The Law of Becoming: 4 (The Novels of the Jaran) (11 page)

“Hello, heartling, you’re back early.” His expression, severe, softened as he regarded her.

Always, she betrayed herself. Always, she smiled, and her heart melted. “Heyo, Daddy,” she said, just like a little girl again, wanting to make him proud of her. “We finished all week’s homework, too. Kori and I are gonna apply to go Frejday to see the rehearsals of her Uncle Gus’s new piece, the one about Shiva and Parvati.”

He didn’t have to say anything. He could simply radiate approval. She basked in it. Then his gaze shifted to Valentin’s back. The world darkened. Her fingers, still cupping Valentin’s shoulder, tightened, as if with this shield she could protect him.

“You must apologize to your mother, Valentin,” said Vasil emotionlessly.

“Come on,” said Ilyana to her brother in a low voice, nudging him with a knee. She didn’t have the strength right now to play spectator to this endless battle of wills. “You can take the baby out to the garden while I make dinner.”

There was a long hesitation, but finally Valentin stood up. As if that was his cue, Vasil disappeared back inside the flat and the door inhaled shut behind him.

“What did you say?” Ilyana whispered as they climbed the seven steps together, pausing on the landing. Valentin shrugged. She growled at him, then snaked her foot forward toward the toe panel. Hesitated. Always, that split second hesitation before going inside. Always, she had to consciously press the panel with her foot, rather than reflexively tapping it, because she dreaded what was inside. The door whisked open.

Scent and smell and sight, all conspired in this wave that swelled over her every time she came home. Humiliation and loathing together.

All the internal walls in the flat had been torn down, leaving it a single space. In this space her mother had put up her great circular felt tent, surrounding that tent with two smaller tents as well as a cunningly devised fire pit that really wasn’t one but looked like one. Not one transparent window looked onto the street or onto the garden and the alley. Not one stretch of plain white wall betrayed that they lived in a khaja building, in a great khaja city, on a planet far distant from the planet and the lands which had given them—well, all of them but the two littlest ones—birth. Because her father was a famous actor, they had resources to draw on. Her mother liked to think it was because he was a Veselov and she an Arkhanov, princely scions of the most important tribes in the jaran, that they had access to such tribute, but Ilyana knew better. Because her father was rich and courted by the rich, he had done what his wife wished: He had paid or bartered to have projection walls installed in place of the windows and the regular walls. So that when you stepped into the flat, you stepped into another world: You walked into a jaran camp.

Other tents sprawled out on two sides, and occasionally a person moved between the tents. Beyond the tents, herds of animals grazed. On the other two sides, instead of looking at the street below or at the blank wash of wall, you looked out at an endless horizon of grass and hill, and the wind brushed the grass in wave upon wave upon wave, sweeping layers of bright and dark across the plains in a pattern that never repeated itself. The distance was so real, so four dimensional, that even knowing better Ilyana still caught herself at times on the verge of walking out into it.

The carpet she stood on had been handwoven of grass. It gave beneath her feet just as a mat of trampled grass would, and its dry scent stirred in her nostrils. The ceiling lofted above, disguised by an infinite projection of sky, sometimes cloudy, sometimes bright, and always with a sun different than Earth’s sun, and with a moon larger than Earth’s moon.

Vasil’s patrons and flunkies loved this flat. It was part of his reputation. Even Valentin, entering, relaxed, but Ilyana tensed. She hated it. She despised her mother for hiding here. Because of the fire codes, one old-fashioned latched window had been left in the streetside wall. A seamless holo projection covered it, but now and again, when everyone else was asleep or out, Ilyana would sneak it open, as if to let in a whiff of London—the curved, supple roofs, the unearthly lights, the breath of here and now.

“Your mother is resting,” said Vasil as the door shut behind them. He ducked inside one of the small tents; Ilyana shared the other small tent with Valentin. By the fire pit, little Evdokia crouched next to a pot of water in which she washed vegetables with four-year-old solemnity. Anton stood by the corral, the stretch of wall that disguised the door into the bathroom, beating on a pillow with a piece of wood shaved to look like a saber. One of the flunkies was here, in the corner where the big carpet loom was tacked down on the ground; she was an aspiring actress who had decided instead that she had been given a mystical calling to apprentice at traditional weaving with the great actor’s wife. Ilyana thought the sloe-eyed young woman looked ridiculous dressed in cast-off jaran clothing, but her presence meant that Ilyana didn’t have to spend hours every night weaving and spinning.

