by Karen Lord
‘I need your help,’ he said, sitting beside her.
She glanced nervously at the lecturer, afraid that he could hear them. ‘Shh, Ntenman. Not now.’
‘Come, you don’t need this subject and I need you to help me now,’ he insisted.
The complete absence of his usual slight deference towards her made her pay attention. She took up her slate and followed him quietly out. ‘What is it?’ she asked, pausing in the corridor near a window.
‘I need your clearance. Ageday number eighteen is only good for certain kinds of information. I want to find out about Moo’s father.’ He extended his handheld to her, much to her surprise. She rested her own slate on the broad brick windowsill and took it carefully.
‘I’m nineteen. My clearance can’t be much better than yours,’ she admitted.
‘Yes, and no. You’re not registered as a student and a minor, so you have a few more freedoms.’
She entered her ID on his handheld, but instead of giving it back to him, she held on as he tried to take it. ‘What next?’
He tugged hopefully, but she kept her grip firm. His face became distressed. ‘You don’t want to see this.’
‘I do. Is this how you get into the Lyceum staff records? Have you used that to your benefit?’
‘I look. I don’t tamper.’
‘Then we’ll look together,’ she declared, positioning the handheld at a good viewing angle for both of them.
He surrendered quickly. The corridor would soon become busy again. ‘Abowen, that’s a patronymic. His father’s name is most likely Owen or Owain, and his homestead is in Montserrat. The nearest Central Court would have been at Ophir.’
He spoke the names in, nudged a few commands with his finger and shook his head. ‘Let me try something else.’
She let him mutter and poke around with the shreds of names and family history Rafi had told him. At one point he gave her a sly smile. ‘Marvellous access you’ve got – not only an adult, but a taxpayer!’
‘My time here is paid research on behalf of my community,’ she explained, mildly surprised that he had not known. His fingers suddenly tensed on the handheld. ‘What is it?’
‘A minute,’ he mumbled. His eyes scanned rapidly and his thumb tapped past a few pages too quickly for her to read them.
‘This is it,’ he said at last, very sombre in tone and expression.
Ioan Adafydd ex-Montserrat
That was the name. There were some other words in the charge sheet, serious words.
Coercion. Kidnap. Rape. Illegal influence.
The final word was also striking.
Terminated.
‘They executed him?’ She knew enough to know that these were not capital crimes, not unless his influence had been such that they felt he could not be controlled.
‘No, that means the ID has been terminated,’ Ntenman clarified, much to her relief. ‘Wherever he is now, they’ve given him a new ID. He’s untraceable, unless you want to submit a formal request.’
‘Me? You were the one who wanted to search.’ She tapped her access closed with nervy but useless speed – if they kept track of who accessed the records, her ID had been logged long before she started reading.
Ntenman was too lost in his own thoughts to care when she shut down the handheld. ‘So that’s our little Rafi’s father. What a charming brute. No wonder they’ve given him the cap. I remember a boy in my second year . . . lovely, shy person till they capped him. Then he started setting his bed-sheets on fire.’
‘With his mind?’
‘Of course. His uncle had been a pyromaniac . . .’
She was listening and believing, but a tremor at the corner of his mouth brought the charade to an end. He laughed as she hit his arm in exasperation.
‘Your fault for shutting me out of your mind so completely,’ he told her. ‘But, in seriousness’ – and once more he accomplished that abrupt change of character from folly to sobriety – ‘Moo said the cap’s giving him nightmares. He won’t talk to me about it, but he might talk to you.’
She stared at him. ‘If his nightmares are about rape and kidnapping, I don’t think I want him to talk to me.’
He tilted his head and looked at her pleadingly. She had seen him do that so many times before, but this was the first time he was doing it to ask a favour for someone else.
‘Of course. If he talks, I’ll listen,’ she agreed.
