chuckled amusedly. “I was delighted to learn, when I once again reached civilization, of your unintended efforts on my behalf. Her death removed one more potential claimant to the patrimony of Challis’s business interests.”
He found he could not help himself. “You are one cold, calculating little bitch, aren’t you, Sister?”
Again the mock bow put in an appearance. “I am immune to compliments, but coming from you, I appreciate the gravity of the specific designation.” As she straightened, her gaze once more rose to meet his. “So—what are you going to do now?”
“Why are you so intent on seeing me dead?”
“Because as long as you’re alive there’s someone who can identify me as an Adept. Someone who can sense my moods, my emotions, and if they so desire, interfere with my intentions. Not to mention someone who could expose me to the authorities. I don’t like sharing the spotlight, Flinx, even if we two constitute both the audience and the act. Your presence concerns me; your talent worries me. I would be more comfortable with you out of the way.”
It was his turn to wax sardonic. “I’m sorry that my continued existence inconveniences you so.”
“That’s all right. It won’t be forever. Are you going to try and kill me now? I’m still not entirely sure that you can.” Hands on hips, she studied him out of bottomless black eyes, her voice a sinister purr. “You’re not the only innocent zygote the accursed Meliorares imbued with curious talents, you know.”
It was a direct challenge. Pip sensed it too. She rose from her resting position, wings outspread, eyes flashing, ready to strike. Flinx calmed her with commands as well as feelings.
“I don’t want to fight you, Mahnahmi. I didn’t come here for that. In case you haven’t guessed by now, I came for the personal sybfile that was removed from Earth. You took it, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Given its sensitive designation, it was safer to leave the original behind. Properly secured, of course. Like you, I have been researching my past—though not with such obsessive dedication. I found out about the work of the Meliorare Society and wanted to know more. My investigations told me nothing about a possible biological father. As I insinuated earlier, I’m not sure there ever was one.”
“When I was on Earth recently and tried to access the original syb, it struck back at me.”
Mahnahmi did not look surprised. “Information bomb. Once I had accessed, studied, and copied the syb, I thought it best to keep anyone in authority from tracking my work. None of that discouraged you, but then, you would have more reason than most to be persistent in trying to trace it. No one shadowed your progress and followed you here, I presume?”
“To an obscure AAnn world lying deep within Empire boundaries? Even if it was physically possible, why would anyone want to?”
“You underestimate our eminence, Brother dear. We may be the last surviving unreconstructed examples of the Meliorares’ work. It would be worth a major promotion to the representative of any Commonwealth
authority who brought us in, whether kicking and screaming or stiff and silent.”
“They’ve closed the book on the Meliorare Society.”
“You think so? Then for all your travels and experiences, you’re still deathly naive, Brother mine.”
He did not argue with her, did not debate the assertion. Though he felt otherwise, he could not be certain which of them was right. Commonwealth peaceforcers could be unnervingly persistent, and who knew what probes the United Church had placed on the work of the Meliorares? It distressed him to think he might still be an unofficial fugitive, with selective mindwipe awaiting him should he ever be confronted and identified by questioning authorities.
“There’s one thing I still don’t understand.”
She shrugged diffidently. “If you’re not going to kill me, then we have plenty of time to chat. What are you going to do with me?”
“I haven’t decided yet.” That was truthful enough he decided, as he spared another glance for the bound Qwarm. “There’s something that’s puzzled me ever since I located the sybfile in the bowels of Larnaca Nutrition storage and traced it to your ship.” He watched her carefully, preparing to judge her response, trying to read her feelings even before she replied. “I’ve looked and looked, but try as I might I can’t find any link between Pyrassis and the workings of the Meliorare Society.”
As near as he could tell, both from her visible and emotional reactions, she was genuinely puzzled. “A link between Pyrassis and the Meliorares? It’s not surprising you couldn’t find one. There is no such link: no connection, not a damn thing.”
If she was lying, he decided, it was with such skill that he was unable to detect it. “If that’s so, then why did you go to the trouble of bringing the original syb containing the proscribed Meliorare data with you? If this dangerous journey into AAnn territory has nothing to do with the Meliorare Society and its work, then what are you doing here?”
She had laughed at him earlier, but those outbursts were nothing like the one that ensued now. She laughed until she cried, bitter tears mixed with genuine amusement. “You stupid boy! You really don’t have a clue as to what I’m doing here, do you?”
He bridled but kept a rein on his temper. “Oh, I have a clue, all right.” With a gesture he took in their highly advanced alien surroundings. “I just can’t figure out how it ties in to the work of the Meliorares.”
Her voice rose, echoing through the endless corridors. “That’s because it doesn’t have anything to do with the Meliorares, you empathic idiot!” Again her laughter rattled down through the vast empty spaces. “When you forced your way into the syb on Earth, it responded the same way it would to any unauthorized intruder. As for me keeping the data with me, whenever I travel off-world I always take a full complement of sensitive personal information along. Not because I think I’m necessarily going to need it, but because it’s too valuable and too dangerous not to keep close at hand.” Wiping her eyes with the back of her left wrist, she eyed him ruefully.
“You, of all people, should know that Church and Commonwealth are implacable when it comes to such matters. Not being able to risk the loss or discovery of such critical material pertaining to my history, I long ago took steps to make sure I would always have access to a copy, while at the same time ensuring that the original remaining on Earth was appropriately safeguarded. I wasn’t taking along information having to do with you so much as I was protecting information dealing with me. The syb you’re so desperate to see is safely locked up in my private annex on board the Crotase.”
“Personal recorder DNP-466EX,” he murmured.
