Jenna Starborn (48 page)

“Oh, Jenna! Oh, I cannot believe this! You
are
a sister to us, I have always sensed it, but even so, this is wonderful beyond belief!”

And we both leaped from our chairs and hugged each other like twins long separated, and we wept like people to whom joy is so rare that it sometimes feels like sorrow.

“I cannot believe it,” she said, over and over again, first drawing back to study my face for kinship, and then renewing her fervent embrace. “Jenna, we
are
sisters—in spirit, and in history, and perhaps in some kind of true genetic fashion—”

“Oh, would that it were true! That some of our cellular material is the same!”

“We can pretend it is, in any case—”

“And I
feel
as if it were so—”

“If nothing else, we must consider ourselves cousins,” Deborah said at last. “For we are at least as close as that.”

Nothing would do, of course, but that we must go immediately to share the glad news with Maria and Sinclair. Maria reacted much as Deborah had, with exclamations of wonder and many affectionate hugs. Sinclair's gladness was more tempered, but appeared equally genuine.

“I have so few relatives that I am always happy to claim one more, particularly one who has made herself such an intrinsic part of our family already,” he said, crossing the room and taking my hand. “I agree with Deborah—we shall call you cousin and be done with it. Welcome to the family, Jenna,” and he bent down to plant a chaste kiss upon my forehead.

That night we celebrated with a special meal, and the next few days were gilded with a sort of lingering euphoria, but nothing else about our routine changed drastically. The women and I still maintained the house and the dorm and cared for the boarders, while Sinclair spent his days engaged in administrative tasks. In the evenings, we usually gathered in the family room to read, talk, counsel our new residents, play games—or study.

Sinclair had purchased the textbooks I had directed him to buy—for I still had no credit of my own—so very soon I was ready to begin teaching him the basics of nuclear generator maintenance. We sat in one corner of the large room, quietly going over theorems, while the others sat scattered in their various positions in chairs throughout the room. It was not, perhaps, the best possible situation for teaching, but I preferred it to working alone with Sinclair in some more sterile environment. I still found him a formidable figure who was easier to take when diluted by his sisters' presence.

He was a quick learner, for his mind was very agile and his will to understand was extraordinary. He retained every stricture, turned in faultless lessons, and studied on his own in his free time. More than one morning, after I had made my way to my work station in the generator room, I found him there before me, examining the equipment and preparing new questions.

“I begin to think that, very soon, you will need a teacher with greater skills than mine,” I told him one evening. “Perhaps your friend Leopold has a technician on his staff who could take up your training once you have learned all you can from me.”

“I do not think I will need to learn more than you know,” Sinclair replied. “And this is how I wish to acquire knowledge.”

I wondered if this had been intended as a compliment, but I was fairly certain it had been a simple statement of fact with no positive or negative connotation attached to it. And, indeed, if I could truly teach Sinclair everything I knew about generator maintenance, he would be well-equipped for the life Deborah had outlined to me. There might be more he could learn from someone, but he would know enough to survive.

During this period of time, only one event transpired to disturb my equilibrium. It came late one evening, after everyone else had gone to bed and Sinclair and I had spent an extra hour working on a stubborn calculation. When he finally solved it, Sinclair pushed his chair back from his desk and rewarded me with a rare smile.

“Well! If there are not too many problems like that in our next few lessons, I think I shall acquit myself tolerably well,” he said. “I am more impressed all the time at the layers of knowledge that you keep locked up so demurely in your head. To look at you, one would not suspect that the greater part of your brain spends its highest percentage of energy solving mathematical dilemmas that the rest of us cannot comprehend.”

I smiled. “No, indeed, I do not perform math functions for my amusement. Only when I am required to.”

“Speaking of problems, I am faced with one that is not centered around arithmetic,” he said, speaking so calmly that it did not even occur to me that I should be experiencing a sense of panic. “Perhaps you can help me with it.”

“Surely. If I have any knowledge at all, I will be glad to share it.”

He rummaged through the homework papers lying before him and pulled up a sheet that had apparently been printed out from his computer terminal sometime recently. “There is a general notice that has been circulated among the governmental and social services agencies of Appalachia,” he said, still in that ordinary, unalarming voice. “Indeed, I assume it has been sent out to most similar offices on all the outer worlds where colonization is under way. There is a man, a high-grade citizen, who is looking for someone who has disappeared. He seems to think she may have taken refuge on some world which does not look too askance at half-cits without a work history.”

I felt myself growing colder by a degree with every word that left his mouth. He spoke with complete dispassion, so that I could not tell if he expected his words to have any effect on me or not. Did he believe I was a runaway—this runaway—or did he merely think this little tale might have some slight interest for me, a half-cit whose own life had been difficult?

“Who is the man engaged on this quest?” I said, trying desperately to keep my voice steady.

He glanced at the printout. “An Everett Ravenbeck. The notice was issued from Corbramb, but he says the woman disappeared from Fieldstar.” He paused and frowned down at the paper. “Fieldstar. That is quite some distance away from here. A terraformed planet, I believe.”

“Yes, that sounds right,” I managed to say.

He looked up at me again, and his fathomless blue eyes could have held all knowledge or no inkling whatsoever; they were that clear, that unreadable. “He says here that the woman he's looking for is named Jenna Starborn, so you can see why I thought it might be you.”

