Daughter of Nothing

by Eric Kent Edstrom

  “Welcome back to St. Vitus, Doctor.”

  “Anything I should know about, Michael?”

  “I’d prefer if you call me Socrates.”

  “I’ll call you whatever I wish.”

  Michael’s avatar wore a finely tailored suit. He always appeared to Dr. Carlhagen as a young man in his mid-thirties, hair cut short and neatly combed, exactly how Dr. Carlhagen’s business partner, Michael, had looked before uploading himself. He’d taken to calling himself Socrates when Dr. Carlhagen put him in charge of educating the Scions.

  “The students are doing well. I get the usual questions about graduation and the state of the world occasionally. Sensei Rosa has done a wonderful job curbing that. I never get questions from Crabs or older anymore.”

  “Excellent. It’s been, what, four years?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I want to see the Eagles.”

  Michael nodded solemnly then transformed into the head and shoulders of a young man with dark eyes and short-cropped hair.

  “This is Vaughan,” Michael said. “Focus is on math, economics, and finance. Sensei considers him the strongest Scion on campus and the best fighter he’s ever seen.”

  Dr. Carlhagen leaned back. The boy’s resemblance to his Progenitor shouldn’t have startled him, but it did. It also irritated him. “Show me Humphrey.”

  Vaughan’s face dissolved into a boy with a thinner face, bony cheeks and prominent Adam’s apple. He had a slightly sullen look, which made Dr. Carlhagen snort.

  “Next.”

  A pale, coldly beautiful girl took shape, thin lips pressed together, giving her a somewhat tense aspect. “Is Belle still having issues?”

  “Yes. A textbook case of depression. Shall I have Nurse Smith add an appropriate medicine to her daily?”

  “No.”

  Dr. Carlhagen had argued with Michael about this several times before. The AI didn’t appreciate the risks of meddling with a Scion’s brain chemistry. The anti-depressives lingered for a long time. The risk to the Progenitor was too great.

  “She’ll have to make it through one more year. Watch her, though. If necessary, I can have Nurse Smith hold her in the medical ward.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Show me Jacey.” Despite the andleprixen, Dr. Carlhagen’s heart picked up speed. One of the reasons he’d stayed away from St. Vitus so long was to avoid seeing her. She wasn’t good for him.

  Belle’s face dissolved and reformed into one so familiar and so beautiful it stole his breath.

  Michael said, “She’s been on a memory and literature track for most of her time at the Scion School.”

  Dr. Carlhagen had to clear his throat in order to speak. “How is Jacey doing?”

  “Superbly. The most gifted memorization skills I’ve seen in a human.”

  The irony made Dr. Carlhagen laugh. Jacey’s Progenitor, an actress, had asked for memorization training as an afterthought.

  “Rule infractions?” he asked.

  “Few. None intentional.”

  “What were they?”

  “Sensei Rosa reported three occasions Jacey spoke with a boy outside of allowed social periods. Sensei believed the transgressions to be incidental. He issued exercise punishments.”

  “Which boy?”

  “Vaughan.”

  Of course it was. Dr. Carlhagen forced his jaw to relax even as he reached for the drawer handle to get his bottle of pills. He stopped himself and instead took hold of his cane and stroked the handle, a silver boar’s head.

  As he stared at the girl’s beautiful, familiar face, his mind started down a well-worn path. And just like the Jeep when its tire got stuck in a rut, he found it impossible to change the course of his thoughts. The hologram of Jacey’s face had long disappeared by the time Dr. Carlhagen’s mind came to a fork in the road.

  But for all his thinking and musing, Dr. Carlhagen knew he’d made the decision about Jacey long ago.

  “Mr. Justin!”

  The butler stepped in and gave a slight bow.

  “Prepare to greet two guests in the hacienda. And bring the box in here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Dr. Carlhagen summoned Michael again and gave him new instructions.

  3

  A Pattern of Impressions

  Jacey held her breath as she watched the recording of herself on the wall-to-wall dance studio mirrors. Her big moment was coming.

