Shockball (14 page)

He nodded, and sat down with me. His expression changed slightly when he saw what I’d programmed for him. “Serada? But how—”

I gave him a steely-eyed look. “Don’t ask. Just eat.”

We ate together companionably, and eventually the drone seemed to lose interest, because it went to perform maintenance on the ruined treadmill. Reever lingered over his herbal tea as I cleaned up our servers.

Why are you blocking your thoughts from me?

I nearly dropped the dirty plates.
Because I don’t want you to know the kind of homicidal fantasies I have
.

My own are probably worse.

They were—he’d seen more horrible things than I had—but I wasn’t abandoning my only good excuse.

Reever, I’ve never been completely comfortable with the way you can access my thoughts. Right now they’re kind of ugly
. That was the truth.
Do you mind so much if I keep that away from you
?

Reever looked at the drone.
He intends to kill me, you know
.

I knew. How, I couldn’t say, but Joe would kill him, and soon. If only I could somehow fake his death, the way I had with the Aksellans on Catopsa…

I looked at a drone passing by the panel. It was the same model used in hospitals, and that gave me an idea.

Reever, if I get one of the lab drones in here tonight, and disable it, can you reprogram it to help us escape?

Your creator monitors us through them.

No, actually, I don’t think he does. He downloaded their data banks this morning; if they were on output monitor, he wouldn’t have bothered.

What about the recording drones inside the lab?

I’m going to have a sudden attack of modesty and get Joe to agree to put up privacy screens in our rooms. The dark will do the rest. Well?

If you can disable it without damaging the power supply system, I can reprogram it.

I grinned, leaned over, and kissed him.
Then we’re in business
.

An hour later I wasn’t thinking about escaping or disabling drones or even Reever. Joe had me hooked up to a nervous-system analysis unit, usually reserved for diagnosing and treating paralysis victims. I was being bombarded with stimulation pulses sent through a tight alloy webbing he’d wrapped me in.

The effect was like getting stabbed by thick needles—thousands of them—over and over.

I hadn’t resisted until after the first preliminary test was done, and I thought I was getting off the table.

Joe had used restraints when I tried to roll off the table, and told me to get comfortable.

That had been about thirty minutes ago.

Oh, God
. I twisted in vain, trying to avoid the continuous, red-hot pinpoints of pain.
How much longer do I have to take this
?

“Probably an hour or two,” a familiar voice said. “Considering what he did to you when you were a toddler, this is a walk in the park.”

Maggie.

Unlike the other times I’d gotten a cerebral visit from my maternal influencer, I wasn’t overjoyed to hear her inside my head. She’d been a part of this, and had some other bizarre plans for me. I’d discovered during our last little reunion that she hadn’t even been Terran, but an alien.

I didn’t feel like talking to a dead alien’s ghost, especially one who had subliminally programmed herself to pop into my synaptic recesses whenever I was under tremendous stress.

Get lost, Maggie.

“Is that any way to talk to your mother?” She didn’t sound upset, just amused.

I gritted my teeth as the stimulation pulses increased in strength and duration.
You’re not my mother
.

“I’m the only one you ever knew.”

You’re an alien who helped him, lied to me, got paid for it, and died before I could find out what you’d done. As a mother, Maggie, you stink.

The dark well that would lead me to Maggie opened up behind my eyes. “Come on, kiddo. Do you really want to throw a tantrum when you could be finding out more answers?”

Answers? All you do is drop lousy hints and make worse jokes.

“This time I have the real deal for you, baby.”

One last time. I’d let her draw me in, one last time, and if she didn’t deliver, I’d find a way to purge her damn subliminals out of my head.

All right.

I dropped into the warm, safe darkness that smelled faintly of Maggie’s illegal tobacco and the distinctly bawdy perfume she’d worn for special occasions.

I landed right in the middle of my sixteenth birthday party.

“Cherijo, I’m so happy for you!” Muriel Foster, the wife of one of my father’s Medtech instructors, was holding my cheeks between her frail, arthritic hands. She smelled of talcum and Earl Grey tea. “You’re going to be the youngest graduate we’ve ever had— and off to your internship tomorrow, too!” She let go and turned to her silver-haired husband. “James, aren’t you proud of our little doctor?”

