Offspring (14 page)

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.

Lucia smiled and tapped one cuff. The suit swirled into a leafy design. Another tap, and it shimmered into desert coloring. “The hood has a one-way mask on it, so I don’t even have to wear make-up,” she said. “I’ll leave now so I can find a good vantage point.”

“Are you licensed for a weapon?” Kendi asked.

Lucia patted a belt compartment. “I can carry a neuro-pistol, stun-level only. I will see you down there.”

“Actually, we won’t see you,” Kendi said. “I hope.”

“Yes.” Lucia touched her collarbone, the place where she usually wore a small figurine of Irfan. “Mother Irfan will bless us, Fa—Kendi.”

And she left. Kendi and Ben waited half an hour, then followed. Outside, the carpenters had finished the staircases and were dismantling the two walkways. Susan Bayberry, the brown-haired supervisor, called out an apology.

“We should be done in a few hours, sir,” she said from across the gap. The polymer mesh underneath held a few dropped pieces of wood and a resin gun. Visible through the mesh were leaves, branches, and lower walkways. One of the carpenters drew a small pistol from his belt and aimed it downward. An orange beam of light touched the resin gun, and it flew upward. With a practiced motion, the carpenter shut off the beam and caught the errant gun. A sticky bead of resin clung to the end like a bit of liquid amber.

“Do you want me to show you how to use the stair bridges now?” Bayberry asked.

“Later,” Kendi said distractedly. “We should be back soon. Leave instructions if you don’t see us.”

Without waiting for an answer, he and Ben trotted down the stairs which wound around the talltree. Ben carried the bag over one shoulder. Dirty gray clouds dragged across the sky, pushing ahead of them an omen of cold rain. Tree lizards chittered and chirped in a cheerful counterpoint to Kendi’s mood. A brown bark lizard hissed indignantly at them, then scampered up the talltree with a flick of its tail.

On the front balcony of the house below, an older woman built like a hickory walking stick was scooping soil from a sack into a large pot. A flat of sky-blue blossoms waited nearby. The house itself groaned with plants and flowers. Hanging baskets spilled vines over their sides. Window boxes burst with bright colors. Ivy crawled up the walls. Pots of all sizes boasted a rainbow of flowers and greenery. Kendi tried to slip past the woman without attracting her attention, but she looked up and caught sight of the two men. Kendi tried not to grimace. He liked his neighbor, but he wasn’t in the mood to talk. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to be rude.

“Grandmother Mee,” he said, pressing fingertips to forehead.

“Father Kendi,” she replied. Dirt smudged her cheeks. “And Mr. Rymar. Is all that hammering up there for you?”

“We’re having some work done,” Kendi replied. “I hope they didn’t disturb you. They should be done soon.”

She waved a brown hand. “No bother. It’s something different to wonder about. Now that I’ve been Silenced, all I have are my flowers and neighborhood gossip.”

“We’re in something of a hurry, Grandmother,” Ben said, shifting the satchel.

“Off with you, then,” she said to Kendi’s relief. “But stop back and tell me what’s going on in the Dream sometime, would you? I miss it.”

“I will, Grandmother,” Kendi promised, and let Ben lead him away.

The monorail station was a wide platform supported by the massive branches of the talltree and partly supported by thick cables drilled into the trunk itself. A pair of tracks snaked away through the leaves and branches for trains that ran in opposite directions. About a dozen people, both human and Ched-Balaar, awaited the next train. According to Kendi’s ocular implant, it would arrive in the next three minutes.

“How are you holding up?” Kendi murmured to Ben.

“I’m upright,” Ben said. “That’s the best I can do right now.”

Kendi wanted to smash something. Instead he turned and looked up the track to see if the train was coming. It wasn’t, of course.

“Excuse me, aren’t you Father Kendi?”

Three people at the monorail station—two human and one Ched-Balaar—asked for his autograph. A fourth tried to convince him to buy into an investment program for a fried chick-lizard franchise, and Kendi had to snarl at him before he would go away.

“Maybe we should get our own flitcar after all,” Ben said as the train finally whooshed into the station like a silent dragon.

“Just filling out the forms will take months,” Kendi replied sourly. “Though I’m starting to think the same thing.”

They boarded and found seats in the section for humans. Ched-Balaar sat on the floor and hooked their front claws into footholds designed for that purpose. Two of them chattered quietly to teach other, arms waving as one of them made a point. Kendi automatically sat next to the window, and Ben took the position next to the aisle. This cut down on the number of people on the train who might see and recognize the famous Kendi Weaver, and when had sitting like this become a habit?