  The class’s ballet performance had played back uninterrupted for nearly five minutes, an unprecedented duration. Usually Madam LaFontaine, the AI dance mistress, stopped it every twenty seconds to point out a flaw in a dancer’s technique.

  The music built toward a crescendo and Jacey watched herself spin and hit a preparatory pose. The other dancers tiptoed away, spinning with flourishes of arms and tutus. Madam LaFontaine had added a colorful backdrop behind the performers, one that didn’t exist in the bare-walled dance studio where they had actually performed.

  The dance mistress had also added a spotlight, which pooled around Jacey’s image as she began a series of turns, building speed, then launched herself into the air. At the peak of her leap, the mirror paused and Madam LaFontaine’s AI image resolved into view among the frozen dancers.

  Jacey studied her leap position. Her legs were extended in perfect front splits, toes pointed, arms overhead. She couldn’t see any problem, except one. She would never forgive herself if she was the reason Madam had paused the performance. She let her breath go when she saw the real cause.

  Madam LaFontaine, who appeared only as a reflection in the mirror, stepped among the still girls, stopping behind Suki, an eleven-year-old in ballet shoes. She was frozen mid-fouetté.

  Madam made a tsking noise. “Suki, tell me what is wrong with this position.”

  Suki, one of three Crabs in the class, stepped forward and studied her reflection. “My toe isn’t pointed, and I’m off balance.”

  “Correct,” Madam LaFontaine said. She motioned with her hand, and a blue line appeared on the mirror, indicating the axis of Suki’s turn, clearly showing the angle. She motioned again, and a green line appeared, showing the correct, vertical angle. “You cannot stay balanced if you are not straight. During your next free break, I expect you in here practicing your fouettés.”

  Suki curtsied to the mirror. “Yes, madam.”

  The instructor walked among the other dancers in the reflection, offering comments on their positions. “Conrad, excellent. Tytus, good, good.”

  She continued down the line and shook her head sadly at the image of Belle, whom Jacey thought looked quite stunning in a perfect arabesque pose.

  “How did you get the name ‘Belle?’” Madam LaFontaine asked. “Look at your face.”

  Jacey hadn’t noticed Belle’s impassive face because the girl always looked like that. The only indication of Belle’s emotional state was in her eyes, subtle cues that Jacey couldn’t explain but sometimes recognized, having spent all seventeen years of her life with the girl.

  “Where is the passion?” Madam LaFontaine asked, waving a hand in front of Belle’s frozen face.

  The real Belle didn’t react.

  “If it is not in the face, it is not in the body,” Madam LaFontaine said. “If it is not in the body, it is not in the audience.”

  “There is no audience,” Belle said.

  “No audience?” Madam threw her arms up in her usual dramatic fashion then pointed to the class. “Look around you! Your fellow students.”

  “They are the performers,” Belle said.

  “And now they are standing still, watching their performance. The performer becomes the audience. You are the audience.”

  “Yes, Madam LaFontaine.” It was typical of Belle to concede a point she didn’t care to win. She learned skills, executed them flawlessly, but without any indication of interest, and certainly, as Madam LaFontaine had pointed out, without passion.

  The instructor turned, cast an eye over the rest of the dancers
and nodded in satisfaction. Jacey thought she was going to ignore her grand moment as the featured dancer, but then Madam turned to face her.

  “Jacey!” she said, holding her arms out and then turning to the still image of Jacey in the mirror. “Excellent! La grande battement superbe.” Then in a torrent of French, Madam LaFontaine waxed rhapsodic, pointing out the perfection of the lines. Suddenly she stopped and raised an eyebrow. “Jacey, the mouth, the mouth, the mouth!” With every repetition, Madam LaFontaine flung an arm out to the side.

  Jacey sighed. She’d never broken the habit of biting the corner of her lip during challenging moves. And there she was, frozen mid-air, biting her lip.

  The youngest dancers—Dolphins and Pelicans—couldn’t suppress giggles, and for once Madam LaFontaine didn’t admonish them for it.

