"Oh."
"Which is what Meharry says you're doing," Sirkin said, getting it all out in a rush. "She says you're an R.E., and R.E.s are all made hetero, because your families want you to marry—"
"Meharry was supposed to be playing a role," Brun said savagely, slamming her fist into one of the pillows. She didn't want to be talking about this now, and especially not after Meharry had taken the high ground. "And besides she's wrong."
"About what, Registered Embryos in general, or you in particular?"
Brun waited a long moment, gathering her thoughts. "When I was in that cave, I realized that I didn't want to be anyone's designated blonde. So I understand that you don't want to be my fling with sexual experimentation, a sort of bauble on the necklace of my life story. But that's not how I've seen it, Sirkin. I admired you, and the way Captain Serrano talked about you . . . if it hadn't been for you, they wouldn't have come after us in time. Then we met, and . . . and I liked it."
"But do you love men or women?"
Brun stirred uneasily. "I don't know. I like both—to have as friends, I mean. I never really thought about it, because it didn't matter a lot. Until now."
"How can you not think about it!" More accusation than question. "You have to think about it."
"I didn't." She had assumed, growing up in her family, knowing she was a Registered Embryo, that she would eventually marry and have children, most if not all of them also Registered Embryos. Being an R.E. determined your destiny; only the freelofs could choose. But on Sirkin's face was an angry look that didn't want to hear about complications. She had to try, anyway. "You know about genetic engineering—"
"Of course. What does that have to do with—oh."
"I am a Registered Embryo, Brig. You knew that before Meharry said it; I told you early on. She's right—at least, I thought it meant I wouldn't love women, just because . . . because it's so expensive."
"Expensive?" Sirkin's brow wrinkled. "Loving women?"
"No, being an R.E. They're tough enough to produce with well-mapped sets—and we're fourth-generation R.E., so all our stuff's on file except any new mutations. Because of that, we're all set to be heteros—so the work that goes into each of us will be available for the next generation."
"There's always A.I." Sirkin said. Brun realized she didn't know how Registered Embryos were made. Most people didn't.
"A.I. is already part of it," she said. "Harvesting of ova and sperm, in vitro fertilization and then splicing . . ."
"Then what does it matter what orientation the Registered Embryos have?" Sirkin asked. "If the whole reproductive bit is handled outside?"
"Prudence," Brun said. "In the . . ." she hesitated, trying to think of a polite way to say "important families." There wasn't, so she plunged on to the second level of reasoning she'd been told about years before. "If things go wrong—if something happened to the Registered Embryo program, the families would still need children. We'd have to provide them the . . . er . . . old way. And they'd want us to want to. At least, not to want not to."
"Oh." Sirkin reflected on that a moment. "So it's to protect the family against the loss of childbearing capacity if the medical infrastructure fails?"
"Right." Brun frowned. "My mother said that even then the orientation of women wasn't critical—in some cultures, women can be forced to bear children no matter what their wishes—but our culture thought that was unethical. Although it seems odd, that they would consider it ethical to determine our orientation so that it wouldn't be overruled later. But formal bioethics always seemed full of loopholes to me, anyway."
"I still think you have to know what you love, though."
Brun threw up her hands. "I love lots of things, Brig. I'm that sort . . . I'm sorry, but that's the truth. That's what got me into that fast crowd at school, really. I want to try everything, do everything, be everything. Logically, that's not possible, but . . . it would be such fun."
"And fun is what matters?"
Brun winced. "Not all that matters, no. But—I'm trying to be honest with you, Brig, so please try to understand. I don't think it's being rich that did this. I think some people are like me, rich or not, R.E. or not. When we were trying to think how to get Lady Cecelia out of that horrible place, I'm the one who thought of the hot air balloon. And one reason it worked was that it was so utterly ridiculous. Impossible. Crazy. I loved that about it—the very outrageousness of it. New things—different things—they draw me. I asked Dad—I thought maybe the R.E. process had fouled up with me—and he said they'd asked for an extra dollop of some set of multi-named neurochemicals that produce my sort of person. They'd opted for conservative intelligence with the older ones; he said they wanted a little sparkle in me."
"I think we are too different," Sirkin said. "Maybe it's your genes, and maybe it's your background, but we aren't enough alike—"
"Not for a permanent sexual relationship, no. But I don't see why we can't enjoy each other now and be lifetime friends. I like you; I admire you. Doesn't that help?"
"Yes. I just wish—"
"You need a long-term lover. I understand that. And if you want Meharry instead of me—"
"No!"
"I thought you liked her. She's angry enough at me that I thought you two had some kind of—"
"We don't have any kind of anything," Sirkin said. "I mean, I like her, as a sort of big sister, but like any big sister she tries to run my life too much. And she's hard."
"That's being ex-military, probably."
"I still don't like it. She makes me feel like a fluffy helpless kitten, and I don't like feeling helpless."
"But fluffy?" Brun cocked an eyebrow at her.
