Offspring

by Steven Harper

  “I don’t know that part of town very well,” he said.

  “I do,” Lucia said. “It’s a poorer section, with a lot of run-down apartment houses. It’s gotten worse since the Despair. I’ll scout it out and figure out the best layout for a trap. Then I’ll get back to work on the Poltergeist people.”

  “Did you find anything out?” Kendi asked.

  “I ran a check,” Ben said. “There definitely used to be a backup file. It was erased only a week ago.”

  Harenn paled. “Oh, god,” she whispered. “Ben, I am so sorry. This is my fault.”

  “Didn’t we dance to that tune already?” Kendi said. “You tried to take the blame for the way Martina and Keith disappeared. It wasn’t your fault then, and it isn’t your fault now. It’s the fault of the asshole who’s blackmailing us.”

  “We did get a list of eight people who had access to the Poltergeist’s computer,” Lucia said. “As I said, I will follow up on it. I’ll also interview the spaceport staff. It may also be that someone who wasn’t supposed to have access broke into the ship, and the staff may have seen something suspicious. Leave it to me, Father Kendi. If there is anything to find, I will find it.”

  Sitting there in his living room with her firm hands and serious face, Lucia came across as supremely confident and competent, and Kendi felt a bit better. He didn’t have to do everything himself.

  “Thank you, Lucia,” he said. “But if you’re going to be carrying one of our children, I think you’d better call me Kendi.”

  Lucia blushed slightly and looked less confident. “I...I will try. But it’ll feel strange.”

  “Speaking of surrogacy,” Harenn put in, “perhaps we should put off my appointment tomorrow in light of everything that’s happened of late.”

  “No!” Ben and Kendi said together, and Kendi managed a laugh. “I won’t interrupt our lives for this guy’s bullshit,” he said. “Besides, everything will be sorted out one way or another long before the baby is born. We shouldn’t wait.”

  “Famous last words,” Harenn said, but didn’t disagree.

  “We should call Vidya and Prasad,” Ben said.

  “What? Why?” Kendi said.

  “Well, what I really mean is that we should call Sejal,” Ben said. “Sejal didn’t lose his mutant Silence in the Despair. He can still possess people, Silent and not, willing and not. He’d be the perfect person to catch a blackmailer. And he won’t ask us questions if we tell him not to.”

  “I should have thought of that myself,” Lucia said.

  “Stressful times.” Kendi got up and tapped the wall. “The Vajhur family.”

  “That was quite a press conference,” Vidya said on the viewscreen a moment later. She had long, silver-streaked hair and mahogany skin that showed stress and worry lines around the eyes and mouth. “You looked even more foolish than—”

  “Thanks,” Kendi interrupted. “Is Sejal around? We need to talk to him.”

  Vidya Vajhur’s face went blank. “Sejal is not here. He hasn’t been for quite some time.”

  “Oh? Where is he?”

  “Away. I do not know where, exactly. It is a secret he has chosen not to share with me. I only know someone has hired him for a ‘secret mission’ for which he is being well-paid.”

  “Is this why he couldn’t help us rescue Keith and Martina?” Ben spoke up. “I talked to him in the Dream and asked for his help, but he got all evasive and finally ran off.”

  “I imagine that is the case,” Vidya said. Her words were short and clipped, clearly angry. Kendi could understand why. Vidya had been forcibly separated from her husband Prasad and their baby daughter when she was pregnant with Sejal. As a result, she had raised Sejal alone in the roughest slums on the planet Rust in the Empire of Human Unity. Seventeen years later, the entire family had been reunited on Bellerophon. Vidya had just gotten her daughter back; Kendi couldn’t imagine it would sit well with her to lose her son.

  “Do you expect him back anytime soon?” Kendi asked.

  “I have no idea,” Vidya said.

  They exchanged a few unrelated pleasantries, and Kendi disconnected.

  “So much for the easy solution,” he sighed. “Now we play commando.”

