by Lee, Cara
Wynne's face abruptly felt cold. She had used Bridge's tablet to research the court case that got Instructor Smith deported to the colony, and with Bridge not being to Dyad yet, of course Auntie Sea would be involved in any questioning. "Back?"
Her mother shrugged casually, but that wasn't reassuring. Her mother was intelligent enough to fake body language if she wanted to. "Oh, just some Secumen investigating Bridge, again. That girl needs a good, solid boy to settle her."
Wynne wouldn't wish her cousin on 'a good, solid boy', but she nodded to be polite. Bridge truthfully wasn't at fault this time, if she were reading the situation aright, but Wynne had to keep her tongue and trust that it would work out in the end.
"Did you get your homework done?"
She considered all the little details that were building up to make her downright terrified of her future, and she looked her mother straight in the eye. "Yes."
That was the first time she could remember intentionally lying to her mother.
She also got away with it.
****
The next morning, Wynne awoke early feeling exhausted, but more from sleeping poorly than from getting less sleep than usual, though there was that, too. She picked up her tablet from its shelf beside her bed. She pinged the previous day's homework to her various instructors, and she took the early-morning opportunity to get her math homework done, if nothing else.
She couldn't let her grades slip, and not only because it would look suspicious. Wynne had worked hard to keep up with Hector in their classes, and in most of them, she'd succeeded in making him work for valedictorian. She wasn't about to give that up now.
By the time her alarm rang for her to get breakfast two hours later, she'd gotten half her load done, which made her wonder if the instructors had conspired to give less homework than usual, on account of her missing tablet.
Or maybe she just worked incredibly efficiently in the morning. Or maybe my mind just isn't awake enough yet to do things properly.
In any event, she'd figure out which it was once she got her grades back.
Bridge and Auntie Sea were at breakfast, with her cousin being as sullen and her aunt being as gregarious as usual. They didn't volunteer what Bridge's questioning had been about, and Wynne dared not ask. She'd never asked before, and her mother and aunt would notice if she did now, so she spent breakfast researching uses of bamboo and tablet alternatives. She hadn't known the colony had an entire bamboo habitat and that the bamboo was used for everything from clothing to food.
She found some ideas to toy with for producing off-network notes, too. Now, to figure out how to spin them so they don't make me sound worth watching as a potential traitor.
Otherwise, the day progressed fairly normally, although Wynne was getting her homework done right before class started and Hector didn't show up until midway into Culture Studies class, bleary-eyed and tottering as if he'd not slept all night.
Seeing Hector exhausted was as weird as the previous week's fit of temper had been. Wynne caught herself staring as he lowered himself into his seat, and she looked away. Most of her other classmates were still goggling at him, but Josiah Cleanuman was among the few who was politely minding his attention elsewhere.
She smiled at him. He flushed and looked away from her.
Even Instructor Smith was studying Hector, his usual irritable scowl replaced by a pitying frown. Their instructor noticed her watching him and cleared his expression, sending the usual scowl her way.
Wynne smiled at him, too. He snorted and resumed class.
****
At recess afterwards, Wynne intentionally followed Hector into the same niche in the sound-blocking settings of the wallfield. She waited for him to sit, pull out his tablet, and rest it against his knees before she asked, "You okay?"
He stared at his tablet for a long moment and adjusted his glasses, not looking up.
He didn't answer, either.
Rather than pry, she sat nearby and waited. He'd pulled the silent-waiting game on her in the library, the previous week. Turnabout was fair play.
Even if he hadn't ever given her the just desserts for dubbing him with that 'Four-Eyes' nickname.
Attention still on his tablet — and starting to tap the screen to do something — he sighed quietly, just a breath of air. "Don't make a habit of commandeering Bridge's tablet," he murmured.
"Oh, I won't," she promised readily, though she found herself wondering what connection there was between that and his current fatigue. "I was thinking, last night."
He paused, then resumed whatever he was doing on his tablet, one hand fiddling with his glasses. "I'd expect you to be thinking every night."
The joke nonplussed her at first, then she decided against sticking out her tongue at her future governor. "Sometimes, a person needs to scribble something that would be better kept off the network. A Layuman drafting out blueprints, for example — keeping the drafting process off the network would prevent accidental uses of the wrong blueprint." It wasn't common, but it happened on occasion, and the resources to fix such errors were expensive. It made a decent argument.
He adjusted his glasses again. "We don't have enough wood for paper, and the bamboo gets used elsewhere."
Wynne found it interesting that paper was the first possibility he thought of, but that he immediately came up with suggestions probably meant that he liked the way she'd spun it, though she didn't think it enough of one for her suggestion to actually be authorized for production.
"What about whiteboard?" The plastics involved seemed easy enough to make, and the resource expenditure to get one would be obvious enough to maybe keep the powers-that-be happy, because they could track whoever had one.
Hector blinked at her, then resumed fiddling with his glasses.
She bit her lip so she wouldn't smile, pleased that she'd actually managed to surprise Hector Primuman the Fourth. "Bad idea?"
"Good one, actually. Come up with that today?"
