“Oh, but I should have seen the signs. I could have reached out to her more instead of being grateful for the wall that rose between us, since that wall left me freer inside myself.”
Mahala moved closer to him. “Is that why you left the Project, because of Chimene?”
“It was part of the reason. I could cite others, but the fact is that I left largely because I had grown tired of my life on Island Two and was fortunate enough to fall in with people plotting an escape. The truth is that I didn’t much care whether I reached a Habitat or lost my life in the attempt— it was all the same to me.”
“It must have taken some courage to leave,” she said.
He shook his head. “Believe me, child, it took none at all. It would have been more courageous of me to stay.” He adjusted the duffel strap on his shoulder. “I’ve kept you long enough, Mahala. Risa and her household will be waiting for you. I can find my destination by myself.”
Mahala was about to walk away, then turned back. “Malik,” she said, “Risa wouldn’t throw you out if you came to her house with me.”
“Showing up suddenly, uninvited—I won’t do that to her.” He moved toward another pillar, as if searching for the images of people he might once have known. She left him standing there among the faces of the dead.
Dinner was what Mahala had expected, with Kristof and Barika questioning her about her classes and friends while Grazie filled her in on recent Oberg gossip. Only her grandmother seemed unlike herself; while her housemates chattered and passed around platters of food and bottles of wine, Risa picked at her plate of vegetables and beans and said little.
Often her grandmother went to the greenhouse after dinner or discussed the first chores of the next day with Sef, but this time she got up from the table and beckoned to Mahala. “I’m going to take a walk,” she said. “Maybe you’d like to come along with me.”
“Of course,” Mahala said. “Should I help clear the table first?”
“Go,” Sef said. “It’s your first night home—we’ll find enough work for you to do tomorrow.”
She followed Risa from the house. Overhead, the dome’s light had faded into the faint glow of early evening. Risa strolled in the direction of the tunnel that led to the main dome, then abruptly turned toward a path of flat pale stones that led to the community greenhouses.
“Malik is in Oberg, isn’t he,” Risa said.
“Yes. He came on the airship with me.”
“I knew he would come.”
“I told him that if he came to your house with me, you’d probably welcome him, no matter how you felt, but he wouldn’t come here knowing that you didn’t want to see him.”
Risa halted near a tree. “It was all so long ago,” she murmured. “He was the most beautiful man I had ever seen. Maybe if he hadn’t looked the way he did, and hadn’t spoken to me in such poetic phrases, and hadn’t been so gentle with me, I would have been able to see how wrong he was for me, and how wrong I was for him.” She fell silent for a few moments. “It wasn’t entirely his fault that we parted. I was to blame for much of what went wrong, although it took me a while to see that. I suppose he still looks much the same.”
“He doesn’t look his age,” Mahala admitted.
“He must look as if he could be my son.”
“Not when you look right into his face, into his eyes,” Mahala said. “He seems older then.”
They walked on until the main road was in sight. Others were out for a stroll; two women waved at Risa from a distance. Normally her grandmother would have waved back, perhaps gone over to talk to them. This time, she led Mahala away from the road and toward a grove of trees.
They sat down under one tree. “He would look at me now,” Risa said, “and see an old woman.”
“No, he wouldn’t.” In the faint silvery evening light, Mahala could almost envision the girl her grandmother had been. Even in daylight, Risa still had the appearance of a woman in her middle years. Rejuvenation would keep her near her physical prime, with only gradual signs of aging, until she was a decade or two past the century mark, and then her decline would come fairly rapidly. Mahala wondered if Risa envied the Habbers their extended lives, the life spans Earthfolk and Cytherians might also have had if their biologists hadn’t been held back, or if she was content with her more limited span. Mahala had always supposed that she herself would make her peace with death when that time came, but perhaps that was only because her end was so distant in time that her death hardly seemed real.
“There’s one reason I wouldn’t mind living as long as Malik or Benzi,” Risa said. “Maybe then I could live long enough to leave this dome and walk outside unprotected. I could be around to see what so many gave their lives to build. Sometimes—” Risa put her hand on Mahala’s arm. “Sometimes I wonder if it was worth it. Your mother might have been different somewhere else—in a way, the dream of the Project was what killed her. I occasionally wonder if I did the right thing by bringing you up in such a place, inside these domes.”
These words were so unlike her grandmother that Mahala could hardly bring herself to speak. “Grandmother,” she said at last, “you’ve always—”
“I’ve always thought of my duty,” Risa interrupted. “I was always a good Cytherian. Now I find myself thinking more and more of what this world did to your mother Chimene, and to Dyami, and to the other daughter I lost.” Risa had never spoken of her younger daughter, who had died while still a child, during an epidemic that had killed many in the enclosed environment of the settlements, where deadly microbes could spread more rapidly. “What do you want to do, Mahala?”
“I don’t know.”
“At least you’re honest enough to admit that. I expected you to say that you wanted to do whatever would be of most use to the Project. Well, then, what do you think you might do?”
Mahala considered how much she could admit to Risa. “I want to go to the Cytherian Institute,” she replied, “and not just for the sake of the Project, but because I could visit Earth.”