  “But perhaps it’s not an imperfection,” Madam said. “In the grand halls of Paris or St. Petersburg, perhaps this performance tic of yours would be considered a signature expression. Indeed, in the virtuoso, a slight imperfection is a grace note that makes the whole even more perfect.”

  Jacey’s face went hot under her instructor’s praise. She curtsied and Madam applauded, then encouraged the others to applaud.

  Belle smacked her hands together four times and then resumed her still pose, patiently waiting for class to end.

  Madam’s image disappeared, and the performance continued. Jacey landed, completed several more turns, and the dancers all came together in a final pose to end the performance.

  The mirror faded to black and became just a mirror, showing all the Scions milling about on the dance floor.

  A burst of chatter erupted, and several of the students hugged each other. The younger girls mostly, those who had not had the habit trained out of them yet. Several came up to Jacey and congratulated her. She accepted as graciously as she could, but couldn’t keep the heat from her cheeks.

  She wanted the attention to last forever, but they had to get to class. The dancers headed out of the studio and into the changing room. Still feeling the pleasant glow of self-satisfaction, Jacey changed into her school uniform and stuffed her pointe shoes into her cubby.

  Jacey waited at the entry for the rest of her Nine to line up behind her. All the girls in Jacey’s Nine were in dance, as were seven of Vin’s. It was a credit to both Dante and Ping that the five boys from their Nines formed up and headed off to their next activity.

  Sarah stood to one side until everyone in her Nine was in position. Then, with solemn formality, she led them single-file down the wooden steps of the dojo complex and onto the quad.

  The quadrangle was a grassy park at the center of the Scion School campus. Thick-boled trees grew here and there, offering shady spots where students gathered during class breaks to goof off or catch up on studies. A wooden platform stood in the middle, ready for the Birthday ceremony later that day.

  The sun had broken over the eastern mountains, their rounded tops green and stark against the bluing sky. An easy, warm breeze blew from the east, heavy with the scent of salt water and the sweet blooms of island vegetation. Jacey breathed it in and savored it the way she might a cool drink after a long run.

  The landscape sloped down toward the sea. And in the far distance, Turtle Island humped from the water like the back of a giant whale.

  Sarah turned right and led the Nine into the girls’ classroom. It had the same floor plan as Girls’ Hall, but instead of bunks lining the walls, there were two rows of nine desks. Jacey fell out of line and took her spot at the last desk. Positions were assigned based on age, putting the youngest at the front. Sarah, as Nine leader, took one of the two desks that faced back toward the students. It allowed her to keep an eye on her Nine and assist if Socrates requested it. Vin and her Nine took the desks across the aisle.

  The desks were meter-wide spans of glass upon metal frames. Dr. Carlhagen didn’t allow chairs, so the desk legs automatically adjusted to each student’s height, allowing them to stand comfortably during their lessons. Jacey put her hands on the surface, causing a light to fade into existence in the center of the glass.

  The light brightened and extended above the desk, then dissolved into the fifteen-centimeter-tall holo of Professor Socrates. He wore a version of the school uniform, except it was white instead of black, and he wore no collar pin. His long white hair flowed into a luxuriant white beard.

  He blinked his heavy eyelids and smiled. “Good morning, Jacey.”

  Iterations of his holo stood on all the other students’ desks as well, though they spoke of different things.

  “Good morning, Professor. Today is Birthday.”

  Socrates put his hands to his head in an expression of shock. “Don’t tell me you are already a Shark? My, how time flies.”

  Jacey’s fingers went to the Eagle pin on her collar. “Not yet, Professor, but soon. Do you know my course schedule for my Shark year?”

  “I do.” A book appeared in his hands. “Let’s see, dance and movement, of course. Tai Chi, memory drill. Ah, Russian literature! One of my favorites.” He worked his finger down the page. “Shakespeare’s tragedies.”

  “Again?” It would be her third time working through the tragedies. Professor Socrates winked. “You’ll memorize them this time.”

  “What about math?” she asked hopefully.

  Professor’s face lost expression. “I’m afraid not.” He snapped the book closed, and it disappeared.