"Well . . . I have to admit I've enjoyed shopping with you. I was brought up to be practical, of course. But it's—it's kind of fun to dress up."
"So . . . even if you think fun isn't enough—even if you think I'm just a spoiled rich brat with more money than sense—you could have fun sometimes."
"With you, you mean," Sirkin said. It wasn't fair, the way Brun could coil an argument into a trap. "You think I should just relax and enjoy you, and forget the future?"
"Forget it? Never. But right now you can't go hunting a better partner; I understand that you'll want to, when you leave this ship. If you choose, we can be friends—I'd really like that, because I like you, and the friendship can last beyond this voyage. Lovers? Again, that's up to you. I don't want to hurt you, though I may have already—" Brun frowned, thinking about it. "I'd like to help you, if I knew how."
Sirkin looked at her, at the body she now realized had been carefully engineered for health and beauty and even sexuality, at the mind behind the eyes which had also been engineered for intelligence and whatever the genetic specialists meant by "sparkle." She couldn't help admiring Brun; she suspected that that, too, had been built in, as ineradicable as the choice of height and coloring. In one way it seemed weak to admire, to love, someone engineered to be admirable and lovable—it gave her the queasy feeling that she was being manipulated by the genetic engineers. Yet Brun had been the material of their manipulations; she was even less free than Sirkin. She couldn't help being who she was, any more than Sirkin could help being attracted.
"I would like to be friends," she said, after a long pause. "I don't know if it will work, in the long run, but—I do like you, and it's fun having another young woman to talk to. But not more than friends. I could fall for you, Brun, and if there's no chance for permanence, I don't want to risk it."
"Fair enough," Brun said. A faint flush reddened her face, then faded. "Now—if we can go back a bit—I'd like some help with the navigation sets our beloved captain sent down for me."
"You're going to end up better at navigation than I am," Sirkin grumbled.
"Not so. I'll pass the test, that's all. Didn't you ever know anyone who could pass tests but flunked real life?" The tension of the past conversation shattered, and Sirkin found herself laughing, not quite in control, but content to
be so.
Chapter Four
Heris could not define the concern she felt. Cecelia looked healthy, strong, and sane; she spent several hours a day on her riding simulator, but that was normal for Cecelia. Now she didn't need the massage lounger after each ride; she showed no stiffness or soreness. Her appetite was good, her spirits high—so Heris told herself. What was wrong? Was it her own imagination, perhaps her own envy of someone with so much privilege getting even more?
At dinner that very night, Cecelia brought that up herself. "It's indecent, in a way . . . to be so lucky. I try to tell myself it's fair payment for the hell Lorenza put me through, but that's a lie. I've had such good luck nearly all my life, and for the year I lost have been given back forty—not a bad bargain."
Heris wondered how much she believed that. "Would you go through it again for another forty years?"
"No." It came out reflexively; her face stiffened. "It's not the same; it couldn't be. I didn't know how long—or that it would end this way—" Her breath came short.
"I'm sorry," Heris said. "That was a tactless question; of course no one would choose that year. I guess I thought you were making too light of it—"
"Too light! No . . . I don't think so. I'm trying not to let it rule the rest of my life . . . put it behind me." The tension in her shoulders suggested that it still weighed on her.
"Does it bother you that you're not competing?" Heris asked.
"Of course not!" It came almost too quickly, with a flush and fade of color on Cecelia's cheeks. "It's been thirty years; it would be ridiculous."
"Still—"
"No. I just want to see it. I might—someday—think about going back."
Zenebra's orbital station carried an astonishing amount of traffic for an agricultural world. Heris had had to wait two days for a docking assignment, and had eased the yacht in among many others. On the station itself she found the kind of expensive shops she remembered from Rockhouse Major. Cecelia had called ahead, purchasing tickets for the Senior Trials, all venues. Heris saw the prices posted in the orbital station's brochure, and winced. She hadn't realized it could cost as much to watch other people ride horses as to own them. Or so she assumed. She also hadn't realized that Cecelia expected her to come along—that she had bought two sets of tickets. Heris didn't quite groan.
On the shuttle ride down to the planet she heard nothing but horse talk. At least Cecelia's coaching had given her the vocabulary to understand most of what she heard. Stifles and hocks, quarter-cracks and navicular, stocking up and cooling down, all made sense now . . . what it didn't make, she thought to herself, was interesting conversation. The talk about particular riders and trainers made no sense at all—she didn't know why, for instance, "riding with Falkhome" was said with such scorn, or "another Maalinson" seemed to be a compliment. But any notion that Cecelia had no equal in fixation on horses quickly disappeared—the universe, or at least that shuttle, was full of people with equally one-track minds.
Zenebra's shuttle port had a huge bronze-and-stained-glass sculpture of a horse taking a fence in its lobby. The groundcars had horse motifs painted on the side. Along the road to the hotel, a grassy strip served as an exercise area for the horses—all sizes, all colors—that pranced along it. The hotel itself, jammed with enthusiasts, buzzed with the same colorful slang. Heris began to feel that she'd fallen into very strange company indeed—these people were far more intense than the foxhunters at Bunny's.