“And after that?”
“The Administrators and Counselors will probably decide that for me.”
“That’s also what you’re supposed to say. I want to know what you might choose.”
Mahala was silent.
“There were times,” Risa continued, “when I was young, when I would imagine that I could somehow rush forward in time and see the sun shining on this planet again, the clouds gone, the plateaus and mountains green with life. But I doubt that even a Habber could live that long.” She sighed. “The Project wouldn’t have been possible without the Habbers. I know that, too.”
“Risa—”
“Foolish of me,” Risa said, “to think that my life is that different from those that people have led for ages. When did anyone ever live long enough to see if their dreams and those of their children and grandchildren would be fulfilled in the end?”
Risa got to her feet quickly, in one movement; she was still limber. “I’ll tell you what I suspect,” she went on. “I think the Habbers are tiring of their efforts here. I think they’re growing weary of their dealings with Earth. They have worlds of their own. What’s to stop them from simply leaving?”
Mahala tensed. Either Risa’s instincts were even better than she realized, or else she knew what some of the Habbers were considering; perhaps Benzi had told her.
“Not that there would be anything we could do about it if they did,” Risa murmured. “We had better go back to the house. Sef will want to hear all about your studies and your new friends.”
Within two days of arriving in Oberg, Mahala was impatient to be on her way to Turing and her visit with Dyami. Her former schoolmates, at sixteen and seventeen years of age, were already leading the lives of adults, choosing bondmates, deciding where to live, volunteering for Bat duty, or finishing their apprenticeships. Even though she was their contemporary, to them she was still leading a child’s life, without any real responsibilities.
She busied herself during the day with household tasks and then took a walk around Oberg after last light, when she was unlikely to run into her childhood friends, who would be sharing evening meals with their families or getting some much-needed rest after a shift of work. Given the demands of the Project, perhaps her former friends had been wise to settle for their more limited lives, for the rewards of duty and work instead of trying for more. Whatever disappointments lay ahead, they could know that they were a part of something larger than themselves, something that would outlive them. She might spend several years trying to discover what it was she wanted for herself and end up leading the sort of life most of the others already did, but without their inner satisfactions.
As she passed the entrance to the tunnel and turned toward Risa’s house, she thought of Ragnar and how he was trying to reconcile his dreams with the restrictions on his life.
“Mahala,” a voice said from behind her.
She turned to see Malik coming toward her from the tunnel. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Risa asked me to come,” he replied.
She turned toward the house and saw then that Risa was outside, sitting under a tree, and wondered why her grandmother had said nothing to her about this.
“Did she say why?” Mahala asked.
“No.” He walked toward Risa; Mahala followed him. He stopped a few paces away from Risa, who got to her feet and gazed at him in silence.
“You look much the same,” Risa said.
Malik said, “I would have known you, Risa. You haven’t changed very much.”
“Oh, but I have. It’s why I asked if you would come now, after the dome darkens. You’d see an older face if you had come here at first light. You’d see my gray hairs.”
“Is Kolya Burian still part of your household?” he asked.
“Oh, yes.” Risa glanced toward Mahala. “Kolya came here with Malik from Earth,” she added, although Mahala already knew that; Kolya had told her the story many times.
She lingered near her grandparents, then moved toward the house. “Don’t go,” Risa murmured. “What I have to say concerns you, too.” She sat down again, then gestured to Malik to sit with her. “My bondmate Sef has never been a jealous man, but it will reassure him to see us all sitting out here together. He knows how much I once cared for you, how much I loved you.”
Malik seated himself. Mahala hesitated, then sat down next to her grandmother. “I should have cared for you more,” the Habber said. “I should have loved you more. I have often thought of what I might have done differently.”
“What you might have done was not to have become my bondmate at all, but I didn’t leave you much choice, telling you that I wanted your child whether or not we ever made a pledge, whether or not we were ever bondmates.”
Mahala had not heard that tale before. “I could have refused,” Malik said.
“It’s just as well that you didn’t. We wouldn’t have had Mahala then.” Mahala felt Risa’s hand on her arm. “That’s why I asked you here, Malik. I want you to look out for our granddaughter.”
“There are enough people to look out for me,” Mahala objected.
Risa’s grip tightened. “Be quiet, Mahala,” she said. “You don’t know what I mean to ask Malik. You told me that you want to see Earth.”
“Yes, I do.”
“And why do you want to go there? Is it mostly to be able to study at the Cytherian Institute, or is it mostly so that you can see our—humankind’s—home planet?”
“Those are both good reasons,” Mahala said, “aren’t they?”
“Of course they are, child. But you can experience any part of Earth with a mind-tour and without the trouble and inconvenience and discomfort of actually going there.” Risa paused. “As for the Cytherian Institute, I think their main purpose in bringing students there from our settlements and Islands is to further the aims of the Council of Mukhtars, to build more loyalty to Earth.”
“That doesn’t mean they’d succeed in doing that with me.” Mahala took a breath. “Just one time, I’d like to stand outside a dome, breathe open air, be on the surface of a world with nothing to protect me.”