*
The first practice session with the team was unnerving. The coach meant what he said. The other players were given a strategy to execute, but Rafi’s job was to blunder through it and force them to make adjustments. In spite of Ntenman’s drills, that meant he did a lot of falling, and strictly speaking, three falls meant a four-minute period off the Wall. It took five falls before the coach took pity on his shaking limbs and dazed expression and whistled him off for a short rest.
He tottered away to the usual penalty area . . . but someone was already there, a woman sitting in the shade behind the Wall. It was the worst place for viewing the players, but the best for seeing the movement of the grav-bands in two-dimensional trails of shimmering colour cast on the backscreen. He could not tell if that was what she had been doing, because now, instead of looking at the screen, she was glaring at him. He felt he should apologise for the ugly play she had witnessed, but before he could open his mouth she stood up and beckoned to him.
He blinked, looked around to see if anyone else was watching and then approached her. She was strangely tall, even to a half-grown adolescent like himself. Most of her curly brown hair was carelessly tied back with a length of red cord into a short puff at the back of her head and the remaining flyaway ends were kept flat against her head with metal clips. As he came closer, he realised that the glare was not for him but for the borrowed grav-bands on his wrists. She took his hands and made a click of dissatisfaction.
‘I—’ Apologies for his substandard gear, his poor form and his utter newness at anything like real game practice all crowded together and made his tongue stumble into silence.
She ignored his noises and let fall one of his hands long enough to pull a clip from her hair. Using its flat end as a lever, she prised open the grav-band connector and adjusted the fit closer to his sweating skin. He felt a slight buzz. She shook her head, frowned and jabbed the clip in with greater force. The buzz increased and he had a moment to feel scared, but then it faded to a subtler vibration that barely crossed the threshold of sensation. The other grav-band was given a similar treatment. He raised his hands and studied them.
‘Thanks—’
He got no further. She shushed him, sealing his mouth with three fingers placed emphatically over his still-moving lips. His blood beat hot in the tips of his ears, but she was looking elsewhere, gauging the movement of the shadows on the screen and listening to the sounds of the game. Her hand slowly fell from his mouth as she concentrated. He kept obediently quiet and watched her.
It was easy to see now that his eyes had grown accustomed to the relative dimness. She was not Terran, not close, not even a bit. Her limbs were long for her body, her eyes large and dark; her hair was like fluff near her temples and ears . . . no, not like his sister’s hair, strongly springy and every-which-way, but light, downy and stirring in the breeze like the plumage of a half-fledged chick. There was a hint of speckling in the brown, bird-like again, as was the tilt of her head as she focused. Pale lines etched a faint, swirling pattern over the dark brown of her cheek, continuing under her ear and straight down the side of her neck, right to the edge of her tunic’s collar and likely beyond. He wondered if it was art or more. He suspected more. After all, she was Ntshune, full Ntshune, a rarity in the urban belt and a near-impossibility outside it.
‘How—’
The sharp note of the whistle cut him off and his muscles tensed in instant reaction, ready to return to the game. She gave him a nod and a quick glance to his grav-bands. He nodded in turn, now unsure if she spoke Standard and far to
o shy to attempt his Simplified Ntshune, and pelted off back to the Wall.
His short rest and the better fit of the grav-bands brought some improvement, but not enough to save him from himself. He ran three levels: one a basic run, one turning and one falling. On the fourth level, his foot faltered and he lost first his balance and then his grip to land once more in the bodycatcher below. He had lasted three minutes. It was humiliating. He lingered for a while, flat on his back staring up at the other players carrying out their training drills, and knew for a certainty that he would never, never be able to play with enough skill to deserve decent gear and time on a professionally equipped Wall. The boys who made the Dailies had been running proper Walls from the time they were old enough to play and mimic their older relatives and listen to their coaching.
He rolled out of the bodycatcher and slouched despondently behind the screen again without waiting for the whistle. She was still there, sitting in the shadows, intent on the game and only sparing him a brief sympathetic look. She now held a bowl of small, hard-shelled spheres. She cracked them with the pressure of finger and thumb, occasionally prised the more stubborn ones apart with the edge of a single shell, and bit into the tough, wrinkled brown core with slow enjoyment. She took time to open them, more time to savour them. He stared at her hands and mouth, forgetting to be polite or shy.