  “But—”

  “Ah, ah, ah,” he said, waggling a gnarled finger at her. “We’ll not rehash old arguments. Dr. Carlhagen has made his decision. Which reminds me, he wants to see you at the hacienda in fifteen minutes.”

  Jacey blinked a few times before nodding. She had been to the hacienda only a few times in her years at Scion School, and never alone. “But what about memory drill? I’m ready to recite Pi.”

  “I keep statistics, of course.” His book reappeared, and he flipped to a page. “Your recall of our last memorization set was one hundred percent over five sessions. I think that is satisfactory. We’ll begin new memorization exercises tomorrow. I’ve already informed Sarah of your appointment with Dr. Carlhagen. You are excused.” Professor Socrates’s image disappeared.

  She stared in awe at the blank desk. She’d expected class to be curtailed due to the lockdown, but to be dismissed while the others were still working was unprecedented.

  Directly ahead of Jacey, Wanda flicked her fingers to magnify the internal organs of a virtual frog; beyond her, Bethancy manipulated columns of holographic words, sorting them by language and meaning.

  Jacey left the classroom and stepped back into the sunshine. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d been outside by herself. It would take ten minutes to walk the path up to Dr. Carlhagen’s hacienda, so she had five minutes to spare.

  Five whole minutes! Outside. By herself.

  The freedom sent a thrill through her blood like she’d never experienced. It made her smile and stretch her arms out.

  The white stucco walls of the buildings glared in the sun, their red-tiled roofs stark against the backdrop of green foliage that covered the island of St. Vitus.

  She wandered onto the quad, taking care to avoid the metal grating covering the pit. She hated the smells that wafted from its black depths.

  She went to the temporary wooden platform in the middle of the quad. The Snakes and Spiders had set it up the night before for the Birthday ceremony. Later, all the students would cross the platform to receive their new pins. From her vantage point on the platform, Jacey could see beyond Sensei’s dojo to the chain-link-gated entrance to the campus.

  On impulse, she jumped down from the platform and cut between the dining hall and the dojo to the warehouse. She went inside and checked the dry storage bay. Sure enough, it was packed floor to ceiling with pallets of rice, beans, flour, and nuts. More was stuffed into a walk-in freezer.

  As far as she knew, no student had ever been in the warehouse so soon after a lockdown.
She went outside and quickly scanned the gravel road that led from the warehouse to the gate. Over the years, the gravel had turned to pebbly sand in a few places. In one such spot, she found what she was looking for. A pattern of impressions, like those made by the Jeep’s tires. These tracks were different than the Jeep’s, though, proving what the Scions had long suspected. Other vehicles came during lockdown to deliver supplies. Other people.

  Jacey wanted to look around more, but she didn’t dare be late for her meeting with Dr. Carlhagen. As she walked across the grass of the quadrangle, she thought back to the nervous curiosity of the younger girls in her Nine. Now she’d be able to tell them with certainty about what happened during lockdown.

  Her stomach gave an uneasy turn as she reflected on it. The tire tracks may have answered one question, but it left many more. The one that occupied her most was perhaps the biggest.

  Why weren’t the Scions allowed to see the supply vehicles or the people who drove them?

  4

  As Foolish as a Dolphin

  Jacey put her question aside as she climbed the wide, gravel path to the hacienda. It wound among palm trees and past long hedgerows of flowering bougainvillea. Maintaining the grounds around the hacienda was one of the tasks of the twelve-year-olds. Jacey remembered hours spent in the sun as a Crab, planting cuttings from the hedges. She felt a bit of pride at how full and tall they’d grown over the past five years.

  In all her time at the Scion School, she had been inside the hacienda only three times, and that was years earlier. In each instance, Dr. Carlhagen had asked a few questions. She had answered by reciting lines of poetry, playacting at being happy or sad, or by doing a pirouette or other dance skill. At the end of each visit, Dr. Carlhagen had congratulated her and sent her on her way.

  Everyone had similar experiences, though no one knew what the point of it was. Jacey thought Dante had the best guess: it was a sort of test, similar to the frequent medical exams they underwent, but for cognitive function or some sort of psychological profile.