  The door slammed in Gary Kyle’s face. He stared at it for a moment, fuming, then picked up the baby carrier and turned toward the stairs. Mark didn’t stir from his nap, for which Gary was grateful. A screaming baby would make an already bad situation unbearable. Why did Pandora have to be so difficult? You’d think she’d be glad to have him take Mark on the weekends so she could have some Alone Time. That was what she always called it—Alone Time, complete with capital letters. Trouble was, two months ago Gary had discovered her spending Alone Time in company. A whole lot of company. It had ended their marriage.

  Gary had kept the house, but he still couldn’t believe the court had granted Pandora primary custody of Mark. Wasn’t Gary the one with intact Silence? Didn’t he have the better income? Didn’t he spend his evenings and weekends at home? He checked the carrier. Mark snoozed peacefully under a yellow blanket.

  As Gary carried Mark out of the apartment building and onto the walkway, he worked to clear his thoughts of anger. Mark was just a baby, but Gary was sure he could feel the tension between his parents, and Gary was determined that his child should be as unaffected by it as he could manage.

  Unfortunately there was no doubt in Gary’s mind that Pandora would bad-mouth him to Mark once the boy was old enough to talk. A breeze stirred his brown robe, and Gary sighed. Maybe he could find some kind of evidence proving Pandora was an unfit mother. She took Mark into bars, for god’s sake. How could the court possibly—

  “Excuse me, Brother. I seem to be lost. Can you direct me to the monorail station?”

  The speaker was a blond man. A dark-haired woman stood near him, looking around and trying to get her bearings. It wouldn’t be easy to lose them—so many of the street lights were out these days.

  “I’m heading for the station right now,” Gary said, glad of the distraction. “It’s not far. Just follow me.”

  “Thanks,” the man said.

  “What a darling baby,” the woman said. “Yours?”

  “My son,” Gary said, unable to keep from smiling. “He’s nine months old tomorrow.”

  “What a sweetie,” the woman cooed, bending over the carrier. Mark slumbered on. “And so handsome. But where’s his mommy?”

  “Divorced,” Gary said shortly. “Look, if you want to catch the next train, we should probably—”

  Something cold pressed against the back of his neck and Gary felt a thump. He spun in time to see the man lower a dermospray. Gary stared at him, uncomprehending. Then a wave of dizziness hit him. He barely had time to set Mark’s carrier down before he dropped like a stone.

  In the morning, Kendi, Ben, and Harenn coasted in a gondola toward the medical center. Kendi usually loved the gondolas. The pulleys on the overhead wire were silent, allowing them to slide from station to station without a sound. It was like floating among the talltrees and houses in a balloon. The walkways and balconies hummed with human voices and Ched-Balaar chatter. Fresh-smelling spring breezes swirled gently around them, bringing the relaxing scent of flowers and bark and leaves. Today, however, Kendi felt unsettled. He and Ben had spent a restless night, neither able to comfort the other very well. Ben had wanted to be held, but Kendi found himself unable to lie still for long.

  Today they were supposed to be excited. But Ben looked pale, Kendi felt tense, and Harenn worked her jaw. They spoke little. Ben held the star-shaped cryo-unit in his lap.

  Dr. McCall was a round woman topped by a fluff of pale hair. Kendi and Ben stepped into the hallway outside the examination room while she gave Harenn a final check-up and got her onto the table and draped in a green sheet. Then Ben and Kendi re-joined her, standing near Harenn’s head. Her face was placid, her hair hidden by a surgical cap. The room was a bit chilly and smelled of antiseptic.
/>   “Ready to become pre-parents?” McCall asked merrily.

  “Ready,” Kendi said, and took Ben’s hand. Ben reached down for Harenn’s hand, and she gave him a small smile.

  McCall touched a control on the cryo-unit, and the top slid aside. With a hiss of cold steam, a metal ring rose a few centimeters above the unit. Eleven cloudy ampules poked upward. Kendi peered at them, though he knew he wouldn’t be able to see anything.

  “The readouts say there are six boys and five girls,” McCall said. “Do you have a preference for sex or for which embryo you want implanted?”

  “Let the universe decide,” Ben said. It was the same thing Ara had said on the day of Ben’s implantation. Kendi squeezed his hand and Harenn nodded.