‘Are those perrenuts?’
The movement of her jaw stopped as she considered, then she swallowed and smiled. The smile had some mischief in it, but no unkindness. She split a fresh shell and held out the centre. When he reached for it, she pulled back from his hand with a small frown and brought it near his lips instead with a commanding little flourish. He obediently opened his mouth and let her place it on his tongue. He had heard tales, but . . .
‘Perrenuts are quite an experience.’
Her voice was low in pitch and volume but with such a mellow resonance that she could have stood in the centre of the Lyceum’s largest auditorium and reached the farthest seats with a murmur.
‘There’s the initial rush of stimulant, which produces a sensation of euphoria, but pay attention to what happens after.’
Rafi understood halfway through her sentence. Eating the nut was enjoyable, but immediately he found himself glancing at the remainder in the bowl and yearning for another taste.
‘The true bliss is not in the flavour but in the anticipation and the wait.’ She fed him another nut, which he accepted eagerly. It was true. The taste of the second perrenut actually flattened the rising exhilaration, but the memory of the taste and the likelihood of getting a third made his mouth water.
‘Some people use perrenuts to test their willpower.’ She held out another and looked intently at him. He closed his mouth tightly and waited, straining so hard not to blink under her stare that his eyes began to tear-up. She appeared to count to an arbitrary number, and then smiled and looked away. Picking two more perrenuts out of the bowl, she pressed all three into his hand. ‘Take them home. Three in a row gives a good thrill.’
He closed his fist over the small gift and answered drily, ‘Thanks. I’ll share them with my friends.’
She smiled at that, but anything that might have been said was lost when the coach blew his whistle. Rafi automatically started running to the Wall before he realised he had forgotten to say goodbye, but when he looked back her eyes were already fixed once more on the swirling patterns of the screen.
*
Master Silyan limped briskly towards the sound of breaking furniture and yelling boys. It was far too early in the morning for such energy, but not entirely surprising as the weekend had almost arrived. Two bodies were on the ground in a grim lock that pointed their limbs in painful and unexpected directions and a cheering audience surrounded them. He banged the door hard with one of Galia’s heavy canes, brought specially for the purpose, and was gratified to see the elements of the audience scatter to their beds and the antagonistic human knot unwind itself with reluctant obedience and shuffle back to corners.
‘What’s going on here?’ He knew he would get no satisfactory answer, so he proceeded immediately into a lecture on the earliness of the hour, their complete lack of consideration and the punishment for fighting outside of the bounds of the gymnasia. When he closed the door at last, feeling greatly relieved, he almost ran into Abowen. The boy nervously dodged sideways and nearly dropped his bag.
‘Master Silyan! Good morning.’
‘Abowen, you’re up very early on a Friday – and dressed for town, too. What are you planning to do?’
‘It’s the weekend, sir. I’m going to visit my mother?’ He said the last with a curious, questioning emphasis.
‘You’re going to visit your mother in Tlaxce City,’ Silyan stated calmly. ‘Of course. Carry on. You don’t want to miss the train.’
*
Five hours passed before Master Silyan remembered that Rafi had not been wearing his cap. By the following morning he finally recalled that Rafi had been assigned as his Saturday boy. It was Sunday before he acknowledged to himself that something might be wrong. By Monday, it was too late.
Chapter Three
‘We love having you visit, but really, don’t you think this is a little short notice?’
Delarua looked at her nephew for an explanation. She had responded immediately, coming directly from the city to meet him at the outermost commuter station. He had been happy to see her but curiously laconic, and now he only shrugged and stared out of the window.
‘I called as soon as I reached a public comm,’ he said.
‘I don’t mind. It’s just that I need to catch up on some work appointments in the city. You’ll have to spend most of today with your mother and your sister,’ Delarua said.