She shrugged. "This morning at breakfast." She wasn't bragging, she was just—
Okay. She was bragging. She wasn't as freakishly intelligent as Hector, but she could hold her own.
He nodded and scribbled something on his tablet. He studied it a moment, then looked up at her, his eyes scanning as if he were able to read her face like a page. "Thanks."
Wynne nodded once, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. "I'm, um…?" Due to the spy cams, she didn't dare ask if his current exhaustion was her fault. "Any way I can help?"
Hector blinked again. Either she was on a roll today, or he was slower than usual, in his fatigue.
She stood and brushed herself off. "Sorry. I'll — just go."
He smiled — sadly, she thought, so she paused.
He shook his head. "Probably best."
It took her a moment to follow that he meant it would be best for her to leave him be, though he still looked terrible, and it was probably her fault. Somehow. Thanks to all the hints he was dropping to help her figure out what was off about their colony.
Cold washed through her again. "Okay. Um. Thanks."
Wynne went to another niche of the soundfield to finish her science homework.
****
Classes ended for the day, and Hector flinched before he picked up his tablet and started for the door. She stared after him, noticing a stiffness in how he moved. He wasn't about to have another seizure, was he?
Josiah Cleanuman paused beside her. "He's your partner, then?"
Wynne jumped and turned on him, startled. "What?"
Red tinged his cheeks, as if his words had come out differently than he intended. "I mean, for the debut…"
Warmth flooded her. He was referring to the coming-of-Dyad party, not Partnering. "Um." She swallowed hard. Debut partners were usually arranged the year before, with fifteen-year-olds alerting whomever they were interested in on the Mid Year's before the Dyad debut. "No. I mean, I hadn't even thought about the debut yet."
"Oh." The red
remained, making Josiah look adorable in a way that he probably wouldn't find flattering. "Well. I'd be interested." He raised his chin and met her gaze, though he was red from neck to hair. "Just so you know."
Josiah Cleanuman was sweet on her, enough so to say something months early?
Then again, he was from tier five families. He probably figured that being the first one to say something would give him a sporting chance with the tier three girl with a tier two paterline.
It was actually pretty smart of him, when she thought about it. "Thanks for letting me know." Though she'd noticed his crush, she wouldn't have thought anything of it, if he'd held his tongue. "I'll keep that in mind."
"Really?" Cleanuman — Josiah; he wouldn't necessarily be a Cleanuman forever — must’ve expected to be shot down.
"Really." Wynne smiled at him. He was a nice guy, just not as smart as her or Hector.
Sure, she was planning to leave the Arzon colony as soon as she could, but she could easily change her mind in the future. Why needlessly alienate him?
****
Wynne was still smiling about Josiah's interest when she got home.
Her mother was at the table, making broad strokes on her tablet that Wynne recognized as likely working on a blueprint. "Got your homework done?"
She frowned at the odd question. "I just got home, Mom."
"Oh?" Her mother looked her way, studied her a moment, then returned her attention to her tablet, tapping the screen that meant she was likely closing what she was working on and opening something else. "Navy or ultramarine?"
"What?" Was that question supposed to make sense?
Her mother showed her tablet screen, which displayed two possibilities for a dress design in those two shades of blue.
Wynne blinked.
"Your debut's not all that long away. Might as well get the plans in place now. Wouldn't want to be like some tier five, scrabbling to cobble a dress together at the last minute."
"Um." Wynne smiled weakly, unnerved by how quickly news evidently spread. "Mom, I just told Josiah I'd think about it."
Her mother frowned at her. "What are you talking about?"
"What are you talking about?" Wynne returned, bewildered. "Josiah just let me know that he's interested for debut — which is the first time it's been talked about, like, ever. So where's this coming from?"
Her mother stared at her as if she were the insane one. "Josiah?"
"Cleanuman? Comes in third in a few of my classes?"
And a downright appalled expression appeared on her mother's face. "No. You are not taking up with some tier five—"
"He's smart enough to test out of it, Mom—"
"No," her mother repeated, firmly. "You're too smart for the likes of him. There's only one young man who can keep up with that brain of yours, and he deserves a tier two wife."
Hector. Wynne's mouth felt dry, and she was a little scared by how easily she followed what her mother was thinking. "Mom—"
"You're plenty clever enough to join your paterline. You've already shown promise as an Imaguman."
"Mom!" Wynne cut in. "I don't like Hector!"
"Be reasonable," her mother retorted. "You're a smart girl, and you'll be dissatisfied with anything less than a smart man. Hector will be perfect for you. I'm sure his father will tell him the same thing."
Probably already did, she thought, considering how Hector had been acting around her lately. She got a sudden mental image of her mother conspiring with his father, cackling about how they would set up their children as a couple.
Of course, the governor could readily activate that 'for the good of the colony' proviso of the charter and bypass courtship altogether. Even Hector wouldn't be able to interfere with that, so far as she knew.
"He's just waiting for the proper day to alert you to his interest."
And taking every opportunity to warn me and scare my boots off.
"Just remember, the third time's the charm. He'll have your heart by then, I'm sure, clever young man that he is. Now, for the dress — blue's his color, so which shade?" Her mother patted her on the arm.
