“Of course,” Val said, eyes still on John.
“Well, don’t use it. From here on in, it’s the service lift only.” Niall pulled Val to one side so they could continue their discussion.
Jani gave John a wide berth and rejoined her parents, who stood in huddled argument beside Val’s skimmer.
“—need his help!” Declan’s cheeks flared as though he’d been struck. “Couldn’t you wait?”
“Non! Why should I?” Jamira’s voice rasped. Her eyes brimmed. “That bâtard turned my daughter into an anormal, a mutant!”
The words stopped Jani in her tracks. A sudden ache flared in her gut and spread to her chest. “Is that what you think I am?” Her jaw felt wooden. “You thought I needed you, and you came. If you felt that way, why did you bother?”
Jamira’s face paled to clay. “Janila, it is not to you that I say this.”
Jani raised a hand to her eyes. She wanted to rip off the films, reveal the truth behind the lie, let her parents see. Let Niall see. “But who else could you say it to? I’m the freak, Maman. The abnormal.” She tried to lift the right film away, but she couldn’t slide her thumbnail underneath it far enough to get a good grip. “Before you left Acadia, you should have had one of the priests fashion you a charm to protect yourself from me.” She dug the sliver of carved-away film from under her nail and flicked it away.
Jamira pressed a hand to her cheek, then took a step toward Jani and reached out. “Janila?”
“Time to go, folks.” Niall stepped into the breach unseeing, jaunty grin still in place. “Jan, which skim’ are you riding in?”
“I think it’s better if I don’t go with you.” Jani turned her back on her mother’s outstretched hand. “You never know.” She saw the comprehension dawn in Niall’s eyes, and turned away from that as well. “You just never know.” She started to walk, although she had no idea where she should go.
“Janila!”
Jani’s feet dragged to a halt as her mother’s shout filled her ears, even as her will tried to propel her forward. She gasped as Jamira’s arms snaked around her waist and squeezed until her ribs ached from the pressure, yet she couldn’t bring herself to touch her hands. Heard her sobs, yet felt no urge to comfort her. Freak. Yes. Only a monster could remain untouched by such a firestorm of emotion. Only a wretch could be so cold. She pried her mother’s arms loose. “You have to go. I’ll visit…when I can.” She forced herself to turn around, to stand still as Jamira again embraced her and whispered her name over and over, begging her forgiveness. “Go with Niall, Maman.” She patted her mother’s shoulder, then prodded her toward a shaken Niall. She watched them get into the Service skimmer, watched the skimmer bank and glide and disappear around the corner.
It took Jani some time to realize that she was being watched, as well. She looked around to find her father still standing beside Val’s skimmer. He massaged his knuckles one at a time, a tic he took down from the shelf whenever his emotions threatened to get the better of him.
“Your mother loves you more than her own life, Jani-girl.” Declan’s voice emerged dead calm, as it did when he was the most angry. “You always fire at the wrong target. When you were mad at Cheecho, you took it out on his sister. When you were mad at your schoolwork, you took it out on your games, and I took the calls from the parents with the bruised children. When you were mad at van Reuter, you took it out on everyone but him.” He walked around the skimmer to the passenger side and popped the gullwing. “Wrong target.” He lowered inside the low-slung cabin and yanked the door closed, sitting in stiff-faced rage as a visibly distressed Val hurried over and inserted himself into the driver’s seat.
Then Declan said something, and Val’s head bobbed up and down in overwrought agreement. Declan opened his gullwing, struggled out of the skimmer, and strode back to Jani.
“Man his age driving that ridiculous thing. Looks a twit.” He pulled Jani to him. “Be careful.”
Jani hugged him hard, wishing part of the embrace travel to wherever Niall’s skimmer was. “Oui, Papa.”
“Don’t stay away for days. She doesn’t deserve that.”
“I know, Papa.”
“She loves you. I love you. You’re our girl.”
“I love you, too.”
Declan released Jani and returned to the skimmer. The vehicle sped away—just as it cornered, Jani caught sight of her father’s furiously waving hand. She raised her own in response, even though it was too late for him to see. Then she let it fall, and felt the numbness settle as she turned to walk up the road toward Neoclona Main.