Rafi was quiet for a moment. ‘Is Gran visiting, too, by any chance?’
Delarua eyed him. The train would reach Tlaxce City Centre shortly, but one of the stops was the Lakeside station, near her mother’s place. ‘No. You want to go see her? I’m not sure that she’s in.’
He shrugged wordlessly, the repeated, meaningless gesture guaranteed to irritate, but she persisted.
‘Tell me now so I can signal the stop,’ she warned him.
‘It’s fine. So it’ll be just us three.’
She examined his expression with genuine anxiety. Never would she forget that she had failed him when he had needed her most. ‘Will that be a problem?’
‘No,’ he replied, then spoiled it with a sigh.
‘Your mother misses you,’ she offered quietly.
He kept silent. The view through the train window flashed green wooded parks and neatly organised suburbia, but over all was the ghost of the boy’s faint reflection, pensive and pondering and sad.
‘Rafi,’ she said. It was a question and a plea. It was a lost call begging for a response.
He leaned against her, too tall now to rest his head on her shoulder, but his cheek settled against her temple. ‘It’s fine.’
*
Whether he was fine or not, she had people to see and work to do. On arrival, she took him straight to her old apartment – now her sister’s – and assessed the meeting of mother and son with a critical eye. Maria hugged him warmly, Rafi relaxed and returned the hug before pulling away, and there was nothing in the timing that could not be put down to the natural inclination of young men to resist being treated like babies. Little Gracie – much bigger now – was a much easier encounter. She screamed happily and ran to her big brother with unreserved glee. He laughed, picked her up and spun her around. Delarua exhaled her worry. They were fine. It really was fine. A few hours would be no problem at all.
By noon she was facing an irate Maria in the living room. Gracie was on the other side of a closed bedroom door (with her ear stuck to the door, if Delarua was any judge), and Rafi was downstairs in the foyer, sitting and nursing a bruised forehead in sullen silence.
‘Maria, stop pacing, stop flinging your hands about and please tell me what happened!’<
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Maria immediately flung her right hand towards Gracie’s closed bedroom door in a dramatic fashion. ‘He was tickling her! Making her laugh!’
Delarua shook her head slowly, dazed at the mundane revelation. ‘What? Oh. You mean . . .’
‘Yes! He wasn’t using his fingers!’
Delarua opened her mouth and found herself stuck. She closed her mouth, rubbed her face with both hands, gripped her hair tightly in both fists, then tried again. ‘You know, I’ve seen him do that before. It’s harmless.’ It was harmless. It was a simple trick, a little mental brush against the nerve endings under the skin. And yet . . . not really simple, to be honest. Done wrong it felt like the itching of a thousand angry ants, but Rafi clearly had his skill under sufficient control.
Maria pressed her hands to her face in a perfect picture of horror. Tears filled her eyes. ‘Grace, you did not say that. How could you . . . you know everything that’s happened. How can you call any of this harmless?’
‘But Maria, was it really so bad that you had to hit him? With a spatula?’
Maria let the tears spill then, and Delarua felt guilty for two fleeting seconds before her following words erased all sympathy. ‘You’re as bad as he is, married to that . . . to . . .’
‘If you want to say “alien”,’ Delarua said wearily, ‘go ahead. Even though he’s been here for nearly four years now.’
‘You let him into your mind! How do I even know I’m talking to my sister?’
‘Pause. Stop. Halt. You did not just accuse my husband of bodysnatching me.’
She shook her head vigorously. ‘I can’t deal with this. If you can, you take him. I don’t need this in my life. We don’t need this.’
‘Maria, ease off the drama. Please. Rafi and I are going to have a nice little break for a week or two and then we’ll come back and see how you and Gracie are doing.’
Delarua collected Rafi’s belongings without further excitement and went down to the foyer. It hurt to meet her nephew’s eyes and see the betrayal and self-loathing there, but meet them she did. She unashamedly poured warmth and light towards him until he managed a tiny smile and stood up.