  “As you like,” McCall said. She plucked an ampule at random and closed the cryo-unit. The ampule went into an instrument that looked like a cross between a pistol and a syringe. “We just have to wait a few moments for the bio-implantation unit to thaw the—ah! We’re ready. Please relax, Ms. Mashib. You’ll feel a slight pressure but it shouldn’t hurt.”

  Harenn took Kendi’s other hand and squeezed it. He grinned down at her, feeling like he should say something important but unable to think what. Harenn was being implanted with his child, his son or daughter. In nine months, he’d be a father. So would Ben. Harenn would be its mother, and Kendi liked that idea.

  It would also be a child of Irfan Qasad and Daniel Vik. Kendi wasn’t sure how to feel about that. He was knowingly bringing into the world a child who, if the truth came out, would become instantly famous. Kendi had heard plenty of stories about famous children cracking under the pressures of celebrity and turning to drugs or theft or arson or worse crimes, and he swore a silent oath that this would never happen to his sons and daughters. Perhaps they deserved to know the truth when they were grown, but the world never would. Kendi looked at Ben’s blue eyes and knew that he was thinking the same thing.

  “Done,” McCall reported, and stripped off her gloves. “You should avoid heavy lifting for the next forty-eight hours, but other than that, you’re fine.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Harenn said.

  “Do you know for certain it took?” Kendi asked.

  “Oh, yes. Miscarriage used to be a problem in these cases, but not any more. Barring accident, injury, or disease, Ms. Mashib will bear a fine, healthy child. Do you want to know the sex now?”

  “No,” Ben said.

  “Yes,” Kendi said at the same time.

  “I thought we already talked about this,” Ben said.

  “Talked about, yes,” Kendi said. “Decided, no.”

  Harenn sat up as McCall took her feet from the stirrups. “I seem to recall,” she said, “that you had indeed agreed to keep the baby’s sex a surprise.”

  “Hey!”

  “You’re outnumbered,” Ben said.

  “However, I feel I should point out,” Harenn continued, “that you could check the cryo-unit to see how many embryos of each sex are left.”

  “Don’t even,” Ben warned.

  “You’re a vile temptress, woman,” Kendi growled. “But a promise is a promise. Even if I don’t specifically remember making it.”

  McCall helped Harenn down from the table, and Ben and Kendi took refuge in the corridor again so she could dress. Kendi swept Ben into a hug.

  “Hey, Dad,” he whispered.

  “Hey, Dad,” Ben whispered back.

  They parted, and Ben said, “What are the kids going to call us? It’ll be confusing if we’re both Dad.”

  “You can be Dad,” Kendi said. “I’ll be their Da.”

  “Works for me.”

  “That way,” Kendi finished, “all their first words will probably be about me.”

  When Harenn emerged from the examination room, Kendi was cowering in a corner. Ben was pummeling him mercilessly.

  “A fine pair of role models, the both of you,” Harenn said.

  “That’s why we have you,” Kendi grinned, straightening. Ben gave him a final thwack. “Shall we go?”

  The gondola ride home was a little more cheerful, despite a stop at the bank for the blackmail money. Kendi couldn’t take his eyes off Harenn. She looked the same—dark skin, pretty face, brown eyes, blue head scarf—but she also seemed different, and it went beyond the fact that she longer veiled her face. When Harenn had first been assigned to Ara’s team years ago, Kendi hadn’t liked her much. Her verbal barbs and readiness for violence had put Kendi off. It wasn’t until much later he had learned the source of her cynicism—her ex-husband had kidnapped their baby son Bedj-ka and sold him into slavery. The knowledge had changed the way he’d seen her. Harenn had stopped being a bitch and became more like a crusty maiden aunt. Later, when Kendi took over command of Ara’s team and headed out to rescue her son, Harenn became something like an older cousin who worked in the family business. Now she was...what?

  “Did I grow a third eye?” she finally asked. “Perhaps an extra nose?”

  “You’re going to be our child’s mother,” Kendi said. “I guess I’m rearranging how I see you.”

  Harenn put a hand on her stomach. “You will see plenty more of me soon.”

