Mary Rosenblum (10 page)

Ahni smiled, upped the balance due with a tip that made his eyes gleam and eyeballed her signature to the charge. Noted his call number and filed it in short term memory. When she had time for Pause, she’d drop it into her data file. Never knew when you might need a fast, no-questions ride somewhere. He’d drop what he was doing and show up, after this.

The main desk, well staffed, faced the dock. Ahni greeted the small geneselected Han woman behind it in brisk business Mandarin, booked a First Class fare to Edinburgh with custom delivery to destination and an open reservation on any of the Elevators. She booked her own fare to the Huang Family compound. The facilitator realized immediately who she was, Ahni noted with approval. She would have a scanner field covering the customer space in front of the counter so she knew Ahni didn’t wear an ID

chip, and would of course have memorized the faces of the Elite families the company regularly served.

She nodded, acknowledging the woman’s professional service, made a note of her name, to email with appproval to the supervisor here. Ahni accepted the twin trip cards from her and handed Noah his.

“What’s this?” He eyed the card skeptically.

“Give it to anyone wearing a Global Express insignia.” Ahni smiled up at him. “They’ll take you to your grandfather’s door. And when you’re ready to leave, you can contact the service and someeone will come pick you up. You have an open reservation on any of the Elevators for your return trip.”

“Wow.” He looked at the card, then at her. “Who are you, anyway?”

“My family has money.” She shrugged. “They owe you as much as I do.”

He was shaking his head. “I don’t know - I mean this seems like too much. It’s a lot of credit-“

“It’s just money.” She touched his arm. “What you gave me was life. This isn’t enough, but it’s something I can do right now.”

“I still have a hard time getting my head around people just running up to someone and killing them.” He hunched his shoullders. “I’ll be damn glad to get back to civilization.”

She smiled and offered her hand. ”Thank you, Noah,” she said. “If you need assistance while you’re down here, contact Ahni Huang.”

“I’ll remember.” He clasped her hand and smiled, his face relaxing briefly. “I just hope these people speak English,” he said.

“They do. They speak twenty-five languages.” She nodded to the waiting porter. “He’ll take you to your shuttle.”

“Thanks again.” Noah waved and almost grabbed for his tote as the Malay man hefted it, but the porter whisked it out of reach, grinned at Noah, and beckoned. Ahni waved and followed the uniformed woman to the small private skimmer-jet that would take her to the family compound. Her smile faded as she boarded. Time to face her parents.

AHNI LEANED BACK AGAINST THE PADDED SEAT AS THE skimmer-jet circled down to land just offshore from the Huang Family compound. Security had already swept the skimmer and cleared it to land, but she knew that a couple of defensive lasers tarrgeted it. Just in case. The red tile roofs of the large rectangular commpound gleamed bright amongst the lush green of the tropical forest that surrounded the compound on three sides. On the fourth side, white sand and rocks offered swimming and the tide pools of her youth.

The skimmer touched down and settled into the long low swells with barely a jar, drifting precisely up to the family dock. The sun roof had polarized to cast some shade, but it was open to the hot, humid Taiwan air. Ahni hopped out, offered the pilot a cash card. The woman refused with a bow, climbed back into the craft and touched it to life as Security hurried out to meet her. The hard-eyed Captain offered a welcoming bow, greetings, and a careful observation of the skimmer.

Ahni returned the woman’s greeting absently, her eyes on the pale brick walls of the compound. Built in the classic old-northern courtyard style, the family apartments, roofed with the traditional red tiles, enclosed a central garden. No weather canopy kept out the rain or heat, by her mother’s decree. This time of day and season, sun poured into the courtyard, turning the still air beneath the leaves of bananas and bamboo and carefully pruned plum trees steamy hot and rich with the smells of home. Ahni drew a deep breath, reaching for calm.

Beyond the family compound beach grasses carpeted the low shore with emerald. Here and there, remains of ancient Buddhist gravesites poked above the tall grass, red tile roofs and pink and cream facades, ornate, sheltered alters where families had once gathered to leave gifts on appropriate dates.

Many of them had been abandoned, but the Huang family paid to keep the walls freshly painted and the roof tiles repaired.