“Where do you need to go?”
Jani wheeled to find John leaning against the treatment facility wall, jacket once more unfastened, hands shoved in trouser pockets. As distinctive as he was, he had a talent for fading into the background that she always found unsettling. “I don’t know. Back home, I guess.”
John pushed off the wall and ambled toward her. “I’ll take you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Jani, just get in the goddamned skimmer.”
As Jani opened her mouth to argue, her right knee started to ache, a low-level twinge that promised to become a higher-pitched misery if she kept walking. She limped after John, stood aside as he opened her gullwing for her, fell into her seat, and sat with hands folded in her lap as he closed her in.
John sat heavily himself, and punched the charge-through four times before it engaged. They maneuvered down the street and through the same gate Jani had entered seeming days ago.
The streets contained more people than they had earlier now that Chicago’s night had begun in earnest. Jani glanced at John’s dapper suit, and added two and two. “I blew another evening for you, didn’t I?”
John was either too beaten or too angry to deny the obvious. “Dinner. With a very close friend.”
“If she was that close, you shouldn’t have left her.”
“First I get the forward from Security with the notation that you’d called Val from a military line, then I get Val’s message. What the hell did you expect me to do, waltz back to the sorbet!” John swerved too close to the skimmer in the next lane. Proximity alarms blared, and he jerked the wheel to return to his track. “I never said my friend was a she.”
Jani watched the passing scenery, and thought of all the famous females she’d seen over the summer in the Tribune-Times or on the ’Vee. John’s “very close friends” tended to fall into very specific categories. “Anybody I’ve heard of?”
John hesitated, then shrugged. “She sings at the Lyric occasionally.”
“Hmm.” Jani yawned. “Niall could probably recite her every role.”
John struck an uneven beat on the steering wheel. “You really don’t care, do you?”
“I abrogated the right to care the night I fled Rauta Shèràa. You asked me to stay. I said no. End of story.”
“No. It never ends. We keep writing new chapters.” The skimmer windows filtered the city light. The resulting semi-dark of the cabin offered the perfect backdrop for John’s voice. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.” Jani answered automatically, but some truths were easier to admit than others. “Not that I had much choice. You were the first thing I saw when I came out of the coma, and you always did make a strong initial impression.”
“Funny how some things never change. You used the same excuse back then.” John wore the glower of a statue that had found a crack in its pedestal. “Maybe there’s something to it. You were the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes, too. Figuratively speaking. I didn’t have much…experience with women before you came along.”
Didn’t I know it. “You bury me with your regard, John, until I can neither move nor breathe. To save me the trouble of making choices, you make them for me. I can’t live like that.”
John snorted lightly, but didn’t speak. The traffic jam that ensued as skimmers maneuvered around a double-parked people-mover gave him something to concentrate on
for a time. “I really got off on the wrong foot with your mother,” he said as the squeeze cleared. “Mind telling me what happened?”
“Niall got me some food while we were at Sheridan. Maman tried it, and the pepper almost did her in.” Jani blinked away the ache as the image of her mother bent over the bathroom sink returned. Anormal. Mutant. “Your folks used to call you a freak, didn’t they?”
“No, they had the Christian Fallback Council of Elders declare me Marked by God. Amounted to the same thing, though.” John’s lip curled. He had never offered more than the occasional remark concerning his youth. That reticence alone told one all they needed to know. “How would my life have changed if they had approved my in utero genetic adjustment? Would I have grown into the man I am? Built Neoclona? Would I even have studied medicine? I don’t know. But as I told you back in the basement, by the time I was old enough to request adjustment on my own, I didn’t want it. Being unique has its advantages.” He glanced at Jani, and raised a hand in grudging admission. “It has its disadvantages, too, but overall the good outweighs the bad.
The skimmer turned onto Armour Place, and Jani leaned forward to stretch her back in preparation for the trudge across the lobby. “At least you could make a choice. Refer to my previous comment on the matter.”
John edged the skimmer curbside, then waved away the doorman who hurried toward them. “Well,” he said after a time, “that was an interesting interlude.”
“Niall reacted to a perceived threat—”
“I’m not blaming him. If I’d seen a skimmer bearing down on you, I’d have shot at it myself.” He focused his broody attention on his fingernails. “I wish you’d called me personally.”