“Here,” said Ilyana, giving her duffel to Valentin. Then she went into the great tent. The projection walls were fantastic, of course; it was practically impossible
not
to believe in the illusion. But inside the tent even Ilyana could forget for an instant that she had ever left the tribes.

Weavings curtained the interior. Embroidered pillows were piled neatly in one corner. The bronze warming stove sat on its stag-headed legs next to a carved wooden chest inlaid with bone and gold. Leather flasks hung from the ceiling poles, and the great leather vessel used for fermented milk sat on a metal trivet, surrounded by its attendant dishes and a wooden scoop. Ilyana opened the chest and got out wooden bowls and spoons. She set them on the rugs, which were layered three deep in the outer chamber of the tent, and then pushed past the curtain, stepping up onto the six deep carpets of the inner chamber of the tent.

Karolla Arkhanov reclined on a raised wooden bed. Sitting on a stool by her feet was another flunky, this one a producer’s daughter who had recently managed the transition into being allowed into the intimacy of the family quarters of the tent by virtue of having accidentally been in the flat when the new baby had come five days ago. She had made herself useful by boiling water and pounding the birth rhythms on the drum, and had thus been granted a status which she evidently deemed glorious but which Ilyana knew was the equivalent of a favored servant. Right now she was spinning, and rocking the baby’s cradle with rhythmic pushes of one foot while Karolla gave her a desultory lesson in khush.

“Here is Yana,” said Karolla. Yana went obediently over to her mother, gave her the flowers, and kissed her on either cheek, in the formal style. She nodded at the flunky, who bobbed her head enthusiastically in return. Thank the gods that Rory wasn’t there; he was the first, and the worst, of the flunkies, and had, in fact, made himself useful to her parents, but recently he had been eyeing Ilyana with unbearably sexual interest. At least the women, whatever their inclinations, were polite and discreet.

The baby was sleeping. Ilyana knelt and brushed her fine pale skin with a finger. The newborn had no hair, but she had a thumbnail-sized red blemish below her left ear. Because of this blemish, Karolla refused to name the baby until she was blooded again—until her menstrual cycle started. It was an old superstition, and it embarrassed Ilyana even while the flunkies and patrons thought it charming.

“Do you want Valentin to take the baby outside, for some fresh air?” Ilyana asked her mother, switching to khush.

There was a silence. “Valentin has been rude,” said Karolla gravely. “Our visitor was forced to leave.”

“Uh, who was it?” Ilyana flicked a glanced toward the producer’s daughter. Karolla had no sense of privacy. All the serious flunkies used language matrices to learn khush and put up with Karolla’s verbal lessons as part of the game of playing court.

“M. Pandit,” said the producer’s daughter, who went by the unfortunate nickname of “Nipper.” Valentin always said, coarsely, that it was because she liked to be bitten, but Ilyana had overheard someone at a party say it was because her grandmother had raised her in Old Japan. Ilyana didn’t know what her real name was.

Ilyana shrugged, kissed the baby, and retreated outside, gathering up the bowls and spoons as she went. M. Pandit was a new visitor, and while Ilyana didn’t much like her, she hadn’t pegged her yet. Definitely not a flunky: M. Pandit had a greasy aura of power around her, as a potential patron would have, though she was not, as far as Ilyana knew, connected with the vast entertainment tribe in any way. Neither did she seem to be interested in Vasil Veselov in
that
way. With a few notable exceptions, those were the only three reasons anyone ever came to visit the Arkhanov camp.

Valentin sat chatting with Evdokia by the fire, encouraging her to count the vegetables as she washed them. He didn’t help, of course. Their mother would have an absolute fit if either of the boys helped to cook: Jaran boys didn’t cook; they learned to help with the herds, to work with hides and leather and harness, to embroider, to fight, to do men’s work. There was very little men’s work to do here, but Karolla managed not to see that, and since she rarely went to other people’s homes, she never saw that both women and men cooked here on Earth. She was content that Anatoly Sakhalin instructed the boys in fighting and in embroidery. She was resigned to the fact that the children had to attend khaja school. She ruled over her flunkies, received homage from her husband’s admirers, and had babies.