James Foster beamed at me, too. “I certainly am; she shows great promise. Now all you have to do, young woman, is follow in your father’s footsteps. You won’t have trouble finding them, big as they are.”

Before I could tell the Fosters what I thought of my “father,” Maggie came up alongside me. The sight of her low-cut, too-tight burgundy party dress made Muriel gasp, and James’s grin widen. “Mind if I steal the birthday girl away from you two for a minute?”

My paid companion hustled me away to the banquet area, and thrust a plate in my hands. “Here.You need to eat something.”

“Let’s skip the usual song and dance, shall we?” I threw the plate to the floor, and suddenly the par-tygoers vanished, leaving me alone with Maggie. “Get on with it.”

“Hanging around those big blueberry guys has made you real feisty, Joey girl.” She picked up an open bottle of my father’s most expensive spicewine, and took a swig. “Daddy’s princess mad at me because she was stupid enough to get caught and have her butt hauled back to Frankenstein’s lab?”

“I don’t need this.” I knocked the bottle from her hands and pushed her back. “You can go back to whatever hellhole you crawled out of.”

“Well, well.” Something like admiration gleamed in her eyes. “Feisty and then some. My little girl, all grown up and ready to kick ass. About time, I say. As for hell, sweetie, I’ve been there, and to tell you the truth, it doesn’t suck as much as you’d think.”

She thought everything was funny. That only made me angrier. “
What
do you
want
!”

“I want you to serve your purpose.” She used a reasonable tone. The same one she’d used to get me to go along with whatever my father had wanted me to do. “The purpose you were created specifically to undertake and fulfill.”

Whenever her vocabulary improved, it made me nervous. “And that would be… ?”

“Soooorrrry.” She patted her mouth, faking a yawn. “Couldn’t risk corrupting the data with the subliminals I downloaded into your head. They’re a bit too unstable to trust. You’ll find everything you need in Joe’s house.”

“What is it?
Where
is it?”

“Discs. I put them in your little treasure box.”

“How did you know about that?”

“Oh, honey, you thought you were being so clever.” She grabbed a chilled shrimp from the banquet table and popped it in her mouth. “I had to edit the room vids every time you pulled that little box out so Joe wouldn’t confiscate it.”

“When did you put them in there?”

“The day before I was hospitalized for the last time.”

Then she’d gone and died on me a week later. It had broken my heart—but I was getting over it. Fast. “All right. I’ll get them, if I can.” I tapped my foot on the polished oak floor. “Are we done?”

“No. We need to talk about a few more things. Like, why you lied to Reever, and why you ever thought, even for a moment, of letting Joseph fix your baby problem.”

“Let’s see: Reever is none of your business. My fertility is none of your business. End of talk. Can I go?”

She got a wistful expression. “You really thought it’s the only way you’d have a child? Or is it that you love him that much?”

“Your species must be incredibly stupid. Yes to both. I want a child, and I really love Reever. Can I go now?”

“What’s your hurry? The party’s just started.” She waved a hand, and music started playing in the background. “Do you remember Christopher Hamilton? The son of that podiatrist who worked in the office next to Joe’s old downtown practice? You had a crush on him when you were… eleven, right?”

“Twelve. So what?”

“Poor boy came here one afternoon asking to see you. Apparently it was a two-way crush. Joe took him into his study, and told him you not only didn’t like him, but you thought his overbite was repulsive.”

“What? How come no one ever told me Chris was here?” I was stunned. “And I
loved
his overbite. That was what made him so cute.”

“Exactly.” Maggie trailed her finger down my nose and tapped the end once. “The kid went home, totally crushed, so I gave Joe a piece of my mind. That’s when your dad told me what he had planned for you. I talked him into waiting until you’d had a chance to mature and experience life.”

She’d known he wanted to use me as some kind of incubator. “Thanks. Thanks for nothing.” Nauseated, I looked around. “How the hell do I get out of here?”

“Joe had planned to breed you for the first time when you turned sixteen.” Maggie patted my cheek as I gaped. “That night, I stepped up my plan to get you off Terra. I’m sorry that I died before I could finish making all the arrangements. But you got away, that was the important thing.”