Jani shook her head. “Not after this afternoon.”
John made as if to speak, but made do with a shaky exhale. The silence stretched. “Get some sleep,” he finally said. “Eat first. Be careful, like your father said.” He looked at Jani. His eyes were too dark for his sepulchre face, which seemed to glow in contrast. “Everybody’s shooting at me tonight. I’m the right target he thinks you should hit, aren’t I?”
Jani nodded. “I think so.”
“That means I made a sterling impression on him, too. I’m…sorry, for what resulted.” John groaned. “Val will speak up for me. They seem to like Val. But then, everybody likes Val. Hell, Nema likes Val.”
“You need to get back to your singer. She likes you.”
John shook his head. He had found a new scab to pick and refused to leave it alone. “She’d like Val if he’d have her.”
“Don’t underestimate yourself. You always did.” Jani smiled as a few of the better memories resurfaced. “You have your moments.”
“Oh yeah?” John perked. “I’ve got half a mind to press the accelerator to the floor. We could be in Seattle in two days.” He sagged back in his seat. “Only problem is, the first time I slowed below forty, you’d bail out the window.”
“I would—not—I—” Jani tried to formulate a lucid protest. But the fatigue and the emotional upheavals of the last few hours caved in on her, and she laughed instead. John gaped at her for a few moments, then joined in. They began quietly, then grew louder as various scenarios played through their minds.
The merriment fizzled. Jani wiped her eyes with care. She knew she had damaged her right film, and she no longer felt compelled to reveal herself to the world. “You don’t want me, John. I’d make you as crazy as you’d make me. Go back to your singer. There’s absolutely no reason for you to be alone.”
John’s grin died. “I’ve been alone since you left. The fact that another woman occasionally occupies your space doesn’t make any difference.” He unlatched Jani’s gullwing, remaining silent as she disembarked, ignoring her good night and vanishing into the dark before she reached the building entry.
Jani stopped and stared at the place where the skimmer had parked, then to the dark into which it had disappeared. It had felt so warm inside. So quiet. So comforting. If I just said the word, I could have that forever. John would raise the walls and affix the locks, and nothing would ever reach her again.
Nothing.
Poor John. She yawned as she limped across the lobby. If she could beg any good luck from her Lord Ganesha, she would find Steve, Angevin, and Lucien asleep. Particularly Lucien. She wouldn’t possess the energy to deal with him unless she slept through the night and into the following day.
Pondering Lucien deflected her attention from her surroundings. She didn’t see the figure dart in from the sitting area until it intercepted her.
“Where the hell have you been!” Angevin grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the lift bank. “We have been calling everybody and everywhere! Lucien even woke up his CO trying to track you down.”
Jani flashed on the possibility of taking John up on his Seattle offer. If he was on his way back to his singer, Val could forward him Jani’s message. They could leave inside the hour. “Angevin, I know I left some things undone, but I’ll get to them first thing tomorrow, I prom—”
“Oh, you think it’s that simple!” Angevin’s eyes gleamed green fire. “You just wait.”
CHAPTER 22
“Angevin, what’s going on? Angevin?” Jani hurried down the hall after the diminutive figure, who broke into a run as they neared the flat entry. “Angevin!”
“Did you know that the rear service entrance to this building isn’t as well secured as it should be?” Angevin stopped in front of the door, then began to pace. Now that she’d made her goal, she couldn’t follow through. “Did you? I sure as hell didn’t. Heard the entry buzzer and assumed it was the front desk. Opened the door. Guess what!”
Jani looked from the door to Angevin’s stricken face, then back again. “Who’s in there? Are Steve and Lucien all right?”
“They’re fine.” Angevin took a step toward the door, then backed away again. “Maybe you should go in first.”
“Oh, for—” Jani keyed in and gave a panel a good push to help it along. She strode through the entry, and saw Steve sitting at her desk, twisting an unlit ’stick between his fingers. “What’s going on?”
Steve opened his mouth, then closed it. He held out his hand to Angevin, who had scuttled in behind Jani. Together, they pointed toward the sitting area.