“You might not be able to endure it,” Risa murmured. “Then they’d have to send you back here, troublesome and costly as it would be.”
“Then I’d know for certain that I couldn’t live elsewhere, that this is the environment for me, but at least I would have seen something else in my life.”
Her grandmother let go of her arm. “Some say that the Habbers are looking for a way to gain more control of the Project and speed its progress, while others say that they are thinking of abandoning this solar space altogether. I have only one request to make of you, Malik. If there is a chance for Mahala to go on whatever voyage the Habbers might make, to have whatever adventure might lie ahead for her, do what you can to see that she gets it if that’s what she wants. You won’t be stealing my granddaughter from me. She is not to torment herself thinking that she has betrayed me or this world by making such a choice.”
Mahala felt that she had to object. “I wouldn’t—”
“Hush,” Risa interrupted. “If you go on such a journey and there is any way to return, you’ll find it. That is all I have to say to both of you. Do whatever you feel you must do.”
Risa stood up and faced Malik. “I was so angry with you for running away, for going to the Habbers,” she continued, “but I think it must be easier for you to be an outsider there than to live among us as one.”
“You still know me fairly well,” Malik said.
“I won’t ask you inside. It’s better if I don’t. But before you leave Oberg, do call or leave a message.”
“I shall,” Malik said.
“Go,” Risa said, dismissing him. “Mahala, come inside.”
Two days after Risa had spoken to Malik, Mahala went to the airship bay to board the ship going to Turing. Malik had spoken to her only a few hours ago, saying that he had changed his mind about coming with her. Perhaps Dyami had said that he was not welcome in that settlement, although that was unlikely.
Frania had told Mahala that she had over two weeks off and would be there to meet the airship. Mahala, sitting down in one of the front seats, thought of her friend as she watched the pilots put on their bands and suddenly felt how much she missed Frania, how much she longed to be in Turing again.
Frania was waiting just outside the airship bay. She ran to Mahala, threw her arms around her, then reached for her duffel. “I should have sent you more messages than I did,” Frania said, “but with this apprenticeship, about all I felt like doing at the end of the day was grabbing a meal and then going to sleep.”
“You don’t have to make excuses,” Mahala replied. “Sometimes that was about all I could do, too.” She had sent her friend only two messages.
“Feel like walking?” Frania asked.
“Sure.”
“I’ve got a lot to tell you. I’ll be taking airships up to the Islands soon. I’ll be able to visit you when I get to Island Two. And—” Frania paused. “I don’t know if I should tell you this. I promised I wouldn’t.”
“I can keep a secret,” Mahala said.
“I know you can. It’s just—oh, I have to tell you. It’s Ragnar. He wants us to make a pledge, to be bondmates.”
Mahala stopped suddenly, thinking she had misunderstood. Frania halted next to her. “What is it, Mahala?”
“Nothing.” Mahala steadied herself. “I’m just surprised.”
“So was I. He only asked me for a promise a couple of days ago, right after I got back here.” Frania set down Mahala’s bag. “How thoughtless of me, when I know you and Ragnar—” She stood there, staring at Mahala with her beautiful hazel eyes as a passenger cart rolled past them. “He told me all about it. He wanted to be honest with me. He admitted that he had asked you for a pledge and you had said no, so I was certain you’d be over him by now.”
“It’s all right,” Mahala mad
e herself say. “It’s past. You mustn’t worry about that.”
“I promised him that I’d become his bondmate. I wouldn’t have promised that if I thought there was any chance it would hurt you. I could have waited.”
“I know that,” Mahala said, still feeling numb, surprised at how affected she was by Frania’s words.
“We don’t know when we’ll have the ceremony yet, whether we should make our pledge before I start shuttle pilot training or afterward. It probably depends on whether he can get a work assignment on the Islands.”
Frania reached for the duffel. Mahala grabbed for the bag and hefted it onto her shoulder. “Let me carry it as far as the tunnel, Frani.”
They walked on. Frania spoke of her training and some of the friends she had made among the other apprentice pilots. Mahala listened, thinking of Ragnar and Frania and the pledge they had promised to make. Clearly she had shown good judgment in refusing Ragnar’s offer. She had given him time to realize that he did not love her so much after all, and losing her had allowed his feelings for Frania to flower. She could tell herself that, but she did not really believe it.
He had turned to Frania only to ease the hurt inside himself. With a few words to him, Mahala might even convince him that asking Frania to be his bondmate was a mistake. She hated herself for the thought.
Dyami and Amina knew just how to behave at dinner, letting Mahala talk of her studies and her fellow students and prompting her occasionally with a question, careful not to be unduly inquisitive. Frania said little, but surely her aunt and Dyami had noticed the glow in her eyes and her obvious happiness and wondered at the cause.
Tasida was staying in the south dome for a few days, seeing two patients there who were recovering from serious injuries after a wall had collapsed on them during a recent quake. Ragnar was absent, but Frania had already told Mahala that he was working late shifts with the crawler and digger workers. That was a relief; he would be sleeping during the days and working in the evenings. With any luck, she would hardly have to see him at all.
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