“Armed and locked.” Her expression contorted. “Unfortunately, what applies to one of us is inevitably applicable to the other. Don’t flatter yourself that it’s otherwise.”
“All right.” For the moment, he had decided to accept her explanation. “Then if it has nothing to do with the Meliorares, what are you doing here? Did you come in hopes of finding just the transmitter?”
Her countenance changed so quickly and she looked at him so sharply that he was momentarily taken aback. “So you know about that, too.”
“It’s pretty hard to miss a transmitter two thousand square kilometers in extent. Especially if you’re standing right on top of it when it decides to transmit. It was no more than two or three days’ hike from where you were camped. While I was there, it sent out a single signal. Very fleeting, very intense. I had neither the time nor the facilities to try and analyze it.” He nodded at their softly humming surroundings. “But it was traced to this place.”
“My people also caught it. As you say, it’s hard to miss when you’re camped on top of it.” She nodded knowingly. “So you were that close to our camp? We couldn’t linger long enough to run the kind of detailed analysis I wanted. There were indications of possible AAnn military activity in our general vicinity, and we had to leave faster than I would have liked. Like you, all we could do was trace and track the signal.” She took a deep breath. “As to the rest of it, your supposition is partly correct: I came here looking for the transmitter. This artifact is the real bonus.” She proceeded to concede the additional explanation he desired.
“Larnaca Nutrition does produce and market vitamin and other health supplements, and very profitably, too. But it’s primarily a cover for far less traditional study, besides being my personal research arm. Like any influential commercial trading house or corporation, it’s always on the lookout to purchase potentially lucrative scientific information. The hope is to acquire such knowledge before Commonwealth or Church scientists can get to it and do something asinine, like declare it freely available for the public good.”
“Your company was engaged in unsanctioned xenology,” he alleged.
She smiled thinly. “I prefer to think of it as extending the boundaries of human knowledge without wasting taxpayer credits. One of the company’s agents procured some obscure intelligence about a diplomatically inaccessible, godforsaken desert orb the AAnn called Pyrassis. Buried among the stock generalities was a lot of rumor and very little fact. What there was of the latter was . . . intriguing. So was the challenge that investigating it further presented. It has nothing to do with the Meliorares, may every one of their misbegotten souls rot in an appropriate hell, and everything to do with making money. Beyond their historical value, which to institutes of higher learning, museums, and the like is considerable, ancient alien artifacts are often filled with exploitable curios.” She indicated their surroundings.
“One this size is of incalculable commercial value. My people have been working on the Pyrassis project for over a year now, a project that they’ve had to keep secret from the authorities and our industrial competitors as well as the AAnn. Everything was going as well or better than anticipated. Then you show up. Of all people. You had to go pushing and shoving your trespassing way into a private, fortified storage facility and set off its security. That would have been bad enough, but no—you had to trace it to me. You’ve ruined everything.” Frustration and anger spilled out of her in equal measure.
“I knew if Challis didn’t dispose of you that day years ago that sooner or later you were going to cause me grief. Even so, I had managed to forget about you. What a fine forced recalling you’ve contrived!”
“If you’d stop trying to kill me,” he informed her calmly, “you might find that we have things to talk about. To my knowledge, no one else who hasn’t been mindwiped shares what you and I have in common.”
“I don’t want to have anything in common with you, Philip Lynx! I don’t want to share anything with you. I don’t want to have things to talk about. I want you to die!”
He felt for her. “You’re expressing your hate for yourself, Mahnahmi. For what the Meliorares and Conda Challis made of you.”
“Oh, now you’re a therapist. I suppose that’s a profession that would fit you, given your own peculiar abilities. Know that my thoughts, my mind, are not fodder for your infantile speculations, Flin
x. I may be younger than you in years, but in other ways, I’m more mature, more developed.”
“Yes, I can see that by how wisely and maturely you’re acting.” He gestured with the pistol. Behind him, the Qwarm Briony was starting to moan. “What is this place? Is it exactly what you were looking for? Besides the transmitter, I mean.”
“We didn’t know what we were looking for. There were no specifics. Only that there might be something in this system that was alien, and old. We thought that if we were going to find anything, it would be on Pyrassis. Instead, it’s out here orbiting the outermost planet in the system, hiding close to a methane dwarf. Thoroughly cloaked against detection, too. If not for the signal that was sent out, that came from an alien transmitter, we never would have found it. Once we traced the signal’s target, the rest was easy.” She nodded at him. “As it obviously was for you, too. Where’s the rest of your crew? On your ship?”
“Yes,” he admitted readily. “On my ship.” He did not add that it consisted entirely of mechanicals and a few recently acquired decorative plants.
“Liar.” Her smile transmuted into a smirk. “I told you that in some ways I was more mature than you. My abilities are also erratic, but when they’re functioning, like they are now, they speak to me of things you can’t even dream about.” Her tone turned momentarily wistful. “Sometimes I wish I couldn’t dream. Mine usually are not very pleasant, and a lot of the time I wake up screaming. Conda Challis, and other . . . things.” She sniffed derisively. “I can sense people coming toward us even as you try to convince me they’re all back on your ship. I didn’t notice you signal out. What did you do—make prearrangements for them to come looking for you if you didn’t report back in by a certain time?”
Bewildered, Flinx tried to make sense of what she was saying. He fought to concentrate, struggled to detect whatever it was that had sparked her imputation. Crew? His crew could not be coming after him because there wasn’t any beyond AIs and vegetable matter. He didn’t think the latter could pilot a shuttlecraft. Even if existence had turned upside down and the flora decorating the Teacher suddenly acquired that ability, he doubted their fragile roots would allow them to march rapidly into the depths of the artifact.