There was a long silence while I tried to think of a reply. I could not renounce the name that I had so recently claimed; and I could not—I simply could not—bring myself to say aloud “I know no one by the name of Everett Ravenbeck.” Nor could I imagine what course Sinclair Rainey would take if I did admit to being this hunted creature. Would he betray me, would he continue to shelter me, would he demand to know the tangled story of my life before he made his judgment? I merely stared at Sinclair, my face showing I could not guess what despair, and waited.

He dropped his eyes, shuffled his papers together, and laid the notice on the top of the pile. “Well, I suppose there may be any number of women in the settled universe who have the name Jenna Starborn,” was his next unexpected remark. “Just the other day I went onto the StellarNet to search for Sinclair Raineys, and I found ten without even looking very hard. There are probably a dozen or so of you Jenna Starborns traveling through the star systems, and it's likely he will never find the one that's missing.”

I felt as though I had surfaced after a stay too long underwater; I could feel myself struggling to catch my breath. “Yes—no doubt—both given name and surname are quite common,” I said, stammering a little.

“I shall not contact him, then, and raise his hopes,” Sinclair decided. “And everyone else here still knows you by the name Starrin, so I do not think they will be alerting him to your presence. Just as well. We would not want this Everett Ravenbeck to think he has found the woman he is searching for when she most certainly is not on Appalachia.”

Again I was overcome by so much emotion that I could not speak. I did not know how to express my gratitude, for I was not in the habit of giving Sinclair the easy embraces I so often bestowed upon his sisters, and I absolutely could not utter a word. Besides, I was not entirely positive that he was playing a charade just to simplify my life; he might actually believe that I was the wrong Jenna. Sinclair was so guileless it was hard to tell.

“Well, it's quite late, you know,” he said, glancing around the room as if for the first time realizing that everyone else had vacated it. “You have worked doubly hard today, first at your chosen vocation and then at teaching me. Go to bed, Jenna, and sleep well. We shall continue with our studies in the morning.”

And that was the only time he mentioned Everett's name to me; and if he spoke of the incident to his sisters, they did not repeat it. They had called me their cousin, and cousin I had become to them, someone to whom the shelter of the family would be extended for whatever protection it could offer against whatever threat materialized. I wished with all my heart there was some way to pay them back for every kindness, every gesture of affection. I knew I would be as unsparing as they had been if my opportunity arose.

I
n fact, just a week later, I was presented with the most unexpected opportunity to repay my bottomless debt to the Raineys—a way I would not have envisioned if I had spent my life imagining ways I could enrich my own life and the lives of those I loved.

It was evening of a day that I had spent mostly absent from the house. I had journeyed by underground transit to the Joester power company building to invest in some additional parts. I needed these to make minor repairs to the existing equipment, but I also wanted Sinclair to begin handling the actual connectors and cables, and I thought these would be an excellent training tool for him. I rather enjoyed myself, traveling around the city that I had rarely crossed on my own, and taking my time before returning to the house. I did walk by a few shops and think, rather wistfully, what I might buy if I had even a small income. But I was just fantasizing, not repining; I was very well content with what I had in life.

When I returned to the house, I found all three Rainey siblings clustered in the family room, reading a notice on the computer monitor. Sinclair was seated before the computer and scrolling through the text, while his sisters stood behind him, watching the words skip by. They were so engrossed that they did not turn to greet me when I entered, and I instantly sensed that something was amiss.

“Is there news? Bad news?” I asked in some concern.

They all glanced back at me, but only Deborah left her station to come and give me an absentminded hug. “Hello, Jenna. Was your day productive?”

“Yes, very. But you all look so discouraged. Has something untoward occurred?”

Now Maria turned to give me a faint smile. “Oh—not really—we were rather foolish to get our hopes up in the first place. It is just that we have been left out of a legacy we thought we had a chance at. We don't really want for anything, of course, it's just that—well—it's always nice to have a little extra money!”

“But, Deborah! Maria!” I exclaimed. “I have no idea what you are talking about! What legacy? What hope?”

Sinclair, who was still watching the screen, shrugged, and swiveled around to look at me. “Deborah has told you some of our history, I know,” he said. “It is, after all, how we discovered our connection. But perhaps you did not know that the founder of the clinic where the four of us were conceived has recently died.”

“No,” I said, in some bewilderment. “I do not even know who the founder is—or why I should care if he lives or dies.”

Sinclair smiled faintly. “He died a wealthy man—and, strangely enough, a childless one. He was a quirky individual who had trouble forming relationships with anyone, and although, through his efforts, thousands of people were brought into this world, it appears he could not call a single one of them a friend. He did not want his inheritance to go to the tax courts or his only blood relatives—to whom, it will not surprise you to learn, he has not spoken in decades. So he determined his heir by lottery.”

Maria took up the explanation. “About two years ago, when he knew he was getting ill, he began a systematic search for all the individuals who had been harvested at his clinic. He posted notices on the StellarNet and encouraged everyone to send in their current locations and announced that he would choose his heir by drawing a name at random. Naturally, the three of us replied at once, and we have been following the news ever since, wondering when his choice would be made known.”