Ilyana fetched a shank of lamb from the pantry hidden behind the bank of potted shrubs that flanked the “spring” from which they got water and hunkered down beside Evdokia to slice it up for stew.

“I went upstairs,” said Evdokia in a soft voice, “an’ Portia and I played with—” She broke off and glanced over toward the weaver, lowering her voice further. “—real toys. Yana, when can we live in a real flat? When do I get to go to school like Portia?”

“I don’t know, little one,” replied Ilyana, feeling suddenly sick with guilt for her afternoon of freedom at Kori’s house. She should have been home, spending time with the little ones. The gods knew, they needed it. “Maybe not till you’re six. Go pour that water out down the drain, heartling.” Obediently, Evdokia trotted off. “Valentin,” hissed Ilyana, lowering her voice so that it barely sounded. “What did you say to M. Pandit?”

“Didn’t say anything to her,” retorted Valentin. “I just told Mother that she’s an oily old quisling and anyway she’s just sniffing round here ʼcause she thinks her smart young trophy husband is interested in Dad, and she dun’t want him to be.”

“Valentin!” Ilyana squealed, and clapped a hand over her mouth. In some ways Valentin was grossly ignorant, but in others he was far, far too knowing. “How could you? Why do you think that anyway?”

Valentin rolled his eyes. “You were at that awful reception, Yana. Didn’t you see her? Didn’t you see Dad making eyes at her husband?”

“No. They had those great reproductions of Greek and Roman amphitheaters in the salon. I just stayed there the whole time.” No one had bothered her there, a quiet girl lingering by three-dimensional models that most of the adults ignored. “Anyway, if M. Pandit is a quisling, then what can her trophy husband do for Dad? He never makes eyes at anybody unless he thinks they can do something for him.”

“I don’t know
everything
, Yana! You oughta pay more attention.”

“Why?” she asked, and then they both clamped their mouths shut when their father emerged from the spare tent. He looked at them but, mercifully, decided to go in to his wife instead. Evdokia returned, Anton tagging along behind.

“Can we go out, Valentin?” Anton asked querulously. “I’m bored.”

Valentin glanced at Ilyana. “Oh, all. right,” he said.

“Voice tag yourself for forty minutes,” said Ilyana. “Then it’ll be dinnertime.”

“Can I go, too?” begged Evdokia.

“You’re too little,” said Anton with all the scornful superiority of an eight-year-old.

“Yes, you can come,” said Valentin swiftly. “Let’s get out of here before Dad comes back out and says we can’t.” They vanished out the door—a stretch of gold and blue horizon that opened into the startling blank flatness of hallway and then merged back in with the endless land again—and it was suddenly quiet. The flunky at the loom shifted position now and again. Ilyana chopped up the vegetables, humming to herself.

The sudden appearance of her father startled her, he arrived so silently. He crouched down beside her. “I have to attend an opening tonight, and your mother is too ill to go with me.” It was a convenient fiction: Her mother was almost always “too ill” to attend functions, even if in this case it was true, the baby just having come. He settled a hand tenderly on her knee and smiled at her. “Will you come with me?”

“What kind of opening?” she asked reluctantly, even while she knew it was already decided.

“Oh, nothing too overwhelming, I think. Not as bad as the last one, anyway.” His smile became conspiratorial, including her in the memory of how stultifyingly official the last reception had been. “It’s an exhibition of photography.”

“Photography? Like the two-dimensional stuff?”

He chuckled warmly. “Some of it, I suppose. I don’t know all the technical terms.”

“Father,” she asked suspiciously, “why are you going to an art exhibit? Are you angling for someone to do a portrait of you?”

Now he really laughed. It was such a rare sound that Ilyana cherished it. “I don’t think so. There’ve been so many, after all. But you will come with me, won’t you? It’s at the Little Tate, and there’s that nesh-enhanced exhibit of the Floating Gardens of Babel in one of the adjoining galleries.”

It was actually the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, but she didn’t correct him. “Oh, all right,” she said, not immune to bribery. Then she felt a pang. “But I really should stay home with Valentin and the little ones.”

“I’ll send them upstairs.”

“Valentin doesn’t get along with Anatoly Sakhalin, Father. You know that.”