Jani turned to find a robe-wrapped Lucien sitting in a chair that had been pushed in front of the couch. The couch itself was occupied by a formidably tall man, his head and shoulders towering above the seat back.
Man…Jani’s senses gave her a swift kick, pointing out the dark gold tinge of the skin and the rigid posture. The jewel-rich green of the shirt, and the liquid-like way the material flowed over the broad back.
Then the head slowly turned, and she saw the eyes. Cracked gold glass, catching the light like gilt. “Ná Kièrshia.” The Haárin tilemaster rose to his feet. “I am Dathim Naré. NìRau Tsecha trusts you are most as uninjured, and bids me offer you the glories of the evening.” He spoke in English, flavored with the trilled R’s and biting consonants of Vynshàrau Haárin.
Ná? Jani detected the shortened vowels and altered accent of the Haárin feminine title. Well, that made sense. Or at least as much sense as everything else had that evening. “Ní Dathim. I am uninjured, yes.” She felt spun around, disoriented, like she’d just emerged from a pitch-dark Veedrome into the blaze of day. What the hell time is it? Too late at night to deal with an Haárin who sheared his head as humanish and felt no compunction about visiting his people’s Toxin in her downtown Chicago flat, surely. “My home is not clean. Your soul is in danger.” She had slipped from English into Vynshàrau Haárin without conscious thought, her straight back and anxious hand flicks defining her distress. “You should not be here.”
“I go where my dominant bids me go, regardless of the threat to my soul. I have declared myself to him. Such is my duty.” Dathim’s arms hung at his sides as he continued his half of the conversation in English. “He has bid me come here to witness your condition,
and to bring you something that you must take care of.”
“Nema gave you something to give to me?” Jani groaned inwardly. Then again, judging by the odd looks she received from the assembled, maybe it wasn’t so inward. She walked to the sitting area. She had a choice of perching on the arm of Lucien’s chair or joining Dathim on the couch. Considering how she currently felt about Lucien and how her right knee and back felt about her, her choice proved no choice. She stepped past the chair without giving its occupant a look and sagged into a cross-legged slump on the couch, a respectful bodylength away from the Haárin.
Dathim sat as well. However, instead of pressing against the couch back, he shifted so that he nestled in the corner and faced Jani. That meant he couldn’t plant his booted feet side by side on the floor in the knees-together seat of a typical idomeni. Instead, he lifted his left leg and crossed it over his right leg, ankle to knee. Then he placed his left hand on the bent knee and stretched his right arm atop the arm of the couch in the classic “this is my space” sprawl of a human male.
Jani glanced at Lucien, who stared at the Haárin, his lips parted ever so slightly. If she didn’t know better, she’d have thought he had a crush on him. If she didn’t know better—
John, take me to Seattle! No, the last thing she needed was John and Seattle in any combination. I’m tired, hungry, and in pain. Someone tried to kill me and my lover may have arranged it. My mother called me mutant tonight. Now Nema has a job for me. Maybe she should call him and tell him it was safe, so that he could leave the embassy grounds and do whatever the hell it was himself. Except he’s been locked down. He can’t leave. He’s in trouble. Wake up! She buried her face in her hands on the off chance that augie had gone south and she hallucinated. When I look up, the far end of the couch will be empty. Lucien will be gone, too. He’ll have been transferred to Whalen’s Planet. Steve and Angevin will have moved out. I’ll be alone, and it will be quiet, and I can sleep.
She looked up to find Dathim studying her full-face, auric eyes shining. When she’d lived in the colonies and dealt with Haárin merchants on a daily basis, she had grown used to their efforts to adopt humanish appearance and the habit of direct eye contact. Make that “somewhat used.” Idomeni appearance could be startling—to that, Dathim Naré had added his own spin. His was the long, bony face of his Vynshàrau forebears—his shorn hair accentuated the hard lines even more. He wore no overrobe atop his open-necked shirt and belted trousers. He wore no earrings. Not even his à lérine scars, the elongated welts ragged and brown against his dark gold skin, hinted at his alien nature. They could have been caused by an accident. He could have been a human male suffering from genetic disorders of the bone and liver, an inhabitant of one of the colonial outposts that had slipped beneath Neoclona’s detection limit.
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