Here, along the sweep of coast dominated by the family commpound, time seemed to have stopped centuries ago. A small fishing village occupied the end of the perfect half -moon bay, an ancient concrete dock jutting out into the water on its jetty, dozens of its small blue and white boats clustered along tie-ups, bare chested men tossing handwoven and plastic baskets of silvery fish and crabs up onto the dock itself, children in shorts and thongs running and shouting dogs fighting with the gulls for scraps. The sloped temple roof of the fish market was white with gulls and a dragon kite sailed overhead. But solar or clean-fusion powered the boats now and you could safely eat the shellfish from the bay. The fish in those baskets were counted and the harvest carefully controlled. At night, a hundred public cleaners scoured the old dock. The oceans were healthy again, and that had taken a planet-wide cooperation, spearheaded by the aggressive Gaiist Movement.

Taking a deep breath, Ahni turned away from the view, calming her breathing, gathering her awareness to a fine point. “Are my parents in residence?” she asked Security.

“Your mother.” The woman bowed. “Your honored father will return later today.” She ushered Ahni through the arched main gate and into the steamy courtyard .

Ahni bowed her head in thanks, walked down the narrow path thick with blossoms to her mother’s private sitting room, the scent of jasmine heavy in the air. She ducked beneath a bower twined with the glossy green leaves and white sprays of jasmine flowers, paused and picked a sprig.

White. The color of death.

The wooden shutters had been folded back from the broad windows, and a tiny bird hopped up onto the sill from the room within before fluttering away. Even in typhoon season, her mother rarely activated the weather screen or closed the shutters unless a storm threatened to come directly onshore. Now the faintest of breezes stirred the intricately knotted hangings of linen thread and carved jade beads that hung as a screen in the open windows. Ahni slipped off her sandals and ducked through the strands of silk and carved jade that curtained the door, the stony clack of the jades an echo of childhood.

Her mother stood at her loom, knotting an intricate tracery of fine silk thread and jade beads in shades of pink and white and palest green. Her simple sheath of polished cotton in a creamy tan contrasted with her tawny skin. Behind her, a vid window shimmered with constantly changing images of ocean and beach above the polished stone slab scattered with unfinished pieces of jade and the laser carving tools she used. Framed panels of antique fabric, intricate piece work in rich colors that had once been a treasured family heirloom passed from mother to daughter, perhaps a tunic or a wedding coat, hung on the walls. Intent on her weaving, her mother’ face might have been carved from golden jade by a master crafter, her high cheekbones shadowing the strong lines of her face. Her long dark hair, untouched by gray, hung in a thick tail to the middle of her back, caught at the nape of her neck by a strip of green silk.

As the jade strings clacked and rattled behind her, Ahni’s moth stepped from behind her loom and came to greet her daughter, hands outstretched, dark eyes fathomless pools above her welcoming smile.

“You’re back. Daughter, I have missed you!” She hugged Ahni briefly and hard. “Tea?” She turned away, ushering Ahni to the end of the long room furnished in carved teakwood covered with hand woven raw silk cushions. An antique Ming teapot already steamed a tray with two cups and a wooden bowl of dried fish and nuts. A plain white bowl of salted plums accompanied the savory snacs and Ahni smiled.

Trust her mother to offer her favorite childhood treat. “A new project?” Ahni nodded at the half-finished hanging.

“An invitation from a London gallery.”

“I saw one of your hangings in the NYUp Arrival Hall,” Ahni said. “Your fame extends beyond the surface of the planet.”

“All women have woven, forever.”

The bitterness behind her mother’s words narrowed Ahni’s eyes, but her mother’s face betrayed no emotion as she handed Ahni a cup of tea, both hands cupping the fragile bowl. Ahni breathed the rising steam and saw Xai in that NYUp hotel room, offering her tea.

“I did not know that your father sent you in his place. It was his duty to risk himself. Not yours.”

Ahni reached for a salted plum. Fear lay beneath her mother’s anger. Why fear? “I could not do as he instructed,” she said carefully.

Her mother leaned forward and set her cup down very carefully on the teakwood table. “Tell me,” she said.

“Xai is … not dead.” Until this moment she had not been sure how much she would say and how much she would leave out. But under her mother’s steady gaze she recited the details of her encounter with her half-twin, her eyes fixed on the plum staining her fingertips red.