  The hiss and thump of resin guns greeted them when they got home. A team of human carpenters were swarming over Ben and Kendi’s house. The two staircases leading to the building—one up, one down—lay in pieces, and a carpenter was running a measuring scanner over the walkways. Another worker pulled a sonic cutter from his pocket and with a quiet zip cut a board neatly in two. Pieces of electronic equipment littered the area, along with pulleys, cables, and other objects Kendi couldn’t identify.

  “I’d forgotten all about this,” Ben said. “Why does everything have to happen at once around here?”

  “We’d get bored otherwise,” Kendi said, shifting the satchel slung over his shoulder.

  “You’d get bored,” Ben corrected.

  They talked briefly with the supervisor, a brown-haired woman with sawdust in her eyebrows, before going inside. Smells of rich tomato sauce, sautéed chick-lizard, and fresh-baked bread assailed them.

  “Attention! Attention!” said the computer. “Lucia dePaolo used her access code for entry.”

  “In the kitchen,” Lucia called.

  “I’d guessed that,” Kendi called back, inhaling appreciatively.

  The kitchen had transformed into a domestic scene. Thick, spicy smells bubbled from a large pot on the stove. Meat sizzled in a pan next to a kettle of boiling pasta. Golden-brown rolls heaped a serving bowl. Lucia was grating pungent Parmesan cheese into a pale mound.

  “I thought I’d test your kitchen,” Lucia said, “to see if it still worked. And I needed to release some stress.”

  “I’m too nervous to eat,” Ben said, dropping into a chair.

  “What do you know, Lucia?” Kendi asked, tossing his money belt into a corner next to an anonymous-looking canvas satchel.

  Lucia brushed the parmesan into a bowl. “Not much. After we got the blackmail note, I went back to the list of technicians. Eight of them had access to the Poltergeist’s medical computer, and I ran checks on them all. No histories of criminal activity, no questionable background checks, nothing. I’ve interviewed five so far, and—”

  “What did you tell them?” Ben interrupted. “They had to be curious about why you needed to talk.”

  “I only said we were trying to track down a missing file,” Lucia said. “At any rate, the five I talked to claim they didn’t take anything away from the ship, and they didn’t see anything suspicious. They could be lying, of course. I’ll talk to the other three and keep digging. Would you set the table, please? I’m nearly done here.”

  “What is the plan?” Harenn asked as Kendi got out plates and glasses.

  “Very simple.” Lucia stirred the sauce pot, tasted, and sprinkled in green herbs. “The satchel is in the corner. I take it the money is in that belt? Good. After lunch, we’ll put the cash in the satchel, which also has a
bug in it. The blackmailer wants you to toss the money off the walkway in front of that house in Ulikov district, so it’s a good bet someone will be waiting at the bottom of the talltree to catch it and run. I’ll be waiting down there, too, wearing a heat-and-light camouflage outfit. It disguises both me and my heat signature, in case they’re equipped with infra-red seekers. Irfan willing, I’ll be able to follow and catch the blackmailer.”

  “So why the bugs, then?” Ben asked.

  “The bugs are there in case I lose our friend. I’m there in case our friend loses the bugs.”

  “What about us?” Kendi asked. “What do we do after we toss the money?”

  “Go home,” Lucia said. “I intend to tail the culprit and find out if more than one person is involved.”

  “And I?” Harenn asked.

  “You’re pregnant,” Lucia said. “You will stay here.”

  “No heavy lifting,” Kendi said. “I’m sure that applies to sprinting after blackmailers.”

  “And since it seems your kitchen does work, despite many years of neglect,” Lucia said, “we will eat lunch.”

  Although the food smelled delicious and Kendi tried to keep the talk light, no one ate much. Ben barely made a pretense of picking at his food. Kendi forced down a few forkfuls of delicious chick-lizard parmesan and found he didn’t want more. He tried not to worry but couldn’t help it. Any number of things could go wrong with the plan. What if the blackmailer got away and released the information? What if the blackmailer had a weapon and Ben or Lucia got hurt? His chest felt like someone had poured sand and glass into it. Harenn and Lucia ate slowly. The clock said it was barely noon.

  They passed the next hour discussing and rehearsing the plan. Lucia changed into the camouflage outfit. It looked like an ordinary green form-fitting jumpsuit, though it had a hood, gloves, and belt.

  “How will that hide you?” Kendi asked.