More cryptic hints. “Why are you telling me this? So I’ll be grateful to you, and do whatever it is that’s involved in this ‘purpose’ you keep babbling about?”

“Didn’t you wonder why he didn’t try this before? I kept him distracted, away from you. Believe me, baby girl, it was
not
the happiest ten years of my life.”

Maybe I didn’t want to think of her as my mother, but it was obvious she did. She’d somehow gotten the maternal instinct to protect, anyway.

That didn’t make up for the rest of what she’d done. “Okay. So I owe you one. I’ll find your discs and I’ll listen to them and I’ll try to do whatever it is you want. Satisfied?”

“I’ll have to be, won’t I?” She snapped her fingers, and a tall, black-haired boy appeared next to her. He had dark, intense eyes, a great smile, and a very slight overbite. A throbbing, sensual tango began to play.

“Why is he here?”

“So you can have a dance before you go. For old times’ sake.”

“To a
tango
?”

“Oh, pardon me, Dr. Uptight.” The music changed to a slow, elegant waltz.

“Better.”

Maggie grinned, blew me a kiss, and sauntered away.

I turned to Christopher, who was staring all around him with complete fascination. I refrained from sighing and held out my hands. “Hi, Chris. Want to dance?”

“Yeah, sure.” He gingerly took me into his arms. “This is some dream.” He rubbed the top of his head and chuckled. “Haven’t had hair up there since I graduated medtech. Wow, I’m a kid again.”

“It’s just a dream,” I told him. Not that I was en-tirely sure it was. “So what have you been up to for the last, what, fifteen years, Chris?”

He slowly moved me around the floor. “I took over my dad’s practice. Married my high school sweetheart, Jenny. We’ve got two girls, and one on the way.”

More babies that might have been mine. “Congratulations. You’re happy, aren’t you?”

“Sure. I’m really lucky to have Jenny and the girls.” He hugged me closer. “I never forgot you, though.”

“Oh?” At twelve I thought I had been pretty forgettable.

“You broke my heart. At least, I thought you had. I didn’t figure out what your dad had done until my oldest girl got her first crush. The boy came to ask me if he could take her on a date.”

“Uh-oh. I bet that brought out your paternal side.”

“And then some. Surprised me when I thought about doing the same thing to him, just to keep her safe.” He twirled me around, and grinned. “That was when all the pieces fell together.”

“Did you? Chase off your daughter’s boyfriend, I mean?”

“No. I remembered how awful I felt, gritted my teeth, and let them go to a movie.”

I laughed and kissed his cheek. “You really are a great guy, Chris.”

“Thanks, and just for the record, Cherijo—your father was a genuine asshole.”

“News flash: He still is.”

“Are you okay now?” At my blank look, he added, “I saw the report on the vid, when they brought you and that linguist guy back to Terra. All I could think was, that’s the girl I could have married instead of Jenny.”

“Lucky escape, huh?”

“No. I love my wife and my kids, but I’ll wonder what it would have been like for you and me. We could have had something terrific together.”

Just before he faded away, he bent down, and kissed me on the cheek. Suddenly I understood why the people we love but can’t have are almost as wonderful as the ones we get.

“Yeah, I think you were right.”

The darkness came up so suddenly that one moment I was doing a graceful pivot, and the next I was standing alone, completely blind.

“What the— Maggie?” I tried to turn around, but I was paralyzed. “Maggie, stop it!”

“One more thing, Cherijo. You must never let him know what you did on the
Sunlace
.”

She knew. “I’m not going to tell Duncan anything.”

“You should tell Duncan
everything
. He loves you.” She appeared in front of me, in her elegant, alien body. “But if Joseph finds out, Duncan will die, and you will never leave Terra again.”

PART TWO
Paternity

CHAPTER Six

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Leyaneyaniteh

J
oseph had to inject me with stimulants to rouse me from my semi-comatose state, or so he informed me as the lab drone peeled the stimulation webbing off me. There were no wounds from the prolonged session, but the memory of pain made my muscles slow to respond. That, combined with the abuse from the forty-kilometer run from the day before, made me promptly keel over.