When she finished, her mother was silent. Angry but … not suprised. She already knew Xai lived, Ahni realized with a sense of shock.

“He has chosen his own path,” she said finally. Birds called and chirped in the quadrangle and somewhere, someone closed a door with a muted thump.

“What is going on here?” Ahni asked.

“Your father is drunk on DNA.” Hatred edged the words. “He is a smart man, but when his precious DNA is concerned, his brain turns to water and seeps from his pores. And he has created Xai in his own image. He had no use for you, or for any other child we might have. Your father and Xai deserve each other!” She rose, back rigidly straight. “You will not tell your father that his precious clone-self lives.”

”What?” Shocked, Ahni rose to her feet. “How can I not?”

“Xai has chosen to walk his own path.” Her mother stood straight, her head up. “I was a bed for him and nothing more. A breast. There is none of
me
in him. And I have watched your father lose clarity of sight.

Because of that strand of his DNA that I nurtured.” Her eyes gleamed, cold and polished as the jade stones she carved and wove. “I have groomed you to be your father’s heir. You are a better heir than his dream of immortality. You
are
his heir and we will make this so.
You will not tell him
. I did not give up my life to see him throwaway the family for the love of his own image.”

Ahni stood, her mind bruised by these cold-stone words. ”
Xai is not dead
. Mother.”

“He has chosen to die to his father.” Her mother looked at her for the space of three heartbeats. Then, to Ahni’s horror, she fell to her knees. “I gave up my life.” She looked up at Ahni. “This” will make it a trade of value. If you do as I ask. Ahni, it is the right thing.”

Ahni looked down at the blue and white tea bowl in her hands, regarded the pale sheen of bone in her knuckles, and wondered that the eggshell-thin porcelain had not cracked. Very carefully she set the Ming bowl down on the carved table and fled her mother’ apartment.

Her feet carried her along the raked gravel of the path past the carefully maintained plantings, treading an automatic path. Whe she reached the path to her door, she hesitated, then turned instead to her brother’s rooms.

Wooden shutters closed the windows, painted a dull glossy red, the color of drying blood. She put her hand on the door, waited while it analyzed her biochemistry, skin texture, and vitals. It swang open and she walked into shadow. “Light,” she said and blinked, her eyes dazzled by the multiple broad spectrum lights that flooded the room with artificial sunlight. Where her mother let in the world, Xai preferred to create his own. Beyond thick glass, an aged, albino Ball Python reared a thick, pale head, it’s tongue flicking, disturbed by the light. In the huge herpetarium a half dozen snakes lived, thrived, and sometimes ate one another. The Ball Python had been his first and favorite, a gift on his fifth birthday. A rabbit nibbled on greens in one corner. She looked around at his neatly made bed, the holodesk in front of the near wall, the dustless perfection of every surface. She had not been in this room since the day she had heard the news. “Why?” she whispered. “What have you done to all of us?” But he had not done this, she realized in a moment of clarity. This path had been laid for him from the moment of his implantation. And her own path?

The python struck silently, thick coils wrapping the rabbit in a heartbeat. It shrieked once, high and shrill, then it’s eyes bulged as tightened and crimson blood burst from its quivering nose.

Ahni turned away.

Something was missing. She frowned, glancing around the spotless room. Something … She closed her eyes, calling up a vision of her brother’s room from the past.

The medallion.

She blinked, turning to stare at the space where it had hung above his bed, a small circle of silver, the highest academic award bestowed by Taiwan after its annual Exams. Their father had received it at the public ceremony in Tai Pei, had hung it beaming around Xai’s neck. It was the ultimate symbol of The Huang’s pride in his self-son. “Fan,” she said aloud. “Would you come here, please”

A handful of moments later, Fan Fujin appeared in the doorway, her broad Northern face apprehensive.

“Is something wrong Elder Sister?” she asked. A peripheral relative, she lived and worked as maid in the Huang compound. “I cleaned this room just this morning. Did I do a poor job?” She drew herself up, prepared to be affronted.

“It’s spotless. As usual.” Ahni shook her head. “Xai’s medallion is missing. I wonder when he took it down. Do you remember?”