The next thing Wynne knew, she was in bed for the night, having picked ultramarine blue and the less disliked of the style options her mother had shown her, done her homework, and eaten supper.
Despite all her reservations, despite his warnings, despite her conviction that she was fleeing the colony as soon as she could — she felt perfectly convinced that her mother was right: She was the perfect Partner for Hector.
She didn't want to be his Partner. She didn't like him that way.
She was afraid of him.
But despite all her logic, intentions, convictions, and emotions that meant she saw Hector as a rival and only tentatively as an ally, she felt right for him.
Just as her mother had said she was.
He'd known she was curious about Instructor Smith, before she'd ever said anything or looked it up. He'd known, and he'd told her exactly what she'd needed to be able to find out.
He'd been trying to tell her. The 'slip-ups', the answers to questions she'd thought but not asked, the fit of temper that she somehow now thought every bit as well-considered as everything else he'd said to her.
The seizure, the freeze-ups, the non sequiturs…
Psychic. He was psychic. And when he'd started saying something that someone else had thought too much, they'd triggered a seizure without touching him. Could've been tech or some kind of telepathy, but she found herself suspecting the latter, like that presumably forgotten 'appointment' had been preceded by his freeze-up in class. Getting a telepathic message, maybe?
She still didn't like him, but…
Wynne found herself wondering: How long until her mother made her feel that, too?
Uncharmed
Debut dawned like every day had since the night Wynne had become explicably, irrevocably terrified of everyone past Tetrad. In her head, not her tablet — never her tablet — she'd confirmed that many colonists died after age thirty-two, with some genders being more likely to survive in various families than others, so she figured she didn't have to watch what she thought around most people younger than that.
But older? She minded her thoughts more than she even did around Hector.
It wasn't that she didn't trust him. She did, since they were allies, and they hung out a lot, because that was the main way she could think of that would keep her mother from forcing her to like him more than she did.
It was that Hector would alert her when she was doing a good job hiding her thoughts. Wynne had cultivated a love of the atomic elements, and she frequently kept a recitation of atomic abbreviations, numbers, and weights going in her head. Her dreams tended to include weird renditions of the periodic table, but Hector had said it worked.
Well, inasmuch as he could tell her things directly. It was always possible for her to misunderstand him, but he was skilled at framing his comments so they both answered her thoughts and didn't sound as if he was doing that, to anyone who didn't know what she was thinking. It did end up awkward, though, because she didn't want to give the spy cams anything to notice, and she didn't want him to end up with another seizure, on her account.
So mainly she got up, did her homework in the hours before breakfast — turned out, she was very much a morning person; even her math grades improved, though Hector still stayed just ahead of her — ate, went to school, loitered in a habitat or snack shop, went home. Sometimes went to a fantasy movie.
The morning of debut, though, was different. All the debutantes had finished their testing the day before, and that morning they were for preparing for the debut so they presumably wouldn't fret over the grades that they'd receive the following day, grades that would determine which families and tiers they qualified for, grades that they'd only have half a day to consider before they had to choose which family they'd spend the rest of their lives serving.
Wynne hugged herself as Bridge screeched and giggled while Auntie Sea pul
led the curlers out of her hair. Auntie Sea had offered to do the same to Wynne's hair, but she'd politely refused; her hair was already wavy. No need to curl it more.
She was a bit curious about her dress, though. Her mother had ordered it two years before, and she still hated it. She'd even found one with a color and style she liked more than the ruffly, off-the-shoulder one her mother had essentially picked for her, but she'd decided against trying to change her mother's mind.
Her mother likely would've just made Wynne want to wear the original dress anyway.
The curiosity came from an… experiment she'd attempted. It was possible that Hector was perceptive rather than telepathic, with Wynne's assumptions just being her reading into things. She and Hector had somehow ended up chatting about the debut — he'd brought it up, she remembered now, saying his father wanted him to take her — and she'd said her mother had already ordered the dress.
He'd patiently paged through thousands of photos of dresses, so she could point it out to him. If she'd read his pause right, he'd been as appalled as she was. She did not like showing that much skin, not after her mother had made her want to wear the black minidress that had somehow ended up her play costume, two years earlier, though Wynne had distinctly recalled ordering something with more fabric. She'd focused on a dress and color she wished her mother would've let her order: a burgundy one that would cover her from neck to toe, leaving the arms bare. Didn't say anything; just thought about it. She never looked it up, either, so there were no records on any tablet she used.
Her mother pulled out the package with Bridge and Wynne's dresses, opened it, and yelped, dropping it. "What is this? It isn't— Sea! Why'd you change my daughter's order on me? This is terrible."
"I didn't," Auntie Sea insisted. She picked up Bridge's dress to help her daughter put it on. "It'll look good on her, though."
Her mother scowled at the dress and gave Wynne a reassuring pat on the shoulder.
Suddenly feeling that yes, it was terrible, Wynne stared at the deep red fabric. If not for her mother’s manipulation of her emotions, she thought she would feel awed. Relieved.