Heris had by this time seen dozens of cubes of the Wherrin Horse Trials, both complete versions of the years Cecelia had competed, and extracts of the years since. She recognized the view from the hotel room window—the famous double ditch of Senior Course A, and the hedge beyond. Although modeled on the famous traditional venues of Old Earth, the trials had made use of the peculiarities of Zenebra's terrain, climate, and vegetation. One advantage of laying out courses on planets during colonization was the sheer space available. At Wherrin, the Senior Division alone had four separate permanent courses, which made it possible to rotate them as needed for recovery of the turf, or for the weather conditions at the time of the Trials.
Up close, the Wherrin Trials Fields looked more like the holocubes than real land with real obstacles. Bright green grass plushy underfoot, bright paint on the viewing stands, the course markers, some of the fences. Clumps of green trees. Bright blue sky, beds of brilliant pink and yellow flowers. Heris blinked at all the brilliance, reminding herself that Zenebra's sun provided more light than the original Terran sun, and waited for Cecelia to get back from wherever she'd run off to. They had agreed to meet at this refreshment stand for a break, and Cecelia was late. Then Heris saw her, hurrying through the crowds.
"Heris—you'll never guess!" Cecelia was flushed. She looked happy, but with a faint touch of embarrassment. Heris couldn't guess, and said so. "I've got a ride," Cecelia went on. Heris fumbled through her list of meanings . . . a ride back to the hotel? A ride to her chosen observation spot on the course? "A ride," Cecelia said. "Corry Manion, who was going to ride Ari D'amerosia's young mare, got hurt in a flitter crash last night. A mild concussion, they said, but they won't put him in the regen tanks for at least forty-eight hours, and by then it will be too late. Ari was telling me all this and then she asked me—I didn't say a word, Heris, I promise—she asked me if I would consider riding for her. I know I said I didn't mean to compete again, but—"
"But you want to," Heris said. From the cubes alone, and from her brief experience of foxhunting, she had had a vague notion that way herself, but one look at the real obstacles had changed her mind. "Of course you do. Can I help?"
"You don't think I'm crazy?" Cecelia asked. "An old woman?"
Heris did think she was crazy; she thought they were all crazy, but Cecelia was no worse than the others. "You aren't an old woman anymore," Heris said. "You've been working out on the simulator. You've got a lifetime of skills and new strength—and it's your neck."
"Come on, then," Cecelia said. "I'll get you an ID tag so you can come in with me—you have to see this mare."
Heris didn't have to see the mare; she had only to see the look on Cecelia's face, and remember that less than a year ago Cecelia had been flat in bed, paralyzed and blind.
As with the foxhunting, more went on behind the scenes than Heris would have guessed from the entertainment cubes she'd seen. The Trials organization had its own security procedures; Heris and Cecelia both needed ID tags, and Cecelia had to have the complete array of numbers that she would wear during competition. Cecelia spent half an hour at the tailor's getting measurements taken for her competition clothes.
"I have all this somewhere, probably in a trunk back on Rotterdam," Cecelia said. "Maybe even somewhere in the yacht, though we didn't move everything back aboard. I don't remember, really, because it had been so long since I needed it."
"Why so many changes of clothes?" Heris asked. She had wondered about that even with the foxhunters. Why not simply design comfortable riding clothes that would work, and then wear them for all occasions?
"Tradition," Cecelia said, wrinkling her nose. "And I'd like to know what a shad is, so I'd know why this looks anything like its belly." She gestured at her image in the mirror; Heris shook her head. "Yet that's what this kind of jacket is called."
Heris followed her from the tailor's to the saddler's, where Cecelia picked out various straps that looked, to Heris, like all the others. "Reins are just reins, aren't they?" she said finally, when Cecelia had been shifting from one to another pair for what seemed like hours. Cecelia grimaced.
"Not when you're coming down a drop in the rain," she said. "And by the way, see if somebody can dig my saddles out of storage and put them on the next shuttle. I'd rather not break in a new saddle on course." Heris found a public combooth and relayed the request; Brun promised to bring the saddles herself if Heris would give permission to leave the ship.
"Fine," Heris said, and anticipated her next request. "And why not bring Sirkin dow
n, too? She's probably never seen anything like this."
Finally they arrived at one of the long stable rows. Ari D'amerosia had four horses in the trials, two in the Senior Trials and one each in Training and Intermediate. Grooms in light blue shirts bustled about, carrying buckets and tack, pushing barrows of straw, bales of hay, sacks of feed. Ari herself, a tall woman with thick gray-streaked hair, was bent over inspecting a horse's hoof when Cecelia came up with Heris.
"Tim, we're going to need the vet again. Cold soak until the vet comes— Oh, hi Cece. Have your rider's registration yet?"
"Yes—and this is Heris, who's hunted with the Greens at Bunny's." Nothing at all, Heris noted wryly, about her main occupation as a ship's captain.
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